Menendez Brothers' Dark Secrets EXPOSED: Chilling Family Album Reveals Family's Haunting Life Before Brutal Double Murder
This family photo was taken one year before the brutal murders of Kitty and Jose Menendez.
Oct. 3 2024, Published 3:57 p.m. ET
Brothers Lyle and Erik Menendez were just 21 and 18 respectively when they gunned down their multi-millionaire businessman father and their mother in the blood-spattered den of the family mansion.
RadarOnline.com can reveal the trial created a national sensation when it was broadcast across the country 1993 on the then-new cable network Court TV.
Jose Menendez with sons Erik (left) and Lyle (right). As the brothers argued about years of abuse from their father, this photo was used in the trial, with the defense claiming it showed Jose Menendez’s hand in an inappropriate position in Lyle’s lap.
On August 20, 1989, Lyle called 911, frantically telling the operator: "Somebody killed my parents!"
During the trial, it was determined the Mendez brother's father was repeatedly shot at point-blank range in the back of the head. Their mother was blasted as she tried to flee, suffering bullets to the leg, arm, chest and face.
Lyle (center) is seen with his grandfather, Pepin, (left) and father, Jose Menendez, (right) while he attended Princeton in 1985.
Cops at the grisly scene determined the victims were killed by at least 15 shotgun blasts.
The brothers initially seemed to have an airtight alibi.
Three generations of Menendezes appear in one photo, with a young Lyle picture with his father and grandparents, Pepin and Maria.
However, the pair raised suspicion with investigators when they almost immediately started running through their father's fortune, spending nearly $1million on the high life in mere months.
During that time, the brothers spent more than half a million dollars on clothes, Rolex watches and cars. Erik hired a tennis coach and entered a tournament in Israel. Lyle took several trips overseas.
The Menendez family attended their cousin's first communion celebration in Princeton, New Jersey, in 1983.
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In March 1990, the case broke wide open when Erik confessed to his shrink, who then told cops after being threatened by Lyle.
Erik admitted to his therapist that the boys' crime was inspired by a film, the 1987 TV movie Billionaire Boys Club, in which Beverly Hills youths attempt to get rich in a murder scheme.
The brothers were given intense tennis lessons starting from a very young age. Here, the father and sons were pictured at tennis courts in Princeton, New Jersey, in the mid-1980s.
The movie's victim is shot in the back of the head and after the murder, the young male killers buy cars, clothes and Rolexes. Incredibly, the movie had been released through José’s film company, LIVE Entertainment.
The brothers can be seen at Erik's high school graduation in June 1989.
Despite this admission, it wouldn’t be easy to convict the deadly pair.
Their emotional testimony — weaving a tale of a lifetime of physical and sexual abuse — ended in a mistrial. After a second trial in 1996, the brothers were convicted.
Lyle, now 56, and Erik, 53, were sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
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Erik Menendez (left) and Andy Cano, his cousin, (right) at Erik's prison wedding in 1999. Cano was a key witness for the defense in both trials, saying a 12-year-old Erik had told him about being sexually molested by his father