By Robert Rand
In the eighteen months since the release of The Menendez Murders, I’ve heard from hundreds of people who have read (or listened) to my book. People reach out on social media, through this website and by writing reviews on Amazon.
Here’s an example of my favorite type of message — a reader who has changed her opinion about Lyle and Erik Menendez after learning the details of their case through my reporting.
This note came from Meg in Michigan a few days ago:
There are four different versions of what happened the night of October 31, 1989.
That’s when Erik Menendez confessed to Dr. Jerome Oziel that he and his brother, Lyle, had killed their parents.
This is a tragedy that destroyed a family. All four of them had remarkable strengths as well as terrible weaknesses and it did not have to be. If at any time over the course of the lives of the four Menendez family members some effective person could have intervened, everyone would still be alive and well and healing. All four of them needed help. And there never was any help for this family.
— Defense Attorney Leslie Abramson, the day before sentencing
The 780 acres of California’s Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility are about a half hour east and slightly south of downtown San Diego.
The penitentiary tops a mesa near an industrial park, just over a mile from the Otay Mesa border crossing.
I always know when I’m close to the jail because my cell phone buzzes with a text message:
“Welcome to Mexico.”
On July 2, 1996, Judge Stanley Weisberg sentenced Lyle and Erik Menendez to life without parole.
Here’s how I described the scene in my book….
Erik and Lyle Menendez were arrested in March 1990, seven months after they killed their parents.
By June of 1994, the Beverly Hills brothers had been in custody for over four years. During that time, they shared the slammer with many notorious prisoners, including their Brentwood neighbor Orenthal James Simpson, who was arrested 25 years ago today.
Now that O.J. is back in the news — planning to “set the record straight” on Twitter — let’s take a look back to 1994, when Erik met O.J.
The Menendez brothers were reunited a year ago today, after not having seen each other for almost 22 years.
The brothers were reunited at the R. J. Donovan Correctional Facility near San Diego.
The last time they’d been together was in 1996, two months after they were sentenced to life without parole following their first-degree murder conviction.
The day of the sentencing, the Beverly Hills Police filed a motion asked the judge to place the brothers in separate prisons because they had been co-conspirators in committing a crime.
The judge agreed.
I want to express my thanks to everybody who has taken the time to read or listen to my book, The Menendez Murders, since it was released last Fall.
I was recently contacted by a reader who posted a review on Amazon Canada that can’t be easily seen on Amazon U.S. or any of the other foreign Amazon sites.
Darknoir has written an insightful, concise overview of the Menendez Brothers story. I appreciate her kind words:
On March 20, 1996, 23 years ago today, a jury of eight men and four women returned with a verdict after deliberating less than four days:
Erik and Lyle Menendez were both found guilty of first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder.
It was a miscarriage of justice.
On March 8, 1990, Lyle Menendez was arrested in Beverly Hills and charged with killing his parents.
Brother Erik Menendez surrendered several days later.
The Menendez brothers have been in jail for more than half their lives.