Photo: AP Photo/Nick Ut
Thirty years ago this week, a shocking crime unfolded in a Beverly Hills mansion.
Lyle and Erik Menendez had grown up aschildren of privilege living in Beverly Hills, with the world seemingly at their fingertips.But everything changed on August 20, 1989, with the gruesome shotgun slayings of their parents, José and Kitty.
For months, the case went unsolved — until police closed in on the brothers, who had been living lavishly on their parents’ fortune.
The murders — and the resulting media frenzy — pulled back the curtain on a dysfunctional family. The brothers claimed that their father was a harsh perfectionist who physically and sexually abused them. Their mother, they claimed, was a mentally unstable alcoholic. The brothers were tried three separate times for the crimes, and were ultimately convicted in 1996 of first-degree murder. They are currently imprisoned in the same California prison.
Below is the 1990PEOPLE cover storyabout the shocking case.
The door opens, exposing the luxurious suite and Mr. and Mrs. Cromwell lying in bed. Their faces are of questioning horror as Hamilton closes the door gently…. Zoom camera to [typing] paper; it reads ‘Five deaths to perfection—Chapter One: Mr. and Mrs. Jacob Cromwell.’ “
MIKE NELSON/AFP/Getty
Jose was as demanding with his sons as with himself. Settled comfortably in a Princeton, N.J., country estate overlooking a lake, Jose insisted on excellence. When the boys were 12 and 9, he told them to concentrate on either tennis or soccer. When they chose tennis, he signed them up with coaches for private lessons three times a week. On weekends he would drill them for hours. “We are prototypes of my father,” Erik said after Jose’s death. “He wanted us to be exactly like him.”
Erik and Lyle both attended the private Princeton Day School, and in 1987 Lyle entered Princeton University, where he earned a spot on the varsity tennis team. He was popular with his classmates but left school after one semester. Though Princeton officials will say only that he withdrew, the student newspaper reported that Lyle was suspended for copying another student’s psychology lab report. During the year he was out of school, Lyle asked his father for money for a trip to Europe with a girlfriend, but Jose turned him down and told him that if he was not in school he should find a job. In the end, Lyle went anyway, with the girlfriend paying his way.
In January, Lyle bought Chuck’s Spring Street Cafe, a popular student hangout featuring deep-fried Buffalo chicken wings, for a reported $550,000. Gus Tangalos, the restaurant’s manager, says Lyle was a hard worker who often spent long hours at the café. Tangalos remembers a day when Lyle showed up and, without removing his expensive jacket, started stirring the chicken-wing sauce. “I said, ‘Boss, why are you doing that?’ and he said, ‘We gotta take care of the people. We can’t have them waiting in line too long.’ That’s what I call an aggressive businessman.”
As for Erik Menendez, a 1989 graduate of Beverly Hills High School, his goals were even more expansive than Lyle’s. In an interview last October, he spoke of fulfilling his father’s ambition to become the first Cuban-born U.S. senator and to make Cuba a U.S. territory. “He hated Fidel with a passion,” said Erik. “He wanted to spend the rest of his life getting Castro out of Cuba. He probably would’ve done it, and he probably would’ve been assassinated somewhere down the line.” According to Erik, he and Lyle planned to move to Florida, where they would establish a political base. “My brother wants to become President of the U.S.,” said Erik. “I want to be senator and be with the people of Cuba. I’m not going to live my life for my father, but I think his dreams are what I want to achieve. I feel he’s in me, pushing me.”
Before saving Cuba, though, Erik decided to try his luck as a professional tennis player. He had been planning to enroll at UCLA, but after the murders he hired a full-time tennis coach and set to work improving his game. Seena Hamilton, a family friend who founded Miami’s famous Easter Bowl tennis tournament, didn’t take Erik seriously as a player and has said she believes he turned to the game as “an emotional escape.” Yet recently Erik traveled to Israel for a series of matches. He took along a private coach, and his free spending was the talk of the tour. He lost in the first round in both of the tournaments he played.
Last year, in another deal that attracted the attention of police after the murders, Live bought BeckZack Corp., owner of some 80 Strawberries audio-video stores. BeckZack’s principal owner was Morris Levy, who was convicted in May 1988 of conspiring to extort payments from a record wholesaler. Live had investigated the chain and found it to be “whistle clean,” but the possibility of an underworld hit led authorities to probe further after Menendez’s death.
In fact, the grisly and calculated nature of the crime made it hard to imagine that Jose and Kitty had been the victims of an explosion of family rage, and Erik and Lyle didn’t cave in under questioning. They told police they had left home on the evening of Aug. 20 to see the new James Bond movie, Licence to Kill. When they found the lines too long, they went to Batman instead. Afterward, they said, they went to the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium to attend the annual “Taste of L.A.” festival featuring foods from the city’s top restaurants. From there, they told authorities, they tried without success to reach a friend they were planning to meet at the Cheesecake Factory, a Beverly Hills restaurant. Arriving home shortly before midnight, they said they found the driveway gate unlocked and the front door open. In the den, next to a coffee table holding half-eaten bowls of fresh berries and cream, lay the bodies of their parents.
—Joseph Poindexter, Robert Rand in Beverly Hills, J.D. Podolsky in Princeton
source: people.com
