Late in the evening of August 20, 1989, beverly police received an alarm call from an anxious male voice saying, "Mr. Officer, this is Beverly Hills, and someone has killed my parents."
The police did not dare to be careless, the people who lived in Beverly Hills were either rich or expensive, and the former owners of the house were the famous Michael Jackson and Elton John, who immediately set out. After arriving at the scene of the crime, in addition to the couple who were shot and killed, the only scene was the handsome brothers Lyle and Eric, that is, the victim's two sons.
Only to see the father shot in the back of the head, the mother is shot in the face and chest, it is impossible to identify. The two sons told the police that they had just returned from watching Batman from the movie theater and saw the scene in front of them when they entered the door. The police are in trouble, there is insufficient evidence at the scene, and it is difficult to trace the murderer.
But a few months later, the truth shocked everyone, and it turned out that the two sons who killed the rich man were the two sons who called the police. So how exactly did they show their feet? Why did you kill your parents? Dear friends, I am under the basket of perspective, today I will talk about - the murder of parents in the United States
The victim's father, José Henrique Menendes, was an American born in Havana, Cuba. José was a typical American dreamer, and at the age of 16, he crossed the ocean to start a new life in the United States. In the beginning, José's life in the United States was not satisfactory, he did not speak English, and daily communication and study were very difficult.
If nothing else, Jose seems to have a hard time getting into a good college. However, Through his talent in swimming, Jose won a sports scholarship at Southern Illinois University and met Katie, a mother of two, at the university.
However, the relationship was not recognized by the parents of both sides, Jose's parents hated Kitty because she was a divorced family, and Katie's parents did not like that José was Cuban. But when the children are older, they all have their own ideas, and the fire prevention and theft prevention do not always guard against their own children's reasoning, and they cannot prevent it. So after graduation, the two eloped to New York, and both parents could only acquiesce to this relationship.
With love, Jose's career also became smooth. He first won the CPA and became a senior accountant. It took a few more years to become president of Coopers-Lebran, and josé was only 26 years old, and his life was like a hanging.
Just when José was preparing to carry out drastic reforms of the company, he chose to leave because he did not agree with the board's philosophy. But it doesn't matter, José is already a high-end talent, he soon got another job, joined the famous American car rental company Hertz, and in 1979 became the company's global general manager. The two sons were born while working for both companies.
Fast forward to 1989, when Jose had become an independent director of the American Caroco Film Company (who had signed Stallone and Schwarzenegger, the first blood and the Terminator were both works), living in a $4 million villa in Beverly Hills, sitting on tens of millions of dollars in wealth, and a proper winner in life.
On the night of August 20, 1989, José and his wife, Katie, were watching TV at home after a hard day's work, and José felt a little tired and dozed off. At 10 o'clock, a car stopped in front of the mansion, and then two men with shotguns opened the door and walked into Jose's house.
They walked through the study to the room where Jose was. José was sleeping on the couch, and his wife, Katie, was resting. One of the men took out a gun and, without saying a word, fired two shots at Jose, who was hit and could not move. The man then walked up behind Jose and shot him in the head, ending Jose's life.
On the other side, Katie stood up when she heard the first gunshot, and as soon as she turned around, she was hit by a shot, but the two figures seen out of the corner of her eyes made her a little incredulous.
After the murderer finished shooting the bullet in the gun, they looked at Katie, who was still breathing weakly, and their hearts began to wonder, what should they do? Soon, the killer decides that Katie must not tell the police who fired the gun. So they got back in the car, took out the rest of the bullets, and shot Katie in the head again.
Jose's house
That's when we started to see Jose's two sons, Lyle, 21, and Eric, 19, called the police. Through the investigation of the scene, the police found that there was no trace of forced intrusion into the home, and the shot that caused Jose's death was in the back of the head, which was obviously the work of an acquaintance.
After that, the police questioned the two sons, and from the situation at the scene, it can be seen that the two sons were very emotional and kept crying, obviously very sad about the sudden death of their parents. One of the eldest sons, Lyle, told the police that they went out to watch a movie at night and came back to see the scene in front of them.
The police also got seemingly very useful information from it, that is, the mother Katie has been very emotionally unstable in the past two years and has tried suicide many times. Could it be a feud between husband and wife within the family? But Katie's death negated this idea, and the case was bogged down and could only be further investigated.
The police then continue their jobs, while Lyle and Eric are busy with their parents.
On August 25, Lyle and Eric held a grand memorial service for their father Jose and mother Katie at the Directors Guild of America, and many relatives and friends were invited. Just during this time, a very strange thing happened, Lyle and Eric were actually a full hour late, is this too disrespectful to the deceased parents?
At the memorial service, Eric looked uncomfortable, with two deep slap marks on his face. Lyle, on the other hand, is completely sad and has been talking about his deeds as a Princeton student and tennis master, and declaring that as the heir of the family, he will give up his studies and start business.
Jose with two sons
If the situation at the memorial service was just surprising, then what happened after the two brothers is even more incomprehensible.
On the fourth day after the crime, the two brothers began to spend wildly, spending $650,000 in just a few days, buying luxury cars, watches, designer clothes and jewelry. To prevent the thugs who killed their parents from harming themselves, they also hired a team of professional bodyguards.
In short, the inherited property is like an accidental wealth, and the brothers do not take money seriously at all. It was only their move that attracted the attention of the police.
Usually, when young people encounter a sudden major change in their home, they are either grief-stricken or closely focused on the case, hoping to find the murderer as soon as possible. But neither of these things was seen in Lyle nor Eric, who instead went crazy and seemed to care nothing about their parents' deaths.
During this period, the relationship between the two brothers clashed over the problem of spending money, and the younger brother Eric thought that his brother Lyle was spending too much money and needed to be carefully calculated. But Lyle was unmoved, and even started Eric's idea.
A policeman named Zoller heard news of a conflict between the two and held a meeting with Eric on October 24. Eric seems to be nothing on the surface, and responds well to the police's questions, but inside he is under great pressure. So Eric wanted to call his brother to talk about it and release the pressure. But Lyle didn't answer, which made Eric even more panicked.
Eric, who had been suppressing his heart, met his psychiatrist Jerome Ozil on October 31, and as they walked on the open grass of Beverly Hills, Eric felt that his heart began to calm down, and under Ozil's persuasion, he finally said the words:
My brother and I killed our own parents.
Jose family portrait
Ozil then takes Eric back to his office, who tells the story of the murder of his parents. It turned out that everything was due to the fact that they had watched a mini-series called "Billionaire Boys' Club", and after watching it, the brothers, who had long lost interest in continuing to go to school, thought of their father's control and torture of themselves over the years, and remembered that their father wanted to cancel their property inheritance some time ago. So they decided to take action against their father, Jose, so that they could inherit the property and achieve financial freedom.
They first bought a shotgun in Santiago in the name of tourism, killed their parents and left the gun in a canyon, and then provided alibi through a friend, achieving a perfect crime. It was only on a trip to a friend's house that Eric had a nervous breakdown, and it was only when he went home to call the police.
Just as Eric and Ozil were about to talk, Lyle came over (Ozil asked Eric to call). Seeing his brother tell him what had happened, Lyle was furious, and he frantically threatened Ozil that if he dared to tell anyone what had happened, I would kill you.
I don't know if Lyle's threats really worked, or if Ozil had other ideas, he didn't tell the police about them, but just took the job of a psychiatrist seriously.
On the other hand, after conducting a lot of investigation, the police ruled out all possibilities, except for Lyle and Eric, who were the most suspicious. They had motivations and behaved unusually afterwards. At this time, the policeman Zoller found the witness Craig, and learned from him that it was the brothers who came in and out of the house with shotguns that day.
But testimony alone is not enough, either to find key evidence or to admit it by brothers and sisters. So Zuler asked Craig to go to Eric with the tape recorder, and he wanted to bring the case to light up in this way. It's just that when Craig and Eric meet at the restaurant, the latter denies the fact that he killed both parents, which makes Zoller feel depressed, and the case seems to be in a dead loop again.
Lyle on the tennis court
The change happened on March 5, 1990, when a woman named Smith told police that he had heard all the conversations between Lyle and Ozil on October 31.
Coincidentally, this woman was Ozil's mistress, and she was with Ozil on the day of the conversation. Later, because he broke up with Ozil, he told the police about the incident.
Immediately, the police conducted a search of Ozil's office and found the tapes and notes of the day, and Lyle and Eric's killing of their parents was hammered.
It's just that the brothers don't seem to be too worried about what they are about to face, and they can even smile and greet relatives and friends on the first day of the trial, as if the trial is just a formality, and afterwards they can have a meal with everyone to celebrate the victory.
It turned out that in order to cope with the lawsuit, Lyle and Eric spent $750,000 to hire a barrister, and in private communication, one thing could serve as strong evidence of their innocence.
It turns out that his father, José, is a successful businessman on the surface, but in private he is a cruel perfectionist and has a pedophile plot.
Lyle's eerie smile at the trial
Jose was very strict with Lyle and Rick as a child, so strict that what he should eat every day, what books he should read, and even what he should think were strictly controlled. Lyle and Eric did not become the very good children That José had hoped for in this educational context.
On the contrary, the two have shown from an early age that they are worse than their peers, such as Lyle who can wet the bed by the age of 14 and like to play with plush toys. Under this strong pressure, the two brothers have the habit of stuttering, stomach pain and teeth grinding since childhood, and their temper is also unusually grumpy.
By the time he was in high school, Lyle fell in love early and even thought of getting married at the age of 19. Naturally, Lyle was so dismayed in his grades that he had to attend a community college. This is a far cry from Jose's desire for his son to study at an Ivy League university.
Lyle's idea, on the other hand, was to skip college and hope that his father would sponsor him to open a restaurant. But how could the powerful Jose accept Lyle's idea, and eventually, with Jose's operation and Lyle's talent in tennis, Lyle was admitted to Princeton University.
As the saying goes, a strong twisted melon is not sweet. This phrase is very appropriate for Lyle, who was forced to suspend his school for a year in his first semester at Princeton because of plagiarism. Jose also had a fight with the headmaster over the incident.
By 1988, Lyle and Eric even went to a friend's house to steal $100,000 worth of money and jewelry, giving them their first feeling of not having to rely on their father Jose. So how did Jose deal with it? He got the best lawyer, settled the whole thing after paying the loss, and moved out of the neighborhood that made them notorious. The two sons did not bear any consequences.
Lyle and Eric
On the one hand, there is a bottomless strength and protection, and on the other hand, José does inhuman things to the two children, and he has been sexually assaulting them since they were very young. Mother Katie is also very aware of these things, but the husband is not only very strong, but also has other women outside all year round. Katie, a stay-at-home mom, seems to be unable to afford the consequences of divorce, so she never dares to say anything more.
These things are not the two brothers' one-sided words, and relatives in the family have heard about them to some extent and have come out to testify.
In the testimony of the brothers, it was precisely because of the fear that the father would be sexually assaulted again when he returned home, which led to the killing of his parents. It was also this testimony that made the jury difficult, and many people began to sympathize with them, and how to sentence them to an impasse.
Just when the brothers thought they would be acquitted and get their inheritance at large, an impartial judge stepped forward and sentenced the brothers to life in prison on July 2, 1996.
Although the matter is over, there are many questions behind it that make people reflect. Jose was clearly a successful businessman, but a complete loser in homeschooling. Leaving aside the dirty things about the two children, too much control has created the shortcomings of the two children's personalities, and the reckless protection has given the two children the courage to take risks.
According to Jose's sister, Jose was spoiled by his mother since he was a child, and when he was 10 years old, he once burned the floor of the country club, and his father paid compensation, but did not let anyone criticize Jose. Isn't that the same as Jose's protection of his own children?
Today's Lyle and Eric
Mom did some sexual assault on José when she was very young, isn't that the same thing José did to his children later?
The deaths of José and Katie are tragic, but they are not responsible for them. What are your views on this case? You may wish to leave a message in the comment area, your likes and comments are my biggest creative motivation.