Initially, Lyle asked that they just chat, unrecorded, to get to know each other. And the second time, I thought, “Boy, if my parents had been blown away here, I wouldn’t be living in this house.”’Įventually the brothers appeared in their tennis whites, holding racquets. And the first time we walked by, I kind of felt a chill. ‘They had removed all the furniture and the rug, so it was just a room and the bookcases and the brothers’ tennis trophies. ‘We kept walking by the murder room,’ Rand tells me, 32 years later. It was a grand house – before the Menendez family bought it for $4 million, it had reportedly been rented by a stream of notables, including Elton John, Prince and U2 guitarist The Edge – but it was strange to see it like this, for obvious reasons. Instead, a girlfriend offered to give Rand a tour. When Rand arrived on 20 October, two months after the killings, the brothers were out playing tennis together, a sport they both competed in to a professional level. Rand arranged to meet Lyle and Erik where they were staying, at the North Elm Drive home where their parents had been killed. Rand set out to interview Jose’s friends, associates and remaining family – including the two grieving sons. In the meantime, Robert Rand, a reporter based in Miami, had been commissioned by the Miami Herald to write a very different kind of article – telling the tale of the Menendez patriarch, a Cuban-American success story who had apparently envisioned big things for himself – as the first Cuban-born senator in the American government. To quote the Los Angeles Times, ‘“Someone was trying to send a message,” he said, but no one in the family had yet deciphered the message.’Īfter that, the story dropped out of the headlines, and the authorities were presumed to be following up their mob leads. In front of 400 people, Lyle delivered a eulogy praising his father’s values, before the song Girl I’m Gonna Miss You by Milli Vanilli was played.Īfterwards, Jose’s sister, Marta, told the press that her brother had been killed because he refused to deal with mobsters, a theory Lyle only slightly tempered. ‘Informed law enforcement sources’ revealed how both the style and circumstances of the killings indicated mob involvement: ‘There’s no question that it’s organized crime.’Ī memorial service was held at the Directors Guild of America. Three days later, in a more extensive exploration of Jose’s background – he had escaped from Cuba at the age of 16 after Castro’s takeover – the newspaper wrote: ‘Official silence has led to widespread speculation that the Menendezes died in an execution-style slaying that could somehow have been related to the executive’s business activities.’īy the next week, a follow-up story headlined, ‘Menendez Couple Reportedly Were Gunned Down Mob Style’, all but confirmed it. Jose Menendez was a successful executive for a home video company, and even the first Los Angeles Times article reporting the death floated a possible business connection to organised crime. Few people are murdered in Beverly Hills, never mind with such apparent savagery. Inevitably, these killings were big news. ‘Who was the person who was shot?’ the second dispatcher asked.Ī family portrait of the brothers with their parents, Kitty and Jose ‘I have a hysterical person on the phone,’ the first dispatcher explained to a colleague, and handed the call over. On the 911 call, Lyle’s anguish was all too apparent, as he kept trying to convey what had happened. The alarm wasn’t raised until the couple’s two sons, Lyle, 21, and Erik, 18, returned just before midnight to the family home at 722 North Elm Drive from a nearby movie theatre that had been showing the new Batman film. Kitty was hit nine times: to her left breast, the right side of her face, her right hand, her right arm, her left thigh, twice in her left knee, a blast through her left shoulder into the left side of her face, and the shot to her left cheek that shattered her skull. Jose was hit by four shotgun blasts: to his left elbow, his right upper arm, his left thigh and what would later be described in court as ‘an explosive contact wound in the back of his head’. And then, at some point that evening, they were brutally killed. They snacked on some blueberries and whipped cream. On the evening of 20 August 1989, Jose and Kitty Menendez sat down in the living room of their Beverly Hills mansion and watched the Sunday-night movie on TV, the James Bond film The Spy Who Loved Me.
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