The Menendez Brothers | Acts of Grief

It's just gone midnight on August 21st, 1989.

Ordinarily, North Elm Drive and Beverly Hills would be deathly quiet.

But tonight, there are several police cars and an ambulance blocking the street.

There's silently flashing lights adding an eerie quality to the pristine neighborhood lawns.

There's movement just about everywhere you look.

A couple of officers cordon off a wide perimeter around number 722, curious neighbors edge slowly out of their front doors to try and see what's going on.

And paramedics are unloading gurneys from the back of an ambulance.

The only people who remain relatively still are Lyle and Erik Menendez.

The brothers sit on the curb in front of their family home looking shell-shocked.

The officer assigned to watch over them can understand why.

Inside the Menendez mansion, the boys' parents are lying in pools of blood, shot to death in the plush living room.

Eventually, the cop stands the brothers up.

He gives them a cursory pat down to make sure they're not concealing any weapons.

Once that's done, the brothers remain on their feet shuffling around.

They mutter to each other for a few minutes.

Then, Erik seems to lose it.

First, he yells into the sky.

Then, he slams his head into a palm tree over and over before suddenly sprinting back towards the house trying to get inside.

Until Lyle catches up and grabs him in a half tackle, half hug.

After that, both the brothers seem to settle.

And when investigators approach to ask them some questions about what happened inside the Menendez mansion, Lyle does most of the talking.

A cop writes down everything, and Lyle covers a lot of ground.

He explains how he and Erik found their parents, how they each reacted.

He mentions that the driveway gate was open when he and Erik arrived home from seeing a movie.

It's normally closed, so that was unusual.

And then there's his father.

Lyle explains that Jose Menendez worked with some shady people.

His colleagues were always calling to harass him, or else doing it in person.

That was probably why Jose seemed so stressed when he returned from a business trip at the end of the previous week.

At least that's what Lyle supposes.

After that, both the brothers start asking questions about their parents.

They wonder why the police and paramedics are still inside, and if either Kitty or Jose might pull through.

They're fairly normal questions for people in their shoes, the children of two recently murdered parents.

But despite their questions and their display of grief, Lyle and Erik Menendez know that their parents are dead and have been for hours.

And this performance is just step one in Lyle and Erik's plan to get away with it.

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On August 20th, 1989, Lyle and Erik Menendez grabbed their matching shotguns and burst into the family's living room.

After a lifetime under their father's thumb and a particularly explosive week of confrontations, it all came down to a kill or be killed moment.

Or at least that's what the brothers believed.

So, they shot their parents to death, leaving a bloody, terrifying scene in their wake.

In the aftermath of the murders, the brothers hatched a plan to make sure they weren't caught.

But there were more factors at play than Lyle and Erik realized, and the crime captured the attention of the media in a way they never predicted.

Suddenly, the two brothers were thrust into the spotlight, where they had to convincingly play the roles of the grieving son struggling to find meaning without their parents.

All the while, authorities were searching for the people responsible for the bloodbath at 722 North Elm Drive.

And slowly, it began to dawn on detectives that the most likely culprits were the sons who'd inherited everything.

The house, the cars, the money, all of it, went right to Lyle and Erik, who wasted no time taking advantage of their parents' wealth.

It was the kind of behavior that screamed motive, if only investigators could prove it.

This is episode 3 in our 4-part series on the Menendez Brothers, Acts of Grief.

It's just before 10 p.m.

on August 20, 1989.

21-year-old Lyle Menendez is still holding his shotgun, its muzzle mere inches from what remains of his mother's face.

Jose and Kitty Menendez are both dead in their once gleaming living room.

Now the space is soaked in blood.

It's quiet in the house.

After the shotgun blast that rattled windows and ripped apart Jose and Kitty's bodies, the silence feels as loud as a scream in Lyle's ears.

He stands there for a moment, catching his breath after the exhilaration of the last few minutes.

Then, tearing his eyes away from his mother's disfigured form, he turns towards the sound of sobs.

Lyle finds his younger brother, 18-year-old Erik, waiting for confirmation that their parents are dead.

Lyle tells him that it's done, and the brothers embrace, grateful that their nightmare is finally over.

They've been living in fear of their parents since they confronted them about the years of sexual abuse Jose subjected them both to.

But now, they're out of danger.

Their father can't hurt them anymore.

There's just the matter of the police to deal with.

The shooting was so loud that the boys are sure the cops will be there in minutes.

But even though it's a quiet Sunday night, they can't hear any sirens.

After a while, they start to wonder if any of their neighbors have actually called 911.

Maybe, if no one knows what's happened yet, they've got a chance to get away with what they did.

So after a few minutes of brainstorming, they get to work covering their tracks.

First, they return to the living room.

Neither of them wants to be in there with Jose and Kitty's bloody bodies, but it's unavoidable.

Moving carefully around the room, they pick up all the spent shotgun shells.

They're hardly criminal masterminds, but they know enough to understand that the less evidence they leave behind, the better.

They also know that they'll need an alibi for the time of the murder, and they settle on something fairly simple.

They'll say that they were at the movies all night before meeting Lyle's friend at a food festival in Santa Monica.

They were already due to meet him at 10, so the timing works out pretty well.

If their parents hadn't stopped them from leaving the house, they'd be there right now.

If they hurry, they might still be able to catch them and shore up a witness for their story.

But for now, their first priority is getting tickets to prove they were at the movies.

They drive to the Century City Mall about two and a half miles away and ask to buy tickets to Batman, which they choose because they've already seen it.

That way, if anyone asks them questions about the movie, they can answer easily.

But the screening that lines up with the time of the murders is almost over and the cashier won't sell them tickets to it, so that part of the plan is a bust.

Switching gears, the brothers move on to disposing of the murder weapons.

From the mall, they drive back through Beverly Hills and up towards Mulholland Drive.

The iconic Los Angeles Road winds up into the Hollywood Hills, and overlooks a huge stretch of dense scrub that plunges down into rocky terrain and luxury houses.

After driving to the top of Coldwater Canyon, they pull off the deserted road, kill the lights and get the shotguns out of the trunk.

Erik walks down the steep embankment, as far as he dares, and pitches the guns into the darkness and out of sight.

With that taken care of, they head west towards the food festival in Santa Monica, about nine miles away.

Along the way, they stop at a gas station so Erik can change out of his clothes, which have a little blood on them.

They also throw the spent shotgun shells in a dumpster.

But by the time they make it to Santa Monica, Lyle's friend is long gone.

So with few other options left, the brothers decide they'll just go back to the house and keep their alibi simple.

They'll say they've been out at the movies, then arrived home to find their parents dead in the living room.

When Lyle and Erik eventually make it back to Beverly Hills, it's been almost two hours since the shooting.

Stepping over the threshold of the eerily quiet mansion, a part of them hopes they'll find their parents alive and well, and that they'll realize the last few hours have just been some horrific waking nightmare.

But it's dark and still inside number 722.

The light from the television is seeping beneath the double doors to the living room.

Erik steps towards the flickering light, but stops just short.

He doesn't want to see what's inside that room, not again.

He walks away, happy to leave it behind him.

He finds Lyle standing at the top of the stairs, and from there, talk turns to logistics.

They spent the last couple of hours getting rid of the physical evidence that they killed their parents.

Now they need to fill in the details.

Answers to the questions the police are sure to ask.

What time they came home, exactly where they've been all night, how they reacted when they saw the bodies, even what they smelled inside the living room.

Once they've settled on their story, Lyle walks into their parents' bedroom, picks up the phone and dials 911.

It's 1137 when the call comes in to the Beverly Hills police station.

Lyle's sobs are punctuated by Erik's distant screams, making it hard for the dispatcher to work out exactly what's happened.

For a moment, the operator is not sure if the call is a prank.

Her colleague, who's listening in, suggests that they just hang up on Lyle.

But eventually, the operator decides that the call is genuine and alerts a patrol car that's already in the area.

After keeping the murders a secret all night, things happen quickly for the brothers after that.

The first officers arrive at the house within minutes, and as several cops head inside to check out the crime scene, Lyle and Erik remain outside, where they're being watched by a lone patrolman.

Whether he's putting on a show for the cops' benefit or expressing genuine grief, Erik's behavior is strange.

He slams his head into a tree at one point and tries to run back into the house.

Meanwhile, his older brother is already laying the groundwork for the story they've come up with.

He asks the officer questions about what's going on inside and wonders aloud who would ever want to murder their parents.

Then, through his tears, he talks about his father's work.

Jose is a Hollywood executive, was a Hollywood executive.

But there was something off about his business and about the people he worked with.

As if he's swapping family gossip with a close friend, Lyle says that his father's colleague seemed aggressive towards him.

Over the phone, at his office, it never ended.

The cop can't be sure, but it sounds like Lyle suspects Jose and Kitty were murdered by some disgruntled Hollywood types.

A deal gone wrong, maybe.

Inside the house, meanwhile, the investigators note the unusual absence of spent shotgun shells.

Whoever killed the couple did a good job cleaning up after themselves.

By this stage, it's been about an hour since Lyle called 911.

North Elm Drive is crawling with police officers.

A highly unusual sight for Beverly Hills, which averages only one or two murders a year.

Curious about what's going on, neighbors from the surrounding houses emerge in plush robes and designer sweatshirts.

They edge towards the cops on the perimeter of the Menendez property to ask what's happened.

A few of them mention that they heard something that sounded like gunshots earlier in the night, but that they didn't think much of it at the time.

Some of them even say they almost called the police but thought better of it.

The idea of gunshots in this neighborhood is just too strange to even entertain.

Eventually, Lyle and Erik are gently escorted from the scene and asked to accompany some officers to the Beverly Hills police station to answer some questions.

On the drive there, the brothers seem nervous.

Maybe even a little scared.

But given everything the cops found at the scene, that doesn't seem at all unusual.

At the station, the boys are questioned separately.

Erik seems very shaken by the whole ordeal.

Still, he sticks to the story that he and Lyle came up with.

The detective ends the interview when Erik starts crying.

Lyle is much more talkative than his younger brother and expands on his earlier theories about the murders being somehow connected to Jose's work.

He also offers up that Kitty had been thinking about suicide recently.

For the detectives, it's a lot to take in and gives them plenty of potential leads to follow up.

All in all, the cops figure it's a solid start to the investigation.

With Dawn rapidly approaching, the detective ends Lyle's interview and tells him he's free to go.

He suggests that the boys get some rest if they can.

Then, because no one imagines that the brothers could have possibly played a part in the murders, and because both of the boys seem so upset, the investigators forego the gunshot residue test that could close the case before the sun comes up.

So, Lyle and Erik Menendez don't say anything to each other.

Everything's working out so far.

They're pulling off the improvised plan, and if they keep it up, they might just get away with murder.

It's August 24th, 1989, four days since Lyle and Erik Menendez killed their parents and their families Beverly Hills Mansion.

Today, they're at the Hotel Bel Air, where they and their out-of-town relatives have been staying for the last couple of days.

The brothers are in a spacious $1,300 a night suite.

Aside from anything else, the exclusive address offers the Menendez clan some peace after the tumultuous week.

The morning after the murders, the news was all people in Hollywood could talk about.

Jose Menendez had only been in the movie industry for a few years, but he'd earned himself an outsized reputation for being a ruthless businessman and made himself incredibly unpopular before his death.

He'd even gone toe-to-toe with Sylvester Stallone over the budget of one of the Rambo movies.

So while the details of the murder are shocking, at least some people find it plausible that the crime might have been retribution from a disgruntled Hollywood player.

Today though, Lyle and Erik are doing their best to ignore all of the noise from the media and focus on their family duties.

Not only do they have to continue the charade that they had nothing to do with the murders, they also have to comfort their parents' siblings, all while processing their own complex feelings of grief, guilt and relief.

It's a lot.

And as the brothers walk towards their Aunt Marta's hotel room, they have their arms around each other, leaning on one another so they don't crumble from all the pressure.

Marta greets her nephews with a hug.

Like her brother, she's a successful business executive, but she doesn't share Jose's cold, bullying nature.

She welcomes Lyle and Erik into the room and tells them to sit down.

She has news for them.

Calmly, she explains to the boys that some years earlier, she sold Jose a life insurance policy, and his sons are the beneficiaries.

It means they'll each receive payouts worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The brothers are stunned.

As far as Marta can tell, neither of them knew anything about the policy.

But that revelation is just the first course.

She continues, explaining that they found Jose and Kitty's wills and that they've left everything to Lyle and Erik.

It's too early to say for sure, but Marta's rough guess is that the estate is worth somewhere between 8 and 12 million dollars.

Today, that could be as much as 29 million.

The brothers look shell shocked.

The last they heard from their father, he told them he was going to write them out of the will.

Kitty had said the same thing.

Knowing all of this, Lyle asks his aunt if there hasn't been a mistake.

But Marta's sure, and as far as anyone can find, neither Jose or Kitty updated their wills before they died.

So, Lyle and Erik have just become millionaires.

It doesn't take long for the boys to put their new fortune to good use.

That very same day, Lyle and Erik head for the Century City Mall.

The brothers want to make sure they both look good for the memorial service that's scheduled for the next afternoon.

Erik doesn't have a sport coat, and Lyle insists it's a necessity for the event.

He also drags his younger brother into a jewelry store so he can look at Rolexes.

Lyle ends up buying a gold presidential watch, as well as a stainless steel model with a diamond dial and a pair of money clips.

He also urges Erik to get a stainless steel timepiece for himself.

All in all, their final bill rings in close to $17,000, which would be almost $42,000 today.

The next day, the 25th of August, the brothers roll up to the Directors Guild of America Theater on Sunset Boulevard in the Stretch Limousine.

The memorial service, organized and paid for by Live Entertainment, Jose's Company, was supposed to start an hour earlier, but as Lyle and Erik are the emcees for the event, everyone had to wait.

Lyle wears flashy green cowboy boots for the occasion and delivers the eulogy in front of a packed auditorium.

And although the event goes off without a hitch, the aftermath is another story.

Because the murders have captured so much attention, members of the press are waiting outside the theater, hoping to catch a quote from some of the Hollywood types in attendance.

Instead, it's Aunt Marta who approaches the cameras, and she's got something on her mind.

She tells the journalist that before her brother joined live, it was owned by the mafia.

According to Marta, people weren't happy that Jose had been running the company clean since taking over, and the mob had killed him and Kitty over it.

The outburst isn't part of the brothers' plan to cover their tracks, but it fits nicely into Lyle's hints that his father's shady business contacts were behind the murders.

Hoping to sell the idea further, Lyle hires bodyguards, telling people that he's afraid the hitmen will come back and kill him and Erik to make a clean job of it.

He only keeps up the pretense for a week, though, before dismissing his protection.

Because by then, he's got other things to worry about.

At the end of August, the family is buzzing.

One of the boys' uncles has been poking around the computer in Jose and Kitty's bedroom.

He's found a locked file called Will, and everyone's sure it's gotta be the couple's updated final wishes.

It's just that no one can figure out how to open the file to see what it says, so they call a technician and make an appointment for him to drop by on September 1st.

While he's across the country in New Jersey for another memorial service, Lyle hears all about this development and freaks out.

Suddenly worried that he and Erik might lose everything, he calls a different computer expert asking him to drop by the family home on North Elm Drive before September 1st.

He gives the guy careful instructions to search for any files named Will, Erik, Lyle or Menendez.

It turns out that files with those names exist, but they're mostly empty.

The one everyone's excited about, the potential Will, only contains 54 characters.

But no one will ever know what they are because Lyle has the tech erase all the files anyway.

So by the time the rest of the family get back to the computer, there's nothing left for them to find.

It's a close call, and it doesn't seem to raise much suspicion within the family.

But despite the brothers' growing confidence that they've gotten away with killing their parents, there are some who are taking a closer look at Lyle and Erik.

For the detectives investigating the case, there are too many things that look like red flags.

The brothers' strange behavior right after the cops went to check out the crime scene, their ongoing spending spree, it just seems fishy.

By the beginning of September, the Beverly Hills Police Department has obtained two sealed search warrants for the Menendez Mansion phone records.

The detectives want to try and corroborate the brothers' stories from the night of the 20th, to see if they can track their movements throughout the evening.

It's a small first step, but there are plenty more to come.

Eventually, Lyle's former roommate from Princeton, Donovan Goudreau, calls the BHPD.

He says he's been trying to get in touch with Lyle since he heard about the murders, but he hasn't heard back from his friend.

Eager to hear more about Lyle's life away from Los Angeles, the detectives fly to New York to interview Donovan.

He tells them all about how he and Lyle met and about Lyle's relationship with Jose.

The hours-long conversation proves that Donovan is one of Lyle's closest friends, which should make him a solid source for the investigators.

However, it's unclear if he tells them everything, if he shares what Lyle told Donovan his father did to him, about the showers they took together when Lyle was young, about the sexual abuse.

If Donovan does drop that bombshell on detectives, it doesn't deter them from following their angle of the brothers as potential suspects.

While they're on the East Coast, the cops speak with Jose's sister Terry and her husband Carlos.

They're the couple who tried to intervene years earlier when Jose got violent with a five-year-old Lyle who wouldn't calm down.

Jose had punched his son, scared him enough to make him wet his pants, then dragged him into a bedroom.

For protesting the abuse, Terry and Carlos were told to leave Jose and Kitty's house.

Lyle and Erik just happened to be staying with their aunt and uncle when the investigators drop in.

So the detectives speak to the brothers in the living room, asking for more details about the night of the murder, their parents' relationship, the usual things investigators ask in a murder investigation.

The brothers present a pretty united front and stick to the story they told the police at the station.

Still, both Lyle and Erik stay on the suspect list.

In the three months after the murders, the detectives estimate that the brothers have spent close to a million dollars between them.

There have been expensive flights from coast to coast, flashy cars, home stereo equipment, luxury hotels and more.

For people close to the Menendez family, they figure the brothers are just dealing with their grief through some kind of retail therapy.

But the police are keeping a close eye on Lyle and Erik's spending habits, because from where they're standing, all those purchases look an awful lot like motive.

Unfortunately for the investigators, narrowing in on a potential motive is only one small piece of the puzzle.

As far as anyone can tell, there's no physical evidence that links either brother to the murders.

So on that count, they're spinning their wheels.

But other viable suspects are thin on the ground.

Despite accusations that Jose's business was once involved with organized crime, the detectives are pretty confident that they can rule out a mob hit.

It just doesn't fit.

Gangster executions are usually precision affairs, where experienced killers deliver a single, clean, fatal shot.

Jose and Kitty's deaths, those were messy, blundering, and anything but expert.

What's more, wives and bystanders are usually left alone in mob hits.

Still, the investigators don't want to cross the idea off the list, because without it, they've got next to nothing.

And it's going to stay that way for a while, until an unlikely but fruitful source falls into their laps.

One named Dr.

Jerry Oziel.

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Gather round, friend, and join me by the fire.

I have a secret to share.

When I was a child, I lived with my grandma.

She allowed me to watch Unsolved Mysteries.

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A series of armed robberies on campus escalated into a serial rapists reign of terror.

That's when I created my first crime podcast.

In January 2014, I picked up the podcast again.

From my college roommate who fell for an underage girl online, to the chilling story of a murdered nun in 1969 Baltimore, and in the Throwaway series, I share my own journey of overcoming homelessness and how that experience led me to unmask a serial killer and identify three of his Jane Doe victims.

This is Foul Play Crime Series, where the stories are real and the truth is waiting to be discovered.

It's October 31st, 1989, just over two months since the Menendez murders.

The weather in Beverly Hills is perfect for Halloween.

Clear skies with just a slight chill in the air.

21-year-old Lyle Menendez is handing out candy to trick-or-treaters at his family's mansion when the phone rings.

On the other end is Jerry Ozil, his younger brother Erik's psychologist.

Ozil asked Lyle to come to his office, which is just a short drive away.

It's important that they speak tonight, he says, all three of them, because Erik has just told Dr.

Ozil everything.

Lyle feels an ice-cold hand around his heart when he hears that.

Surely he can't mean that Lyle's younger brother has confessed to murdering their parents.

Panicked, he leaves the Halloween candy on the porch and races to Ozil's office.

When Lyle walks into the room, Erik will barely look at him, which tells Lyle all he needs to know.

Ozil explains that 18-year-old Erik has told him all about what happened the night of August 20th, as well as in the weeks leading up to it.

Once Dr.

Ozil enters the picture, the Menendez saga becomes even more complex, because he introduces a conflicting perspective on who said and did what and when.

According to Ozil's later testimony, Erik confessed that he and Lyle had been planning their parents' murder for weeks, which differs wildly from the story the brothers will eventually tell to others.

In fact, the credibility of Dr.

Ozil will become a major point of contention at the brothers' trials, as people wonder whether to believe the psychologist or his patients.

And alongside Dr.

Ozil, one more player joins the fray at this point to further complicate matters, Judelon Smith.

As with so much of this story, even the truth about Ozil and Judelon's relationship is difficult to nail down.

They'd met earlier that year, when Judelon, a 36-year-old crystal saleswoman, called Ozil to talk to him about some self-help audiotapes.

That phone call soon turned into an affair behind the back of Ozil's wife.

He fell for her, hard, and seemed desperate to spend as much time with her as possible.

At least, that's how Judelon tells it.

According to the psychologist, though, Judelon was a stalker who'd forced herself onto him, then spent her days in his waiting room like some lovesick puppy.

That's where 36-year-old Judelon was when Lyle arrived at Ozeal's office on Halloween night, 1989.

If Judelon's to be believed, she overheard every detail of the brothers' conversation with the psychologist.

According to Judelon's account, she joins Ozeal in his office right after the brothers leave that night.

He tells her that he's scared for himself, for his family and for her.

The brothers are dangerous, especially Lyle, who wasn't happy that Ozeal knew what they did.

The brothers apparently even threatened to kill him to stop him talking about what he heard.

So, Ozeal calls his wife and tells her to get somewhere safe with their kids.

He also calls a colleague who advises him to make a record of his patient's confession and keep it in a safety deposit box.

Next, he calls his attorney to let him know without breaking any doctor-patient confidentiality what's up.

The next time Lyle and Erik arrive at the office to talk again on November 2nd, Ozeal tells them about what he's done, making sure they know that his death will trigger the release of the records.

After that, the brothers aren't feeling so talkative.

But Ozeal convinces them that continuing their group sessions could help them in the future.

If they're ever arrested, he says they can point to their ongoing therapy as evidence that they're committed to their own rehabilitation.

He could even serve as a witness for them if he had insight into their long-standing family issues.

Even if they don't actually show up for all their sessions, as long as they send payment, it'll look good for them.

So the brothers stay on the books, and they even keep coming to the office to talk.

At some stage, Ozeal starts taping a session with the brothers, a fact that both Lyle and Erik are aware of.

He doesn't tell them whether the tapes are to help him track his own thoughts, or if they're for his own protection.

But the fact that they exist at all doesn't seem to trouble the boys.

Not yet, at least.

According to Judelon, Dr.

Ozeal is excited by the thought of having a pair of homicidal brothers as patients.

He even hopes it might make him famous one day.

However, come December, Dr.

Ozeal's focus is drawn away from the Menendez family when Judelon experiences some kind of medical emergency.

Once she's discharged from the ER, she begs him to keep her close, so he convinces his wife to allow his mistress to stay in their housekeeper's room for a couple of days.

Judelon's stay at the Ozeal house is yet another disputed piece of this story.

To hear Dr.

Ozeal tell it, Judelon refuses to leave once she arrives and threatens to go to the police with what she knows about the Menendez case if Ozeal kicks her out.

She demands that his family leaves so the two of them can be alone and gets violent when it doesn't happen.

However, in Judelon's account, Ozeal is holding her prisoner.

He keeps her drug, then assaults and rapes her while she's helpless to fight back.

The episode carries on for the next couple of months until early March 1990.

That's when Judelon either escapes or is ejected from the Ozeal home and goes straight to the authorities with one thing on her mind, revenge.

She sits down with the detectives on the case, as well as a deputy district attorney for LA, and tells them that the Menendez Brothers had confessed to killing their parents.

Two days later, on March 8th, the authorities arrive at Ozeal's home with a search warrant authorizing them to seize any evidence the psychologist has relating to the Menendez murders.

There's a court-appointed attorney present for the search who's supposed to hold any evidence that's protected under doctor-patient confidentiality until a court rules whether or not it's admissible.

However, Ozeal effectively waves Lyle and Erik's privilege by insisting that he and the cops all sit down and listen to the tapes right there in his living room.

The investigators are elated.

After months of trying to tie Lyle and Erik Menendez to the murders, here they both are, confessing to the crime, in detail and on tape.

And because Ozeal has waved privilege, it's enough for the police to make an arrest that same day.

Just hours later, Lyle is driving along North Elm Drive, right by the family home, when officers pull him over and force him to the ground at gunpoint.

At that moment, Erik's in Tel Aviv for a tennis tournament.

When news of his brother's arrest reaches him, the 19-year-old boards a flight for London.

After that, his lawyer reaches out to the authorities to arrange Erik's surrender.

He flies to Miami, where officers meet him and escort him back to Los Angeles.

The police announce the arrests via press conference, telling journalists that greed drove Lyle and Erik Menendez to murder their parents.

Both the brothers are being charged with murder involving special circumstances, which means that there are only two possible penalties available, life without parole and death.

If the story wasn't already intriguing enough, that final detail pushes it over the top.

News about the arrests makes headlines across the country, transforming the case from a salacious piece of Hollywood gossip into national news.

Already, people are forming opinions about the spoiled brats from Beverly Hills who killed their parents for the family fortune.

But, as Americans salivate over the upcoming trial, no one's prepared for what will emerge inside that Los Angeles courtroom.

Nor can they imagine how it will still be making headlines over three decades later.

From Airship, this is episode three in our four-part series on the Menendez Brothers.

On the next episode, Lyle and Erik fight for their lives in the courtroom.

If anything in today's episode hit close to home, or you just need someone to talk to, there are free resources for you.

We put links in the show's description.

If you'd like to learn more about the Menendez Brothers, we recommend The Menendez Murders, the shocking untold story of the Menendez family and the killings that stunned the nation by Robert Rand, and the documentary Truth and Lies, The Menendez Brothers.

This episode contains reenactments and dramatized details.

And while in most cases we can't know exactly what was said, all of our dramatizations are based on historical research.

American Criminal is hosted, edited and produced by me, Jeremy Schwartz.

Audio editing by Mohammed Shazib.

Sound design by Matthew Filler.

Music by Thrum.

This episode is written and researched by Joel Callan.

Managing producer Emily Burke.

Executive producers are Joel Callen, William Simpson and Lindsay Graham for Airship.