Lyle Menendez said in a documentary airing Thursday on ABC it is shocking to think he was capable of murder.
“It’s still jarringly, it seems unimaginable because it seems so far removed from who I am and even who I was,” said Menendez, convicted along with his younger brother Erik in 1996 of the 1989 shotgun slayings of their parents Jose and Kitty Menendez in their Beverly Hills mansion. “Under enough pressure, anybody is capable of something that when you’ll look back you can’t believe it.”
Both brothers are serving life prison terms without the possibility of parole.
In both trials — their first ended in a mistrial when jurors were unable to agree on convicting them of murder or lesser manslaughter charges — the brothers maintained in their testimony their father would hunt them down and kill them were they to reveal that he had been molesting them since they were children.
No proof was ever given to substantiate the claim.
The interview is the 48-year-old Menendez’s first since 1996 when he and his brother were jointly interviewed by Barbara Walters in their lone television interview, according to senior executive producer David Sloan.
Previously unbroadcast portions of that interview are included in “Truth and Lies: The Menendez Brothers — American Sons, American Murderers,” which airs from 9-11 p.m., Sloan said.
Sloan called the Walters interview extraordinary and said it “reveals clues into the reasons the brothers murdered their parents.”
The documentary will also include previously unseen home movies and pictures from the family vault, along with interviews with the brothers’ best friends and neighbors, the lead detectives, lawyers and jurors on the case, Sloan said.
“We decided to do this doc because we thought we had enough new voices, enough new material,” Sloan told City News Service.
“There are new voices — people close to the investigation and family insiders who’ve never talked before. There are home movies that have never been seen before that are compelling. There is a side of Eric that no one has ever seen before — told through contact sheets of a photo shoot that turned out to be very revealing.”
Viewers of the documentary “will see this crime — a story that’s been told many times — in a whole new way,” Sloan said.
“They will see details and nuance that will make them understand the Menendez family in ways that would never have occurred to them,” Sloan said.
“Lyle Menendez describes life inside his home as so explosive that it was like `living with an inch of kerosene on the floor.’ What was the match that ignited that fuel? No one will ever know.
“But hearing the story told from every vantage point — from friends, family, investigators and lawyers — raises new questions about the reasons behind this crime. Did they kill out of greed? Were they sexually abused? The debate will continue for years to come.”
—City News Service