music_collector

Those were some bad dudes. I didn't know much about them prior to this, so thanks for the history lesson.

This reminds me of Paul Bernardo.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Bernardo

Trollheart

Oh there's more to come. So much more. We haven't even got to the murders yet, never mind the trials. Stay tooned, as they say.

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ribbons

I usually don't read true crime/evil/horror stuff, but your Menendez stuff history is fascinating, TH. Very well done. I remember vaguely hearing about the Menendez brothers in junior tennis circuit days. The father had a brutal reputation.

Trollheart

Thanks hon. It's nice to know I have a couple of readers at least. Good to have you along, and I'm honoured to have been able to sway you from your aversion to murder/evil subjects, if only this one. MWA-HAH-HAH-HAH-HAAAAA!

Sorry.

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ribbons

Thanks! Can't wait for the continuation.......

I remember watching parts of the trial on Court TV (US). Time to go to YouTube and *reminisce*.

Trollheart

II: Pre-emptive Strike? Blood Brothers: Murder in Paradise

The night of August 20 1989 was, like most California nights, warm and muggy. Cold didn’t seem to have a pass to get into Beverly Hills; it was almost as if it was an unwritten but strictly observed rule that it must always be sunny and warm there. Think about it: have you ever seen footage of the playground of the rich and famous where it was raining? Or even cold? It was as if Beverly Hills was exempted from bad weather, given special dispensation in this as it is in about every other area, including, usually, crime. Beverly Hills exists as a kind of almost fairy land, detached and separate from the rest of Los Angeles, the rest of California, and certainly the rest of America. There could have been signs outside the city limits: Inclement weather, criminals, beggars, homeless people, loud music, drugs not wanted here. (Well maybe drugs). Keep walking.

But crime was about to ignore that sign with a sneer and the click of shotguns being cocked, and fill the pleasant, balmy air with the sharp stench of cordite and the smell of roasting human flesh, the stink of blood and treachery. Striding confidently through the big iron gates and on towards the French doors of the white three million plus villa, death was coming on inexorable feet. No alarm buzzed, though the Mendendezes had one of the most expensive systems in America, the villa having once been occupied by rock royalty such as Prince and Elton John. But Jose always forgot to switch the alarm on, and tonight was no exception. It would, however, be the last time he forgot.

Death had come to Beverly Hills that night.

Having nodded off in front of the television, Jose was slumped comfortably on the sofa, head back, while Kitty had also fallen asleep, so neither heard the tread of their killers as they advanced up the garden path. Had they done, and even had they stiffened for a moment in dread anticipation, they would surely have relaxed once they recognised their two boys, though perhaps for a fleeting instant they might possibly have wondered what Lyle and Erik were doing with shotguns?

Such thoughts would not have passed through the mind of the family dog, Rudy, could animals reason in that way. This was just the two young masters come home. Nothing to worry about. No need to raise the canine alarm.

One of the brother raised his Mossberg shotgun and fired. The first two shots missed, hitting the wall, one shot hammering into a tree in the garden, and the concussion of the impact pulled Jose from his sleep, one bleary moment before he returned to if, never to awaken again. The fourth shot hit him in the elbow as he yelled “No no no!” and then two more took him in the arm. But these were minor wounds, and to ensure his father was dead, Lyle walked behind him, placed the barrel of the shotgun against his head and squeezed the trigger. People had remarked upon Jose’s hard-headedness, but even the scourge of many boardrooms could not stand up to the direct impact of a shotgun blast, and half that hard head was blown away. Jose slumped forward, dead.

Not surprisingly, the sound of her husband being killed woke Kitty up.


(I'm not kidding: this is quite graphic. Proceed at your own risk)

She stared, for a moment stupefied into frozen inaction, unable to believe what she was seeing. Then she made a run for it. She didn’t get far. Two or three shots took her and one shattering her arm brought her down, like a felled deer. Kitty did not die easily. She struggled to her feet and made off again, but her killer followed her, took her down with another shot and then stood over her, methodically blasting her from leg to shoulder, firing shot after shot. She collapsed, but amazingly was not yet dead and continued to try to crawl away. They had run out of ammunition, so the brothers went outside and reloaded. Coming back in, one of them leaned over the coffee table, pointing the shotgun down at her and blew her head away, sending her to finally join her husband in the afterlife. No doubt Jose would have found a way to criticise the method of execution. “Too long and messy,” he might have moaned. “Do a quick job, get it over with and get out before the cops arrive.”

The cops, however, did not arrive. Nobody had heard the shots. The television was on loud enough to disguise the sounds, and the villa was set back enough from the main road that a casual passerby would have been unlikely to have heard anything, and if they did would probably think it was fireworks or a car backfiring, or indeed, sounds from the television, where James Bond, unaware of and immune to the real-life slaughter taking place around him, was busily making love to a spy.

Before they left, the brothers made sure to kneecap both of their parents. Why, did not seem obvious at the time, but this was a well-planned and carefully thought-out murder, and they had their reasons, as would become clear. Their work done, the two brothers departed, but not before carefully collecting the shell casings.

As perhaps a final insult to their parents, and obviously to remove suspicion from them, the two boys then returned to the house, “discovered” the grisly scene, and immediately called the police.

Well, no, not immediately. The boys arrived back around 11:00 PM but it was almost midnight when Lyle, as the elder, made the call. This, too, would come into their later trial. There could certainly be a certain amount of delay allowed as the reality set in, the shock causing those who found the bodies to delay, but almost an hour later? If you or I came home and found our parents or wife or family brutally murdered, wouldn’t you be on the blower right away? I know I would. But they waited. What were they waiting for? A last check around to ensure they hadn’t left any incriminating evidence, a final “deep clean” of the crime scene before the professional forensics team arrived?

In perhaps another odd move, after the 911 call the first person they called was not Jose’s mother, not any of the family or friends, but... Erik’s tennis coach, who lived in Santa Monica. Hardly the first name, you would think, that would come to mind as you look at your dead parents sprawled in front of you and wait for the police to arrive. They then made sure to put on a show when the cops did get there, running out in tears and banging the pavement and crying and howling, Erik mostly. Lyle was the more controlled of the two, and when it came to time to be questioned by the police, he would be the one to hold it together while his younger brother seemed to fall apart.

Beverly Hills Cops: Interrogation and Investigation

Detective Zoeller was called in off his vacation to take charge; murders were all but unknown in Beverly Hills, but when they occurred the residents demanded all of the police resources, and there was no such thing as “wait and see”. Whether the killing involved the possibility of other victims being targeted, or whether it was just causing a bad stink, reputation-wise, in the most desired address in America, the great and the good were not going to allow any delays or be fobbed off by junior investigators. This crime had to be solved, pronto. And Zoeller knew that, as did his boss, which was probably why he, as the top homicide detective (of two) in the BHPD, was told to cut his holiday short and report to the Menendez residence, now a charnel house.

He as well as the beat cops who had responded first to the 911 call were agreed that this was no ordinary murder, nor was it a robbery gone wrong. “Someone was sending a message,” opined one of the cops. The level of damage, particularly in Kitty’s case, spoke of unbridled anger and rage, a very personal score being settled in the most final and bloody way possible. The brothers were not yet considered suspects, but were interviewed, where they reacted in two entirely different ways, both consistent with their personalities. No sense could be got out of Erik, who even asked for confirmation that his mother and father were dead, and kept asking after the family dog. His interview was terminated after twenty minutes as it was useless to try to question him; he was hysterical and making no sense. Lyle on the other hand answered all questions with a cool and calm detachment that must have sounded some sort of warning bell in the cops’ minds, though it would be some time before that would become a klaxon, impossible to ignore.

Already though, odd inconsistencies were showing up in the boys’ stories (well, in Lyle’s, as nobody could get any sort of answer out of Erik). First, they claimed they had earlier gone into town with the intention of going to see the new James Bond movie. Was it coincidence that their parents had been watching one of 007’s earlier efforts before their brains had been splattered all over their living room? And they mentioned that when they arrived back they saw and smelled smoke, presumably from the multiple shotgun discharges. But this was an hour later, and any smoke in the air had already dissipated, as confirmed by the investigating officers, who saw no such clouds of smoke such as the brothers spoke of. Lyle mentioned that his mother had been on the verge of suicide, but neglected to tell his interrogators about the several attempts she had already made to take her own life.

When asked if they had any idea who might want to hurt their parents, Lyle advanced a theory that, while far-fetched, the cops had already considered. He said the “mob” had “hit” their father because he would not play ball with them, and his wife had been collateral damage. This did fit in with the apparently professional style of the killing, and the kneecappings were another indication that this was a gangland thing. However one action should have given them pause.

After they had been released, the boys requested permission to return to the house to pick up their tennis racquets! Dedication and professionalism is all well and good, but when your parents are smoking corpses, who thinks of going back to the scene of the crime on what is, on the face of it, an extremely trivial errand? It’s not even as if either of them was playing in a tournament (from which you would have thought they would have asked to have been excused on compassionate grounds anyway) - they just wanted to practice. I mean, come on. That doesn’t sit right, whether you suspect them or not. That has to raise eyebrows.

The memorial service was set for August 25, five days later, autopsies completed and presumably whatever the funeral directors’ offices could do to mitigate the awful carnage wreaked on the two bodies and make them presentable as human beings. Almost fulfilling the old adage, the brothers were late for the funeral. Not theirs of course, but that of their parents. This in itself show a lack of respect and regard for their mother and father, and a discourtesy to the many hundreds waiting to say their last goodbyes. It also validates what their father had taught them: to always be in control, drive the narrative and never let anyone tell you what to do. What he would have thought about them taking his advice in these circumstances, we can only guess.

With characteristic lack of feeling and complete arrogance, Lyle made it clear that he intended to take over as his father’s heir, to become head of LIVE. He didn’t know at this stage what Jose had put in his will, but he knew that he stood next in line, like a prince taking over from his father the king, and never considered there might be others who were expecting, planning or hoping for the top job, now that the tyrant had fallen.

The mob connection looked stronger when the name Noel Bloom came to the attention of the cops, and they also considered a guy called Morris Levy, whom Jose had cheated in a deal to buy out his chain of video stores, in which it was said another powerful Mafia family, none other than the Genoveses, one of the Five New York Families, had a share. Settling on the almost accepted scenario, LIVE paid for an expensive hotel room for Lyle and Erik, as police were concerned the mob might come after them.

The actual funeral was to be held in the university chapel at Princeton, ironic as it was from here that Lyle had been booted for a year following the copying scandal, and it was a place he hated. Still, like everything in the Menendez family, it was all about the perception, the image, and so the brothers laid their parents to rest in New Jersey, eager to have the bodies cremated. Theories began to surface as people questioned the possibility of Jose’s involvement in organised crime, and how he could have made the money he had by legitimate means? His political aspirations told against him too, as another wild idea was that he intended to return to his homeland and oust Castro, taking over and pledging his country’s loyalty to the USA. The belief was then that Castro had sent goons to America to take him out before he had a chance to return.

And then, there was the intended purchase of that island in Miami, a perfect place from which to operate and oversee a drug or gun-running operation. His family were in New York, home of the Five Families. To some people, all these pieces began to fall into place, especially as gang graffiti found on the mansion wall seemed to indicate a beef with one of the local crews. Nevertheless, both of the main suspects, or at least links to organised crime which Zoeller had in the frame turned out to be a bust, and they were back to square one. Then he spoke to Pete Wiere.

Pete was a friend of the family, and his reply to the not-at-all-leading question as to who he believed responsible surprised and shocked the detective. “I have no basis for this,” admitted Wiere, shrugging almost apologetically, as if he expected his idea to be laughed at, “but I wonder if the boys did it.” It was such a strange thing to say, and all Wiere could give to back it up was a suspicion that the brothers were “too perfect.” On September 17 to Zoeller went to interview Carlos Baralt, and was again surprised to find that, having been unable to interview the brothers - they would not return his calls - one of them was there, and shortly afterwards the other turned up too, so the detective was able to interview them, with neither having time to consult with the other so as to prepare a story. Trouble was, Zoeller had not been expecting this stroke of good fortune and was also unprepared.

But he was a cop with decades of experience behind him, even if Beverly Hills didn’t do much to challenge his skills. This was a chance to use them, and use them he did. He quizzed Lyle on whether falling asleep in front of the television was something his parents had done normally. If so, he pointed out, this would have to be known to someone familiar to them, so that they would be able to take them by surprise. Lyle was non-committal, evasive. Erik seemed more concerned that the cops were now working, it seemed, on a theory of the killers having been known to his parents, which might place them right back in the frame. They had done all they could to deflect suspicion onto the shadowy mob, but with the two strikes against that theory in the dismissal as suspects of Bloom and Levy, that line of enquiry was beginning to look less and less likely.

Now Zoeller began to carefully probe the boys’ relationship with their parents, their girlfriends and how their parents had reacted to them, and at the end of the interview admitted to them that he really felt the gangland theory held very little water. They shakily agreed. Nevertheless, when reporters interviewed them Lyle began pushing the organised crime idea again. Personally, it seems odd to me (I don’t know if they felt the same way) that the supposedly grieving and shocked brothers should conduct the interview, not only in the same house in which their parents were murdered - they had plenty of money and could have rented a place, even bought a new house, but they chose to remain at the family home - but in the very room in which the deed was carried out. The reporters were sitting in the crime scene itself (cleared now of course) and they and Lyle and Erik were seated on the same sofas that had been drenched with their father’s blood. Well, probably not the actual sofas themselves, but ones placed in the same position and occupying the same space. It must have felt eerie, like at any moment two gunmen were about to burst through the doors and start firing shotguns.

Whether to wrong-foot the press, or in an attempt to head off what he may have seen as the beginnings of suspicions turning their way, Lyle then claimed he had information that the police were looking at Bloom as a suspect. In fact, they had already discounted him and indeed the whole mob hit angle. He then went on to confuse the reporters by claiming he wasn’t really that interested in finding out who killed his parents, rationalising this as the powerlessness to make them pay other than seeing them go to jail. He said it would be worse knowing and to be unable to avenge them, than not knowing. This did not sit well with the journalists, nor did Lyle’s next-to-inauguration speech, as he waxed lyrical about how he saw the company progressing under his leadership. By the time the interview was over, both reporters were of the same mind.

Those brothers killed their parents.

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music_collector

That's.....quite the story.

Trollheart

You knew this was coming....


III. Beverly Hills Cops: No Laughing Matter

The initial investigation was pretty much a shambles. To some degree, this wasn’t the fault of the cops. As mentioned, in Beverly Hills about the only action a cop would get might be if someone’s expensive pedigree dog got lost, or maybe a domestic row, though it’s hard really to think of anyone daring to disturb the almost sepulchral quiet of the exclusive area. So they were not qualified, nor experienced enough to investigate a major murder like this, and that led to some pretty big errors that would come back to haunt them, and lead to delays in the arrest of the brothers.

First, they failed to administer a gunshot residue test to Lyle and Erik at the scene. This would have shown that they had both recently fired weapons, which would be difficult for the brothers to explain. A normal police force would have suspected everyone, no matter their status or relationship to the deceased, and don’t they say that in many cases the culprit is always close to home? Didn’t they know that the Menendez brothers stood to gain a fortune if their parents died? Did they even probe the strained relationships within the family? None of these questions seem to have occurred to them, which is bad enough, but when Zoeller refused Lyle permission to enter the house the day after the murder - on the pretext of getting his tennis racquet but in reality to check his car for evidence they might have forgotten to dispose of - a later trip was successful, when a cop told him it was okay.

Why did the cop do this? Had Zoeller not given orders that the crime scene - and that would include the car - had been sealed and that nobody was to enter? Even if he had not, is this not Policing 101? What sort of idiot risks his job by granting access to the scene to what could be potentially a suspect? And how, in the name of all that’s holy, did an entire police team - admittedly a BHPD one but still - miss shell casings, wrappings for the shells and other incriminating evidence that was still in the car the next day? Did nobody think to check the car? Really?

Erik and Lyle may have thought they were master criminals, and revelled in and congratulated themselves on getting away with the perfect murder (and robbery really, as they had essentially stolen their inheritance) but after the killing they were as far from unobtrusive and calm as it’s possible to be. Erik kept jabbering on, nervously dropping hints about what they had done to friends who, luckily for them, discounted his words as just a symptom of the shock he was in. Then the two brothers phoned the gun store where they had bought the shotguns, out of state. They asked about the CCTV footage: when was it kept till? Why would anyone who had nothing to hide want to know this?

As might be expected, the two went wild spending their ill-gotten gains, and there was little if any remorse for or even remembrance of the two people who had brought them up, now just twin piles of ashes in urns. Lyle even got in a computer expert to erase files on Kitty’s computer, one in particular titled WILL. Perhaps he was afraid his parents had been about to write the two of them out of their will, and while a screen detailing changes would not be legally binding, it might very well provide a partial motive for the boys killing their parents, if it was proved that they had known about it. Unable to get at the file - which was corrupted - Lyle ensured it was completely erased from the computer.

Ken Soble and his friend who had interviewed the boys for their paper went to see Glenn Stevens, a name Lyle had given them when asked for a list of their friends they could interview or speak to. Stevens was angry at Lyle, who had begun to emulate his late father and was condescending about his friend, denigrating him and treating him like a lackey. Stevens hinted that not only did he, Stevens, feel the brothers had something to do with the murders, but that the police suspected them too, and had told him. That could of course just be a case of sour grapes, but Zoeller decided to push Erik and see what he could squeeze out. Erik remained relatively defiant, asking why they suspected him and his brother, and Zoeller remarked that they appeared to be avoiding him, not returning his calls, and when certain questions were put to them, the answers could at best be described as evasive, certainly not helpful. In short, they didn’t seem to want to offer any assistance to the police, as if they didn’t want the killers of their parents caught.

It now emerged that the close bond between the two brothers was under considerable strain as Lyle, the elder now acting as the father, spent money like water and also seemed to be dipping into his brother’s share. Erik was beginning to fight back, realising he was being treated badly. Seeing his chance, Zoeller asked Erik outright if his brother had been involved, if he had hired someone to kill their parents. Erik remained loyal to his sibling, but once Zoeller had left the younger brother began frantically ringing Princeton, looking for Lyle. He got, worse luck, Glenn Stevens, and stammered that the police suspected them and he had to talk to Lyle. He was no good on his own, he had to have his brother to talk to.

Soble and his partner decided before they could write a story naming the boys as suspects they had to know from the police if they were on the right track, so they asked for a meeting. At that meeting, each side felt the other out but each left with about as much, or as little, as they had come in with. The only real result was that both sides now believed their suspicions to be at least not groundless. Soble requested, and got, a follow-up interview from the brothers, but this time found them more close-mouthed, more guarded, as if they knew they were on the suspect list and were determined not to do anything to move themselves to the top of it.

There was one addition: this time, the boys had brought their lawyer.

After Soble had quizzed him on his reckless spending, and the fact that he planned to go back to school in the winter, Lyle remarking that by January the murders would be a long time in the past, the answers began to dry up. No comment, my lawyer advises and so on, made the interview seem more like a police one after they had been cautioned. Something had clearly changed. Something was up. And very quickly the reporters were shown the door, but not before Soble had gone for broke and asked Erik if he thought Lyle had done it. “No”, said Erik, but did not elaborate as the door was closed in the reporters’ faces.

But what’s the old saying? As one door closes another opens? When Zoeller and his partner went to see Craig Cignarelli, Erik’s best friend had a tale to tell, a tale that potentially could blow the case wide open. He told of how he and Erik had been having dinner when the younger Menendez began to describe how he and his brother had shot their parents. There was a lot of critical detail in the account Erik Menendez gave, and inwardly Zoeller was salivating, this amounting to a confession, until Erik said (according to Cignarelli) “It might have happened.” That took their enthusiasm down several notches. Still, the question remained: why even broach the subject? Why risk putting he and his brother in the frame, even if only hypothetically? And how did they have such gruesome details about the deaths?

The Deputy DA, Pam Ferrero, listened to their retelling of their conversation with Cignarelli, and decided it was good, but they needed more before they could go for an arrest. She suggested Zoeller and Linehan ask the kid to wear a wire. They were surprised and gratified that he agreed to do so. All they needed now was for him to get Erik talking again and make the same confession, even if as a hypothetical, and they would have him. Unfortunately Erik got spooked - he surely didn’t suspect his friend of wearing a listening device, but he might have considered it a bad idea to repeat the “confession”, in case anyone took it for the truth - and laughed the whole thing off. Still, the conversation between the two young men did prove at least that Cignarelli had been telling the truth when he had said Erik had made the confession.

Then there was Greg Guest, a friend of his brother’s who, when borrowing Lyle’s Porsche (recently purchased with his inheritance, a snip at sixty four thousand dollars) found a spent shell casing in Lyle’s leather jacket. Having mailed the shell to the cops, he then tried to back away from it, changing his story as to where it had been found, but as it happened a ballistics expert assured Zoeller it had not come from the murder weapon. On this, he would later be proven wrong.

All this time, the Menendez will was slowly but indefatigably making its way through probate court. The cops knew that once it was approved and the boys could get their hands on the real money, they would likely skip the country and be out of the jurisdiction of law enforcement. Time was not on the side of the police, and was running out. They needed to find those shotguns, which would then tie their owners to the weapons and provide irrefutable proof as to the identity of the killers of Jose and Kitty Menendez.

The search would not be an easy one. Within a ten-mile radius of Los Angeles there were over three hundred gun shops (at least, registered ones) and most likely the brothers had been careful enough not to buy close to home, so ten miles might not be a large enough area to cover. But LA is roughly 500 square miles in area, so work that one out! Zoeller and his team would have had to expand, if the ratio held true, their search to about fifteen thousand shops! And this assuming the boys had not gone further afield, and bought the guns out of state! It seemed a hopeless task, certainly one that would not be completed before the looming deadline of the probate.

And then, finally, out of the blue, they got a break.

Judalon Rose Smyth came to the BHPD with a complaint, and when her contact heard what was in that complaint he knew Zoeller would want to be told, so he brought her to meet him. Turned out Smyth was a friend of Dr. Oziel, Erik’s psychiatrist, and she told an extraordinary story about his asking her to eavesdrop on the conversation he had had with Lyle and Erik, where Erik had told him about the murder. Lyle, apparently, lost it and shouted “Now we have to kill him, and everyone associated with him!” while Erik sobbed and declared he couldn't kill anymore. Oziel was so scared he armed himself and told his wife to go into hiding with his children. She said he had the whole thing on tape - confessions, descriptions of how the two brothers had killed their parents, Lyle’s crowing about having got away with it, everything.

Accordingly a search warrant was issued for Oziel’s house, office and the safety deposit box he was known to keep. He was reluctant to hand over the tapes - scared, more like - but had no choice in the end. Before sealing the tapes for the court, Zoeller and his team listened and they knew they finally had the evidence they needed. It was time to move on the brothers.

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

Trollheart

IV. The Truth, the Whole Truth, and Anything But the Truth: Brothers in the Dock

“If the police get their hands on those tapes, I’m fucked.” - Lyle Menendez

I: All My Dreams, Torn Asunder...

The Arrest

While Erik played in a tennis tournament in Israel, Lyle was taken as he and his friends drove in his yellow jeep to get some food. Zoeller knew the elder Menendez was only back in Beverly Hills for a short while, as he was now running a restaurant he had bought in Princeton, and this was their chance to catch him. They decided against surrounding the mansion since their grandmother, Jose’s mother Maria was staying there, and the people of Beverly Hills were a little averse to armed standoffs in their backyards. Seeing the blockade, Lyle furiously slammed the jeep into reverse - right into a cop van blocking his exit. Armed police jumped out and shouted at the three men in the jeep to get out and lie down, which they did.

After a short while the two friends, one of which was Glenn Stevens, the guy who had agreed to try to entrap Erik, were released and sent back to the mansion to break the news to Maria that the police had arrested the killer of her son and daughter-in-law, and that it was their son, while Lyle was booked and then sent to the LA County Men’s Jail. The police held a media announcement, the motive given for the crime simple greed. They also said they would be pushing for the death penalty. The family, of course, did not believe it and were determined to stand by Lyle. Erik, when he heard of the arrest of his brother, rushed home and turned himself in. He was nothing without his elder brother. He was quickly reunited with him in an LA cell.

Now that they had their main suspects, the police had to shore up their case. The tapes all but proved the brothers' guilt, but given that they had been seized from a psychiatrist’s office, even though all the proper forms had been observed and everything had been done by the book, there was a good chance they would be ruled inadmissible as evidence, which made finding the weapons such a priority again. Luckily, again Smyth came up trumps, advising them not only of the dumping site for the guns (which though searched for were never found) but that the boys had bought them not in LA but in San Diego. Frustrated at all the time and man-hours wasted, Zoeller nevertheless started from zero again, painstakingly visiting every gun shop along the San Diego Freeway, getting the same answer in every shop until in desperation he tried the Big 5 discount store, where to his amazement and delight he found a receipt for two Mossberg shotguns, bought August 18 1989 - a mere two days before the killings - and paid for by one Donovan Jay Goodreau.

Interviewed by Zoeller, Goodreau realised his stolen driving licence had been used by the brothers to buy the guns, but confirmed the signature was not his. The DA ordered samples of the two Menendez’s handwriting to be collected, for comparison. Erik refused to give a sample. But now the carelessness of the two brothers began to come back to haunt them. Although the clerk at Big 5 could not identify the buyer of the gun from the mugshots he was shown, nor were the police able to lift any fingerprints from the form, one of the other clerks remembered that one of them had called back days later to ask about the video surveillance. Turned out there was no surveillance - the cameras had no film in them. But the call itself had to be treated as a suspicious act. Why would anyone want such information?

The Trial

Of course, as might be expected, Menendez money bought the best defence team possible. Heading it was Leslie Abrahamson, a tiny woman with a mouth and manner that varied completely inversely with her stature. She was a feared figure, a tenacious and vicious fighter for her clients, and vigorously opposed the death penalty. She was also someone who would stoop to any depths to win her case, and who didn’t care all that much if her client was guilty, as long as she could get them off. She would defend Erik, while the quieter and less experienced, though no less determined Jill Lansing would be at Lyle’s table. Facing both would be the returning Pam Ferrero, now married and a Bozanich, who had been asked back onto the case when the DA lost faith in the man meant to take first chair, Irving Alhadeff. It was almost a case of things coming full circle for Ferrero, now Bozanich, as she had been the one trying to build the case against the brothers, but had had to go back to another case she had been working on and leave this one in the hands of Alhadeff.

The prosecution held its breath for several days while closed hearings went on to determine whether or not the tapes seized at Oziel’s office could be used as evidence. In a major coup, the judge ruled that they could. The defence immediately appealed the decision, but it was upheld; the appeal delayed the trial for almost a year. Giving his ruling in open court, the judge quoted from transcripts from the tapes, proving in the boys’ own words their guilt. The family, no surprise, was shocked, and much of the brothers’ support dissolved, though, it must be said, not all. Abramson, unbowed, stated her intent to appeal to the highest court in the land. This added another year onto the start of the trial, and in June 1992 the Supreme Court issued its ruling.

It did not go well for the prosecution.

One tape would be allowed into evidence, but not the one Zoeller and Bozanich wanted, and none of the tapes could be played in court. Abramson crowed over her victory, though the brothers didn’t seem to see it as such. And now the agency of the case’s biggest break, and that which enabled it to come to court, was about to throw a serious spanner in the works. Judalon Smyth took out indictments against Oziel, claiming he all but hypnotised her, raped her, plied her with drugs, and put her life in danger by having her listen outside his office door when Lyle was in there being told what his brother had said. Her accusations were sure to be picked up upon by Abramson and her defence team, and used to discredit the psychiatrist as an unreliable witness.

In response, Oziel and his wife, who stood by him, fought back and called Smyth delusional, vindictive and a liar. They detailed how they had opened their home to her after she had become fearful for her life, and how she had threatened and abused them while there. Oziel himself denied he had asked her to listen at the door, pointing out that it being a psychiatrist’s office and security and privacy being of paramount importance, it was all but impossible for any intelligible sound to be heard through the door. He painted Smyth as someone scorned and out for revenge, and turned her accusation of violence and ill-use of her back upon him, saying he was the one who was frightened of her.

Meanwhile, in jail, Lyle was not popular. A man who was used to getting everything he wanted and answering to nobody, with little feeling or sympathy or even time for others, he did not take to the life of a prisoner well, and had many complaints lodged against him. Erik seemed to be sliding towards or revealing a homosexual side, and when a priest began attending him, the younger brother began to spill details of abuse he allegedly suffered at the hands of both his parents. These accusations - which the dead man and woman could not refute - would form much of the basis of their defence case, as Abramson went, as she was known to do, for the “abused-child-kills-abusing-parent-let-him-off” angle which had served her so well in the past.

But now that the idea of the gang hit had been put to bed completely, it emerged that the brothers really hadn’t thought it through. A kneecapping is a popular form of punishment, yes: they had it here in Ireland (at least, up the north) during the Troubles. But it’s meant as a warning. They smash your kneecaps, you’re on crutches or in a wheelchair for a while, you get better, you do what you’re told otherwise next time it will be worse. Or maybe you don’t recover, and spend the rest of your life in that wheelchair, wishing you had listened when you were warned. And you serve as a warning to others. So there would be no point in kneecapping someone while at the same time killing them in such a brutal fashion. Why bother? A warning shot into the brain? Made no sense.

Also, it’s a well known fact that in general, mobs don’t kill families. Here, yes, the gangs are led by no code of honour of any sort, and even a blameless taxi driver who has the bad fortune to be related to a mob boss can get shot, but in America, particularly among the cosa nostra, who revere mothers and wives as angels, there is an understood ban on hurting the women. Yet the Menendezes gave their mother the most grisly and protracted death of their two parents. Mob hits also, generally, are more in the surgical line, as in, not so bloody and violent. Bugsy Siegal was an exception, though nobody has ever confirmed for sure that his was a mob hit. But even the St. Valentine’s Massacre in the 1930s only involved the guys being machinegunned down. Messy, sure, violent certainly, but not overkill. And that was Capone.

No, the attempt to make the murder of their parents look like a mob hit was overdone, based on an inexact knowledge of gang behaviour and zero experience with mobsters and their modus operandi. The killing had all the hallmarks of having been made to look like that, but not being that. Had a more experienced police force than the BHPD been investigating, it’s likely they would have quickly dismissed such a theory as absurd.

Back in jail, plans were found in Lyle’s cell which seemed to show the layout of a building, but did not conform to the specifications of the jail, so though the brothers had been accused of trying to hack through their chains and leg it, the plans didn’t look like ones for escape from the jail. What they were, the prison officers did not know. Letters accompanied the plans, which spoke of going to South America, then to the Middle East. Presumably this was to avoid extradition back to America; his letter then went on to counsel Erik not to testify against him, to have faith, to remain loyal. Very oddly, he mentioned that he was determined that their parents should not have died in vain. Considering he and his brother killed them, this is a statement that’s very hard to reconcile, unless you assume he was compartmentalising, and was refusing to realise that it was his fault.

Next he talked about family secrets, but did not allude to what they were. He was concerned though that these would come out in court, and worried what bearing they might have on the case. Then he as much as admitted his guilt, saying “what we did in August was a mistake.”

As for Jose, a line comes to mind from Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part I:
“Ill-weaved ambition, how much art thou shrunk!
When that this body did contain a spirit,
A kingdom for it was too small a bound,
But now two paces of the vilest earth is room enough.”

After all his grandiose plans - buying an island for his family, running for the Florida senate, seeing his sons grow up to be famous tennis stars, and no doubt leaving behind some massive monument to his greatness, with his two sons now in jail and awaiting trial on the murder of he and his wife, all that was left for the world to remember Jose Menendez was a plastic tombstone and some dead flowers. History would not remember this Cuban immigrant who had wrestled the American Dream and made it do his bidding, forcing life to shape itself into the destiny he wanted, the destiny he demanded. No. People would only remember that this was a man who pushed his children to achieve greatness, and that they turned on him and took his life, the ultimate, the final, the worst betrayal.

Shakespeare again comes to mind: “Let her see," snarls an angry King Lear "how Sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child!”

Let’s just pause here before we go any further, and examine the evidence. It may at this case be all circumstantial, but it’s pretty compelling all the same. A number of questions arise.

*How did the killers gain such easy access to the Mendendezes’s home?

*Why did the family dog, fiercely protective of Kitty, not attack or even make any sound?

*How did the killers know that their targets were likely to be asleep in front of the television?

*Why were there wounds on both Kitty and Jose’s knees? Though in Kitty’s case, her body had been blasted so many times and in so many places this probably becomes a moot question, but what about Jose? He was shot sitting down, his head blown away. How would anyone be able to kneecap a man in a sitting position without having him move, and if the shots were fired after those that took off his skull, why would anyone bother doing that? What would be the point?

*Why did Lyle and Erik seem so desperate to get back into the house the morning after the crime?

*How could two boys whose parents had just been killed even think of playing tennis?

*Why would those same two boys - or one of them at least - express indifference to catching the killers?

*Why would the other one mention that it was possible - or, in his words, “it could have happened” - that they had killed their own parents?

*Why did neither boy express any remorse at the death of their parents soon after, especially since they had made such a show of unrestrained grief when the police showed up after the killing?

*If he was innocent, why did Lyle try to escape from the blockade when he was arrested?

*Why did the boys not cooperate with the investigation: failing to return calls, not being available for interviews, keeping quiet about things?

*Why had Lyle plans of some sort of building in jail, and a letter that seemed to detail a life after prison?

*Why did they both say the room was filled with smoke when they discovered their parents’ bodies, when the smoke would easily have cleared by that time?

*Why did they take so long - nearly an hour after finding the bodies - to call the police?

*And probably the biggest question of all: why would they have confessed to, even boasted about killing their parents to their psychiatrist, and why then would Lyle threaten him and indicate his life was in danger?

__________________
Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

Trollheart

II: Men II Boyz: “Aunt” Leslie Shapes the Narrative

Having made the claim that the boys had only killed their parents in order to preserve their own lives, which they were in fear for, and that they had been striking back at years of abuse and torture against them, perpetrated by the corpses now underground, Leslie Abramson went to work supporting her accusation. LA was already reeling from the verdicts in the Rodney King case, and tensions were still high as people watched the Menendez trail with bated breath. Where the King trial had been both a case of law enforcement v the ordinary man, and a litmus test as to how far those officers of the law were entitled to go in the so-called execution of their duty (or how much the courts would turn a blind eye when they went beyond the norm) as well as a case of essentially black man versus white man, this trial was very much asking an important question. Could those with money and power secure freedom from the law? Was their position and prestige enough to insulate them from the consequences of their actions?

While it would be unfair to say that Abramson was trying to prove it was - she really didn’t care if they were guilty, as long as she got paid and they got off, another success in her career - the Assistant DA and her team were endeavouring to do their best to show that American justice, the rule of law applied to everyone, regardless of status, wealth or colour. This of course would prove to be far from the case in respect of two huge media figures, Michael Jackson avoiding a sentence for child assault the next year, followed quickly by the similar acquittal of O.J. Simpson, and a third time for Jackson in 2005. Both men, ironically, were black, so it was hard for African-Americans to protest about the injustice of these non-convictions. Had one or both been white, it’s possible it would have been a completely different story. However, with two white boys on trial race would be unlikely to figure in this, and Bozanich believed her team had a good case, and that the juries (two, as some of the charges pertained only to Erik and some only to Lyle, while in some they were both seen as complicit) would see through the tissue of lies and fantasy that the terrier leading the defence was about to place before them.

The rest of the Menendez family were in something of a quandary. If the evidence presented by Abramson convinced the jury that Erik and Lyle had killed in self-defence, then they might be acquitted, but in order for that to happen, all the family’s dirty laundry - real or imagined - was going to have to get a good and very embarrassing public airing. Obviously, they did not want their secrets - if there were any - to be exposed, but then they probably didn’t want Jose’s sons being sent to the gas chamber either, so what to do? Not as if they had a choice of course: the show was about to begin, and Abramson intended it to be the Greatest Show on Earth, or as she quipped herself, “Let the sleaze fly!”

As with most juries, there were those who were instantly dismissed by either side, like the person who wrote that life was a two-edged sword and sometimes good people had to do bad things. Both juries were weighted more in the male arena, which some people believed might lessen the chances of its being sympathetic towards a charge of the boys having suffered child abuse, this being usually more the purvue of women, and the average age was also questioned, with most jurors over the forty years mark. This was believed to likely lead to a more “old school” view, where parents were supposed to be obeyed and kids did not have the right to hit back, certainly not so brutally. Out of a pool of a thousand jurors, the two sets of twelve were picked, and to their dismay were told their services were expected to be required for about five months.

This was going to be a long and hard trial.

California, surely one of the most liberal states in America, while retaining the death penalty at this time, still only reserved it for “special cases” of murder. To their eternal worry, Erik and Lyle fit this category, as they had lain in wait for their victims (planned the murder and not carried it out as a spur of the moment thing) and they had acted together. If found guilty they could most certainly be executed. Financial gain was also allowed by the judge as a motive, even though a county judge had thrown this out two months previously, why I don’t know as it’s obvious to anyone with a brain that the boys not only profited from the two murders, but made no secret of it, going around spending money like movie stars.

The judge, Stanley M. Weisberg, was already well known, infamous even, for having moved the trial of the cops accused in the King case to a more white-friendly locale, angering African-Americans and the defence, who claimed Mr. King would not get justice from that neighbourhood. As the jury had only one black man on it, they were proven to be right, as all four officers were acquitted, resulting in the LA riots of 1992. Although the officers were eventually found guilty (well, two of them) the next year - seemingly by another reluctant judge, who must have realised he couldn’t possibly acquit again - they received very minor sentences, and Weisberg’s name was irrevocably and inextricably linked with the original trial and its aftermath. He probably felt he had a reputation to repair and a point to prove, and though he would not really be able to decide the boys’ guilt, he would have been keenly aware that his performance in the trial would be under public scrutiny, and he could not afford to be seen to fuck up.

From day one the trial was set to become a movie, as a screenwriter called Matt Tabak was first in line for a seat, claiming to be doing research. Like many public trials in the USA, in a way that really does not happen here or, I think, really that much in the UK or anywhere else, the court was crowded with those who wanted to watch, and one is certainly reminded of the bloodthirsty spectators who filled the Colosseum in Rome to watch gladioli, sorry gladiators fight to the death for their amusement, and more recently the popularity, up to and including the nineteenth century, of public hangings. While undoubtedly there were those there who supported the boys, others who wanted to see them get what was coming to them, and those who were genuinely interested in how the trial would play out, there’s no question that there was a large percentage of people who simply went there to rubberneck and gawk. One woman even smiled that her husband had asked her to bring him there for his birthday!

Abramson knew what she was doing, and how to play the role that would play most favourably with the jury. She assumed the status of a doting aunt, taking charge of how Erik dressed, making him look more like a Sunday school kid than a cold-blooded killer. She plucked threads off his sweater and leaned on his shoulder in a motherly way, and did everything she could to present the image of a blameless boy when she knew she was defending a ruthless murderer. Abramson was an opponent of the death penalty, but had no problem using it as an issue to bolster up her own reputation. An interesting development was that none of Kitty’s family attended the trial. Jose’s relations sat stone-faced, as if to deny the terrible accusations the little woman at the defence table was about to direct against their brother and son.

They would be spared that horror for the moment though, as the prosecution opened their case, and though Pam Bozanich was out to get their grandsons/nephews, she was not about to entertain any nonsense about parental abuse. She reminded the jury of the many and frequent lies Lyle had told, including that the Mafia had been behind the killing, and that he was in fear of his own life. She spoke of the money that had been spent by the boys after the murders: the Rolex watches, the cars, the business investments - all made with Jose’s money. She recalled the attempts of Lyle to destroy the file he had come across on Kitty’s computer, the one he believed contained Jose’s will, and his fears that if the tapes made by their therapist were to find their way into the hands of the police it would seal their fate.

Perhaps showing what shaky ground they were on, or just out of pure arrogance, the defence team latched onto the words “little Jewish guy” used by Bozanich to describe the computer expert who had tried to delete the file with the will on it, and asked for a mistrial. The judge, who was also Jewish, saw through this for the transparent and opportunistic ploy it was, and denied the motion, to nobody’s surprise. Jill Lansing, defending Lyle, then went on to describe the lavish lifestyle he and Erik had been born into, how their father was rich, they had wanted for nothing, and painting a picture of two boys who had no need to murder their parents for their money. Then things went darker, as she detailed the total control Jose exerted over his family. This certainly could not be denied: enough witnesses had seen the man’s explosive temper, his sneering belief that he knew better than even professionals, the way he had made nothing but enemies in his jobs and the way he had pushed the children to excel, even at the expense of their health and their youth. None of this was in dispute.

But of course, that in itself was not enough. Plenty of kids have pushy parents, who often want to try to live their lives, the success that evaded them, vicariously through their offspring. While you can’t say there’s nothing wrong with that, it can be pushed to dangerous levels, and this was certainly the case with Jose Menendez. But even that would not be accepted as a valid excuse for murder.

But there was more.

WARNING! TRIGGER EVENTS - ABUSE, SEXUAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL. GRAPHIC DESCRIPTIONS OF THE (ALLEGED) ABUSE OF CHILDREN. CLICK "SHOW" AT YOUR OWN RISK.


According to Lansing, a few days before the murders Erik had taken Lyle to one side and confessed to him that their parents had been abusing him for twelve years.. Lyle, who had also (the team claimed) been abused from an early age, immediately confronted his father and told him it was going to stop, or the two brothers were going to leave and never come back, taking Jose’s dreams of his sons becoming famous tennis stars out of his grasp forever. Jose, in typical fashion, they alleged, sneered and told his son he could do whatever the hell he wanted (this would be easy to make the jury believe, as this was certainly the man’s philosophy, as had been proven throughout his life in America) and threatened the boy’s life. It was then, said Lansing, that the two began to plot the murder, believing they had been left no other choice. It was literally now kill or be killed.

Lansing skillfully dismantled the prosecution’s arguments, both about the murder and the spending spree, having justified the one and used the other as evidence that the boys were not trying to cover up their crime. She painted a story of a violent, abusive man (hard to deny, but where to draw the line? Lansing seemed to have an endless supply of paper) who would punch his kids when they upset him, force them to shower with him and indoctrinate them until they only thought what he wanted them to think. Brainwashing and control to the highest degree. The idea was that Lyle was to be his heir, his successor, and would be Jose v2.0, making none of the mistakes and suffering none of the indignities that his father had. She showed how cruel and sadistic Jose Menendez was, delighting in ending careers and browbeating employees, happy to have everyone terrified of him, a man who ruled with a fist of iron, in the workplace and a home.

And then came the sexual practices.



For the prosecution, Lester Kuriyama refocused the attention of the jury, which had been forcibly diverted with these lurid tales of sexual abuse and control, back to the details of the murder. He reminded them that Oziel’s tapes contained a confession wherein Lyle admitted killing his father because he was too controlling, not because he had been abused. He was also upset, he said on those tapes (of which only one had been allowed into evidence, if you remember) that he had been cut of of the will, which certainly proved a financial gain motive. Kuriyama scored something of an own goal though when he began talking about “Friends”, the screenplay Erik and his friend had written: Abramson screamed “Objection!” on the grounds that the decision had not yet been made by Weisberg as to whether or not mention of the play would be allowed, the judge sustained the objection and the prosecutor had to retract the statement. Score one for the defence.

Witnesses, however, seemed to back up the prosecution’s case. The 911 call had been proven to be a fabrication, and it was important the jury heard the tape, in order to understand what good actors the boys were, how they could callously kill their parents - or hysterically, if, as they and their defence team claimed, they were in fear of their lives - and then put on such a show, knowing it to be bollocks. The first officer on the scene, with the hilarious name of Michael Butkis (I kid you not!) noted that though the boys screamed and pounded the grass outside, he did not see any tears in their eyes. Apart from being upset, as you would expect, you might think that there would be some from the smoke after the guns had been discharged, but then, remember the two left it almost an hour after carrying out the slayings before ringing it in, and it would have taken several minutes at least for a car to reach the house, so the smoke was, as has already been noted, long dissipated.

The pilot of the boat which took the family on a shark-fishing trip, during which the contention of the brothers was that they feared this was a cover for their murder, did admit that the boys seemed distant and withdrawn, even scared, though in all likelihood this was again just acting, setting up their excuse for murdering their parents a day later. It’s been noted by the author of the book that it would seem pretty stupid of Jose to try to kill his sons on a boat where there were witnesses, though one assumes it could have been made to look like an accident. Even so, the Menendez patriarch was not the type to leave anything to chance, or to risk failure, so this would hardly seem the ideal set-up. Why not just kill them at the house, where it was all nice and private?

The relationship between attorney and judge is not always an easy one, especially when one is defending accused murderers, and parent murderers at that, and Abramson and Weisberg frequently butted heads over her sarcastic remarks, often deliberately made loud enough for everyone to hear, her dismissive gestures, her over-protection of Erik, and various other things about her the judge did not like. She fought, but ultimately the judge is the boss in any trial, and even lawyers can be held in contempt, or even removed at the behest of His or Her Honour, so the tenacious little terrier had to know when to draw her claws in, to mix metaphors slightly. The fact that the entire trial was being broadcast to the nation by Court TV probably factored into her performance, as a sympathetic television audience is always an asset, but Judge Weisberg was not having it. He reprimanded the TV news journalists for hassling attorneys and threatened to throw them out of the courtroom if they could not behave. He was making the most of his role, and determined to show his career still had some life in it, could possibly even be turned around.

The issue of the smoke came back to haunt the brothers as the police officers took the stand, one of them noting that the two had said that on arriving they smelled smoke, but that in his experience the smoke from a shotgun blast wafts away quickly after the gun has been used, and besides, one of the windows had been shot out, making it likely that the smoke had exited even faster than would have been normal. It seemed the boys were saying what they thought they should say. To be fair, had they done this properly they should have rented some old cabin or shack and tried out the guns, to see how quickly the smoke hung around for, but that didn’t figure into their plan it seemed.

Another victory for the defence team came when, prior to Craig Cignarelli, Erik’s long-time friend and co-author of the play “Friends”, giving evidence against his buddy, Judge Weisberg, after reading through the play, decided it would not be admitted into evidence. He believed it had no bearing on the case and would only confuse jurors. Bozanich was crushed, Abramson crowed in triumph. But she was not out of the woods yet. Cignarelli was testifying against Erik, and he could do a lot of damage if he said the wrong things, or if people saw him in what she considered would be the wrong way. It’s one thing to ban a piece of evidence, but you can’t ban a witness if they want to take the stand. And Cignarelli did. No doubt he saw some chance for notoriety here for himself, and was probably working out which of the rags he would sell his exclusive inside story to, and who would play him in the upcoming movie.

__________________
Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018