The 1993 Menendez Brothers murder trial is finally streaming online, plus I’m interviewed on Court TV’s new podcast
Finally!
Twenty-seven years after two juries were seated for the trial of Lyle and Erik Menendez, the rebooted Court TV has posted the ENTIRE six-month-long court proceedings (even the heated evidence hearings) on their website.
Two juries in the first trial – one for each brother – heard 101 witnesses and examined 405 exhibits over 85 days of testimony that ran from July 20 to December 3, 1993.
The case ended with two mistrials in January 1994 after neither brother’s jury could agree on a verdict.
Now, you can watch the trial and see everything the juries saw.
Here’s how I described defense attorney Jill Lansing’s powerful opening statement in the book:
Described by the Washington Post as a “nuclear-strength pain in the legal butt,” Leslie Abramson (L) famously defended Erik Menendez through two highly publicized criminal trials. Jill Lansing (R) represented Lyle Menendez during the first trial and was succeeded by veteran public defender Charles Gessler at the retrial. (AP Photo/Chris Martinez)
“On August 20, 1989, Lyle and Erik Menendez killed their parents,” she began. “We’re not disputing where it happened, how it happened, or who did it. The only thing you are going to have to focus on in this trial is why it happened. What we will prove to you is that it was done out of fear.”
Dismissing the prosecution’s greed theory, Lansing maintained that the brothers had plenty of money. Lyle lived in a mansion, drove an Alfa Romeo, and had credit cards since age fifteen. “This trial will take you behind the façade of the rich houses and fancy cars, the wealthy friends and the impressive social engagements,” she said. “It will take you into the life that was experienced by Lyle Menendez and his brother as they grew up.”
That was one of many dramatic moments that had people around the world riveted as if watching a novella.
Seeing the testimony of the brothers themselves is gut-wrenching. It was extremely difficult to actually be sitting in the courtroom.
Here’s what you didn’t see on the TV feed: many family members, jurors, and journalists became emotional during the trial – particularly on the first afternoon Lyle Menendez testified.
Tom Edmonds was the BHPD detective who interviewed Lyle and Erik at the BHPD early in the morning of August 21, 1989. He did not give them GSRs – gunshot residue tests – that would have determined if they had fired guns because he believed their emotion was genuine.
There were several family members who knew about the molestation of the brothers BEFORE the killing of Jose and Kitty Menendez: The brothers’ cousin Diane Vander Molen lived with the Menendez family for several summers when she was a teenager. Nine-year old Lyle Menendez revealed something shocking to her.
Cousin Andy Cano and Erik had an extremely close relationship growing up. Erik shared something very personal about his father when they were 10 and 12. [Testimony starts at 2:17.]
In April 1989, Lyle and his friend Goodreau exchanged mutual confessions of having been molested when they were young. The night before he testified, Goodreau told me that he “wasn’t going to volunteer that information but he’d tell the truth if he was asked about it.”
During the prosecution case in July 1993, Goodreau apparently had memory problems during an evidence hearing when he was asked about the dramatic night at a Chinese restaurant in Princeton, a story he’d shared with me during dozens of phone calls. I reluctantly became pulled into the case as a witness when I went to one of the local L.A. TV stations with my 1992 taped interview with Goodreau that contradicted his testimony
