The Menendez Brothers | Five-Year Plan

It's August 20th, 1989, a cool, quiet evening in Beverly Hills, a city for the rich and famous.

It's an insular, privileged community.

The houses are mansions.

The streets are luxuriously wide, and the lawns remain lush and verdant, even in a drought.

But as the saying goes, all that glitters is not gold.

At 722 North Elm Drive, a 9,000-square-foot Mediterranean-style home with green palms and monstera sits behind a black, wrought iron gate.

Inside the house, Jose and Kitty Menendez are relaxing.

It's a Sunday night, and the couple are in the living room.

The flickering light of the television bounces off the wood paneling.

Family photos dot the walls.

Posed portraits of Jose and Kitty with their two sons.

21-year-old Lyle and 18-year-old Erik.

All bright smiles, perfect teeth, perfect hair.

The perfect family.

Those two sons aren't in the room for this family night, though.

Not yet.

Just before 10 p.m.

the living room's double doors burst open.

Lyle and Erik are both holding 12-gauge shotguns.

Without saying a word, the brothers raise their weapons and start firing.

Immediately, Jose gets to his feet and shouts something at his sons, a protest or a plea for mercy.

But they're not listening.

The brothers unload gel after shell into their own parents.

After what feels like hours but is actually closer to seconds, the brothers are out of ammunition and rush from the darkened room.

Jose's lifeless body is slumped on the couch, chunks of his flesh ripped away by buckshot.

But on the ground, 47-year-old Kitty is still moving, pained moans emanating from her bloody form.

Kitty's eyes swim upwards as she sees her oldest son step back into the room with the reloaded shotgun in his side.

Lyle holds the muzzle against her face.

He closes his eyes.

Afterwards, it's eerily quiet in the house.

It's only been a few minutes since the brothers burst in, but the room is transformed.

Blood splatters the walls, soaks the couch, and stains the gold rug and parquet floor.

The peppery smell of gun smoke hangs in the air.

Lyle retreats from the wreckage.

He heads down the hallway and out of the house.

His younger brother, Erik, waits by the car, a stricken look in his eyes.

Lyle scans the neighborhood, half expecting to hear the sound of sirens or to see the flash of red and blue lights.

But there's nothing.

No one's emerged to ask about the shotgun blasts that just echoed through the street.

No one's called the police about the screams coming from number 722.

No one knows that Jose and Kitty Menendez are dead, or that their picture-perfect sons are the ones who murdered them.

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From Airship, I'm Jeremy Schwartz, and this is American Criminal.

In the early 1990s, Los Angeles saw a run of trials that kept the entire country glued to their television screens.

First, Rodney King was brutally beaten by four LAPD officers.

The assault was caught on videotape, but it recorded more than just a violent beating.

The footage shone a light on the systemic racism which seemed to exist in the Los Angeles police force.

When those cops were acquitted of any wrongdoing, deadly, days-long riots shook the city.

A few years later, former NFL player OJ Simpson, one of the most famous men in America, was acquitted for the murders of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman.

That case and the media storm it stirred up raised questions about celebrity and how it might enable or excuse criminal actions.

But between those two historic trials, the story of the Menendez family captured the nation's attention in an entirely different way.

On the surface, it's a simple, if disturbing, tale.

In 1989, brothers Lyle and Erik Menendez killed their parents and tried to get away with it.

When the matter finally made it to trial in the 90s, there was no question about who did what.

The facts of the case were not in question.

What was up for debate was the motivation for the bloody crime.

As the courtroom drama unfolded live on television, everything that people thought they knew about the Menendez family shifted.

In the end, the trial of Lyle and Erik Menendez came down to not just what crime was done, but why and whether one stomach-churning crime excuses another.

Some three decades later, the Menendez story isn't any simpler.

Out of this family of four, there were two monsters to blame.

But just who those were isn't a simple question to answer.

Lyle and Erik picked up the shotguns of their own accord, but maybe over years of abuse, it was Jose and Kitty who drove them to pull the triggers.

This is episode one of a four-part series on the Menendez Brothers, The Five Year Plan.

It's July of 1944 in the tiny village of Oak Lawn, just outside of Chicago.

In a stucco bungalow with a manicured lawn and tidy hedges, the Anderson family is about to fracture forever.

Patriarch Andy has just arrived home from work to find an empty dinner table, kids scattered and his wife fussing about in the kitchen.

Andy has a skewed perspective on what marriage and fatherhood should look like.

And tonight, it gets him worked up into a rage.

He's had enough of his wife's back talk of playing the role of father to children who don't respect him, not in the way he feels he deserves.

Reading the warning signs, his wife tries to placate him, bringing him a cool beer and promising that dinner won't be long.

But the gesture only frustrates Andy even more.

He throws the can onto the floor where it splits apart, fizzing over the linoleum.

Then he storms from the kitchen through the living room and into his bedroom.

He's watched by his young daughter who's playing on the rug.

A few minutes pass, and then the toddler sees her father march out of the house with a suitcase under his arm.

He doesn't even look at her, just slams the door on his way out.

Mary Louise, or Kitty, isn't quite three.

She has no idea that her father won't be coming home again.

She doesn't understand that in this moment, her life is changing.

All she knows is that her mother is sobbing at the kitchen table.

A born performer, Kitty just wants her mommy to stop crying.

So, in the sudden stillness after Andy disappears, the toddler dances and twirls clumsily about the house, hoping to make her mother smile.

But it doesn't work.

As she gets older, Kitty will hear stories about their family, about what happened when she was just a baby.

She'll learn that her father was abusive for years.

But that won't stand out in her mind so much.

The memory of what he did will fade, but her mother's actions will stay seared in Kitty's mind.

And she'll wonder if her mom had been the problem.

Had she let her husband slip away?

Was that why Kitty's happy childhood was ripped apart?

Was it her mother's fault that Kitty grew up in what people called a broken home?

These questions solidify into a distorted cautionary tale Kitty carries with her for the rest of her life.

She will not repeat the sins of her mother.

She won't watch another marriage implode, no matter what.

For!

19 years after Kitty's father walked out on her family, she's become a confident 22-year-old senior at Southern Illinois University.

A gifted athlete and beauty queen, she's got big dreams for the future.

She wants to work as an actor, director and producer in Hollywood someday.

But she's spending most of her free time now with her handsome new sophomore boyfriend.

Jose Menendez is a Cuban immigrant with a thick accent and a desperate thirst to prove himself.

Like Kitty, his childhood home was also torn apart, but for very different reasons.

Jose's mother was obsessed with him from the moment he was born.

In her eyes, the little boy could do no wrong.

As he grew, she forbade anyone from disciplining him.

And while that's not an ideal parenting tactic, it's not as damaging as other things Maria Menendez was accused of.

According to Jose's sister, their mother sexually abused Jose from the time he was three until long after he started school.

Though Jose never spoke about the alleged abuse, it's not hard to believe, given what comes later.

Jose grew up an unruly and opinionated young man in a Cuba that was changing rapidly.

Revolution was sweeping the country.

After a bloody guerrilla war, a new government led by Fidel Castro seized power on the island.

But as Castro tightened his grip, some Cubans protested.

The teenage Jose Menendez was one of them.

And that was a dangerous thing to do at that moment in Cuba.

Opponents of the new communist regime were being threatened, and some even disappeared.

Fearing for Jose's safety, his parents decided that they needed to get him out of the country as soon as possible.

So in October of 1960, 16-year-old Jose boarded a plane with his uncle.

They headed for Miami.

Starting over is daunting for Jose.

Even when the rest of his relatives join him in Florida, it's an uphill battle.

Castro has seized most of the family's wealth by the time they fled Cuba.

But rebuilding their lives in the United States doesn't break the Menendezes.

The young Jose works hard in his new home and wins a swimming scholarship to Southern Illinois University.

However, when Jose makes it to SIU, he coasts.

He has ambitions, certainly.

The talented athlete boasts to everyone that he'll be famous someday, a household name.

But it's not until he meets Kitty Anderson that he starts putting in the effort required to make something of himself.

It's their relationship that finally spurs Jose into action.

The pair marry after just a few months of dating and move to New York City in 1963 once Kitty graduates.

Initially, they struggle to make ends meet in the big city.

At Jose's insistence, Kitty gives up her dreams of working in broadcasting.

In his opinion, that's a field for men, not women, and he won't have his wife pursuing such a career.

Instead, Kitty takes on what Jose considers a more suitable job as a teacher while he studies accounting at night and keeps books for a local business during the day.

Now, with a wife to look after, Jose displays a commitment to his schoolwork he never demonstrated at SIU.

Those early years in New York are still hard, but Jose seems determined that he and Kitty won't have to live in their tiny apartment or use their oven as a heater forever.

When he graduates from his accounting course in 1967, Jose is scooped up by a major New York firm.

His starting salary is $25,000 a year.

It might not sound like a lot today, but average rent in New York in the late 60s is around $300 a month, so it's a big step up for the young couple.

And having secured financial stability for the first time, Jose and Kitty soon expand their family.

They welcome their first son Lyle in January of 1968.

After that, Kitty ends her teaching career permanently in favor of Jose's preferred role for her.

Stay at home, Mom.

While his wife takes care of the new baby, Jose travels from city to city, auditing the accounts of companies across America.

It's on one such trip to Chicago in 1970 that Jose takes the next leap forward in his career.

Discovering the firm he's auditing is in dire financial straits, he takes it upon himself to suggest a restructuring plan that might save them.

The company's directors are so impressed with Jose's show of initiative that they offer him the job of controller.

The role will put him in charge of the firm's finances and comes with a hefty $75,000 salary, which is over seven times the median family income at this time.

Jose eagerly accepts.

He leaves his job in New York and moves his wife and son to be with him in Illinois.

In his first year in Chicago, the 25-year-old helps his new employers nearly double their revenue, and it only goes up from there.

Jose has almost single-handedly saved the firm, but he doesn't get the gratitude he expects.

It seems not everyone is so impressed with him.

In the summer of 1972, the company is acquired by new owners, and when they reorganize, they push Jose out the door.

It's a blow to his ego as much as it is to his finances, but the young man doesn't stay down for long.

Pretty soon, he lands a plum job at rental car company Hertz as their director of operations.

By this stage, Kitty is given birth to their second child, Erik, rounding out the family to an even four.

Jose now has two sons, strapping boys he can mold in his own image.

Unfortunately, Jose Menendez is rapidly proving himself the kind of man no one should emulate.

He's a perfectionist who accepts nothing but the best.

People who work with Jose don't like his demeaning attitude.

He seems to take vindictive pleasure in making people feel small and can spend hours in meetings berating his team and ridiculing people with cold indifference.

In Jose's mind, he's superior to whoever's in his eye line at any given moment, and he's not afraid to tell them so.

It's an approach that doesn't win him many fans, but it seems to get results.

Jose climbs the corporate ladder at a rapid pace.

After just two years at Hertz, he's promoted and put in charge of all US operations for the company.

He's only been in the United States for 15 years.

He's barely 30.

But by the mid-1970s, Jose is already well on the road to achieving the American dream.

He has a beautiful wife and obedient kids, a big house and a bigger salary.

But beneath the surface, life inside the Menendez home is far from ideal.

And just as Jose is the driving force behind the family's financial success, he's also the one who will bring about their downfall.

As the years go by, the cracks will start to show.

And eventually, just as he once boasted to his peers at SIU, everyone will know the name Jose Menendez.

It's 1973, and Jose and Kitty Menendez are entertaining at their home in Muncie, New York.

Jose's older sister, Marta, is visiting with her family.

She and her husband have five daughters of their own, and they all love coming to spend time with their cousins.

Young Lyle, in particular, adores their visits.

He tells his aunt Marta as much sometimes, wrapping her in the biggest hug his arms can manage, and telling her that she has such a happy family.

This morning, however, Lyle's acting out.

He's only five, and he's somewhat rambunctious, especially when there's company.

And right now, he's tearing around the living room while the grownups enjoy their coffee.

Marta can see her brother getting more and more annoyed.

Jose has grown into the kind of man who demands high standards from the people around him, especially his family.

And it's clear to Marta that little Lyle's not meeting those standards right now.

Jose yells at Lyle, ordering him to calm down, but the five-year-old doesn't listen.

Jose's practically vibrating with rage as the sun gets louder and louder with every squeal.

Eventually, Jose's had enough.

He stands, crosses the room in a few strides, and grabs a son by the shoulder.

Marta can see Jose's thumb pressing hard into Lyle's small frame as Jose leans down and glares into the boy's eyes.

The room is deathly quiet as Jose whispers something into his son's ear that makes the blood drain from the boy's face.

Seconds later, a dark stain spreads across Lyle's shorts.

He's wet his pants.

Marta thinks that that will be the end of it and half expects Kitty to call her husband to order.

But Kitty stays quiet and Jose isn't done.

Without warning, he draws back his fist and punches Lyle in the chest.

Then, before the boy even has time to catch his breath, Jose drags him down the hallway and into a bedroom.

Marta and her husband are shocked.

When Jose returns, an argument breaks out over the way he treats his children.

Furious, he tells them that if they don't like it, they can leave.

He'll raise his sons how he sees fit.

But if Jose isn't exactly father of the year material, then Kitty's not much better.

She just doesn't seem to like her sons very much.

People hear her calling them clumsy and stupid and notice her being physically aggressive towards them when they're small.

Like Jose, she also has incredibly high expectations for the boys.

Kitty remarks to a friend that she'd like to hold Lyle back a grade because he's not at the top of his class.

She also throws out clothes that Lyle grows out of because she won't have Erik walking around in hand-me-downs.

The thought of it is just embarrassing.

So neither of the boys' parents give them the love and support they need.

But it's clear that in the Menendez house, one person calls all the shots.

And as the boys get older, Jose finds a new way to assert his authority over them.

His plan for his sons is that they'll each become national sporting champions, play for Ivy League schools, and one day be successful businessmen like he is.

So when Lyle is nine and Erik is six, Jose tells the brothers that it's time for them to choose a sport to excel at, soccer or tennis.

They choose tennis.

From that moment on, their whole lives revolve around becoming the best players they can be.

Jose hires private coaches, builds a tennis court beside their house, and even takes lessons himself so he can better monitor their progress.

And it's not just at practice that Jose is relentless.

During the boys' matches, their parents are always courtside.

They appeal close calls, use subtle signals to coach, and do anything they can to gain an advantage.

The boys' behavior is no better.

Lyle in particular becomes infamous for his mid-match tantrums.

The brothers act up in part because they know their father won't accept anything but the best.

If they lose, his silence in public is the calm before the storm.

Once the family are behind closed doors, he mocks his sons for failing.

For failing him.

Then he makes them train longer and harder.

Not that winning earns the boys any praise either.

It's almost like they're Jose's colleagues, and he wouldn't give them a gold star just for doing their jobs.

For the most part, Jose's bullying of his children goes unremarked.

There are plenty of pushy parents on the junior tennis circuit after all.

Sometimes, though, the curtain slips, and the outside world gets a glimpse beneath the shiny veneer of the Menendez family.

At one match, when Lyle is a teenager, he ignores an ankle injury and tries to keep playing.

But he's in pain.

He winces whenever he puts weight on it, limps as he walks around the court between points, and is just generally not at the top of his game.

He spins the racket in his hands, watching his opponent wind up for the serve, and as the ball comes flying towards him, he springs forward, racing to meet it.

But his ankle's too weak, and he can't make the ball in time, and he gives up the point.

Lyle glances at the stands, wondering if he had different parents, ones who cared about how much pain he was in.

Would they put a stop to the match?

Unfortunately, forfeit isn't in the Menendez vocabulary, and neither is support.

At that moment, Jose starts mocking his son from the sidelines.

He calls him names, tells him he's a baby for showing that he's in pain.

It's a shocking display, but no one wants to call Jose out.

Instead, they sit there in awkward silence, watching him berate his son.

Lyle is in shock, though.

It's just more of the same from his father.

If this were any other day, he might be able to ignore it and just finish out the match as best he can.

But his ankle is throbbing, and his father's voice is pounding in his head.

As the match slips further and further away from him, Lyle can feel his blood boiling.

Eventually, he snaps.

After his opponent wins another point, Lyle turns to his father and screams at him to just shut up.

In the quiet seconds after he yells, Lyle heaves a sigh of relief.

But the feeling doesn't last.

He watches Jose snatch up a tennis ball from the edge of the court and throw it right at him.

As the ball sails past Lyle's ear, Jose snarls at him, ordering him back to the car.

The match isn't over, not officially, but Lyle knows that he's done for the day.

Head bent in defeat, he follows his father to the parking lot, and they both get into the back seat.

Once the car door shuts behind him, Jose curls his hand into a fist and punches Lyle square in the face.

As his son reels from the blow, Jose tells Lyle that if he embarrasses him like that again, he'll kill him.

Jose Menendez won't be humiliated, not by his own sons and certainly not in public.

It's a lesson that Lyle won't ever forget.

By this stage, the Menendezes are living in the treeline streets of Princeton, New Jersey.

Their four-bedroom dream home overlooks a man-made lake.

On the weekends, Jose mostly stays home so he can spend more time with the boys.

He plays tennis with them, watches football, and insists that they take showers together.

Life in the Menendez family is a strange existence.

But without close friends to confide in, Lyle and Erik don't seem to realize just how odd their lives are.

Jose likes to tell Lyle and Erik that other children are diseased with mediocrity, something the Menendez bloodline doesn't suffer from.

However, mediocrity is also catching, he cautions.

So he doesn't let them form any close friendships.

Not that there's much spare time to socialize anyway.

The boys' lives are regimented to the nth degree.

Even when Jose has to be in the office, he still calls home several times throughout the day.

He likes to make sure that his sons are practicing after school, to check on exam results, and to keep a close eye on every other detail of his family's life.

In short, Jose runs his household like it's an extension of his career.

His standards are as unyielding at home as they are at the office.

And while his methods get him mixed results with his sons, he fares much better at work.

He's been at Hertz for several years now, climbing steadily through the ranks.

By 1980, he's got his eye on becoming the company's president, until he's informed that, at 35, he's still much too young for the job.

Jose doesn't take kindly to being told no.

So when another company, RCA Records, offers him the role of their VP of Finance, he eagerly jumps ship.

It's a shift in gear moving from the world of car rentals to the music industry, but Jose takes to it like a duck to water.

After all, business is business, and he can be a manipulative monster at RCA just as easily as he could at Hertz.

People who work with him at RCA learn very quickly that he's just not a very nice person.

Even when he's not shouting at everyone around him, there's the cold look of judgment and disdain in his eyes.

Not that Jose cares what his colleagues think of him, not the people below him anyway.

RCA's famous clients are a different story.

He feeds off the attention he gets from the stars he meets.

The likes of John Denver, James Brown and the Eurythmics.

Of particular interest to Jose is the Puerto Rican boy band Menudo, an act he hand picks to sign with the label.

The group are incredibly popular and feature a revolving door of talent who are ushered out of the limelight once they get too old, which is usually around 16.

Given that he forked out $30 million of RCA's money in the bidding war to sign the group, it's hardly surprising that Jose takes a personal interest in the band.

He spends weeks with them while they tour Italy and Brazil, more nights that he's not home with his family.

And even when he's back in the States, Jose is always out until late entertaining clients in New York while Kitty stays home with the boys.

He spends nights at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel, often sleeping next to his mistress, a corporate executive he met at an industry event.

Jose has become an unfaithful husband and an almost absentee father, a far cry from the image he's determined to project of the loving patriarch of the perfect family.

But he knows that the truth about his family doesn't matter.

Not as long as people only see what he wants them to see.

And with a wife who takes all her cues from him and sons who've been conditioned to obey, the only thing people see is success.

But nothing lasts forever.

It's the fall of 1985, and 41-year-old Jose Menendez is feeling restless.

Six months ago, RCA Records was acquired by a larger company.

But just like before, the new owners discovered that they didn't have room for Jose in the new corporate regime.

He was let go.

The setback smarts.

Jose had risen high with an RCA.

He felt like he was in striking distance of the company's top job only for it to slip away because of a corporate restructure.

His million-dollar golden parachute softened the blow, but as the summer of 1985 came and went, it began to bother him that he still hadn't found the right job.

He'd had several offers to run other record companies, but they wouldn't give him an ownership stake as part of his salary, so he turned them down.

Possessive and controlling, Jose is determined to own at least a portion of whatever business he joins next.

By the time he left RCA, he was pulling in $500,000 a year, when the median income for American families is around $24,000.

Still, Jose believes he deserves even more, and he knows that number would have been much higher if the company belonged to him.

Now he spends his days in his Princeton home, waiting for someone to offer him what he's worth.

As the clock ticks over to 3 p.m.

Jose stands from his desk and walks through to his bedroom.

Lyle and Erik will be home from school soon, and he wants to run tennis drills with them for a couple hours before dinner.

But as he's changing into his workout clothes, the phone in Jose's office rings.

He jogs back into the room and snatches up the receiver.

It's a lawyer from Los Angeles calling, and what he has to say is going to change everything.

Carol Coe Pictures, who are behind the Rambo and Terminator film series, want Jose to run the home video arm of their company.

It's exactly the kind of job offer Jose has been waiting for.

The only problem is that he'll need to be in Los Angeles to accept the position, and Kitty doesn't want to leave Princeton.

They have family in the area.

She loves their neighborhood and doesn't want to abandon the charity she volunteers for.

But while Kitty feels strongly about her home and community, there's less love between husband and wife these days.

They've drifted apart over the past two decades.

At some stage, Kitty found out about Jose's affair, packed some bags and headed to a motel, but came back.

Since then, the couple have settled into a frigid stalemate.

Kitty won't leave her marriage, not after the traumatic implosion of her own parents' relationship.

And Jose stays for reasons of his own.

He admits to relatives that he doesn't love his wife anymore, but says that he likes the way she runs the family home and raises his sons.

But now Jose needs her cooperation so he can move on to the next phase of his career.

Eager to make a deal, he suggests that she stay on the East Coast with Lyle, who's about to start college.

Jose and Erik will move to California without her.

But of the two sons, Erik is Kitty's favorite.

Even from when they were young, she seemed to dislike Lyle.

Staying on the East Coast with him doesn't interest her.

So she finally agrees to move west with Jose and Erik.

Lyle stays behind in New Jersey to start university.

His first choice was Princeton, but to his father's disappointment, he didn't make the cut at the Ivy League school, even with his decent tennis skills.

So he enrolls at Trenton State in hopes that he can transfer in later.

Thousands of miles away, the rest of the family set up their new lives in Los Angeles.

Jose buys a mansion in the secluded neighborhood of Calabasas.

The house costs almost a million dollars, but Kitty isn't satisfied with it, and begins extensive remodels before the family even moves in.

But despite having a project to keep her occupied, Kitty's not happy.

She's always liked to drink, but since arriving in California, it's gotten out of hand.

Years earlier, she told her brother-in-law that she thought she had a drinking problem, but she didn't seem interested in addressing it beyond that.

Now she starts drinking every day, taking Valium, and around 1986, Kitty's psychologist makes a note that the 45-year-old is lonely, depressed and possibly suicidal.

She still loves her husband, but theirs is a deeply unhealthy marriage.

She's angry that he's repeatedly unfaithful, but won't even think about leaving him.

Eventually, however, Kitty reaches her breaking point.

She realizes that she spent years keeping the family together, trying to be the perfect wife and mother.

She lost herself in that fantasy, and now she's woken up.

She's determined to get her own form of revenge on Jose for the way her life has turned out.

And when Lyle's home over college breaks, he notices what his younger brother Erik's already seen for himself.

Since the move to Los Angeles, their mother's been pushing Jose's buttons as often as she can.

She's sarcastic towards her husband, and stands up for herself like never before.

She even challenges Jose in front of other people, which she never would have dreamed of doing before.

Everything is different, but Jose's too obsessed with himself to really care.

He's still fixed on his own agenda.

He's come up with a five-year plan for himself.

After putting in some time at his new Hollywood job, he's going to leave the film industry, move with Kitty to Miami, and run for the US.

Senate.

It's a swerve, but one that tracks with Jose's ambitions for his family.

He's fixated on the legacy of the Menendez name, on people knowing that he's a success.

And he wants his sons to be the perfect reflections of himself.

To that end, he insists that Lyle get a custom toupee in 1987.

The teenager has started balding slightly in recent years, and Jose doesn't want anyone knowing.

Jose insists that Lyle will follow his father into politics and that he'll need a full head of hair for that.

At least that's what the image obsessed father believes.

So he pays $1500 for the hairpiece and orders Lyle to wear it every day.

But a toupee doesn't solve the problem.

It just covers things up for a while.

And it's emblematic of so much else that's wrong with the Menendez.

Ironically, as the 1980s draw to a close, Jose can't seem to see all the cracks in the careful façade he's built up for the family.

But they're there.

And pretty soon, the domineering patriarch will lose control of everything.

He won't live to carry out his five-year plan.

In fact, he won't even make it to the end of the decade.

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

On the next episode, as tensions rise in the Menendez household, secrets will emerge that set off the chain of events leading to the bloody massacre at 722 North Elm Drive.

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 Shazeeb.

Sound design by Matthew Filler.

Music by Thrum.

This episode is written and researched by Joel Callan, managing producer Emily Burke.

And the executive producers are Joel Callan, William Simpson and Lindsay Graham for Airship.