THE ONLY MENENDEZ VICTIMS ARE DEAD

UPDATE BELOW

This piece was published in 1994, when the first Menendez trial ended in a hung jury. Since the boys are back in the news, it’s worth another look.

An update follows this essay.

The Menendez murder trial ended in a hung jury. Eric and Lyle Menendez admit to killing their parents, who were eating in front of the TV. The boys killed them with a shotgun. When the first blast at their mother failed to kill her, they shot her again as she attempted to crawl away. It was not done in the heat of an argument. It was not the result of a quarrel. It was not done in a sudden rage. They pre-meditatively murdered their parents, claiming they had suffered years of sexual and psychological abuse.

The defense attorneys played the ever-popular victimization card designed to justify their heinous act. The boys, we were told, were not criminals; they were victims. Defense attorneys argued that the brothers acted out of fear and desperation; they were terrified of their father.

Understand that the boys are grown men. Understand that their parents were not planning to kill them or even cut them out of their will. Understand that they shot their mother in the face. Understand soon after the slayings, one of them bought a very expansive Porsche and a Rolex watch. Understand that the “cute and collegiate” lads stood to inherit millions of dollars.

Their defense was successful because victimization is all the rage. Americans with their liberal sensibilities, tend to feel sorry for the weak. Minorities, women, gays, children, criminals and the homeless can claim to be victims of some kind of unfairness, then they cash in.

Advocates for the homeless, for example, portray them as victims of a bad economy or a heartless landlord, or of an employer who arbitrarily tosses them out. They fail to mention that some lose their homes or jobs due to alcoholism, drugs, incompetence, unreliability or mental illness. Landlords are not in the charity business. If tenants fail to pay rent, landlords have the right to evict. If contractors and employers do not show up and do the job, employers have the right to fire them.

Considering today’s climate, we should not be surprised to learn that more than half of the Menendez jury bought the victimization argument.

The Menendez case brings to mind a celebrated murder trial in the 1920s. Clarence Darrow, probably the best-known criminal defense lawyer in American history, believed that “criminals are victims of society. “…people are sent to jail,” he argued, “because they are poor.” Theft and kidnapping aren’t crimes, he insisted with a straight face, just “trades” or “professions.” Darrow went on to defend two wealthy and brilliant young men, (the spiritual predecessors of Lyle and Eric) Leopold and Loeb, who kidnapped and murdered a 14-year-old boy, “for the sake of a thrill.”

Darrow argued they were not responsible for their actions. “They killed because they were made that way.” Their upbringing is to blame. Society is to blame; their genes are to blame.

They are victims of their past.

Absurd as these arguments were, Darrow was just getting warmed-up. (Lyle and Eric’s attorneys should listen to Darrow’s creative victimization arguments.) He claimed that Leopold had picked-up his murderous ideas from reading Nitzsche’s philosophy. Therefore, “the university [where he got the book] would be more to blame than he is. The scholars of the world, the publishers of the world” are more to blame.

“Your honor,” Darrow concluded, “it is hardly fair to hang a 19-year-old boy for the philosophy that was taught him at the university.”

Hang the university!

Hang Nietzsche!

Hang the scholars!

Not content to rely mere temporal forces, Darrow went on to make courtroom history by blaming “the infinite forces that conspired to form him, the infinite forces that were at work producing him ages before he was born.”

Cold blooded murder was written off as, “…one of those things that just happened.”

The judge was in tears at the end of Darrow’s summation. The infinite forces were found guilty. Leopold and Loeb were victims. The young murderers’ sentences were reduced from death to life.

The Menendez brothers will be tried again. Hopefully, the next jury will not be blinded by victimization smokescreens. The Menendez brothers are not victims; the only victims are their parents.

THE MENENDEZ BROTHERS RISE AGAIN

Update: April 5, 2025

After their second trial, the brothers were found guilty and sentenced to life without parole. They have been incarcerated for thirty years. Now in their fifties, Lyle and Erick have never married, had children, had careers, gone out to dinner, driven a car, walked in the woods, lived in a comfortable house or taken a vacation.

Should we feel sorry for the boys?

Answer: Their parents won’t be taking a vacation anytime soon.

Within days of the murder the boys went on a shopping spree spending $15,000 on three Rolex watches, a $64,000 Porsche Carrera, and a new Jeep Wrangler. Later that year, Lyle put a $300,000 deposit on a $500,000 restaurant in Princeton, N.J.

They were due to inherit $14 million.

Until now.

New evidence recently emerged supporting their claim that their father sexually abused them; they were terrified and saw killing their parents as their only escape.

“I’ve been trying to avoid dad,” wrote seventeen-year-old Erik in the handwritten letter. “It’s still happening Andy but it’s worse for me now. I can’t explain it. He so overweight that I can’t stand to see him,' I never know when it’s going to happen and it’s driving me crazy. Every night I stay up thinking he might come in.”

Come in to do what? The letter didn’t say. Erik was upset, he said his mother was not there mentally and his dad was “crazy,” but sex was not mentioned.

The letter was never introduced as evidence during their trial.

My purpose is not to analyze the case again. It’s been done before. Here’s a small sample.

Should we feel sorry for the boys? Were they sexually abused by their own father? When they confessed to the killings in therapy, they didn’t mention the alleged abuse. “I am 100 percent sure that they fabricated their defense,” Pamela Bozanich the prosecutor at the trial said, “I’m not 90 percent sure; I’m 100 percent sure.”

Why so much interest? Because premeditatively murdering one’s parents is not only heinous, but almost incomprehensible. They killed them for the money. They killed because they hated them. They acted like sociopaths: they can only interpret events as what is good for them; they lack conscience and empathy. Superficially charming, they manipulate for personal gain, they have no remorse for actions that hurt others.

Meanwhile, last year, 300,000 people signed a petition to free them.