Trollheart

Introduction: What is Evil?

It’s a question that has been asked for centuries now, and really we’re no closer to defining what we consider to be evil than we were in the Dark Ages. The nature of evil - or rather, our perception of it - changes with each few generations. Not all that long ago, in certain parts of the world homosexuality was seen as evil; further back, women getting the vote was viewed with the same distaste, and moving forward a hundred years, equal rights for women was not only frowned on by men but also many women, who believed it would lead to anarchy and chaos. A century ago, even rape was tacitly condoned, as long as the man was rich and powerful and held the fate of the woman in his hands. A gentleman - or that gentleman’s son or sons, or even his friends - was quite free to take any servant girl that took his fancy, whether she was willing or not. Refusal would result in dismissal, no reference being given and therefore the unfortunate woman would be cast out into the streets, where she would have no way to make her living other than by selling her body. Which would then make her an, to quote ELO, evil woman, showing the ridiculous and distasteful hypocrisy of the times. While the “romantic attentions” of rich men towards the lower-class women who worked for them was not actually encouraged, they wasn’t discouraged either, and with the legal profession, the courts and the police all exclusively male, a woman who brought a complaint against an employer stood little chance of any sort of success, and even if she somehow did manage to secure a conviction, she would be blacklisted and would never work again.

Murder, in general, has always been seen as evil, but of course there are exceptions. Killing to save yourself, or to free someone from the attentions of another who seeks to do them harm, while still illegal is again looked upon as being acceptable, and will often form the basis of a defence and acquittal on those grounds. Killing in a time of war is generally not seen as murder, though here the waters are a little murkier. Stick to what are rather laughingly and ironically called the rules of conduct and you’ll be okay. Nobody is going to call a soldier who kills another soldier or a pilot who drops bombs on a city a murderer (though they are), no more than they would accuse the generals and commanders who send such men on these missions of such crimes. But step outside those bounds - commit rape (maybe, not always), assault children, shoot an unarmed man - and a soldier may very well be opening himself up to a charge of homicide, or even war crimes. In these cases, such men would be looked upon as evil.

Our conception and notion of evil has changed to suit the times we live in. When everyone went around armed with swords and you could be jumped on the way home, or knocked off your horse by thieves, defending yourself - even if you killed your assailant - was praised and not condemned, and as long as you were of a highborn status, anyone who displeased you could be killed without any ramifications, and would not be seen as evil in the slightest. Torture, now seen as vile and evil (and useless) was once the tool of kings and queens, a legitimate mechanism for extracting information. Tie someone to a stake now and burn them alive, you’re most definitely evil, but back in the mists of history it was not only legal but applauded. Burn the witch! Burn the heretic! Burn the traitor! And so on.

And of course, one man’s evil is not necessarily that of another. It’s notoriously based on your point of reference: the evil Islamist terrorist will be seen by his own people as a brave freedom fighter, and those on the losing side of any war are almost always characterised as evil, while those who win are the good guys. Many studies have been made and books written on the belief that good and evil are two sides of the one coin; many others claim there is no such thing either as good or evil, and that both are false constructs made by humans to try to make sense of an otherwise baffling and terrifying world. And of course evil is a label that can be attached by those in power to their enemies, or by one group to another in order to demonise them and legitimise their own views and actions.

Evil is, in the final analysis, unquantifiable. What you or I think of as evil may not be what someone else sees it as, and you could spend your life going round and round in circles, arguing the toss and never getting any closer to a true understanding, or even definition of the term. But for the purposes of this journal, we accept the basic definition, which is that evil is that which is unacceptable in society, that which diminishes or tries to diminish society, the practice of which requires the offender(s) to be removed from society, and that which breaks the laws of society by threatening the status quo, law and order, and life itself. I just made that up, and it’s a completely inadequate definition, I know: much of what’s mentioned above could include the likes of bank robberies or joyriding, which technically don’t qualify as evil in and of themselves, but you try coming up with a better one. Evil used to be defined as that which was against God, but what happens if you don’t believe in God, if you can’t whine “the Devil made me do it!”?

Anyway, for this journal I’m just taking the basics - murder, rape, paedophilia, white slavery, cults - all the sort of things the average person may be expected to think of as evil. War is certainly in there, and you’ll find Hitler sticking his ugly fascist nose into this at some point, as will others from various wars, but it would be disingenuous and unfair to tar all war leaders, and all those who participate in war as evil. Was Napoleon evil? How about Wellington? One was on the losing side; does that then make him evil? What about Julius Caesar? Genghis Khan? William Wallace? Clearly, not every figure in war can be described as evil, nor do they deserve to be, but some do, and we’ll meet these as we go along.

Murderers? Generally, and with few if any caveats, yes. While I don’t intend to feature every murderer in history here - I have two other journals looking at that - I will be featuring murderers, but only the worst of the worst, and that doesn’t mean they have to have killed the most. Ian Huntley only (!) killed two people, but I might indeed consider him more evil than, say, Levi Bellfield, the so-called Bus Stop Killer, who killed twice as many. So murderers definitely, but if that was all then I could just call this Trollheart’s Murders and we’d be done. It’s not though, so we’ll be looking back through history to find the cruellest and most evil men, women, perhaps even children; group, cults, organisations, anything that can be said to rise above the level of what we perceive or accept as “normal” evil. Oh yes, here, only the very worst will do.

Step this way, and be careful: I think the light is broken…

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

Trollheart

And after all that, our first article concerns a murder. Not too surprising: next to rape, or even ahead of it, murder is seen as the most evil thing a human can do. Taking someone’s life is the ultimate theft, the final act from which there is no coming back; you literally can’t say sorry and though you can try to make amends if you feel remorse afterwards, it’s too late for the person or people you murdered. Corpses can’t forgive you. So murder is pretty much always going to be high on the list when you talk of evil. But this isn’t a serial killer - actually, it’s two murderers, but neither are serial killers - in fact, they only killed two people. Only, yeah. But you know what I mean. However, it’s who they killed that made, and makes, this murder all the more shocking. People who, according to some, perhaps in some ways brought retribution of the bloodiest sort upon themselves, but who, according to others, were simply innocents who were killed for one of the oldest motives in human history. People who should have been the last the killers would have thought of killing.

Their parents.

Even that, though is not quite what makes this pair totally evil, in my mind. Murderers come in many shapes and forms, from the cold-blooded ones who either never regret what they have done or even revel in it, to the ones who later realise the enormity of their crime and break down, often turning themselves in or, in perhaps rarer occasions, killing themselves, unable to live with what they have done, or fearing a life in prison or even the death penalty. And then there are the more cunning ones; the ones who try to cover up their crimes, blame others, deflect suspicion, falsify alibis and cry crocodile tears over the people they have killed.

Few though come close to the sort of brazen and arrogant behaviour displayed by these two brothers, who attempted to blacken their parents’ name even in death, turn the tide of public sympathy their way, and invented stories of mob hits and other wild accusations and improbable theories, anything to make the police look the other way. And for a long time, it worked.

“The slaughterhouse of failure is not my destiny.” - Og Mandino, The Greatest Salesman in the World

Sharper Than a Serpent’s Tooth: The Menendez Brothers

I: Big in America

Little did the mother of Erik and Lyle Menendez realise, as she shook her head and sucked in her cheeks and declared “Boy, this is lousy writing” that the manuscript she held in her hands, written by her son Erik, about a man who murders all his family, was both a future confession in all but name and a blueprint and pointer to her own vicious death at the hands of he and his brother Lyle. With characteristic lack of flair, the story was titled “Friends”, and the boys had hoped to shop it around to film studios in the belief it would be picked up and they would become famous. They would. Become famous that is, or at least infamous, but for different, and yet almost exactly these reasons.

Mary Louise “Kitty” Menendez met her husband to be when she was working on the campus radio station at South Illinois University, and was instantly smitten. Her friends were amazed: Kitty, as she was universally known, was a bright, beautiful and outgoing girl, always ready to party and dance, but allied this to an almost bookish intelligence other girls her age either did not possess, or were afraid, in the repressive American sixties, to display. Kitty didn’t care too much for public opinion or scandal, which was amply demonstrated when she chose Cuban immigrant student Jose Mendendez over all the blue-eyed American boys who drooled after the young and popular beauty. America at the time was less than well disposed towards immigrants of any stripe, but the McCarthy hearings of the previous decade and the revolution led by Fidel Castro in Cuba, presenting Uncle Sam with a fledgling communist country right on its own doorstep, left Cubans at the top of the list of people not to be trusted.

Certainly not to be married, but this is exactly what happened after a short romance - perhaps not to be characterised necessarily as whirlwind, but certainly different from the usual “wait and see, get to know them” idea prevalent in American society. Naturally there was opposition, but less naturally, it came from both sides, as Jose’s family believed him too young to be married at nineteen years of age. Kitty’s family, of course, saw the match as well beneath her. She was considered one of the midwestern elite, coming from a good family with good connections, while Jose was a foreigner, a freshman and most likely (though this was probably not said to his face) a communist. All the same over there, I hear. But in the young immigrant student Kitty had met a kindred spirit. Jose cared little for his family’s protestations, having come to America at age sixteen, and anyway he was a man who, for the rest of his life, would never allow anyone to tell him what to do.

From Kitty’s point of view, Jose was different to the long line of carbon-copy clones of the American Dream she had either dated or been admired by. He had depth, he had feeling, he had drive. Most of her college mates already had their lives and careers planned out for them from an early age by influential and powerful parents, and had little to fear in the big bad world. If these were cardboard cut-outs, Jose was the real thing. She saw something in him; a man who had definitely not been handed everything but who was determined to overcome his social and racial handicaps and make something of himself, a man who would not be led by the nose into a safe life but would instead take the future by the throat, shake it and demand it gave him what he wanted, what he deserved, what he dreamed of and planned for. A man who would take no shit from anyone, ever. In this, she would find to her cost she was not exaggerating.

“Dear Jose, I quit. Fuck you.” - Anonymous Hertz Car Rentals salesman

Jose Menendez had fled Cuba at the time of the revolution. His family was a powerful one who had lost everything in the communist takeover, necessitating Jose’s flight from the country in the hope of a better life. Although a mere lad of sixteen, who had never been outside his home country in his life, Jose did not lack for confidence; in fact, he was arrogant to a fault, and this arrogance would only grow as he prospered and his business empire grew. His first real triumph was to wrest the gorgeous American girl away from all her gorgeous American would-be suitors, and to have thwarted people more handsome and who surely believed themselves better than he was a victory indeed. In some ways, though it can’t be doubted he loved Kitty, she was more a demonstration to the world at large of his power. In courting, and winning her, he was growling at the world though those dark, smoky eyes and saying “Look: I take what I want, and you can’t stop me.”

And nobody could. The anti-hero of the BBC period drama The Onedin Line once remarked that he had “ambition enough for an army of Napoleons”, but Jose’s desire for success would outstrip even the aspirations of the fictional sea captain. In a way, it’s quite remarkable how a Cuban immigrant with literally nothing rose to the heights Jose Menendez achieved, and yet, the nature of his climb and the attitude he adopted, both while getting there and once sitting at the top of the corporate tree, make it difficult to admire him or even have any sympathy for him.

Put simply, one word could describe Jose Menendez: arrogance. He truly believed, not that he was necessarily better than other people, but that he was as good as them, and intended to prove it. Racial prejudices of course fuelled this desire; as mentioned above, America has never been particularly kind to immigrants and foreigners (despite being a land of them), but special repugnance seems to be reserved for Cubans, who are presumably seen as “commies” and “reds” living on the doorstep of the world’s greatest democracy, and dedicated to tearing it down. Then again, no matter your beginnings or your disadvantages, one thing will make you instantly and unanimously, and unquestioningly accepted in American society, and that is money. Jose knew that money was the key to his being taken seriously, and he worked hard to get it.

But he wouldn’t be doing so in Illinois. Taking his new wife east to the bright lights of New York City, where his family lived, Jose enrolled at Queens College as an accountancy student, and forced the best he could out of himself. He wasn’t the greatest student, and times were hard, their income mainly coming from Kitty’s job teaching, something a proud and arrogant man like Jose Menendez would have hated: being supported by his wife. He intended to make his own way in the world, for her to be relying on him, but first he had to graduate and look for a job. For now, he paid his way as best he could by taking a part-time job at the local supermarket, no doubt furious he was just one of many other immigrants there all trying to get by, and treated no differently. He had, however, a talent for figures, and despite not studying for the CPA he passed it a year early, and was taken on as a trainee by the accountancy firm Coopers & Lybrand. Now making a decent wage and able to support his wife, Jose moved them to a decent apartment in middle-class Queens, and in 1968 Kitty had her first child.

Jose began to show what kind of man he was, and what kind of man he intended to be, when he was sent to audit the finances of a client for Coopers & Lybrand. Asked for his opinion after sitting through a long board meeting at Lyons Container, where management pored over unlikely plans to restructure the company, Jose flatly told them their ideas would not work, and they should go with his plan. Although surely shocked and even angered by the temerity of a snot-nosed kid from the firm they paid to do their accounts telling them what they should do, the directors listened and became more convinced as the young hotshot spoke that he knew what he was talking about, and more, that his plan had indeed a better chance of success than theirs.

They clamoured to have him on board as a director, but Jose was a man who was able to manipulate those around him. It was as if he could read their minds and their hearts, see into their souls and find their weaknesses. He pushed the board for a huge salary - three times what he was earning at Coopers & Lybrand, and he got it. So it was back to Chicago for the Menendezes, Kitty taking care of her new son full-time while Jose worked to turn the fortunes of the ailing corporation around. He not only succeeded, but did so in a year, and doubled the company’s revenue. He became chief executive, and hired his brother-in-law, Carlos Baralt, as his assistant. Jose’s management style, however, was unpopular and after a row with the chairman of the board he was forced out of Lyons, taking Baralt with him. Nobody doubted what a wonder he had wrought at the company, just nobody liked him, and he made it easy not to like him, being arrogant, condescending, sometimes brutal in his dealings with others - subordinates or not - and basically making enemies of everyone around him.

This behaviour would continue throughout his life, both in his professional and his family life, and people learned very quickly not to cross him. Everyone got to know what it meant to be on the wrong side of Jose Menendez, and he was almost certainly more feared than respected. This meant, of course, that he had few friends, few equals with which to share his success and brag about how well he had done. In 1971 he joined Hertz Car Rental and again within a year he had progressed like, as my mother used to say, a dose of salts through the management structure, becoming chief financial manager and then general manager, and true to his reputation, began firing people left, right and centre as he flexed his muscles and threw his weight around. This behaviour went against him, and against Hertz, as the executives and salespeople he fired just went to the competition, taking their often years or even decades of contacts, experience and knowledge with them.

Most, it seems, went quietly, but two - both unnamed - did not. One set his sales book on fire and threw it in his ex-boss’s face, the other, deciding to take early retirement over his abuse at the hands of the general manager, left him a caustic note: “Dear Jose. I quit. Fuck you.” It would be something of a vast understatement to say that Jose Menendez was neither popular nor liked at Hertz, and this would be the pattern of his working life as he slowly built up his commercial empire. Though nobody could fault his work ethic, one grudging compliment coming from the chief executive of Hertz, Robert Stone, who noted “I never knew anyone who worked harder, worked more towards goals.” However Adrian Bulman, one of the managers, had a different view: “I’m surprised,” he remarked, “that in an industry as tough as this one somebody didn’t punch him out.”

Jose’s arrogance and condescending behaviour even extended to deciding how his employees should wear their hair, as he snapped to a junior, taking an instant dislike to his curly hair, that he didn’t want to see him wearing that style again. Warren Hudson, who had formed an initial good impression of Jose when he met him to be interviewed for a job at Hertz, quickly changed his opinion once he was working for him, remarking that he would have been glad to have killed the man. This was the kind of reaction Jose’s blunt, uncaring, all but abusive treatment of his employees engendered in almost anyone who crossed his path. To say he was not a nice man is probably like saying Hitler and the Jews had their differences. It’s hard to see how anyone could have liked him, but like every powerful man of industry, he cultivated, if not friendships, then acquaintances. After all, you don’t have to like a guy to know he’s going to make you money, and that being on his right side is a good way to go.

Jose was well known and hated for what could probably be described as a “night of the long knives”, to take the Hitler imagery a step further, quarterly review meetings where, if your figures weren’t up to scratch you could find yourself heading out the door, no matter how long you had been with the company, no matter your excuses. Blood on the boardroom carpet was almost a literal thing with Jose; he spared no-one. In fact, it’s probably fairer and more accurate to compare him to Stalin than Hitler. Hitler didn’t particularly care about his underlings, knew little about them and dumped them as their usefulness ran out. But like the great Russian dictator, Jose made it his business to know everything there was to know about his people, even going to the rather ludicrous and surely unnecessary lengths of travelling the country incognito to spy on them.

In truth, and to bring things slightly more up to date (though at the time such a figure was unknown of course) he emulated Tony Soprano, his constant mantra at the meetings “Where’s my fucking money?” You can almost visualise him kicking the shit - verbally, or maybe in reality - out of the unfortunate, terrified executives who failed to come up to scratch. Other images come to mind of Jose walking behind one salesman who had particularly displeased him, with a baseball bat…

Why was Jose Menendez such a bastard? Was it a case of taking revenge on the sneering, upper-class nobs who had looked down upon him when he was at SIU? A reaction to the looks of disbelief, shock, and perhaps even snarky pity when Kitty announced she was going out with, and then marrying the young Cuban? Was he showing them all he was as good as, if not better than them? That might have been part of it, but it doesn’t explain why he would be so hard on his sons later on, treatment which would ironically lend credence and substance to their insistence that they were being abused. Personally, I just think he was just what is known in the trade as a fucker; he was a nasty piece of work, a man who, without the aptitude for figures he possessed and without the drive he had, might have ended up in some street gang, his blood oozing away in an alley in Queens as he contemplated the waste of his life.

But whatever the reason, though it would make him rich and feared, Jose would never be liked, never truly respected. Everywhere he went he was a dictator, with no regard for people’s feelings, no tact, no humility, accepting no excuses and always looking at the bottom line. He was, in other words, the typical hard-nosed, no-nonsense, heartless and unfeeling businessman the corporate world throws out by the handsful, ready and willing to plunder, rape and kill (figuratively, at least for the last two) in the pure pursuit of money and power. So in 1970s America, though an immigrant from a socialist country, he fit right in.

Hudson was so humiliated by Mendendez that he wrote to his sons after the murder, saying “Having worked under your father and been on the receiving end of more than one of his tirades and having been witness to his destroying people in business meetings, actually reducing grown men to tears, I was wondering if I could ask you a question? . . . I was just wondering if Jose was a whimpering piece of shit when the other guy(s) had the big guns and all the power on their side, or if he was still super macho, Mr. Arrogance and spit in their eye. When all the stories came out about the Beverly Hills police department ‘interviewing’ everyone who might have a motive for killing Jose, I called them to ask why they never contacted me . . . and lots of other Hertz people. . . . I explained to them that I would have done the job for nothing, but at the least, I wanted to shake the hand of the actual killer(s).”

That might seem an odd thing to write to boys supposedly shocked and grieving the deaths of their parents, but it does show the kind of long-lasting hatred Jose could engender in people, and with good cause. Given his reputation, and all the people he crossed, ruined, destroyed and humbled over the years, it’s doubtful too many people mourned his passing, even if they paid lip-service at the funeral.

Jose had as little regard for his customers as he did for his staff. During the Oil Crisis of 1979, Jose responded to the rise in inflation and oil prices by unilaterally raising rental rates by a whopping four percent. To him, the bottom line was all that mattered. When told by one of his executives that a particular strategy would work, yes, in the short term but backfire in two years and cost the company money, he shrugged, telling the executive it didn’t matter, as he would no longer be working for Hertz. In Jose’s mind, if he was not there in charge then it was not his problem. He would have made a great politician!

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

The Batlord

Okay what is this thread about?

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Trollheart

Flower arranging.

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

Guybrush

I was considering suggesting Fred & Rosemary West (if you haven't done them), but who am I kidding? I'd rather listen to a podcast.

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Something Completely Different

Trollheart

Thanks. I'm going to try to not be too obvious, and like my Food for the Crows journal, this won't be just about murderers, otherwise it would be just like my serial killers one. I'm also going to avoid featuring anyone who is or will be in the serial killers journal, as there's no point in doing something twice. So we could have possibly Ian Huntley, who doesn't quite qualify as a serial killer, but does certainly qualify as evil, or maybe Scott Peterson. But it will be a while before I go back to a murderer, as I want to explore the whole nature of evil, and down through history too. So the next one will be someone who is evil for other reasons. Thinking maybe Pol Pot, possibly Vlad Dracul or Caligula, or Bin Laden or even Saville? Probably Saville actually. Haven't decided. But this will take a little while to get through first, so I have a lot of work ahead of me with even this first example. No rest for the wicked! Or the evil...


Hey, a thought: what about Ed Sheeran?

Nah, can't pick people who are that evil! Got to have standards....

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rubber soul

Saw a doc on Jimmy Saville. Really chilling. Shame the public didn't really know until after he was dead.

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Trollheart

The frustrating thing about that is how so many in positions of power and influence DID know, but without actual solid proof they were all terrified to make any sort of legal accusation due to the connections he had, including those in the underworld. They waited till he was dead before they moved, and of course by then it was too late.

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Trollheart

By 1979 Jose was executive vice president of Hertz nationwide, and the family had moved to a beautiful new home on Pennington Lake in Princeton. Here Jose had a tennis court built, and here he would train and drill his now two young boys until they were Olympic class tennis players. Nothing else would do. Jose had been a swimmer and a tennis player in his youth, though without a real aptitude for either, but that wasn’t going to stop him. Nothing ever did, until a hail of bullets did the job. Allen Fite, small fleet sales manager for Hertz’s Atlanta region, said that for many people who knew Jose when he was a young lion, his death was not much of a surprise. “It was kind of funny,” said Fite. “When this happened, people were calling other people within Hertz saying, ‘You didn’t do it, did you?’” Another employee remarked “The joke was, when he was killed, everybody needed an excuse to prove they were not in L.A." Others, however, said there would be so many suspects among the people who had been broken by Jose over the years that the police would never solve the crime.

You don’t get to where Jose was without making a few enemies along the way, but this man had all but gone out of his way to do so, cultivating no friendships and provoking everyone he could, so that rather like when Mr. Burns was shot, Lisa’s words “Everyone in town is a suspect” rang eerily true. I’m sure the prevailing - if not openly expressed - feeling was that the bastard had finally got what was coming to him. One is also reminded of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, where Scrooge, shown his future by the final spirit, the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, sees his business associates chuckling over his death (although of course he doesn’t at the time realise it’s him they’re talking about) as they grin “I see Old Scratch got his man at last, eh?”
Indeed.

But before his - not quite untimely - death there were worlds to conquer, and Jose Menendez would not be satisfied with the simple executive vice presidency of a car hire firm, even if it was the biggest in the world. In fact, he was forced out of Hertz the very next year, when a new President of US Operations came in and Jose was reassigned to RCA, the big record label owned by the parent company. Sent to L.A. to talk to lawyers and musicians, it was here he made perhaps one of the only friends he had ever had, or ever would. In 1981 Jose was given the task of turning the “joke label” around. RCA was known for signing old, tired acts such as Kenny Rogers and Diana Ross, who were well past it but still got paid exorbitant sums for their albums. Jose knew nothing about music, but set to the task with his by now characteristic determination and his contempt for failure.

Perhaps surprisingly, as a man who had been a feared and hated tyrant at Hertz, Jose was able to command great loyalty at RCA and was actually well liked. That didn’t of course mean he went any easier on people when it suited him to brandish the whip. Angry at his vice president for American sales, Don Ellis, who had been delayed to a meeting through no fault of his own, he sent a snippy note to the man, who, angry himself at such treatment, and having reluctantly relocated from the UK at Jose’s behest, resigned in fury. However worries, or snide predictions, of RCA being too much for Jose proved completely unfounded. He coaxed the Eurythmics back to the label at a time when they were reaching the height of their fame, and did the same for Jefferson Starship, who by now had dropped the first part of their name, having gone from being The Jefferson Airplane to just Jefferson Airplane and then Jefferson Starship, now just Starship. Under this name they had their biggest hits ever, including two number one singles and an album that sold over a million units. Suddenly, RCA was looking less of a joke to its rivals.

And then he fucked up big time.

His arrogance and overbearing confidence in his own ability led him to sign a Puerto Rican boyband - before boybands were even a thing - and it almost broke him. It could be said, perhaps, that his success with Starship and The Eurythmics was more down to a knowledge of business (which it could not be denied he had) and the stars’ response to that; the equivalent of two sides of a deal who both knew what was best for each other, a business arrangement. But with Menudo, the Latin band he signed, his lack of experience in, knowledge of and appreciation for the music industry was thrown into sharp relief. Jose Menendez had come to RCA with no interest in music, and no experience running a record label or even managing a band. He probably didn’t even really know who Annie Lennox was, beyond a cheque to be written.

His idea, at its heart, was sound. Latin music was certainly about to make a big splash, with artists like Gloria Estefan and later Ricky Martin ready to bring their own brand of salsa pop to the world outside of Latin America. But Menudo were not a band, just an industry-manufactured future echo of any of the boy and girlbands put together by the likes of Stock, Aiken and Waterman and later Simon Cowell and Louis Walsh - kids who could fulfill a need, plug a gap in the market, but who had no real music talent and were replaced once they reached age sixteen and ceased to become attractive to the label’s teenybopper fanbase. It was fine to do that on the streets of San Juan, where Menudo were superstars, but American audiences saw right through them.

Jose is rumoured to have lavished anything from ten to thirty million on the band, provided them with a private jet and, as one commentator waggishly claimed, “half the country”, and for nothing in the end. Jose did not turn RCA around, to his disgust (and no doubt he would blame other factors, never willing to admit defeat or that he had taken on a job too tough for him) and at age forty-one he was executive vice president in charge of video sales, ready to lift the first building blocks in the next stage of creating his empire and his legacy.

Goodfellas: A Blooming Business

Jose’s next project was the one which would make his name, and bring him into contact with people even more famous than the musicians and producers he had been working with at RCA. Carolco, most famous perhaps for managing Sylvester Stallone, bought a twenty-five percent interest in pornbroker-turned-legitimate-video-distributer Noel Bloom’s International Video Entertainment, one of the provisos being that they could bring in their own financial expert, who turned out to be none other than Jose Menendez. In 1986 Bloom was linked with Michael Zaffarno, a capo (boss) of the Galante crime family, and under investigation thanks to his sales of porn videos, which was how he had made his money initially. Trying to distance himself, both from the connections with the mafia and gangsters in general, and with the porn industry, seen as less acceptable in the tail-end of the eighties with the demise of the permissive society and the end of free love, Bloom had started IVE in an attempt to “go straight” and be taken seriously.

It was Jose’s old - and possibly only - friend, John Mason, who had put him in touch with Peter Hoffman in Carolco, who had in turn given him the job at IVE. Upset at having missed out on the top spot at RCA when a new president was brought in over him (as had happened at Hertz) Jose had been considering moving west when Hoffman’s call saved him. As was often the case with Jose Menendez, he made a good impression on Bloom, who liked him, but as was also almost always the case this impression did not last as Jose quickly began to show his true colours. His first move, as ever, was to fire, fire, fire, and in a short time he had more than halved the staff at IVE. As had always been his way, he consulted nobody, including Bloom, who was technically his boss, merely telling him why these people had to go, not asking for his permission or agreement, and turning a deaf and contemptuous ear to any arguments.

Then, as again he had done up till then, Jose set his sights on the top job. He was brought in as financial manager, but he wanted creative control. This was Bloom’s area, and there could only be one victor in such a struggle. Within a few months Bloom had decided it was not worth the daily fights - Jose had already excised the “adult entertainment” part of the company, something Bloom may have had a fondness for, having been how he started - and told Jose he could buy him out. As ever, Jose did not let it rest at that, but dragged Bloom maliciously through court cases as he refused to hand over money he did not believe his ex-boss was due.

The small coincidence of the trial taking place, and still having been running, when Jose and his wife were murdered served to shift some of the suspicion for their deaths onto Bloom and his supposed Mafia connections, something which suited the two sons down to the ground. In some ways, it couldn’t have worked out better for them if they had planned it. Disgruntled partner, bought out against his will, denied his payout and no fan of Jose, in the middle of a battle to get those funds and having been publicly humiliated by Menendez at court, sees the case suddenly stall as Jose is killed. Coincidence? Surely not.

In actual fact, Bloom had already won the case; this was merely an appeal, and Jose had said all he was going to be allowed to say. He had testified, and was not required to do so again. Carolco, feeling bad (they said) about the murders, offered to pay up. Bloom, worried about how this would look to the press and to the cops, asked them to wait, but for whatever reason they would not, and his fears grew about the picture that would be painted of him, and how the sudden settlement would be viewed by those in authority, by the brothers and by the public at large.

The Sons

Kitty Menendez only had two children, and they were both boys. They would forge the kind of relationship with each other than only brothers can, each almost acting as an only child, each spoiled beyond measure, each believed by both parents to be a cut above everyone else’s children, indulged and flattered, but also mercilessly criticised and strictly disciplined to a level almost unthought of outside of perhaps the army or a strict boarding school. They would later both claim that it was this treatment, coupled with completely unproven accusations of sexual abuse not only from their father but also their mother, and fear for their very lives, which drove them to strike first, killing both their parents in a desperate attempt to save themselves from being killed.

Lyle Menendez

Lyle was the elder, born January 10 1968 as Joseph Lyle Menendez, and would always be known by his second name. He wouldn’t have to wait too long for a playmate, with his brother born a mere two years later, though the word play would not really be allowed to exist in the world of the two Menendez children, not if their father had anything to do with it. And he did. From the very beginning Jose had seen his first son as a tiny version of himself, a lump of soft clay he could mould in his own image, a boy he could turn into a man like him. Though nowhere as good, of course: Jose Menendez would never accept any equal, not even his own son. He had their lives laid out for them, whether they wanted it or not. They would excel at tennis, like he had not, going on to compete in - and win, damn it! Who cared about taking part? The winning was what was important! - the Olympics, vindicating their proud father’s belief in them.

Like tiny soldiers under a particularly brutal drill sergeant, the boys were ordered to make sure not an hour of any day was wasted. They had to learn about politics, combat, business, sport, and life lessons that would stand them in good stead later in life. Jose, of course, did not trust them to do these things on their own, and so he directed every moment of their waking days himself, setting schedules, activities, training. There was no room for friends, no room for play. That was for the weak, and Jose Menendez’s sons would never be seen as weak by anyone. Not if he could help it.

Kitty was not a lot better. She indulged her sons to excess, never believing or accepting they could do wrong, the kind of mother who, when presented with irrefutable evidence of a crime committed by her son would shake her head stubbornly and close the door in your face. Nothing would ever convince her that her sons were at fault for anything. She allowed them to run free when out, risking being hit by traffic if they ran out into the road, but justifying her attitude by saying that physical hurt was preferable to fear; bones would mend (she obviously never considered worse than that occurring) but a scared mind would remain scared all its days. But though she indulged them, she was far from the ideal mother. She had no real nurturing or maternal instinct, and was quite happy to allow Lyle and his brother to walk around with dirty nappies rather than change them. She’d get around to it; it wasn’t of pressing importance.

She even tried to farm her kids off on Jose’s mother, as having them around got in the way of the ski holidays she and her husband regularly took, but Jose put paid to the idea of them living full time during the week with anyone else, even his mother.

Just around the time of Erik’s birth the family had moved back to Illinois and Jose was taken on at Lyons, as detailed above. Erik proved an exuberant, excitable child who would rush out heedless of any danger, and whose behaviour his parents did not seek to correct, believing this was how young boys should behave. Their young boys, at any rate. But as you might expect, while things were relatively calm on the surface, below there was disquiet and danger. Jose closely examined his boys - Lyle mostly, as Erik was at this time too young to be able to join in or be part of the ritual - quizzing him on current events, and sending him researching the answers if he had not got them, sneering at him when he took too long. Enforced isolation in their rooms was one punishment, though nowhere near as bad as being trapped in there with their tyrant father while Jose took them apart psychologically, breaking them down and reshaping them in his image. He used physical punishment too, but it’s to be believed the boys feared the dreaded belt less than their father’s snarling voice, dripping with disapproval and mockery of their efforts.

Kitty never interfered in the punishment of the boys, be it physical or psychological. She may not always have agreed with it, but she convinced herself Jose was right, as he had conditioned her to. Jose was so arrogant and sure about his methods that he didn’t notice - or care - that it began to adversely affect the boys. Erik developed a bad stutter, which infuriated his father, who took it as a sign of weakness and all but accused the boy of making it happen on purpose. Both boys acquired nasty, violent tempers, and slowly but surely their emotions were all but leeched out of them as they were in effect made into robotic copies of their domineering father. Kitty took to drinking and taking valium pills, unable or unwilling to face up to her responsibility as a mother and protector of her children

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Anyone for tennis?

Having chosen the career of tennis for his sons (well, technically they were allowed choose, but only between that and soccer, and they chose tennis) Jose drilled them as hard as he ever had, determined they would be the best. From sunrise to almost late afternoon they would have to practice, practice, practice and then spend the evening being browbeaten and lectured by the man who could do no wrong, and intended his sons should not be allowed to either. He would cure them of the weakness he saw in their eyes, little realising, or caring, that what he saw there was fear, fear of him, fear of disappointing him and inviting his anger. Even professional coaches he hired himself weren’t good enough to teach his boys, and Jose would regularly contradict them, running out from the house to dispense unwanted advice and orders.

However, the two boys did well in the sport, winning state championships when they were sixteen and fourteen respectively, but even this was not enough for Jose, who pushed and pushed as if he never believed his kids would push back. And they did. One day, Lyle just shouted at his taunting father “Why don’t you just shut up?” He received a broken nose for his trouble, and the promise that if he ever spoke to his father like that again, Jose would kill him. The double standard was almost funny: Jose could belittle and jeer and all but abuse his kids, but should they dare assert their manhood and stand up to him, they were for it. He had spent most of their lives trying to toughen them up, but was not okay with them turning that toughness on him. He saw it both as a betrayal and a challenge to his undisputed authority and supremacy in the family.

The boys would frequently lose it on the tennis court if things did not go their way, throwing down their racquets, stamping and screaming McEnroe-style, and the parents weren’t much better. The entire family was an unwelcome sight at most tournaments, despite the boys’ considerable talent, and an indication that trouble was to follow. Kitty in particular didn’t much care about rules if they went against her sons, would make her objections known at some histrionic volume, and Jose of course thought he knew better than the professionals.

When Lyle went to Princeton he found himself suddenly no longer a leading light, no longer the one others stood in awe of, no longer better than everyone else. He was just another arrogant rich kid who thought the world belonged to him, but on walking through the doors of the venerable college was swiftly disabused of this notion. The biggest wake-up call (or it should have been, to anyone else) was his suspension for a year after copying another student’s work for a test. Even his blustering, threatening father could not change the minds of the faculty, who gave Jose no more respect than they would the parent of any other student - here, Jose too for perhaps the first time was made to feel as if he were ordinary, and he did not like it - and the suspension stood. Lyle therefore left Princeton.

The matter was hushed up, and the family pretended Lyle was still at college, however eventually Jose had to find something for the boy to do, and so he set him to work at his new video company, LIVE, from which he had ousted Noel Bloom. But while he had been driven by his father mercilessly on the tennis court and even at the dinner table, Lyle had been brought up by his mother to understand he did not have to work, that things would be done for him, that he would never suffer academically, and this was the attitude he took into business. Not interested in working, he did as little as possible. Unpopular, lazy, inefficient, and no protection offered to him from the boss his father, he didn’t last long.

When he finally returned to Princeton, he found he had an acolyte. Donovan Goodreau was pulled in, completely under his spell, and they became great friends, Goodreau seeing Lyle as his svengali. He even did his homework and assignments for him, taking the place of Kitty, who now could no longer shield her son from the horror of having to actually do his own work. But like the few friends he cultivated over his life - more adherents really, disciples - Lyle either got bored with Donovan or just wanted to hurt him. He spread a rumour around Princeton that Goodreau was responsible for a series of petty thefts, and though his friend denied it, Lyle ordered him out, and back to New Jersey he went. Minus his wallet, which Lyle held up triumphantly, ready to go on a spending spree he could easily have afforded with his own money. But for Lyle Menendez, it wasn’t spending that was fun, it was spending someone else’s money without their permission. Theft, in other words. He was already well on the way to being a criminal.

“My brother’s a god. I worship the ground Lyle walks on.” - Erik Menendez

Erik Menendez

The contrast between the two brothers was startling. Perhaps because their father had had longer to “mould” his eldest son into the kind of man he believed he could and should be, Erik was left somewhat unbothered by the rampaging maniac attention of his father. Either as a result of this, or perhaps it was his nature, Erik was as dissimilar to his older brother as it was possible for two children to be. While people who met Lyle commented on his coldness, his detachedness, the blank stare in his eyes (the eyes of a killer?), cultivated no doubt by years of the pressure his father had heaped on his young shoulders, of the sparks that flew between them and, in reality, of his acceptance that his father’s way was the right one, Erik was far gentler and more, well, human. He rescued abandoned animals, wrote poetry and loved nature. He was, perhaps, everything Jose Menendez despised in a man, or a boy, and to some degree friends believed that Jose, having his heir in Lyle, did not care so much for Erik, and he was called “the throwaway child”.

It’s quite possible - though unproven - that Jose never even wanted a second child. Luckily it wasn’t a girl, as who knows what the ultimate chauvinist misogynist would have done with that hand, had he been dealt it? But all he really wanted was someone he could control and shape, another him, a legacy he could leave behind, something of himself to live on after, despite his arrogance he knew he would, he died. In this way Erik escaped the worst of the treatment, looked on as an afterthought by his brutal father, and allowed to live his life the way he wanted to. Mostly. This isn’t to say he was given anything like actual freedom, or exempted from the harsh discipline Jose meted out, but his father’s eyes were always first and foremost locked on his eldest son, and his younger child was able to fly somewhat below the radar.

While Jose cared little for him, Erik’s mother pampered him, doing his homework for him, helping him to cheat on exams and even forging a false ID for him when underage so that he could go drinking with his new girlfriend (she made one for her too). Initially worried about the boy’s sexual orientation - he was still playing with teddy bears and other stuffed animals up to his fourteenth year - Kitty did everything she could to encourage the relationship between Erik and Jan, and push it towards its inevitable result. At Calabasa High School Erik made his own friends but they noted that he had a dark, somewhat sadistic side to him. One who noticed but didn’t care, was in fact attracted to this side of Erik was the man who would become his best friend, Craig Cignarelli. A scion of the MGM dynasty, Cignarelli had the world on a string and he knew it. The word playboy might have been coined to describe him; easy-going, handsome, confident to a fault bordering on arrogance, and a lady’s man, he became all but Erik’s mentor.

Together they wrote the screenplay for “Friends” which would be referred to so frequently at the trial of the two brothers, and used as proof that Erik and Lyle had masterminded and then executed the killing of their parents, not on a whim, but as a cold and calculated plan to get their hands on their father’s money. It would be presented as a form of premeditation, evidence that their minds worked in this way, and that, far from being harmless fiction, it was in effect a confession for their future crime. Indeed, Cignarelli and Erik had often discussed how to get away with the perfect crime, though that crime was not always murder.

Erik and Cignarelli had a run in with a local gang, which resulted in trouble following them home. Jose, the tough man who took no shit from anyone, the consummate bully who believed himself better and stronger than any other man, who had destroyed careers and lives and marriages without a second thought, feared his boy getting on the wrong side of the criminal underworld, and also worried probably about Noel Bloom’s reported association with gangland figures, and uncharacteristically told Erik to drop it.

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