The Menendez Brothers | They’re Going To Kill Us

It's late in the evening of August 20th, 1989.

At the Beverly Hills Police Department headquarters, two dispatchers are monitoring the phones.

It's been quiet for most of the evening, and that's par for the course for a city like Beverly Hills.

Its wealthy residents have little to complain to the police about.

But at 1147, the calm is shattered.

We are going to take a short break.

Once the operator believes that the killers aren't still in the house, she dispatches an ambulance to the Beverly Hills address and tells the caller to sit tight.

Help is on the way.

Less than a minute later, a police patrol car turns onto North Elm Drive and pulls up a few doors down from number 722.

Officers climb out warily.

The treeline street is silent.

But then, the front doors of 722 fly open and two young men dash out of the mansion.

It's 21-year-old Lyle Menendez and his 18-year-old brother, Erik.

When the officers see the brothers running towards them, they draw their weapons and order the men to stop moving and sit down.

The Menendez brothers quietly comply.

In the dim light of the street lamps, it doesn't look like there's any blood on their clothes.

But inside the mansion is another story.

Officers enter the home with their guns drawn.

They sweep the darkened house, making sure there are no armed gunmen hiding out in one of the many rooms.

Once that's done, they make their way towards the family room, where they've been told the bodies are waiting for them.

Despite the warning, the officers aren't prepared for what they find.

Beverly Hills averages about two murders per year, and this blood-soaked room fills that quota in one fell swoop.

The first body they see is a dark-haired man slumped onto a couch stained red.

Jose Menendez has several gaping wounds in his body and head.

Stretched out beside the coffee table is a woman with wispy blonde hair.

Like her husband, her body's been torn apart by gunshots, and blood's pooled around her on the expensive flooring.

It's no wonder the Menendez Brothers ran screaming from the house.

It's like something from a slasher film.

As some of the officers step outside to compose themselves, one stands at the doorway to radio an update back to headquarters.

It's been less than an hour since the 911 call came in from North Elm Drive.

And it's time for the Menendez Murder Investigation to begin.

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

In August of 1989, the brutal murders of Jose and Kitty Menendez shocked not only Los Angeles, but the entire country.

Here was a family who seemed to exemplify the very best of the 1980s American dream.

The father, a Cuban immigrant, was a wealthy Hollywood executive with a successful career that spanned multiple industries.

His wife was a dutiful stay-at-home mother to their two handsome sons Lyle and Erik, who were both star tennis players enrolled at prestigious universities.

In the aftermath of the killings, all anyone could focus on was the image of perfection the family had long projected.

But as theories abounded as to who'd committed the crime, few people were asking the right questions.

The public and police were ignoring the many red flags in the Menendez's story.

They didn't see that behind the doors of 722 North Elm Drive, all was not well.

No one knew what really went on inside that house.

No one suspected the tensions in the family had been rising for weeks before the murders.

And no one imagined that the people responsible for Jose and Kitty's shocking deaths were their own two sons.

This is episode two of our four-part series on the Menendez Brothers.

They're going to kill us.

It's late in the fall of 1987, almost two years before the murders, and 43-year-old Jose Menendez has just arrived at Princeton University.

As his driver steers the sleek black car through New Jersey's treeline streets, Jose taps his foot impatiently.

It's barely been a day since Jose found out that his eldest son Lyle has been suspended for plagiarism.

The 19-year-old is only in his first semester at the Ivy League school, and if he's kicked out, it will be disastrous, not only for Lyle's future, but for Jose's reputation.

So as soon as he heard about the suspension, Jose booked a flight east to argue his son's case in person.

It's late afternoon when the car pulls up outside the administration building.

Jose unfolds himself from the back seat and slips his driver a small tip when the man hands him a suitcase.

Then, pulling his coat tighter against the east coast shill, Jose strides up the stairs into the imposing stone building.

Inside, he breezes past the secretary and into the dean's wood-paneled office.

Jose knows that the administrator is used to rich and powerful parents applying pressure on the daily, but Jose won't let that deter him.

His son will not be thrown out of Princeton.

But despite Jose's determination, he doesn't get his way.

Lyle's told that he can accept a one-year suspension and return to Princeton next fall or leave the school for good.

It's his choice.

Lyle takes the suspension, but what's striking about the situation isn't the punishment.

It's that Lyle's parents aren't even mad that he cheated.

Kitty and Jose have done both their son's homework for years to ensure that they get top grades.

Jose has even overnighted essays to Lyle from Los Angeles, so they don't care that he's copied a classmate.

What's galling to them is that he got caught.

Now, one tiny homework assignment has brought them all undone, and none of Jose's usual tactics can change that.

So Lyle returns to Los Angeles with his father, where he's told to get a job while he waits out the suspension.

It's not clear how solid Lyle's work ethic is, but he spends some time delivering pizzas, and even joins the team at Jose's office for a month.

While he's there, people say Lyle's cold, arrogant and self-satisfied.

A typical rich kid.

But for his part, Lyle just feels like he's in the way.

And while the eldest Menendez child is making a bad impression on his father's employees, younger brother Erik is getting into his own kind of trouble.

Now in high school, he and his friends have started drinking and getting stoned in their downtime.

Staving off boredom with a little criminal activity.

There are several versions of what happens next.

Some involving Lyle and some omitting him entirely.

But whatever the truth, the broad strokes of the story are the same.

In the summer of 1988, some kids in the Menendez Brothers social circle hatch a plot to burglarize a home in Hidden Hills.

An exclusive gated community that today, celebrities like the Kardashians call home.

The house the kids are targeting is owned by an acquaintance.

And when there's no one there, the small crew break in and make off with cash and jewelry that would be worth over $250,000 today.

The heist is such an exhilarating success that the teens decide they want to do it again.

Soon, the burglaries are all anyone can talk about in Calabasas, the town where the Menendez family live.

It's such a small community that most people know the details before the newspapers even pick up the story.

And the gossip quickly turns to speculation about who's behind the brazen incidents.

Eventually, investigators zero in on the students of Calabasas High School and start calling them in for interviews.

Who rats on who isn't entirely clear.

But in all the different versions of the story, the police end up in the same place, on the doorstep of Jose and Kitty Menendez, asking to speak to their son.

It's mortifying for Jose, who values his family's squeaky clean image above anything else.

He plans to cap his glittering career by running for the US Senate in a few years, so he can't afford to let anything tarnish his reputation.

Like with Lyle's plagiarism incident, he's less concerned with what Erik's done and just annoyed the kid was stupid enough to get caught.

Now the Menendez patriarch has to clean up his son's mess again.

Once Erik confesses to the crime, he's arrested and charged with burglary, before being released to his father, who gets to work settling the matter as quickly and quietly as possible.

A few days later, on September 16, 1988, Jose pulls up to the Malibu Sheriff's Station, driving a van full of the teenager's ill-gotten gains.

Jose writes an $11,000 check to cover the cost of the stolen items that are still missing.

After that, his lawyer reaches out to the district attorney to cut a deal.

In the end, Erik gets probation instead of jail time and is ordered to perform community service.

He also has to receive counseling, presumably to curb his emerging criminal tendencies.

So, Erik begins seeing the Beverly Hills psychologist, Jerome Ozil.

The shrink usually specializes in sex therapy and phobias, but he's recommended to the Menendez family by Kitty's psychiatrist.

There's one important catch, though.

Jose makes Erik sign a document that allows Dr.

Ozil to tell Jose and Kitty everything their son says in his sessions.

So even though there should be confidentiality between doctor and patient, all parties know that there won't be any secrets between them.

After several sessions, the psychologist eventually concludes that the burglaries were a cry for attention.

And in that regard, Erik certainly achieved his goal.

Jose and his lawyer have done well to settle the legal issue discreetly.

But their neighbors all know what happened anyway.

They might not be saying anything to Jose or Kitty's faces, but the Menendezes feel like they're wearing a scarlet letter.

So it's time to get out of Calabasas.

About a month after Erik's arrest, Jose insists on moving the family to Beverly Hills.

They abandon the house Kitty's been remodeling for months and buy a mansion in Los Angeles' most famous neighborhood.

They pay about $4 million for the six-bedroom home at 722 North Elm Drive in October of 1988.

With all their riches, you'd expect the Menendez family to take well to their lush new surroundings, but things don't go smoothly.

Erik enrolls at Beverly Hills High for his senior year and joins the school's tennis team.

He's less successful in the classroom, though, where his English literature teacher suspects that the 17-year-old might be dyslexic.

Concerned, the teacher calls a meeting with Kitty, but Kitty casually reveals that she and Jose have known about Erik's learning disorder for years.

What Kitty doesn't tell the teacher is that she and Jose have kept it quiet by doing Erik's homework for him all this time.

Better that than admit there's anything wrong.

It's an issue that could have been handled years earlier, had Jose and Kitty put their son's needs ahead of their own pride.

But now there's little that Erik's teachers can do to help him cope with the dyslexia before he applies to college.

There's one bright spot in Erik's life, and that's his emerging passion for drama.

A teacher notices that he has a talent for acting, and offers him a spot in a special program.

But Jose forbids his son from participating.

In his eyes, Erik's already flamboyant enough, and he doesn't need acting lessons to make that any worse.

His son's sexuality is a problem for Jose.

Though Erik has and always will deny being gay, it's an accusation his father regularly throws at him.

With the AIDS epidemic raging throughout the country, and the stigma against gay men soaring, Jose refuses to accept the possibility that one of his sons isn't straight.

That's the kind of thing that could derail Jose's plans to run for the Senate.

At one stage, Kitty even tells Erik he has six months to find himself a girlfriend, hoping that'll settle the matter.

But when Erik meets the deadline, it's not enough for his father, who calls his son names and seethes about what he regards as gay behaviors.

It all just adds to the pressure that's been building within the family for some time.

The impossible standards, the need to project perfection.

It's too much.

That pressure might be what inspires Erik's next creative outlet.

He teams up with his friend Craig to write a screenplay about the son of millionaires who decides to murder his parents for their money.

The protagonist feels neglected by his father, who sets standards he'll never be able to live up to.

Depending on how you look at it, the screenplay is either an eerie coincidence or a chilling portent of what's to come.

Kitty actually types up the boy's script for them on the family computer, but she doesn't seem phased by the story.

She's got enough on her mind as it is.

Jose's been cheating on her for years, and that hasn't changed since they arrived in California three years ago.

But now Kitty feels especially isolated.

After leaving first, her friend's in Princeton, and then Calabasas.

Just before the family moved to Beverly Hills, she was admitted to the hospital for an overdose of prescription pills and alcohol.

She spent a few days in the psychiatric unit before signing herself out with Jose's support.

After all, the perfect wife doesn't need to seek treatment for mental health problems, not in Jose's opinion.

But putting a lid on a pot doesn't stop it from boiling.

All that steam needs to go somewhere.

And eventually, Kitty reaches the end of her rope.

One afternoon, she announces that she's going to poison herself and the family.

After the ensuing fight, Jose doesn't feel safe eating at home most of the time and starts taking the boys to eat at restaurants instead.

In short, the family is fracturing.

Feeling like a conversation isn't an option, Kitty expresses her frustration in letters to Jose.

She tells him that she loves him, then calls him aggressive on the same page she writes that he's soft-hearted.

She calls their children her gift to him while lamenting their family's broken home.

And she implores him to leave her and find someone he can truly love.

If nothing else, Kitty's letters are signs of her ongoing torment, symptoms of her rocky marriage, struggles with alcohol and prescription medication, and her mental health troubles.

And in the weeks and months to come, Kitty will drop hints to the outside world that all is not well in the Menendez home.

But it won't be enough to save her from her fate.

It won't save any of them.

It's July 1989, and 47-year-old Kitty Menendez is in her psychiatrist's office.

She's been seeing the doctor for a while now.

He once wrote that she was living with depression and might be suicidal, and that was before she overdosed on alcohol and prescription pills.

Now, almost a year later, Kitty's back on the couch, talking about her life and all the ways she struggles.

Safe in the quiet room, Kitty feels free to speak her mind.

Looking out the window and seeing the lush trees puts her at ease.

She can almost pretend that she's back in her beloved Princeton home, back when things were simpler.

But then her psychiatrist's next question punctures that daydream, bringing her back to reality.

He asks about her sons.

Over their many weekly sessions, Kitty's spoken with her shrink about plenty, her feelings about living in California, her motivations for getting a facelift, her marriage and even her eating habits.

But today they're discussing her family.

While her doctor watches her carefully, Kitty says she's been hiding sick and embarrassing secrets about her family.

She won't elaborate on the cryptic statement, however, no matter her doctor's prodding, the most she'll admit is that she worries her sons are sociopaths.

Today, most psych professionals prefer the term antisocial personality disorder to words like sociopath or psychopath, but they all ring the same bell.

There's something not right here.

But Kitty doesn't offer her doctor much in the way of details.

Hers are the unfocused vague worries of a woman holding her family and herself together by a thread.

She leaves the session feeling better just because she alluded to what's really going on under her roof.

But she hasn't told the whole truth.

She hasn't even scratched the surface.

Kitty's not the only one unburdening herself, however.

Across the country in New Jersey, her eldest son Lyle is bearing his soul to a new friend.

In a restaurant on the Princeton campus, the 21-year-old is sharing a meal with his roommate Donovan Goudreau.

They've each had a couple of beers, and as the restaurant empties out, the young men are deep in conversation.

It's one of those evenings when people say more than they intend to.

Later, in a courtroom, Donovan will deny the following conversation ever took place, even after he recounted it for a journalist.

But it's a milestone moment for Lyle, who will never forget it.

When the server clears away the last of their plates, Lyle fixes Donovan with a piercing stare and tells his friend that he's family now.

They've only known each other for a short while, but Lyle feels an intense bond with Donovan already.

Donovan doesn't shy away from the intense emotions behind what Lyle's saying.

In fact, he's moved to open up too.

Quietly, so no one but Lyle can hear him, Donovan tells him that a family friend molested him when he was young.

He describes the room it happened in, the time of day, the person who assaulted him.

He also admits that he's never told anyone about what happened.

It's shocking for Lyle to hear, and it pushes him to share a secret of his own.

He tips back his glass, swallowing the rest of his drink, and then leans across the table.

In a hushed voice, Lyle says that his father sexually abused him and Erik when they were very young.

He'd take baths with him, Lyle explains.

And those hours in the tub were terrifying.

But that's all over now.

Both Lyle and Erik are grown men.

Jose hasn't touched Lyle for years, and Lyle's sure that Erik can say the same.

He's sure of it.

Back in California, though, all Erik's sure of is that the next phase of his life is about to begin.

He's almost finished his senior year and is ready to start college in the fall.

Like other kids his age, he's applied to plenty of schools.

One of those applications was bound for Brown University in Rhode Island, which would have put him relatively close to his brother in New Jersey.

But Jose didn't want Erik that far from home, so he never mailed off his son's application.

Now Erik is enrolled at the University of California, Los Angeles, for the fall semester, which starts in a few weeks.

The UCLA campus is just three miles from their front door.

It's August of 1989, and Erik is in the family's beautifully appointed kitchen with his mom, talking to her about the things he still needs to buy for his dorm room.

Kitty is only half listening to her son as she gets dinner ready, a glass of cognac in her hand.

But Erik chatters away all the same.

By this stage, the 18-year-old looks every bit the college freshman.

Tall and handsome with an athlete's physique and thick, dark curls, he'll no doubt be popular on campus.

But as Erik rattles off the long list of snacks he wants for the mini fridge they'll buy for his room, Jose comes home and the mood in the kitchen shifts.

Jose cuts Erik off, telling his son not to get ahead of himself.

Erik's confused for a moment, but then the other shoe drops.

Jose announces that he's been thinking about it, and he's decided that Erik won't be living in the UCLA dorms full time.

He tells his son that he'll spend three or four nights each week in their Beverly Hills home.

With a condescending sneer, Jose says it's so he and Kitty can help Erik with his schoolwork.

But Erik knows that's not the real reason.

Everyone in the kitchen knows.

Erik's devastated.

He's been looking forward to having his own space for months, years even.

But now it feels like he's being held prisoner by his own parents.

And the blows keep coming.

A couple of days later, on the afternoon of August 15th, Erik is wandering through the home when he stops short by the sound of raised voices coming from the den.

Lyle is home from New Jersey for the summer and is in a full-blown shouting match with their mother.

Though from what Erik can hear, it's their mother who's doing most of the yelling.

Sidling up to the wide doorway, Erik sees his mother in all her fury.

Now 47 with fluffy blonde curls, Kitty usually looks like a woman who'd invite you into her kitchen for cookies.

But right now, her face is screwed into a snarl as she screams at her eldest son.

Erik can barely make sense of what she's yelling.

Something about a tennis tournament.

Before he has a chance to do anything, intervene, run away, hide, Erik sees something impossible.

Kitty, her hands curled into angry claws, lunges towards Lyle.

The 21-year-old brings his arms up to cover his face, but that's not what his mother's aiming for.

Instead, she grabs a handful of hair and yanks Lyle's scalp clean off his head.

Watching this in just a few quick heartbeats, Erik's shocked.

It takes him another second to realize that the thing in Kitty's hand isn't actually Lyle's scalp.

It's a wig, a toupee.

The entire crown of Lyle's head is shaved bald.

As Lyle cries in obvious pain, Erik's breath catches in his chest.

He had no idea that his brother wore a hairpiece.

Meanwhile, their mother keeps yelling about how much it cost, insisting it's an extravagance her son doesn't deserve.

That's when Lyle finally catches sight of his younger brother in the doorway, and the look of pain on his face turns to embarrassment.

Erik, though, just wants to save Lyle from their mother's vindictive outrage, so he asks if he could talk to Lyle alone.

Lyle gratefully shoots past their mother, and the brothers head out the back of the mansion.

A few minutes later, the pair settle into the guest house in the backyard.

For a while, neither of them knows what to say, but Lyle eventually breaks the silence.

Gingerly peeling the remaining glue off his scalp, he explains that the toupee was Jose's idea.

He noticed Lyle's hair thinning two years ago and decided that Lyle needed the hair piece.

A Menendez son has to be perfect after all.

Hearing the explanation, Erik's shock fades a little.

That certainly sounds like something their father would do.

And the fact that the whole thing stayed a secret for so long doesn't surprise Erik at all either.

In their house, the air is thick with secrets.

But something about seeing his brother so exposed and vulnerable emboldens Erik.

He feels like now is the right time to tell Lyle the secret he's been keeping for years.

He doesn't know if it will change anything, if Lyle can even help him.

But if he doesn't say it now, he might miss the chance.

So Erik takes a breath and starts to speak.

He tells Lyle that their father has never stopped molesting him.

It's been an ongoing nightmare for Erik since he was just six years old.

And now that Jose's decided Erik has to stay home for half of every week, he knows it's going to continue.

It's a difficult conversation for the brothers to have, but with everything out in the open, they can start thinking about a solution.

Lyle wants to protect his little brother, wants the abuse to stop so they can be a normal family.

So he suggests that they confront Jose.

They'll tell him that they're done being victims and that Erik is going to move to Princeton instead of staying in California.

And they figure they'll have plenty of power in this situation.

Their father's pride is too important to him.

He'll never let their dark family secret get out.

As they discuss the logistics of their plan, the brothers decide to ask for Kitty's help.

If all three of them stand united against Jose, there's no way he can refuse them.

But the next night, when Lyle tries to speak with his mother, it doesn't go well.

He tells her that Jose's abusing Erik, that he has been for over a decade.

In response, Kitty furiously orders Lyle out of her room and slams the door.

She won't help them.

She'll barely even acknowledge them.

And if they had to bet, the brothers would put money on their mother standing by Jose.

It's an unexpected blow, but Lyle is confident that they still have the power here.

They just have to sit their father down and speak to him man to man.

What could possibly go wrong?

It's the night of August 17th, 1989.

Jose Menendez has been away on business for a few days, but he's due to arrive home any minute.

Lyle's been waiting to speak with his father all afternoon.

He's even written out notes to remind himself of what he wants to say.

But as the hours drag on, he gets more nervous.

Eventually, he starts pacing, his footsteps echoing in their marble-tiled foyer.

He's anxious to get this whole thing over with as soon as Jose walks in.

A little after 11 p.m.

the quiet is broken by the sound of a car on the circular driveway.

Moments later, Jose walks to the front door, rubbing his face with one hand.

He looks tired after the long trip, but Lyle doesn't waver from his plan.

He insists that he and Jose need to talk, and to his surprise, his father agrees to hear him out.

Once they're seated across from each other, Lyle comes right out with it.

The sexual abuse of Erik is going to stop.

Then he says that he and Erik will leave the house for good if they have to.

At the very least, Erik won't be going to UCLA in the fall, not with Jose so close by.

When he's finished, Lyle takes a deep breath, feeling it shudder through his shaking chest.

He watches his father closely, but the 45-year-old's expression is unreadable.

After a few seconds of silence, Jose erupts.

He yells that what he does with Erik is his business, not Lyle's.

Panicking in the face of his father's anger, Lyle screams that he'll tell people what Jose's done.

Their family, the police, anyone who listen.

It's the nuclear option, and Lyle can't take it back now that he's said it.

He listens to his father say in a terrifyingly calm voice that they've all made their decisions, and now they'll just have to live with them.

It's an ominous declaration, one that'll haunt Lyle for days.

But for now, he leaves the room convinced there's nothing more he can do.

Later that night, Jose visits Erik's bedroom, fury etched on his face.

He tries to push Erik onto the bed, but the teenager scrambles out of the room and downstairs.

He finds Kitty and begs her to help, but she seems heavily medicated and wholly uninterested in his pleas.

She tells him that she's always known about the abuse and she's not going to intervene.

No one ever helped her, she says.

In all, it's a disastrous, terrifying night for Lyle and Erik Menendez.

Reeling from their parents' reactions, they wonder if they're even safe in the family home anymore.

They know that their parents own a pair of rifles.

What if they decide to use them on their own sons?

Lyle and Erik cycle through their options.

If they go to their relatives, they worry that Word will get back to Jose and he'll get violent.

They could go to the police, but they figure that Jose will definitely kill them for that.

Feeling backed into a corner after years of abuse, the brothers decide that their best course of action is to protect themselves.

Their parents have guns, so they'll get weapons of their own.

At least that way they can be prepared for whatever comes next.

The following day, a Friday, the brothers drive south towards San Diego.

There they find a sporting goods store and purchase a pair of shotguns for a couple hundred bucks each, as well as a box of shells.

The store requires ID for the purchase of firearms.

The brothers don't want to give their own, but Lyle happens to have a friend's driver's license on him, so he uses that instead.

The guy left it behind after a move, and Lyle looks enough like him that the cashier doesn't say a word, just brings up the sale and hands over the weapons.

That night, the brothers sleep with the loaded shotguns under their bed.

They have no idea what their parents might do next, and Kitty and Jose aren't giving out any clues.

They seem to be pretending that nothing's changed at all.

They're even insisting on going ahead with a family outing that's scheduled for the next day.

Jose's boasted to an important client that he's an expert deep sea fisherman, and he figures he should at least know what a fishing rod looks like before he and the client go on their upcoming shark fishing expedition.

Of course, the thought of a fishing trip with their parents has Lyle and Erik terrified.

They figure that if their parents are planning on killing them, then the open ocean would be the perfect place.

Jose and Kitty could shoot them, then dump their bodies and claim it was a tragic accident.

It's a terrifying prospect, a thought stirred up by the brothers' echo chamber of paranoia.

They only have each other to talk to, and every conversation comes back to the same question.

Are our parents going to kill us?

But the fishing trip goes ahead without any violence.

Lyle and Erik spend most of the afternoon on the boat huddled together, away from Jose and Kitty.

And aside from the moment when Jose throws up over the side of the boat, it's an unremarkable Menendez family day out.

It's also the last one they'll ever share.

The next day, the brothers separate.

They've decided that if their parents want to kill them, they'll only do it when Lyle and Erik are together.

There's no way Jose and Kitty could explain away two separate tragic accidents.

So Erik stays out as long as he can stand, driving around the city to kill time.

Meanwhile, Lyle calls his friend Perry to try and make plans for that evening, but he only gets the answering machine.

Perry returns Lyle's call, but it's Jose who picks up the phone.

He tells Perry that the brothers are both out shopping together, even though Lyle is there in the house with him.

It's one more signal that the brothers interpret as a sign of impending doom.

That evening, Erik returns home.

But around 9.30, the boys decide that they have to get out of the house again.

They're too freaked out to stay in.

But when they head for the front door, Kitty blocks the way and tells them they're not allowed to leave.

When they protest, Jose materializes by their side and echoes Kitty.

No one's leaving.

Then he turns to Erik and tells him to go to his bedroom and wait.

Those words are an all too familiar trigger for the youngest Menendez.

It's a phrase Erik's heard countless times in his life, and it always proceeds in assault.

Then after that, who knows what Jose will do?

As Jose leads Kitty into the living room and shuts the doors, the brothers start running upstairs.

They've decided in this instant that they have to act.

If they don't grab their guns, they'll end up dead.

It's now or never.

It's time to kill their parents.

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

On the next episode, Lyle and Erik scramble to cover their tracks.

But when an old family ally shows his true colors, everything comes crashing down.

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 Los Angeles Times coverage of the case.

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.

Executive producers are Joel Callan, William Simpson and Lindsey Graham for Airship.

On February 4th, The Minds of Madness is set to release and investigate a four-part series centered on a cold case from nearly four decades ago.

At first, it was just, my mom's gone.

And then it became, you know, your mom was taken by a bad man.

They found video of him killing women.

If you'd ever watched any episodes of Breaking Bad, that's exactly what you would see.

He buried these 11 women and kept going out there.

He made a road going out there.

You got this dude saying, hey, I'm going to show your family these pictures.

And like, he's secretly taping her.

The cops don't care, we're nothing to them.

I don't see anything that screams there's two people doing this.

I never thought anything was going to come of this case, ever.

Listen to the Minds of Madness series, Who Killed Jennifer, starting February 4th, wherever you get your podcasts.