Thread by @Telegraph

🔴Erik and Lyle Menendez were convicted of their parents' murder in the early 1990s.

Now, a new generation of social media users wants to see them freed.

Here's why a gruesome Beverly Hills murder case is back in the spotlight, three decades later

🧵👇
telegraph.co.uk/world-news/202…

On the evening of 20 August 1989, Jose and Kitty Menendez sat down in the living room of their Beverly Hills mansion and watched the James Bond film The Spy Who Loved Me.

They snacked on some blueberries and cream.

And then, at some point that evening, they were brutally killed

The alarm wasn’t raised until the couple’s two sons, Lyle, 21, and Erik, 18, returned just before midnight to the family home from a nearby movie theatre

‘Who was the person who was shot?’ the 911 dispatcher asked.

‘My mom and my dad!’ Lyle sobbed.

Inevitably, these killings were big news.

Jose Menendez was a successful executive for a home video company, and even the first Los Angeles Times article reporting the death floated a possible business connection to organised crime

Jose’s sister, Marta, told the press that her brother had been killed because he refused to deal with mobsters.

➡️ After that, the story dropped out of the headlines.

Authorities were presumed to be following up their mob leads

Yet, the following March, two arrests were made, and Lyle and Erik Menendez were charged with murdering their parents.

The predominant story, which would be told over the next 3 years before the case went to trial, was of 2 brothers who were greedy, spoiled, sociopathic brats.

That two days before the murders, having learnt that their disappointed father was to disinherit them, the brothers had driven to buy shotguns.

On that Sunday night, they gunned down their parents, then went out so that they could return home later to feign the discovery

The big break came after Erik confessed to his therapist

The story of how this became public was a convoluted one – it was the therapist’s disgruntled former mistress who ultimately told the police

Only in 1993, as their first trial began, was a different narrative presented – one intended to explain both the brothers’ general predicament and the specific lead-up to the actions they took

Each brother described, in great detail, stories of sexual abuse from their own father

In the short term, this defence was partially successful.

But in 1995 Lyle and Erik were found guilty of murder in the first degree and sentenced to life without possibility of parole

However, early in 2020, Court TV posted online footage of the entire months-long first trial, and TikTok became, somewhat unexpectedly, awash with Menendez brothers content

Since then, TikTok videos tagged #menendezbrothers have been watched more than 700 million times.

There are now numerous TikTok videos, Instagram accounts, podcasts and YouTube channels focusing on the specifics of the trials – the testimony and the evidence

There are those, of course, who still firmly believe that these were nothing more than two self-centred, evil boys who killed their parents.

Others, believe they are misunderstood victims
telegraph.co.uk/world-news/202…

"As I listen to the brothers’ account, what I hear is the sound of two people endlessly trying to explain – to a court, and to the world, but maybe also to themselves – why they did something awful"

Read the full interview with Lyle Menendez here 👇
telegraph.co.uk/world-news/202…