Keith Morrison reports on the latest developments in the high-profile murder case of Lyle and Erik Menendez that continues to captivate the nation.Keith Morrison and Andrea Canning go behind the scenes of the making of this episode in ‘Talking Dateline’:Listen on Apple: https://apple.co/3BAijYlListen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/4igVe4C1NWWpFIY1pDdH08
Chapter 1: What happened on the night of the Menendez murders?
Tonight on Dateline. I was just firing. As I went into the room, I just started firing.
What was in front of you?
My parents.
35 years later, their crime still haunts. Lyle and Eric Menendez, the brothers who killed their parents. I just told them that I didn't want to do this and that it hurt me. Were they abused? Should they go free?
Social media young people have just taken up their banner.
Now, new evidence. There was a letter that Eric Menendez had written. I'm convinced that he was talking about sexual abuse.
There was a connection between Jose Menendez and some Menudo boy band members. Roy Rosello told me that he had been assaulted. Hear from the brothers themselves.
People were afraid of him. There was no way he was going to let this secret get out. But you could have left. But leave and do what?
I believe that they should be released. There's no reason they should get out. They killed their parents. I mean, come on.
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Chapter 2: What evidence points to possible abuse?
Chapter 3: How did social media influence public opinion?
He was wearing shorts and he had a shotgun blast to his thigh, blood soaked all the way down. And then I noticed his wife, Kitty, at his feet on the floor.
She was curled into a fetal position and, like her husband, had been shot many times. Several times near her knee and, most horribly, Kitty was shot point blank in the face.
There was a contact wound on Kitty Menendez's face. It blew out her eye. I mean, it was grotesque what happened to her.
Back then, Pamela Bozanich was an L.A. County prosecutor in the Organized Crime Unit. But nothing prepared her for this. Jose and Kitty had been shot 15 times.
Shotgun killings are very messy, and there were brains and blood everywhere.
It looked as if Jose and Kitty had been relaxing in the den. An empty bowl of cream and berries and Eric's college paperwork were on the coffee table. The television set was on. There was no sign of a break-in, but... We didn't see any shotgun shells.
What did that say to you? Somebody collected the shotgun shells. But who does a thing like that if they've got a messy crime scene of that sort? somebody that didn't want fingerprints on the shotgun shells, the only thing I could think of.
While investigators examined the crime scene, Lyle Menendez, then 21, and Eric, 18, went to the station to speak to police.
The brothers said they were in and out throughout the day, and then as evening approached, they decided that they wanted to go to the movies. They wanted to see a James Bond movie, but it was sold out, so they saw the Batman movie, which they had both seen before.
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Chapter 4: What led to the Menendez brothers' arrest?
Chapter 5: What role did Dr. Jerry Ozeal play in the case?
That would leave the family and the rest of America speechless. The media feasted on the story of the rich brothers charged with killing their parents, apparently to get their hands on the family's reported $14 million estate. They were smirking, they were smug.
How do you play?
Not guilty. Hard to overstate the public's disgust with those young men. But on the other side of the country, in an upscale New Jersey town just a few miles from Princeton, people began comparing memories.
Their home at the time was a Tudor-style home. It was on a lake.
Bill Curtin was a young tennis coach when he met Jose Menendez and was certainly impressed.
There were two clear sides of him. One was the very friendly, outgoing, joking person. The flip side was how driven and controlling he was.
Jose engaged Bill to teach his son, Lyle, and then watch the lessons. But didn't just watch.
He would physically come on to the tennis court and start giving instruction to Lyle while I was still there. That was very, very strange, very uncomfortable.
And Bill learned Jose had hired several coaches for Lyle. That the boy was working hours every day to learn tennis.
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Chapter 6: How did the murder trial unfold?
Which I thought was very strange.
It was pretty obvious, said the prosecutor. First-degree murder. And they did it for the money.
At the end of the prosecution case, I was like, okay, these two brothers are so guilty, it's not even funny.
But then, of course, the defense got its turn. Ms. Abramson for the defense.
Thank you. We had a joke. The investigator, myself, and my co-counsel, Lester, the joke was, you have a gun, you have two bullets, you go in the courtroom. Who do you shoot? Okay? So both the guys say they would shoot Lyle and Eric. My thing was, I'm going to shoot Leslie twice. I felt that the brothers were evil, but not as bad as she was.
Abramson had a reputation for doing whatever it took.
You guys haven't been fair to these boys and you're not fair to them now.
She told the juries the brothers had shot their parents all right, but it wasn't murder. It was something the law called imperfect self-defense.
That is to say, under all the circumstances, it was reasonable to the person to think that they were acting in self-defense, but the reality is that that wasn't the case at all.
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