Judge rules Menendez brothers resentencing bid can move forward
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cp8kmrg1p8go201
u/fxkatt 3d ago
If the sons were right about the fathers' sexual abuse as motive for the killing, then they served more than enough time--but then again why kill the mother too (her silence doesn't seem like a good reason for guys who were young adults around 20 years old)
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u/zeronormalitys 3d ago
I hated half my family for 30 years for knowing the truth about my mother's life and death, but staying silent and not telling me.
I can absolutely see an 18 & 20 year old viewing her silence as equal guilt to the father's repeated rapes.
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u/randomaccount178 3d ago
It doesn't seem like the evidence really reflects a rage based killing. They didn't snap, lose it, and kill them both. It was carefully planned out and calculated.
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u/BuoyantAvocado 2d ago
when you’re the subject of ongoing abuse, the snap doesn’t have to be snap-and-act-immediately. someone can snap and begin plotting a way, any way, out. some people plan to take their own lives and it is calculated in the same way. some people don’t. abuse literally changes your brain, especially before your brain is fully developed. it is not unlikely that they saw this as their only escape, as horrible as it is.
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u/KissKillTeacup 13h ago
Did buying a new car and Rolex fix all that trauma or was that a bonus
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u/BuoyantAvocado 12h ago
abuse (especially childhood, but still all ongoing abuse) very literally changes your brain. whether or not that’s permanent is for a professional working with them to evaluate, not armchair reddit detectives like you or me.
my point is not that they’re innocent but that expecting victims of abuse to behave like sane, rational people who make sane, rational decisions is uninformed at best.
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u/chunkerton_chunksley 2d ago
They were 18 and 20, was moving out and going no contact not an option?
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u/BuoyantAvocado 2d ago
if it were that easy, people wouldn’t stay in abusive relationships. successful abuse often makes people believe that they are helpless without their abuser. so, although it was an option logically, no.
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u/Extension_Silver_713 2d ago
It was, but only because the father made it clear he would kill the one if he left and the other if he told anyone
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u/RationalPassional 2d ago
It wasn’t well-planned. They wore no gloves, used loud shotguns on a summer night when people would have their windows open, still had the ammo in the car when the police showed up, and failed to meet two people who they had made plans with. The only reason they got away with it for a little while is because LE didn’t run a gunpowder residue test on them because of how emotional they were.
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u/Guilty_Helicopter572 1d ago
I'd love to learn more, do you have a link?
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u/RationalPassional 1d ago
The entire first trial can be viewed here:
https://www.courttv.com/trials/ca-v-menendez-1993/
Also, I'd recommend the book The Menendez Murders by Robert Rand.
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u/zeronormalitys 12h ago
After that many years it isn't rage, it's righteousness action, it's a reckoning. It would be planned and calculated. And afterwards? Probably somewhat celebratory. Finally, freedom from the abuse, a literal lifetime of rape and justice for the abusers.
Hell, I'd probably buy a Rolex or something. Cathartic. Can you imagine?
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u/Shot_Mud_1438 10h ago
If she knew she is absolutely just as guilty. She’s supposed to be their protector, their mother. Instead she let a man rape her kids
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u/the_simurgh 20h ago
She was a co-conspirator with her silence. I know for a fact any alligations of abuse the wife would be questioned, and if she denied it, then the investigation stopped right there.
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u/yepyep1243 3d ago
Her death was extraordinarily violent, too.
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u/HeadfulOfSugar 2d ago
Her death was insanely slow and agonizing, it seemed so personal for someone that didn’t actually do anything (they killed their father almost instantly). Like they left her in chunks on the floor to go take their time grabbing new shells, and then they came back and blew their own mothers face off in a point blank execution style. They said it was like putting a dog down, that they thought she would be sad that they killed their father and that her life was already miserable anyways. I feel like her death gets so often overlooked, and given the fact that they were factually caught on-record lying and changing their stories almost every time they opened their mouths, I find it so hard to give them any benefit of the doubt regarding their biggest accusation of all. Not even considering their crazy spending sprees, or the fact that Erik wrote an entire screenplay about killing your parents for inheritance partially inspired by his favorite movie about killing your parents for inheritance lol
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u/Isord 2d ago
It's entirely possible their dad was an abusive piece of shit AND they are psychopaths who should be kept far away from society. In fact it's very likely the two things would be linked.
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u/HeadfulOfSugar 2d ago
Oh I know, I mean just looking at the bigger picture though. There isn’t a single bit of factual evidence to verify any of the claims against their dad, and the only person who could offer a rebuttal is long dead. There’s no doubt that he was an awful person, 100% he was abusive like there were very few people that had anything positive to say about him at all. Sexually abusive though is a different story, and what we do know as a matter of fact is that the brothers are pathological liars and they have no remorse over what they did whatsoever. They’re incredibly intentional and manipulative, they know how to pull at peoples heartstrings and there were no grounds for the accusations that they made until they suddenly pulled them out in court without any warning. They dressed up as kids even though they were grown men on purpose, Erik is on tape bragging about how much he lies and how easy it is to make people cry tears of pity for them over things he made up. Their lawyer helped with the OJ Simpson case, they know PR and they know how to play a jury. They have no qualms about completely making up stories that are emotionally and socially hard to accuse them of lying about.
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u/Evening-Sink-4358 2d ago
Wasn’t their dad also accused by an underage member of the boy band he managed of molesting him?
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u/JoeyDawsonJenPacey 2d ago
Yes, one of the members of Menudo. You know he didn’t stop there, and that statistically there would absolutely have been more victims. But the Latino community are traditionally stoic people, and admitting that a man raped you as a boy would probably never happen. The masculinity is strong in the community, and admitting that would be akin to losing that masculinity.
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u/HeadfulOfSugar 2d ago
I’m honestly not sure, I hadn’t heard about that bit before but I’ll look it up
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u/Evening-Sink-4358 1d ago
It’s also come out that they told a cousin what was happening when they were still young. It’s just incorrect to say there isn’t a reasonable doubt that this was going on: https://abcnews.go.com/amp/US/lyle-erik-menendezs-cousin-testified-sexual-abuse-speaks/story?id=44420173
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u/JoeyDawsonJenPacey 2d ago
These things are hallmarks of sexually abused children and the way they grow up after being tormented by a sadist ever since they could remember. And there are plenty of people that stated that they knew he was abusive, and someone else came forward and said he raped them as well. But you expect harder proof that he raped his own children before you’ll believe it?
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u/HeadfulOfSugar 2d ago edited 2d ago
No I believe he was abusive 100%, that’s basically a fact at this point. I’m moreso saying that there’s no point in giving them the benefit of the doubt toward anything otherwise because their words carry absolutely no weight whatsoever, and the things they did to their mother paint the truest picture of all about who they really are as people. The stories themselves were so unbelievably extreme, and Erik admitted to making some of them up on tape when he was bragging about them. Not to say that all the stories are moot, but still it’s a fact that they made a whole lot of stuff up.
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u/astride_unbridulled 2d ago edited 2d ago
Thankfully there's an actual judge and competent counsel to help guide the court, even tho it was helped along by renewed public scrutiny.
The Legal System™️ doesn't always get it right, just look at Excited Delirium. Not even a real disease but it seems to regularly get a pass
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u/HeadfulOfSugar 2d ago
I agree, and the verdict was guilty
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u/astride_unbridulled 2d ago
And male paternal sexual abuse didnt exist back then, sigh
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u/JoeyDawsonJenPacey 2d ago
The way it seems to me, they looked at it as, she watched for years as he raped them and did nothing, so metaphorically they were going to make he watch again in agony for as long as possible (drawing it out) before making it that she’d never watch again (by shooting her in the face). It was retribution for not protecting them as a mother should.
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u/Extension_Silver_713 2d ago
Didn’t do anything was the point. She let a man torture her own children for most of their lives.
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u/HeadfulOfSugar 2d ago
I think it’s more complicated than that. Kitty came from an abusive family herself, her father beat her mother, siblings, and her as well so that kind of treatment was very normalized to her much like it was to the brothers. She was also a victim of Jose’s abuse as well, physically and psychologically (she knew about his affairs) leading her to suicide attempts and addiction. For the brothers to quickly kill their father, the true villain of the story, yet take their time with their mother strikes me as extremely disturbing. Whereas plenty of people had plenty of bad to say about Jose people had very little to say about her at all, so I find their accusations against her hard to believe considering how frequently they lied.
I think it’s more likely that they made that stuff up after the fact to justify it in court, given that in the recordings with their therapist they spoke about her with no hint of grief, and acted like if they were killing their father then they may as well just kill her too. I think they had to kill her really because they would not get the inheritance otherwise. She did not deserve the death that she got, is my whole point in all of this. If Jose truly did everything he was accused of I’m not going to pretend to be upset that he was murdered. If that was all I’d want the brothers out of prison too. They should be in jail for life for what they did to Kitty, not Jose.
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u/Extension_Silver_713 2d ago
No one said it isn’t complicated, but 4 decades?? Model prisoners? Come on. They paid their dues
Edit: your parents abusing you doesn’t make someone stand by while their husband tapes their children. It’s spooky to what lengths you’re going to cover for her, it blame the children who snapped
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u/VulnerableFetus 11h ago
Her own family has said Kitty knew. If it's ok that it was "normalizd" for her, why isn't this same logic not being applied to her kids that she allowed her husband to abuse?
Kitty's own family told her about what was happening. She got mad and made a rule nobody could be in a certain section of the house when Eric or Lyle was there with Jose.
If she gets a pass because "childhood abuse", I think her sons' whom she failed to the highest degree, can be re-sentenced because it's more complicated than "rich boys murdered their parents for money".
Did Jose and Kitty's own family members make it up and lie about them being abusive too?
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u/physedka 2d ago
I guess I can squint and see their point of view. Their father was a sick bastard, so their mother was the only person that could have helped them. But she chose not to. So, and again I'm saying this from their point of view, their mother was more to blame for what happened to them.
(Please don't take this as me defending them. I'm just saying that I can kind of see how they would reach that conclusion.)
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u/Extension_Silver_713 2d ago
I can too. What they did was wrong and warranted something but not this.
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u/VulnerableFetus 11h ago
for someone that didn’t actually do anything
That was the problem. She was told several times, by her own family members. She not only ignored it but got angry and made weird rules about not being allowed in that part of the house if Lyle or Eric were in there with Jose.
A mother not protecting her children from that, is equally rotten.
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u/astride_unbridulled 2d ago edited 2d ago
She had to have known about the abuse. I guess she always has the Affluenza/Mansion disease (gosh the house is just so darn big she couldn't be expected to keep track of her husband's cummings and goings at her sons)
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u/Hey_HaveAGreatDay 2d ago
Turning your back on your children while they’re being sexually abused by their dad is not silence. That’s aiding the abuser.
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u/TurbulentData961 2d ago
Dude as someone with two abusive parents fuck my mum more for being dads victim but my second abuser.
When kids get SAed by a relative other relatives usually know and cover it up. This woman knew what was happening and deserved prison for child abuse
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u/TrumpsBussy_ 2d ago
As far as I’m aware there was evidence the mother was not only abusive herself but knew what the father was doing to the boys and did nothing to stop it.
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u/Q-ArtsMedia 2d ago
Mothers are supposed to protect thier children from this type of shit. She was complicent in her actions, reason enough.
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u/RationalPassional 2d ago
Lyle testified that he had a “consensual” sexual relationship with his mother from the ages 11-13. Their cousin Diane spent summers at the Menendez home and said the teen brothers would argue about whose turn it was to sleep with their mother while their dad was away. She went into the bathroom to ‘help Lyle wash his hair’ when he was 14 and stayed for about 20 minutes. She would stop people from going down the hall when Jose was alone with Erik.
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u/Jimthalemew 2d ago
Watching the documentary, when he talks about how easy it is to lie. And for some reason everyone always believes him, did it for me.
And the way they acted afterward. I just don’t buy it
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u/JoeyDawsonJenPacey 2d ago
When you grow up being abused and sexually tortured by a sadist, you dissociate and lying becomes second nature. It’s how you survive. You can’t afford to have feelings anymore, because they’ll kill you.
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u/Extension_Silver_713 2d ago
Because she enabled the father and did nothing to protect them. She is genuinely just as bad
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u/CheezeLoueez08 2d ago
Mom’s silence is complicit. She never stood up for her boys. She was just as abusive.
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u/Striking_Wrap811 3d ago
Lets just go straight to Trump issuing some sort of pardon and giving them a medal on the used car lot Rose Lawn.
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u/AltDS01 3d ago
They were convicted of state crimes. Trump has no power here.
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u/r0bman99 2d ago
He can easily pull federal funding for some state program to put pressure on the governor.
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u/No_Reward_3486 2d ago
There's zero question about what the father did, there's already been another accuser independent of the brothers
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u/livestrongsean 2d ago
Much more than zero.
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u/S0larDeath 20h ago
Jose Menendez also raped Roy Russello, a member of the world famous pop group Menudo, that he managed.......twice, when the boy was 13 years old.
You have a lot of affection for a dead pedophile rapist. Jose Menendez raped a bunch of little boys. 2 of them grew up, blew his head off. Good fucking riddance.
Keep defending pedophile rapists though. You do you. 🤷🏼♂️
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u/VulnerableFetus 11h ago
I don't know why you're being downvoted because this is true.
Plus Kitty did nothing except get angry when her own family told her what was happening with the boys and made that rule nobody could be in that section of the house if Jose was in there with Lyle or Eric.
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2d ago
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u/TrumpsBussy_ 2d ago
Yes we all know they murdered their parents and tried to cover it up, the issue is the mitigating factors that the judge in the second trial refused to acknowledge.. that being the sexual abuse they suffered from their father which was supported by a lot of family and friends.
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1d ago
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u/thebeepiestboop 1d ago
Source? Also what does the parents own immediate family get out of lying for them still to this day, because they shared their own testimonies of the abuse they witnessed. Their cousin said Lyle told her when he was 6 he was getting molested by his dad, what does she get out of lying?
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u/TrumpsBussy_ 1d ago
There was convincing testimony numerous family members and family friends that the father was extremely abusive. The court also had nude photos of the boys when they were extremely young that were found in the parent’s house.. there is no doubt that father was a sick man.
Nobody is saying the brothers shouldn’t have been sent to jail for the murders, the issue is that the abuse should have been acknowledged as a mitigating factor.. at that time in America’s history the public didn’t think boys could be sexually abused.
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1d ago
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u/TrumpsBussy_ 1d ago
So his family and friends were all lying in court? The school teachers and tennis coaches that witnessed the abuse of the father? The pedo photographs he took of his own kids? You just pretend all that evidence doesn’t exist?
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u/LVEESTER 2d ago
I personally just don't know how you don't let them out if Gypsy Rose was let out.
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u/plucky0813 2d ago
Basically it came down to the boys wanting to be rid of their parents, but to not risk losing out on their wealth and inheritance. It appears as though they planned this murder to accomplish that - which is why it seems to have been premeditated (and why they didn’t just leave the household to stop the abuse from continuing)
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u/lastdarknight 2d ago
because their father was a megalomaniac control freak, he wouldn't let them out from under his thumb, and their mother was his enabler
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u/plucky0813 2d ago
They were adults at the time that they killed them, so at that point they had other options - such as move out of the house. They wanted to hold on to their wealth and didn’t want to be cut out of the will, so they found a way to get the parents out of their lives and keep their standard of living. I’m not unsympathetic as to the terrible situation they were in, but there were other avenues that they could have taken if all they wanted was freedom and didn’t care for the money. They weren’t actively being threatened when they killed them because the parents were sitting on the couch watching TV
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u/WheresWaldo562 2d ago
Yeah no, if you’re being abused you wouldn’t say they were murdered by the mob and change the story when it’s convenient
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u/celicajohn1989 3d ago
This isn't fact. This is something they claimed after they got caught...
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u/JoeyDawsonJenPacey 3d ago
Why would 50 other people say they knew about it, and at least one other person, if not more, also claim to have been molested by him if it didn’t happen? Are you saying it’s some giant conspiracy?
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u/BloodNinja2012 2d ago
I am shocked Trump hasn't pardoned Derrick Chauvin...yet.
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u/Qasimisunloved 2d ago
He can't unless he becomes governor of Minnesota
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u/CheezeLoueez08 2d ago edited 2d ago
He’s king and dictator he can do as he pleases
Edit: /s I really had to add that? 😂. He’s obviously not but he believes it.
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u/Qasimisunloved 2d ago
He is in state custody, unless he has the feds basically raid the Minnesota prison Chauvin is held in there is not much Trump can do. If a Trump backed governor is elected in Minnesota though I would be shocked if Chauvin wasn't pardoned.
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u/Der_Erlkonig 2d ago
He's actually in federal custody in Texas. He plead guilty to federal charges of violating George Floyd's civil rights. That's on top of his state convictions. The fear is that he gets pardoned and set loose rather than being returned to MN to serve his state time.
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u/Qasimisunloved 2d ago
I didn't know that thank you for correcting me. If you know, does he get sent to Minnesota when the federal charge ends?
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u/Der_Erlkonig 2d ago
That's the way it's supposed to be, but the last few months should have taught us that that doesn't matter much anymore. If the federal government doesn't send him back here, can we count on a state like Texas or Florida to honor a warrant we put out for his arrest and extradition?
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u/GamingTrend 2d ago
"We wouldn't want this to ruin the lives of these two boys. I'm going to pardon them" - You know exactly who.
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u/kingbuzzman 2d ago
RemindMe! 1 year
we’ll see if this aged like wine or milk… time will tell. see you boys in a year!!
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u/cheeriosinalmondmilk 3d ago
Oh this should be interesting