Keith Morrison and Andrea Canning sit down to talk about Keith’s episode, “Menendez Brothers: Chance at Freedom.” Thirty-five years ago, Jose and Kitty Menendez were gunned down in the den of their Beverly Hills home. Their sons, Lyle and Erik, were charged with their murders. A media frenzy surrounded the trial which was televised and captured the nation’s attention. Following each of their juries being unable to come to an agreement, the brothers were convicted in a second trial and sentenced to life in prison without parole. The case is back in the news and capturing the attention of a new audience on social media. And now, the outgoing Los Angeles County D.A. has recommended the brothers be resentenced, which – if a judge agrees – would immediately make them eligible for parole. Keith and Andrea discuss public opinion surrounding the case and details that could be considered in a possible resentencing. Plus, they answer viewer and listener questions about the episode.Listen to the full episode of “The Menendez Brothers: Chance at Freedom” on Apple: https://apple.co/3VBytrdListen to the full episode on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/0W8ufgVwDGafjZKrtYhUzh
Chapter 1: What is the Menendez Brothers case about?
Good to see you and hear your voice. This episode is called The Menendez Brothers' Chance at Freedom. This story is one that has captured headlines. It's about the 1989 murders of Kitty and Jose Menendez by their sons, Lyle and Eric. The couple was found shot to death in their Beverly Hills home, and what followed were multiple trials, a media frenzy, and now a possible chance at redemption.
If you haven't listened to the show yet, it's the episode right below this one on the list of podcasts you just chose from. So go there, listen to it, or if you want to watch it, you can stream it on Peacock and then come back here. When you come back, he has an extra clip he's going to play for us. It's Lyle Menendez confessing to his therapist.
Later, we are going to answer some of your questions about the show from social media. So stay tuned for that. Okay, let's do it. Let's talk Dateline. All right. First of all, Keith, I want you to listen to the sound. Do you hear that?
I hear it.
Yes. It's a lot of pages. You know why? Because I've never taken so many notes while watching a Dateline in my life.
Those are your notes.
Those are all my notes. These are all questions I have for you.
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Chapter 2: What was the public reaction to the Menendez Brothers trial?
Well, this is a long-running story. It's full of very strange things, so it's understandable.
It really is. And I'm embarrassed to say this as a mother. I found out after the fact that my 15-year-old and my 14-year-old had watched the Ryan Murphy monsters. I'm not sure I would have let them watch it. Didn't realize that they found it on Netflix.
Did they form an opinion based on watching that?
It's amazing. All these teens are talking about it and they absolutely think that the brothers need to get out based on watching this. It certainly got me interested in it, knowing that my kids had watched it. And then I watched your episode, and I see why everyone is talking about it. It's incredible all these years later, all the interest in the case.
Chapter 3: What are the allegations of abuse in the Menendez case?
Yeah, yeah. I've never seen anything like it. And never could have imagined that this would develop beginning way back in 1989. I mean, I first covered this story for Nightly News when it— when the murders happened, and then later on when the trials happened, and they became a media circus at the time too, in a different way because they didn't have social media in those days.
It was always a big story, and it was always based on a varied series of beliefs that people would have observing these guys about the kinds of things that cannot be proved one way or the other. And, you know, sexual abuse is at the heart of it. Did it occur? I suspect it probably did. But there are people who are convinced that it didn't occur.
And certainly the brothers did a lot of lying about it, too, which didn't help their cause.
Like the prosecutor. She was very... Adamant. Blunt about, you know, that they were not... She does not believe that they were sexually abused.
Pam, the prosecutor. She is angry because she believes... that they made up these allegations of abuse, that they have dined out on them for many years. Therefore, in a belittled real abuse, which occurs far too often, her main job before getting into homicide prosecutions was sexual abuse. And so she knows what sexual abuse is all about.
She encountered many cases of it and believes in it wholeheartedly. But she believes that these two guys were not sexually abused. And it was an extremely brutal crime. There were some elements of it which I think made it very difficult for people to see that there should be some kind of redemption, as you say, at the end of it.
It was really awful. The fact that they reloaded, you know, the fact that they shot Kitty in the face.
they discussed whether to kill their mother too. They decided to make that choice and kill both parents. And Lyle, their mother was still alive. She was crawling across the floor, crying and begging for help. And he had run out of ammunition, so he Left the house. He walked out to their rental car. He opened the trunk. He got out the ammunition. He loaded his Mossberg shotgun.
He walked back into the house. He walked right up to his mother. He put the gun to the side of her face and blew her face off.
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Chapter 4: How did the Menendez Brothers' spending habits change after the murders?
My goodness. I know. It's one of those stories where, you know, one minute you're thinking you feel bad for them. And then the next minute you're like, wait a second. It really takes you on a kind of a roller coaster of trying to get to the bottom of what really was going through their minds. And it's tough to figure that out.
This reminded me so much of a case that you and I talked about on Dateline True Crime Weekly about the Olympian's wife in California who said that she was being abused by her husband. But he was, you know, the Olympian. Everyone loved him. And you said on the podcast that you felt like if that case was tried.
Today that it would probably have a different outcome you know that we knew we didn't know as much about abuse back then people didn't talk about it but that was her defense was that she was being abused so she killed her husband. I wonder from you where do you think this would go if it was if this all happened right now this crime.
It's truly hard to know for several reasons. One is that people are finding it easier now to say publicly that they've been abused and to kind of reveal all the details of that than they were in those days. So those are really hard questions. And the law hasn't kind of figured out exactly how to Navigate them effectively twice.
Yeah. When we come back, we have an extra clip from the confession of Lyle Menendez to his therapist, Dr. Jerry Ozeal. I felt like in the Lyle interview that you really pressed him. Yeah. You know, this was a hard-hitting interview, in my opinion. You were really trying to, like, drill down. There were no free passes in that interview.
No, but he did well, didn't you think?
I do. I think he's been in there for 35 years, as you said. He has a lot to say. And I was glad to see that he did the interview with you.
When I talked to Lyle, we went on for quite a long time, as we do with Dateline interviews. But I found him to be a very engaging, very interesting, effective, intelligent person to interview. He presented a lot of the facts of the case the way a politician would, just kind of presenting his side of things, which made sense. But I came away from that thinking, you know, I kind of respect that guy.
He's pretty good at what he does.
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Chapter 5: What insights were gained from Lyle Menendez's confession?
Chapter 6: Have the Menendez Brothers shown remorse for their actions?
Chapter 7: How has public perception shifted regarding the Menendez Brothers?
Yeah, I know. Or just to show some remorse that we chose the wrong option.
I think that they, yeah, they've both said they understand they made a very bad decision. They did a terrible thing. But remorse, I don't know. It's a hard thing to figure out how much remorse people actually feel.
Keith, you have an extra clip you want to tell us about?
These were sessions with Dr. Jerry Ozeal that the brothers were assigned to see this particular doctor. The background of the story and the reason that we're able to hear this is because although any conversation with a psychiatrist is completely off limits to everybody else, they're not going to tell a single soul in the world about it, except Dr. Ozeal
was hearing these confessions from the boys. And he knew what they were accused of. And here were these kids revealing in graphic detail what they had done to their parents. And so he invited his girlfriend to go and sit in the waiting room and listen at the door. But when the tapes were played, it offered a whole new window into what really happened in that case.
And this is a portion of that interview of Lyle talking with Dr. Jerry Ozeal.
Yeah. Solution is to kill your mother.
Yeah, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
For months after the murders, they had sessions with him. They never, ever said anything about abuse. Yeah. But they confessed to what they had done, and they were pretty open and direct about it. That's where I got the business about going back out to the car and reloading.
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