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Front Burner Transcript for November 29, 2024

Host: Jayme Poisson

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ERIK MENENDEZ: I was just firing. As I went into the room, I just started firing.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: In what direction?

ERIK MENENDEZ: In front of me.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What was in front of you?

ERIK MENENDEZ: My parents.

[Music: Theme]

JAYME POISSON: Hey, everybody. Jayme here. So 35 years ago, two boys committed a crime that would go on to become one of the most high profile in modern American history. The Menendez brothers, Lyle and Erik, age 21 and 18 at the time, were accused and then convicted of killing their parents in a bid to claim their $14 million inheritance. The brothers, though initially denying involvement in the crime, eventually claimed to have killed their parents as a response to many years of sexual and psychological abuse at the hands of their father. The case gave way to two trials, referred to at the time as the trial of the century, and split opinion between those who believed the boys to be victims of sex crimes and others who believed them to be premeditated killers. The highly publicized trials which took place in the mid-'90s, were covered extensively on primetime television -- every detail, every entry of new evidence -- by media all over the world. The first trial was even carried live. A style of coverage many believed to have given way to the genre we now call True Crime. Eventually, the Menendez brothers would be convicted of the murder of their parents and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. And that appeared to really be the end of this story. That is, until a pair of documentaries and a Netflix miniseries dedicated to their story were released in the last two years, catapulting the brothers back into mainstream consciousness.

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LYLE MENENDEZ: Erik and I killed our parents together, so... I'd say that makes us pretty close.

JAYME POISSON: This was followed by new evidence and the possibility of a resentencing, which could stand to see Lyle and Erik Menendez walk as free men after more than three decades in prison. Robert Rand is one of the only working reporters who has covered the Menendez family's story from the very beginning. He's also the author of The Menendez Murders, which he has recently updated. And he joins the show to talk about all of this today.

[Music: Theme]

JP: Robert, hi, it's such a pleasure to have you. Thank you for coming on to Front Burner.

ROBERT RAND: Thank you for having me.

JP: So let's start at the very beginning. You spent time with the Menendez brothers before they were arrested, right? And just what, if anything, stuck out to you about them? What was, what was that like for you, that meeting?

ROBERT RAND: In the fall of '89, I was assigned not to write a story about the murder investigation, the Beverly Hills police weren't saying very much, obviously, but I was assigned to write a biography about José Menendez.

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HOST: José Menendez is chairman of the board, president and chief executive officer of Live Entertainment, joining us here in Los Angeles. And I should point out, this is the company, folks, that brings you the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles video...

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 1: Here is a Cuban immigrant coming to this country as a teenager with very little. Driving, driving, driving through industry after industry.

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MENENDEZ BROTHER: My father was the head of Hertz.

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[old Hertz commercial]

O.J. SIMPSON: Nobody does it better than Hertz.

MENENDEZ BROTHER: And hired O.J. to be a spokesman in those commercials. And then he became the head of RCA Records.

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UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 2: Directing the lives of very significant stars at the time. Hall & Oates, Kenny Rogers, Dolly Parton. He helped create the band Menudo...

ROBERT RAND: Rags-to-riches immigrant saga ends in a terrible tragedy.

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BEVERLY HILLS POLICE CHIEF: I've been in this business for over 33 years, and I've heard of very few murders that were more savage than this one was.

REPORTER 1: No signs of a break-in or a burglary. Only the bodies of entertainment executive José Menendez and his wife Kitty in the family TV room, torn by shotgun blast that one of the neighbour kids heard.

ROBERT RAND: And as part of that reporting, I came out to L.A. for a couple weeks and spent three days with Erik and Lyle Menendez, two months after they killed their parents and five months before they were arrested. They weren't suspects publicly. I had no reason to be suspicious of them. And they told me very loving, very caring, emotional stories about how much they missed their parents.

JP: When did it start to become clear that it was Lyle and Erik who were responsible for the murders?

ROBERT RAND: Well, I had been doing a deep dive into the home video business. And all of my sources, which were considerable, told me that they didn't believe that this had anything to do with home video. People told me a lot of, a lot of people do many things to get even in Hollywood, but they usually don't kill each other. And so that never really made sense based on what I was hearing from a number of people. And then as the investigation was going on in the seven months of the fall of '89, I realized that Erik and Lyle Menendez had become the primary suspects. Two days before my deadline for the Miami Herald in December 1989, when we were going to publish this biography about José Menendez, I had a phone call from Marta Cano, the brothers' aunt who lived in West Palm Beach, Florida. And she told me that the brothers had been coming out of a bank in Beverly Hills, and somebody had walked by them and said, 'You're next.' So that was very startling to hear. And I hung up with her and I called Les Zoeller, the lead detective for the Beverly Hills police, who I had met when I was in California. And I said, So tell me about these death threats that the brothers got this morning. And Detective Zoeller replied, What death threats? So I hung up with him, and that made no sense to me. And I spoke with my editor Tom Shroder at the Miami Herald and told him everything. And he said, The brothers did it. I said, No, I'm not really sure that, you know, they did. I spent three days with them. You know, I don't think they did. And he said, No, the brothers did it. And a few minutes later, their aunt Marta Cano called me yelling at me and saying, Why did you call the Beverly Hills police? Erik and Lyle didn't want them to know about those death threats. That made no sense. I called Detective Zoeller back and started asking him some direct questions. And he wouldn't really tell me, but in so many words, he made it clear that the brothers were the sole focus of the investigation at that point, which was the end of December of '89. And Erik and Lyle Menendez were arrested the first week in March of 1990.

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HARD COPY HOST: Hard Copy has learned exclusively that the Beverly Hills police have uncovered details of a murder plot as twisted as any movie mystery.

BEVERLY HILLS POLICE CHIEF: We were waiting for the glue, if you will, to bind it all together. And just recently, that glue has come about. And I feel that we have a very tight case indeed.

REPORTER 2: Police arrested Lyle at the family mansion yesterday. Younger brother Erik reportedly returning from an overseas trip to surrender. Police say the motive was apparently money, a $14-million inheritance to be shared by the brothers.

JP: After they were arrested, there was an almost, I don't know if you would say that this is fair, but an almost immediate public obsession with the story, right? Two rich kids in one of the most coveted neighbourhoods in the world, a family that from the outside appeared to represent the American dream. And somehow, all of this culminated in a brutal double homicide. And what did that public obsession feel like at the time? Is there anything in particular that you would attribute it to?

ROBERT RAND: It was, it was unbelievable for me. It was not only here in the States, but all around the world, people became very interested in this story. This was Beverly Hills. It was a movie executive making $2 million a year. The Menendez family were really, from the outside of that mansion that they lived in, they were the perfect all-American family. They had achieved the American dream. And behind the gates of that mansion, the real story was that there was a dysfunctional family that was spinning wildly out of control. But because they were rich, because they appeared to be perfect from the outside, people didn't question the parents. And, you know, I wrote the cover story for People magazine that came out a couple weeks after the arrest with the headline 'Murder in Beverly Hills... Now, cops say, they did it--for the money.’ And I don't believe that was ever really the story. I believe they were abused. You know, I've spent many years covering the case. I was at each trial every day for six months. And, um. But the media loved that story. And the L.A. County DA's office has a dozen people that do nothing but public relations. And so what their job is -- this sounds terrible, but it's true. What their job is, is to put out their spin on the story. Again, you have to remember, this was 1990 -- long before the internet, long before social media. And so the PR people at the L.A. County DA's office put out this story: greedy rich kids kill Ozzie and Harriet on a Sunday night in Beverly Hills. And the media loved that story. And the defence, in hindsight, made a tactical error in that they chose not to go public with any of their defence until two weeks before the first trial. And that's when they revealed that the brothers had been sexually abused by their parents. And so the general public reaction when this story of their defence came out was, well, why are we just hearing this for the first time?

JP: Right. Because that narrative was kind of baked in.

ROBERT RAND: Yeah, they--

JP: The narrative that came out of the...

ROBERT RAND: The story people had heard for three years [JP: Yeah.] was about greedy rich kids.

[music]

JP: In the first trial, for people who might not be familiar... my understanding is each of the brothers were tried separately.

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UNIDENTIFIED COURT OFFICIAL: Would you state your name again for the record, please?

LYLE MENENDEZ: Joseph Lyle Menendez.

UNIDENTIFIED COURT OFFICIAL: All right.

ERIK MENENDEZ: Erik Galen Menendez. M-E-N-E-N-D-E-Z.

JP: And each with their own jury. And then there was this defence that they had killed their parents due to years of sexual, physical and mental abuse at the hands of their father. And just, what was the reaction or sense in the room as the brothers spoke at length about the abuse that they had suffered at the time?

ROBERT RAND: It was actually a single trial. There were two juries, a separate jury for each brother, because some of the evidence only applied to one brother or the other brother. And in that trial, you had very dramatic testimony from each of the brothers.

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LYLE MENENDEZ: I just told him [emotional] that I didn't want to do this. And [emotional] that it hurt me.

DEFENCE LAWYER ABRAMSON: What do you believe was the originating cause of you and your brother ultimately winding up shooting your parents?

ERIK MENENDEZ: Me telling... [emotional]

DEFENCE LAWYER ABRAMSON: You telling what?

ERIK MENENDEZ: Me telling Lyle that, uh...

DEFENCE LAWYER ABRAMSON: Was it you telling Lyle about something that was happening?

ERIK MENENDEZ: [emotional] My dad...

ROBERT RAND: But what was the heart of the defence was over 50 witnesses -- teachers, coaches, family members, friends -- testified about things they had seen. And they presented, the defence presented a very detailed picture of what life was like behind the gates of that mansion. And so that was very different from the story that people had heard for three years about greedy rich kids. And as a result, half of the jurors, all the women voted for manslaughter. The end of the first trial, there were two mistrials. Neither jury could reach a unanimous verdict. I interviewed all the jurors after the first trial. And all the women had believed this detailed picture that was painted by the defence with over 50 witnesses. All of the men told me, well, a father would never do that to his sons.

JP: Wow.

ROBERT RAND: And that was the attitude in 1993. You know, it was years before the MeToo movement, years before the MenToo movement. And I interviewed every male juror and every single one told me in some form: a father would never do that to his sons. And actually, Leslie Abramson, the famous attorney with the blond, curly hair who represented Erik Menendez, said in her closing argument:

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DEFENCE LAWYER ABRAMSON: Would you feel any differently about what happened to my client if my client's name was Erika Menendez?

ROBERT RAND: And the reality is, that's the way society was in 1993.

[music]

JP: Tell me what happened in the second trial, right. So this one... Uh, correct me if I'm wrong, it was one jury for both brothers, and much of the testimony and evidence related to the allegations of sexual abuse were dismissed by the judge and never presented to the juries. The defence was able to formulate an argument which portrayed the brothers as premeditated killers, and eventually they were convicted of first-degree murder. And just, were you shocked when a guilty verdict was read out loud?

ROBERT RAND: No, I wasn't shocked at all. Because the jury in the second trial heard a completely different set of evidence than the two juries in the first trial. What happened was that the trial judge, Stanley Weisberg, the first thing he did on day one of the trial was he kicked the TV camera out of the courtroom. The first trial had been carried live, gavel to gavel, on Court TV. People, not only in the States but all over the world, were watching this like a soap opera, like a novella. They were just hooked on, you know, the drama behind the gates of that mansion. And in the second trial, the first thing the judge did was kick the cameras out of the courtroom. And so that cut way down on the amount of media coverage because TV stations had no video to use in their stories. There were sketch artists, just like old fashioned trials. And then the judge proceeded to reverse almost all of his evidence rulings, and he did not allow the defence to put on most of their witnesses from the first trial. And the witnesses that were allowed to testify, they were severely limited in what they could say. And so this trial was taking place in the backdrop of a political scene in Los Angeles with the L.A. County DA's office. They had lost a string of high-profile cases. There was a case called the McMartin Preschool case. Then there was a case known as the Rodney King beating trial, where four LAPD officers were acquitted of a beating that was captured on videotape. And that, the acquittal, set off the L.A. riots in the spring of '92.

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REPORTER 3: What began just over a year ago with the beating of one man, continues tonight with parts of Los Angeles in flames.

REPORTER 4: Well, Barbara, now that the sun has come up, we can see the extent of the damage and the destruction wrought by last night's fires and rioting.

REPORTER 5: The officers hit King more than 50 times, kicked him and shot him with stun guns during that encounter back in March of 1991. Their acquittals one year later caused an uprising that would leave 55 people dead and more than 2,000 injured.

ROBERT RAND: And then they lost, they had two mistrials. Which is basically a loss for Menendez one. And then we have O.J. O.J. was acquitted.

JP: Right.

ROBERT RAND: And the second Menendez trial had the terrible misfortune of starting about a week after the O.J. acquittal.

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COURT CLERK: We, the jury in the above-entitled action, find the defendant, Orenthal James Simpson, not guilty of the crime of murder in violation of Penal Code Section 187A, a felony upon Nicole Brown Simpson, a human being, as charged in Count 1 of the information.

ROBERT RAND: And so, again, there was this political backdrop to everything that was going on, in which the DA's office was determined they were going to convict the brothers in the second trial.

JP: Yeah. Can you remind me how this played outside the courtroom? You know, maybe not how the juries felt, but, you know, what was the general public sentiment around it? Like, I do remember SNL skits kind of parodying the brothers. And there was some stuff that when you look back on it now, it seems kind of brutal.

ROBERT RAND: It has not aged very well, some of the comedy that was done back then. Because basically what was happening was that SNL and, you know, Letterman and many other shows, they were totally making fun of the brothers. You know, they were just a punching bag for joke after joke after joke in the late night shows.

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SKIT ACTOR 1: [as lawyer] Can you tell the court who did murder your parents?

SKIT ACTOR 2: [as Menendez brother] Our other two brothers, Danny Menendez and José Menendez Jr.

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COMEDIAN: And after viewing the evidence and seeing the testimony in the first trial, let my boys go. Oh, come on. They're so adorable. They are too fine to go to prison. Woo!

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DAVID LETTERMAN: [as Lyle] These are my chips, Erik.

PAUL SHAFFER: [as Erik] They are not, Lyle.

DAVID LETTERMAN: [as Lyle] Yes they are, you little weasel. Give them here!

[bag bursts, chips spill out]

DAVID LETTERMAN: [as Lyle] Whoa!

PAUL SHAFFER: [as Erik] Whoa... Mom and dad's new rug. We're really gonna get it this time.

DAVID LETTERMAN: [as Lyle] Unless we get them first... [laughter]

ROBERT RAND: And I think today you would never have, you know, major media people doing the kind of jokes that they were doing back then. I mean, Jay Leno on The Tonight Show, you know, as he was doing during the O.J. case, during Menendez, he was doing all kinds of skits and, you know, parodies and making fun of them.

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JAY LENO: [as fundraiser] Hi, folks. Wanna help out the Menendez brothers?

[Leno shakes can of coins]

JAY LENO: [as fundraiser] They're broke...

ROBERT RAND: And today, again, because society has evolved so much over the past 30 years, I don't think that we would be doing comedy that was making fun of abuse victims.

[music]

JP: In the three decades between their conviction and today, hundreds of books and documentaries have been published on the story of the Menendez family. Conspiracies as well. But things had gone relatively quiet. That is, until a documentary that you made, right? And then also a new Netflix series called Monsters and an accompanying series of documentaries on the Menendez brothers' story. And this also led to the entry of new evidence in this story, which I know you've had quite a part in. And so can you talk to me about how television and entertainment have been such a powerful force in helping to bring this story back into the limelight, and what this new evidence is and what the implications of that could be.

ROBERT RAND: Sure. This, the new evidence all started with our documentary that came out on Peacock in May of '23. And 24 hours after that docuseries premiered, the appellate attorneys for Erik and Lyle Menendez filed what's called a habeas corpus petition. And they said, we have new evidence that was not available at the time the brothers were on trial, and so we would like to vacate their 1996 convictions. And so the two major pieces of new evidence are, there's a letter that Erik Menendez wrote to his cousin, Andy Cano, with whom he had a very close relationship when Erik was 17 and Andy was 15. And in the letter... it's about, it's a five-page letter, you know, written between a couple teenage boys. And so most of the letter is just kind of routine stuff like, oh, I hear you have new girlfriend, or, you know, how's your soccer or your tennis going. But there's a paragraph that jumped off the page to me, which was Erik Menendez is writing, I'm still afraid of dad. I'm afraid every night that I'm going to hear him come down the hallway and that he's going to come into my room. He's so gross and overweight, I can't stand to look at him. And it's clear that he is talking about that the sexual abuse by his father was still going on. And so the obvious question is, well, if this letter existed, you know, why didn't Erik or why didn't his cousin, Andy Cano, who testified for the defence in the first trial, why didn't they bring this letter up then? And the answer is, the two cousins were very close. But a couple years earlier, Andy Cano and his family, José's sister Marta Cano, had moved to Puerto Rico, but Erik and Lyle still continued their close relationship. And so I believe that neither Erik or Andy, that they just didn't remember this one letter. It was one of hundreds of letters. And then the second piece of major evidence is the connection between the boy band Menudo and José Menendez. And the primary character in our documentary, his name is Roy Rossello. He was a member of Menudo. And Roy revealed for the first time that he was raped by José Menendez when he was 13 or 14.

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REPORTER 6: Menudo had just signed with RCA Records, where Menendez was a top executive.

[music]

JP: Obviously that new information changed the dynamics of the case, as you've said. And I know earlier this week you found yourself in a California courtroom, right? In what people hoped may be the day or close to the day that the brothers were released. And just tell me where that case stands today.

ROBERT RAND: Well, a few days ago was the first hearing. It was the first time that Erik and Lyle Menendez had been in court, had their case in court since the last federal appeal period in front of the Ninth Circuit in Pasadena in 2005. And the Menendez brothers had exhausted all of their state and federal appeals. And so the only way that you can try to reopen your case is if you have new evidence. And now there is new evidence. And so what the appellate lawyers are saying, there is new evidence that could have made a difference of the outcome from the original trials, and so we want to reopen the case. Now, normally the goal of habeas petition is to try to get a new trial. I don't believe that a new trial will ever take place. It's 30 years later; half of the witnesses are dead or they have dementia. You know, the costs would be astronomical for the L.A. County prosecutors to try to reconstruct a 30-year-old case. And so now we have a recommendation that was made a few weeks ago by George Gascón, the DA of L.A., asking, uh, recommending that Erik and Lyle Menendez be resentenced and possibly be let out of prison immediately, you know, based on the amount of time that they've served. Whether or not they are released -- I believe they will, I believe they should be released -- they will probably have to jump through a number of hoops, including testifying in front of the California Parole Board about their rehabilitation. But I think they will be successful, but it's probably going to take six months, eight months, maybe even a year until [JP: Right.] get out. But I believe they will get out and they should get out.

JP: Robert, are you currently in contact with the brothers? And if you are, do you mind if I ask you what those conversations are like and how they're reacting to all this recent media attention?

ROBERT RAND: I am in contact with the brothers. I have visited-- I visited Lyle in person a few weeks ago in prison. I've talked to both brothers on the phone. And, you know, the term the lawyers use is that they're cautiously optimistic. You know, I know they are hopeful that something will happen. But again, they've been locked up for 35 years. And they've seen so many other inmates, some of their friends, that have gotten their hopes up and had their hopes dashed. So they are hopeful that they will get out. But nothing's a sure thing.

[music]

JP: Robert, before we go today, when I think about the legacy of the Menendez brothers' story, of course, we think about their family who had to grieve in many different directions here. But I'm also just made to think of how courtroom journalism became this huge cottage industry, about how today true crime is one of the most kind of dominant forms of storytelling in pop culture. And in some ways, all roads lead back to Lyle and Erik Menendez, right? Like the home where the murders were committed has even become something of a tourist destination. And what do you think it is about these stories -- stories of murder, of brute violence, of, you know, unconscionable brutality -- that people find resonant? Like, why do you think people feel so taken by these stories? Why is there such an audience for this across society?

ROBERT RAND: I think that people are living vicariously through these stories. They're also comparing their own life experience to, you know, what they're reading about, what they're watching. You know, and wondering how they would react in that situation. You mentioned the true crime tourists that are swarming the Menendez mansion in Beverly Hills, much to the dismay of neighbours in the immediate neighbourhood. I, you know, I think that people are watching these stories and are just drawn in by, you know, the curtains being pulled back. You're seeing inside, what's happening inside a mansion in Beverly Hills. And we all want to live the American dream. We all want to live in that mansion. We all want to make millions of dollars a year, but the reality is that not every story, not every family has, you know, the picture perfect existence that we believe they do. And so I think that's part of the appeal.

JP: Robert, I really want to thank you for taking the time to talk with me today. This was great. I learned a lot, actually. So thank you so much.

ROBERT RAND: Of course. No, thank you for having me.

[Music: Theme]

JP: All right. That is all for this week. Front Burner was produced this week by Joyita Sengupta, Matthew Amha, Matt Meuse, Allie Jaynes, Mackenzie Cameron and Kieran Oudshoorn. Music is by Joseph Shabason. Our senior producer is Elaine Chau. Our executive producer is Nick McCabe-Lokos. I'm Jayme Poisson. Thanks so much for listening. Have a great weekend. Talk to you next week.

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Could the Menendez brothers soon be free? - Transcript

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