Lyle Menendez

Passions

Lifestyle

Notable

Traits

Family

American homicide; the son of a wealthy video distributor with one younger brother, Erik. Erik was a star on the tennis team and their dad pushed Lyle to also be a tennis ace. Perhaps in rebellion, he was often late to practice and placed last on the court. In his school classes, he was suspended for a year when he was caught plagiarizing notes. When the family moved to Calabasas, CA, both of the brothers ran with a crowd of young, spoiled rich kids, a few of whom engaged in theft for thrills. During the summer of 1988, Erik was implicated in a couple of large burglaries. When the family moved to Beverly Hills, CA the following year, both boys were sent to a psychiatrist, Dr. Oziel. On the night of 8/20/1989, the boys came home with shotguns, entered the TV room and blew both of their parents away with five shotgun blasts. At 11:47 PM the police received a call from a sobbing Lyle crying, "They shot and killed my parents." Playing the role of grief-stricken orphans, the two boys showed little interest in the police investigations. Almost immediately following the murders, Erik bought a Jeep Wrangler and hired a $50,000 a year tennis coach. Together, the two boys spent $1 million in three months. Lyle bought a Porsche and a Rolex watch and the boys together bought a Chicken & Fries restaurant. When a personal friend of Dr. Oziel's, Judalyn Smyth, came forward on 3/06/1990 to tell police what she had overheard, the boys were arrested three days later and sent to trial. From that day on, they only saw each other in court or when their attorneys were present. Their defense attorney, Leslie Abramson, pushed boundaries in her strategy. She claimed that Erik had been sexually abused from the age of five up to the time of the murders and that Lyle was sexually abused by their dad from 1974-76, aged six to eight. She said that Jose pushed Lyle to excel, humiliating or abusing him when he could not keep up with his dad's performance demand. She outlined a scenario in which the boys were afraid for their lives and only killed in self-defense. On 1/13/1994, the jury deadlocked and a mistrial was declared. In Lyle's private diary, released the end of May 1995, he exposed himself as a foul-mouthed and egotistical punk who denounced the police, witnesses, the judge, his former girlfriend and his former lawyer, Robert Shapiro. He wrote that "Women are in love with me," and "I can move a jury as I like." In their second trial, the boys were tried together. Jury selection began on 8/23/1995 and was completed on 9/28/1995 when the panel was seated. The trial began on 10/11/1995, 9:15 PM PDT, Van Nuys, CA. On 3/14/1996, two jurors were dismissed for medical reasons and the trial was forced to start over again from scratch. Six days later, on 3/20/1996, 1:55 AM PST, the jury reached a verdict of guilty on the charge of first degree murder. Sentencing took place on 4/17/1996 and both boys were given life in prison without the possibility of parole. On 7/02/1996, 1:00 PM PDT, Van Nuys, CA, Lyle secretly wed a girlfriend, Anna Eriksson, one year older than he, who had fallen in love with him from his pictures in the papers and on TV and had become pen-pals, writing to him in prison. His attorney, Leslie Abramson stood up for him as proxy for the wedding. The couple are not to be allowed conjugal visits. One year following, Anna has filed for divorce on the grounds that Lyle was having kinky phone sex with another gal. Link to Wikipedia biography