By Robert Rand
On March 15, 1990, one week after the arrest of the Menendez Brothers, Hard Copy featured my interview with Erik Menendez for the Miami Herald.
I quizzed Erik two months after the murders and five months before he was arrested.
Erik lied to my face as he told me he wished he knew who had killed his parents.
The Beverly Hills Police had the same wish.
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.
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.
After 29 years of reporting, my book The Menendez Murders has finally been released. I’m happy that I can share my work with everybody in the U.S. and around the world who remain fascinated by the case.
It was great fun to hold a discussion, answer questions, and sign books Sunday at the legendary Book Soup on the Sunset Strip.
On Friday, September 10: “The defense calls Joseph Lyle Menendez,” announced attorney Jill Lansing at five minutes before two o’clock. Lyle, dressed in a navy crew-neck sweater, walked directly to Lansing.
Lansing was blunt:
“Did you love your parents?”
“Yes,” he choked out hoarsely.
“And on August 20, 1989, did you and your brother kill your mom and dad?”
“Yes.”
Thanks to the iHeartRadio stations, I was able to share the Menendez brothers’ story in Chicago, Philly, San Diego, Minneapolis, St. Louis and more.
I’m grateful to be spreading the truth – one station at a time.
Here’s my iHeart interview with La Dona Harvey and Ted Garcia of KOGO radio in San Diego, the local station near the prison where the Lyle and Erik are now incarcerated.
I became a reluctant witness in the trial when I caught a major prosecution witness in a lie, all because of an audiotaped interview he did with me a year before.
The witness was a Princeton friend of Lyle Menendez.
The friend, Donovan Goodreau, exchanged the mutual confessions with Lyle in the spring before the murders. BOTH boys been sexually molested when they were kids.
On the night of August 20, 1989, the last in the lives of Jose and Kitty Menendez, their elegant residential street in Beverly Hills was so still you could hear a leaf drop.
That in itself was not unusual or suspicious.
People pay a steep price to live in such neighborhoods, and they cherish their peace and quiet.