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Erik Menendez, with his attorney Leslie Abramson and his brother Lyle Menendez. Photo: Ted Soqui/Sygma/Getty
On a sweltering August night in 1989, the serenity of a typically quiet Beverly Hills neighborhood was shattered by the wail of police sirens. A frantic call had just come in from a distraught Lyle Menendez, then 21, who screamed into the phone, “They shot and killed my parents!”
Officers rushed to the Menendez family’s opulent $5 million home, where they discovered the bloodied bodies of Kitty and Jose Menendez, murdered in their TV room.
Lyle and his younger brother, Erik, then 18, told police they had just returned from a night at the movies and stumbled upon the horrific scene.
The shocking events of that fateful night and the aftermath are the focus of the upcoming Netflix documentary, The Menendez Brothers, streaming on Monday, Oct. 7. The documentary features audio interviews from prison with Erik, now 53, and Lyle, 56, who has remained silent since their infamous sit-down with Barbara Walters in June 1996, shortly after their first trial ended in a mistrial.
In conversations with director Alejandro Hartmann from California’s Donovan Correctional Facility, Erik reflects on the night of the murders and expresses disbelief that he and his brother were not arrested immediately.
“There should have been a police response, and we would have been arrested,” Erik reveals in the documentary. “We had no alibi. The gunpowder residue was all over our hands. Under normal circumstances, they give you a gunpowder residue test, and we would have been arrested right away.”
Yet, that night, no arrests were made. It wasn’t until March 1990, after an extensive investigation, that authorities charged Lyle and Erik with first-degree murder in the deaths of their parents: Kitty, 47, a devoted stay-at-home mom, and Jose, 45, a high-powered Hollywood music executive.
During their first trial in 1993, which ended in a mistrial, the brothers claimed they killed their parents after enduring years of alleged sexual abuse by their father, a claim their mother reportedly ignored.
In 1996, the brothers were sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
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