By Robert Rand
On Monday, March 12, 1990, Erik and Lyle Menendez – who were being held without bail – were arraigned at Beverly Hills Municipal Court.
The charges against the brothers were read to a packed courtroom that included many supportive family members.
Erik Menendez looked exhausted because he hadn’t slept since his voluntary surrender and return from Israel a day before.
It was the beginning of the end the lives the boys once knew.
Yes, Erik Menendez was the co-author of a screenplay about a young man who kills his parents and inherits $157,000,000. The script that was completed — and shopped around Hollywood — before the murders.
No, it was never included as evidence in either of the two trials.
Did the media firestorm influence the verdicts?
I’ve written Facebook posts and Tweets on this subject already; I’m hoping this post drives a stake in the heart of this “story.”
Welcome to the curious case of a photo on a basketball card of the Menendez brothers at an NBA game — a story that won’t die.
Is that Lyle and Erik? What’s the real story?
On the Donnie and Grace In Your Face podcast, I explain why the second trial was so different from the first trial, what happened at the April 2018 reunion of the brothers after not seeing each other for 22 years, and why I believe that manslaughter – not murder – should have been the resolution of the case.
I was a guest on GDLA – the local morning show on Fox 11 in Los Angeles – with co-hosts Megan Colarossi and Elex Michaelson where we discussed was how different the media is today with the Internet, the 24-hour news cycle and social media compared to 1993 when the first Menendez trial took place.
If the trial were held today, I believe the verdict would have been manslaughter – not a murder.
In the current era of #MeToo, #MenToo, and the report by the Pennsylvania attorney general’s office about abuse in the Catholic Church, people are more open and willing today to believe that boys as well as girls can be abuse victims.
It has been two months since the release of The Menendez Murders.
I am grateful for all the TV shows, podcasts, radio interviews, newspapers, and websites that have helped me share a new version of this story – the truth.
In the 2018 era of #MeToo, #MenToo, and the revelations about the Catholic Church, people are more willing to accept that Erik and Lyle Menendez’s emotional testimony of being abused was the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
On Christmas eve 1989, my story about the case for the Miami Herald Sunday magazine included (photo) the first media speculation that the Beverly Hills Police were focused on Erik and Lyle Menendez.
I had interviewed both brothers that October for a biography about their father Jose . The boys were not suspects publicly and I had no reason to be suspicious of them.
Then Lyle Menendez was arrested — on March 8, 1990. A few hours later, BHPD chief Marvin Iannone held a news conference to announce the arrest of Lyle and the international manhunt for Erik.
In the most cryptic comment of the day, Chief Iannone told reporters “who knows what really goes on within a family.”
Glenn Yeffeth, the boss at my publisher BenBella Books, interviewed me for the company’s podcast, Building Books, and we talked how most of the mainstream media got the original Menendez story wrong in the 1990s.
My first draft was 250,000 words and BenBella only wanted to publish 100,000 words.
Obviously, some some major editing was in store!
The public was outraged that the two 1994 juries – one for each brother – could not reach verdicts in the first Menendez trial. All the jurors agreed that a homicide had been committed. Most of the women voted for manslaughter, but almost all of the men wanted to convict Erik and Lyle of murder.
When I interviewed most of the jurors after the trial, men mostly told me some variation of “a father would never do that to his sons.”
The Menendez family money was gone after the first trial. Most of the family estate – estimated at $6-8,000,000 – went to the attorneys, defense investigators and taxes.
Defense attorney Leslie Abramson was appointed by the court at $125 an hour.
The mainstream media signed on to the District Attorney’s 1993 theory that Erik and Lyle Menendez were a pair of greedy rich kids, and that included NBC’s Jay Leno.
Leno’s monologues on The Tonight Show often featured at least one joke based on the Menendez testimony of the day.
When Erik admitted that he had a hard time getting dates, this was Jay’s gag:
Yesterday, Erik said his parents made fun of him because he never had a girlfriend. You know, I don’t know how to break it to him, but shooting your Mom and Dad isn’t really going to help your chances.