By Robert Rand
Earlier this week, I had no idea how Tuesday would go. For the past three years, my reporting partner Nery Ynclan and I have been in the middle of an intense investigation. We couldn’t tell anybody what we were doing
Lyle Menendez was arrested 32 years ago this month — March 8, 1990. Erik Menendez surrendered to the Beverly Hills Police three days later — March 11 – after flying from London to Miami and then L.A. . The next
The last time I visited Lyle Menendez at the R.J. Donovan Correctional Facility near San Diego was February 2020.
Within weeks, California, like the rest of the world, would be locked down because of COVID-19.
Sure, we were all unhappy to be stuck at home, but imagine trying to survive the plague while packed in prison!
The virus was not a problem at Donovan until December; that’s when a shock outbreak — 700 new cases in one week — turned the sprawling lockup into a pandemic penitentiary.
Lyle and Erik, luckily, were never infected. They are now fully vaccinated.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.