The 1989 shotgun murders of Jose and Kitty Menendez in Los Angeles gripped the nation.
The killings of the entertainment executive and his wife in their wealthy Beverly Hills neighborhood were brutal. Their son Lyle Menendez was the one who called 911, with the brothers initially claiming the killing was Mafia-related or connected to their father’s business dealings.
Lyle Menendez was attending Princeton University, and his younger brother Erik Menendez was a tennis star.
The brothers were later arrested, charged, and convicted for their parents’ deaths.
The brothers have argued that they committed the crimes in self-defense after years of abuse by their father.
Coming on the heels of the O.J. Simpson trial, the nation was hungry for true crime TV. The brothers’ first trial was one of the first to be almost entirely televised on Court TV.
The Netflix drama “Monsters: Lyle and Erik Menendez Story ” and the documentary “The Menendez Brothers,” released in the fall of 2024, have been credited for bringing new attention to the case.
On Tuesday, the brothers were granted their first chance at freedom in decades. A Los Angeles judge reduced the brothers’ sentences from life in prison without parole to 50