Thread by @MenendezRand

🧵Dateline's New Menendez Brothers Episode
This is a long thread but you'll want to read it if you are following the #MenendezBrothers case as many people are all over the world - not just in the U.S.
I've covered the Menendez case since the investigation began on August 20, 1989

I began covering the Menendez case the day after the killing of Jose and Kitty Menendez in 1989. There were seven months between the crime and the arrest of the brothers in March 1990. The initial media speculation was that this was a mob hit connected to the home video business.

I spent three days with Erik and Lyle Menendez in Oct 1989 - two months after the killings and five months before their arrest. My assignment for the @MiamiHerald was a bio of Jose Mendendez - not a story about the investigation - an immigrant's story that ended in tragedy.

@MiamiHerald The #MenendezBrothers were NOT suspects publicly when I met them and I had no reason to be suspicious of the brothers. They told me very loving stories about their parents and we're emotionally appropriate while discussing what they described as their "close knit family."

On the day Lyle Menendez was arrested in March 1990, I was having lunch in West Palm Beach, Florida with his aunt Marta Cano. The entire time we were together, Marta and I discussed that the Beverly Hills Police were focused solely on the brothers as their primary suspects.

I broke the news to Mrs. Cano about Lyle's arrest when I called into my answering machine (1990s technology!) and heard a frantic message from the @MiamiHerald that I had to come in immediately to write a story. Erik surrendered two days later and was arrested by the BHPD at LAX.

@MiamiHerald On March 26, 1990, I was one of the bylines on a @people cover story with the headline: "Murder in Beverly Hills." The magazine had the unfortunate, inaccurate copy on the cover: "Now, cops say, their sons did it - for money." Even in those early days, I knew that wasn't true.

@MiamiHerald @people I flew over from my home in Miami and covered the #MenendezBrothers first court hearings in March 1990. Menendez and Andersen family members insisted to me that Erik and Lyle couldn't have been involved in killing their parents because the family was so close-knit and loving.

@MiamiHerald @people In the fall of 1990, the brothers privately admitted to their attorneys and family that they were responsible for the deaths of their parents. In March 1991, I wrote a 14,000 word story about the Menendez case - the longest article @playboy ever published
menendezmurders.com/laybpy-march-1…

The DA's office presented evidence of murder for financial gain in August 1992 to a grand jury which did NOT indict the brothers on those charges. When Erik and Lyle Menendez went on trial in July 1993, prosecutors stuck with a false tale about "greedy rich kids" who killed for $

During the first #MenedezBrothers trial in 1993, jurors heard from 53 teachers, coaches, friends and relatives that the defense put on that told a story of a highly dysfunctional family that was spinning wildly out of control behind the gates of a Beverly Hills mansion.

I was even pulled into the trial I was covering as a witness when I exposed the truth about Donovan Goodreau, a close friend of Lyle Menendez that knew that Erik and Lyle had been sexually molested four months BEFORE the killing of Jose and Kitty Menendez
menendezmurders.com/then-there-was…

Here's "the smack down" I had in July 1993 with Pam Bozanich, the lead prosecutor in the first Menendez trial, when she tried to get me to turn over my taped interviews with Donovan Goodreau that were recorded in March 1992. My testimony begins at the top.
courttv.com/title/12-ca-v-…

Two mistrials were declared in Jan 1994 when neither of the two juries - one for each brother - could reach a verdict. All the women voted for manslaughter, most of the men for murder. I interviewed all 24 jurors. The men told me a father would never molest his sons.

"The Menendez murder case ended without any verdicts as a second jury was declared deadlocked, the jurors divided over whether the #MenendezBrothers were cold blooded killers or long-suffering victims of abuse."
latimes.com/archives/la-xp…

The second #MenendezBrothers trial was a complete miscarriage of justice when Judge Stanley Weisberg reversed most of his evidence rulings and did NOT allow the defense to put on the heart of their first trial case.
screenrant.com/menendez-broth…

I want to assure everybody that the letter Erik Menendez wrote to his cousin and confidant Andy Cano in 1988 that is part of the habeas filing evidence is 100% authentic. Marta Cano, Andy's mother, is a devout Catholic and she would never be involved in fabricating evidence.

There is additional information and evidence the Menendez appellate lawyers know about but the prosecutors haven't seen. The only thing the haters like Pam Bozanich can attack in 2024 is the Erik letter to Andy Cano and our Menendez/Menudo story that is told in the @peacock doc.

@peacock In my interview with Keith Morrison for Dateline, Keith told me that Pam Bozanich believes that EVERYTHING in our documentary 'Menendez + Menudo Boys Betrayed' was made up and falsified. Bozanich needs to watch the doc carefully before making such statements.
Video from 4.18.23

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We didn't just take Roy Rosselló's word for it that he was raped by Jose Menendez. My 'Menendez/Menudo' reporting partner Nery Ynclan and I spent two years corroborating Roy's story with people who toured with Menudo, worked closely with the band, and other key Menudo sources.

Why did the LAPD open a criminal investigation into Menudo's founder and manager Edgardo Diaz - which is still active - if they thought Roy Rosselló was a liar? If we need to, Nery and I will come forward with additional evidence that supports ALL of our detailed reporting.

85% of the Dateline program Friday night was a re-cut of their disastrous November 2017 pro-prosecution Menendez brothers' episode. I'm disappointed that Dateline didn't have more original reporting for a story that has so many new moving parts that have been revealed recently.