By Robert Rand
Lyle and Erik are headed back to court for their retrial. Here are all the odd facts, bizarre characters, and untold stories you need to appreciate round two including, of course, a cameo by OJ. himself.
On the night of August 20, 1989, the last night 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 neither unusual nor something to arouse suspicion. People pay a steep price to live in such neighborhoods, and they cherish their peace and quiet.
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.
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.
Three decades after the infamous Menendez brothers killed their parents and were sentenced to life, who gives a damn about what happened to them?
One former Philadelphian does, disturbed by a perceived miscarriage of justice.
Robert Rand is a latter-day Don Quixote, a journalistic knight errant carrying a pen rather than a broken lance. He has no Sancho Panza as a sidekick, just an unquenchable pursuit for justice. — Stu Bykofsky, Philly.com
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.