Unraveling the Menendez Family: The Beginning

What truly drove the Menendez brothers to commit such a heinous act? Join me, Christi Chanelle, as we navigate the labyrinth of media sensationalism and uncover the deeper, darker truths hidden beneath a narrative of greed. In PART ONE of this series this episode challenges the simplistic portrayals and dives into the complex family dynamics that may have led Lyle and Erik down their tragic path. With the release of a compelling new Netflix documentary shedding fresh light on the case, we'll explore the trauma the brothers reportedly endured, peeling back the layers of their troubled upbringing.

Through the saga of Jose and Kitty Menendez, we see a story of ambition, pressure, and ultimately, unraveling. Jose's climb from Cuba to American success in the music and film industries set the stage for a household rife with expectation and tension. Experience the emotional turmoil of a family grappling with high ambitions, personal insecurities, and the specter of abuse. This episode doesn't shy away from the heart-wrenching moments when dreams of escape clash with a desperate need for freedom, offering a poignant perspective on what might have driven the brothers to their devastating actions.

Chapters

• 0:01 True Crime Podcast
• 5:21 Family Pressure and Ambition
• 19:05 Escaping Family Abuse and Pressure

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

Yes, police. What's the problem? What's the problem? What's the problem? Someone killed my parents. Pardon me, someone killed my parents. What? Who Are they still there? Yes, the people. No, no, no. Were they shot? Yes, matthew, were they shot? Yes, they were shot. Yes, they were shot. Yes, one of them too. One of them, too, was shot.

Speaker 1: 0:29

722 North A1. What happened? I had to just stare at the person. I was trying to get further. Other units were fighting. Is the person still there? What happened? We have units around. What happened? I don't know who shot who. I don't hear anything. You came home and found who shot my mom and dad. Do you know if they're still in the house? The people that did the shooting? Get away from them. Okay, hey, let me talk to Eric. Who is the person that was shot? My mom and my dad, your mom and dad. My mom and my dad? Okay, hold on a second. Okay, we're on our way over there with an ambulance. Okay, I gotta go. Okay, hello, hello, this is the police department. Yes, okay, I want you to come outside. Okay, just come out the front door. I never did my brother.

Speaker 2: 1:54

I'm your host, christy Chanel, and this is the Love you Miss you Bye Podcast. True Crime Edition edition. Do you remember the Menendez brothers? I certainly do. It was. I was probably a sophomore in high school when the murders took place and right about to graduate when they were arrested. And right about to graduate when they were arrested.

Speaker 2: 2:25

Not long after their trial was on court TV and everybody was glued to the TV. They were all over the place. It was definitely sensationalized. As I get older, I realize that the media can point you in any direction they want you to go in. They feed you what they want and they judge and convict people based on the news that they provide. They wanted their parents' money, so they killed them.

Speaker 2: 2:53

I didn't really believe it then. I really didn't. When I watched the case, I could see that there was a lot of trauma there. There'd have to be right, because in every other way they seemed to be very normal. I don't know. Recently, netflix released a series called Monsters which is based on their story. I hated it. I have to be fair and say that I only watched the first episode and I was completely turned off by it. It was very Hollywood. But Netflix is about to redeem themselves because they are putting out a documentary called the Menendez Brothers. Now that one I will definitely be watching on October 7th. But what really piqued my interest is the fact that there's new evidence and we are going to get into it, because a lot of things could be changing in this case.

Speaker 2: 3:47

Let's start with their father, jose Enrique Menendez. He was born on May 6, 1944 in Havana, cuba. Jose's parents were pretty athletic. His father was a champion soccer player and his mother was a champion swimmer. Okay, so he's got some good genes there. So, of course and naturally, jose is going to pick up on some of those traits. You know ambition, athleticism. He was extremely successful in anything that he tried. As far as sports go, things started getting a little crazy in Cuba and Fidel Castro was now their prime minister and it was not really safe. So his parents sent him at 15, 15 by himself, to America. He ended up moving in with his cousins and living in their attic. I can't imagine what that must've felt like at 15. Going to a whole new country with family that I'm sure he didn't see that often, if at all, and moving into their attic, so not really completely having his own space, but he did make the most of it and he still had his sports to lean on to keep himself going. He did very well for himself and ended up getting a scholarship for swimming and attending Southern Illinois University. That's where he met Mary Louise Anderson, otherwise known as Kitty, and that was all in about 1962.

Speaker 2: 5:21

Kitty was born in 1941 and grew up in Chicago and of course she was beautiful because she was also a former beauty queen. They hit it off right away and started dating. Kitty was a couple of years ahead of him in school, so she ended up graduating. I think it was 1963. Jose was like I'm done, let's go. He was only 19. And they decided that they were going to go get married, but they were going to elope, of course, the cheap way to do it. I don't blame them. And then they moved to New York where Kitty was a teacher and Jose decided to enroll in college once again, but this time in accounting. He was good with numbers and also worked as a dishwasher part-time Sounds like he's got a lot of ambition Around.

Speaker 2: 6:09

This time Kitty gets pregnant with her first child, a boy named Joseph Lyle Menendez. He was born in New York on July 10th 1968. At this time Kitty decides I'm done with teaching, I want to be a full-time mom. She seemed to be very excited to be a mom, which is odd. Later you'll hear stories that she did not want to be a mom. So that's interesting. And then, on November 7th 1970, they had their second son, eric.

Speaker 2: 6:45

Also really strange, he left accounting and decided to go into the music industry. Random, he must've had a connection somewhere, because that's a big shift. He was very successful. He was the top music executive for RCA Records in 1980. Talk about ambition. I mean, this guy you can't put. If you can say a million things about him, but the one thing that's true he's a go-getter. He signed a lot of music groups, but one of the most popular and I'm sure you remember them from the 80s, duran Duran. I know I did. I had their tape. I used to listen to them all the time, loved them.

Speaker 2: 7:25

Then he started to make some real money and moved to Princeton in New Jersey and the boys attended private school there. So just by hearing how ambitious Jose was, you can kind of get an idea of what he would expect from his own kids. They were thrown into sports and it wasn't like hey, go have fun. Kids it was. You need to work hard, you need to stick with it and I will accept nothing less. Period. And I'm sure we've all seen that type of parent. They're kind of neurotic and crazy. He was the dad that wasn't letting them just play t-ball. Neurotic and crazy, he was the dad that wasn't letting him just play t-ball. Eric and Lyle finally found their niche in sports and it came in the way of tennis. They were both exceptional tennis players, especially Eric. Kitty would also show her support for her children and showed up at every event. Again, from the outsider's perspective, they were a perfect family. In 1986, again from the outsider's perspective, they were a perfect family.

Speaker 2: 8:30

In 1986, jose again wanted to shift directions from the music industry into the movie industry, so they moved to Hollywood. In 1987, jose started a new job working for Live Entertainment. They were a new company and they were losing money left and right. They were in. I guess they had lost around $20 million when they hired Jose and, just like the go-getter he is, he turned it all around. His first year he increased the profits by $8 million. By his second year, $16 million. He was riding high and really, really starting to make some money. He was a little dirty and underhanded in the way he got things done, but he the company loved him. How could they not? He was now making the money, so they decided to make him the CEO. Think, think about this. This is back in 1987, 1988. His salary was about $500,000 a year, but he could also make up to $860,000 a year in bonuses.

Speaker 3: 9:33

Chairman of the board, president and chief executive officer of live entertainment joining us here in Los Angeles. And I should point out, this is the company, folks, that brings you the teenage mutant ninja turtles video which seriously, is a hot video right now it is so. The company is broad-based and it provides, uh, pretty much what the consumer wants, and you must have projections for down the road, what you're expecting to make at some point. We think 1989 will be a tremendous year.

Speaker 2: 9:59

With all the ambition that he has, I can just imagine what it would have been to work for him. A lot of people have said they despised him. He was not a nice guy, he was a scary guy, and I know sometimes that tactic works and maybe it worked a lot back in the 80s and even probably the 90s. It just doesn't work anymore. You can't keep people and I'm glad that corporate mindset has changed and shifted, because it just wouldn't go anywhere these days. But back then he did not care, he didn't mind reprimanding people in public, firing people it didn't matter, he could do whatever he wanted. So not only was he a jerk, he was also having a lot of affairs at work HR, are you listening? So, knowing he had all these affairs, it's probably a good guess that Kitty knew about some of them and just decided to turn a blind eye. Actually I know she did because it's in some of the testimony but she decided not to leave and just deal with it. I mean he was bringing home almost a million dollars. She just sucked it up, but I don't think it bode well for her mental stability. One of the things that I read said that he was ashamed of his Cuban heritage. He just did not want people to know about it. He did not like where he went to school, he did not like where he came from and he wanted to keep it hidden. So of course he's now determined to have both of his kids go to an Ivy League school and do better than he did. I think he did pretty good. He wanted his kids to go to Princeton.

Speaker 2: 11:43

Can you imagine the pressure that these two men felt, these two kids felt, from their dad? Just for a second? I'm betting it was a pressure cooker. You have to do this, you have to do that, and it's all about appearance. What does that sound like to you? I'll give you one second to think about it. A class A narcissist. This man was a class A narcissist. One of the main traits of a narcissist is outward appearances. This is what it is. They want everything to be a certain way Narcissist. They didn't do very well in academics, like the parents wanted them to, but they were still excelling in tennis. Eric ranked 44 in the nation for tennis players. This kid was good. He was good.

Speaker 2: 12:35

Some of their friends said that they really liked to be with each other just the two brothers by themselves more than they like to be with other people. Now, if you think about the overall theme they were abused, which we will talk about more. That would kind of explain, because nobody else knew what was happening. But both of them, so their friends, were like it was weird, it was awkward, it was, it was just strange, like hinting that they might've been intimate with each other. I have no idea, but that was what some of their friends said. So it seemed like the family dynamic was that Jose put a lot more pressure on Lyle being the golden son than he did Eric, which you know. I have three kids. Of course you're going to be a little bit more tough with the first child because you have expectations in your mind of how it should go. Get good grades, get you know, you're very, you're more strict.

Speaker 2: 13:31

What wasn't normal was that Jose would shame his son, lyle, about his physical appearance. I think we've all seen pictures. I'm going to show some on the screen. If you're watching on YouTube where you can tell he's wearing a hairpiece, you can see it. Lyle started losing his hair around 14. He was very, very self-conscious about it and his dad would like to pick on him about it. So his dad forced him at 19 to wear a toupee 19, a toupee. If he didn't and wasn't self-conscious before the fact that his dad kept writing him about it, he definitely was now. Now he had to worry if people were looking at him strange because he had a toupee on. I'm sorry to say, in the 80s they didn't look that good. They did not look that good. Now they can go and they can do like surgery to change your hairline, but they didn't do that in the 80s because we all know Jose had enough money to do that and he clearly had a toupee on.

Speaker 2: 14:31

They grew up around money. They understood that that's what you needed in life and they were kind of known as bratty. It's just a different mindset. They wanted what they wanted and they knew that they could get it. I live in a really good neighborhood now and they have money. Their allowances are big and extreme and they can buy whatever they want, which means they have access to whatever they want and they feel like I'm talking about the Menendez boys now there would be no repercussions.

Speaker 2: 14:58

So they decided to start stealing and it became an adrenaline rush. It was the two brothers and their friends. Uh, they enjoyed it until one day the two brothers decided they didn't want to do with their friend. So they went and they stole. They didn't steal a gold necklace, they stole over $100,000 worth of stuff and they got caught because that friend that they didn't take. Well, he told on them and so they ended up getting caught. Jose, the dad, went and paid for all of the items and then had Eric take the fall for the entire thing. Didn't want to mess up Lyle's career, didn't want to mess up Lyle's future, and because he took the fall, that ended up putting him in therapy, which was actually a good thing for him because he ended up thriving from it, which we will all see. But it also got him caught. You know that Jose wasn't even upset that they did it, because you know he was kind of known for doing underhanded stuff at work. He was upset they got caught.

Speaker 2: 16:03

Okay, if you're keeping score, he has these high expectations of his child. He's making them feel insecure because they're never going to meet those expectations. He's teaching them how to play dirty expectations. He's teaching them how to play dirty. He's paying off their debts and making sure that Lyle has a clean record and is not upset that they did it, but upset that they got caught. So these are the lessons that these two kids are learning Money is everything. Don't get caught and play dirty, okay, around.

Speaker 2: 16:37

This time they moved to Beverly Hills in a very famous mansion. Michael Jackson lived there and Elton John. So I would say they were doing quite well for themselves, and it looks like Lyle did make his dad and mom very proud by getting into Princeton, an Ivy League school, which is where he wanted them both to go. But during school he didn't do so well. He got put on academic probation for his grades and then got caught plagiarizing. So he was kicked out. Daddy couldn't save him on this one and Lyle was suspended for an entire year. Daddy got very, very upset, but he wasn't mad at Lyle. No, no, no, no, no. He was mad at the university for kicking him out. Well, of course, duh Lyle, I think, worked for his dad for a short amount of time at Live Entertainment in hopes that he could walk in his footsteps, he could show him the way. Lyle wasn't really into it. He wanted really honestly, nothing to do with it. He would show up late, he would leave early. He just wasn't who he wanted to be. So he got fired. You can't do that. And of course you know daddy couldn't save him out of that one. He didn't fire him, they did. On the flip side, eric was doing well, he was thriving. He was doing so good in tennis and he was doing good in school and he even won a prize for best actor. So he was really into, you know, writing and acting and just thriving.

Speaker 2: 18:07

Eric and his friend Craig co-wrote a screenplay together. What the subject of the screenplay is is a little alarming. I'm not going to lie. It was called Friends and not the one we all used to watch a long time ago with Chandler and Monica. No, this was not it. It was actually a story of a young man who murdered his parents to inherit a lot of money. I don't know. Was he predicting the future? Possibly Meanwhile all this is going on. You know, kitty seemed very, very proud of Eric. She was always a little closer to Eric than she was Lyle, and Jose was always closer to Lyle than he was Eric. But the general consensus from Jose was he wasn't proud of either one of his boys. He was actually really disappointed in both of his boys and was talking about writing them out of the will. Interesting little tidbit. There was a lot of tension brewing, a lot of tension that people from the outside had no idea was happening.

Speaker 4: 19:13

I was in the den with dad and he was going over my college work happening. I kept asking him what do you mean? I thought I would be gone. I had this sinking pain, sadness. It was like in that moment, all of the dreams that I had pinned everything on about escaping home they just got crushed inside of me. I looked back at my room and I didn't know what to do. I just started putting clothes in the bag and my mom came in and she said when are you going? And I said I'm just going to a friend's house for a few days. And she said no, you aren't. She started taking my clothes from the bag and throwing them out and then she left.

Speaker 4: 20:18

My dad came in a few minutes later. He pushed me up against the window and he had his arm against my neck and said do we have a problem? And I said no and he said you better be here when I get back to my trip. At that point I just was defeated. I didn't have the strength to argue with him. I certainly wasn't going to fight back. I just felt dead inside. Emotionally I was just crumbling. And so I thought about I really thought about suicide. I thought about taking my life.

Speaker 2: 20:58

He's starting to become more and more upset. He sees himself as being free. He's ready to leave the house and go to college and get away from the abuse that he's getting from his parents, which we have yet to really deep dive into and we're yet to really deep dive into, and we're about to.