How Did Erik and Lyle Menendez Get Caught With Murder?

On August 20, 1989, Jose and Kitty were savagely killed in their Beverly Hills mansion. Jose was shot six times, while Kitty was subjected to a total of ten gunshots.

Authorities were already suspicious of their sons, Lyle and Erik — who were 21 and 18 at the time — as they spent more than $700,000 of their parents’ fortune following their slayings on luxury items such as a $60,000 Porsche, a $50,000-a-year tennis coach for Erik and a $550,000 café in Princeton, New Jersey, for Lyle, according to Vanity Fair.

Police originally believed the murders had ties to the mob and the brothers were shuttled to different hotels in an effort to evade them.

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However, what ultimately tied the brothers to the scene of the crime was a confession made by Erik to his therapist L. Jerome Oziel two months after the murders.

Oziel taped multiple therapy sessions with Erik, where he described the plan to kill his parents. Erik said the idea sparked from a BBC program where someone killed their father and said Jose’s death was necessary because of how “tyrannical, dominating and controlling,” he was. He allegedly said Kitty had to die too as she wouldn’t be able to live without her husband.

Lyle later joined his brother for his therapy sessions, with the pair confessing in December 1989 that their father deserved to die for infidelity and their mother’s murder was to put her “out of her misery,” according to the Los Angeles Times.

Five months after Erik’s initial October 1989 admission to murdering Kitty and Jose, he and Lyle were arrested. The therapist informed his mistress Judalon Smyth of the bombshell from his client, and she went to the police shortly after their March 1990 split.

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Why Was the Trial Delayed 3 Years After the Murders?

The trial for the murders didn’t happen until three years later in 1993 as the prosecution struggled to get the tapes admitted as evidence.

A judge stated the tapes were admissible in August 1990 as Oziel claimed Lyle threatened him, breaking the doctor-patient confidentiality privilege. The ruling was appealed, and the trial was delayed.

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Two years later, the Supreme Court of California ruled in August 1992 that most of the recordings were admissible in court, with the exception of one in which Erik spoke about the murders. The brothers were indicted soon after.

Oziel’s mistress Judalon testified in the 1993 trial and told the court her ex said he “needed to get them to say incriminating things on a tape so we would have the tape to protect us,” per the Los Angeles Times. Oziel was allegedly afraid the brothers would kill him following their confession of murdering their parents.