Original subtitles

*

- Violent things don't happen in Beverly Hills.

They just don't. It was shocking.

- Everything was colliding at that moment,

and my brother said...

- This was it, and they were gonna kill us.

- And I just felt chills over my body.

- I'd been in this business for over 33 years,

and I've heard of very few murders

that were more savage than this one was.

- What I'd done was just--

I just wanted to undo it.

I just wanted to go back in time.

I didn't want this moment to be real.

- The police began to focus on the boys

as possibly the killers.

- The police were making it clear

that they felt that we were involved.

And just to be candid,

I was acting like a guilty person.

- I had to tell someone what I had done,

so I went to Dr. Oziel.

- It was a very intense meeting,

Oziel telling me that I seemed menacing to him.

- Nothing is more fundamental to the Menendez brothers case

than the outrage perpetrated by Oziel.

Nothing.

- Today at approximately 1:20 p.m.,

Beverly Hills Police detectives

arrested Joseph Lyle Menendez, 22,

for the August murders of his mother and father,

Maria Louise "Kitty" Menendez and José Enrique Menendez.

His brother, Erik Galen Menendez, 19,

also wanted for the same crime, is being sought

and is believed to be out of the country.

- I was in Israel,

playing on the lower circuit of the pro tour in tennis.

And I got a phone call one morning

from a person that I knew in Los Angeles.

He said, "I don't know how to tell you this,

but your brother's been arrested."

And he said, "It's all over the news here."

My thought was, at that point is,

"I got to get back to Lyle."

It never crossed my mind to run away.

I could have.

- Erik, it turns out, was in Israel

at a tennis tournament with his tennis coach.

And Lyle's uncle Carlos Baralt said,

"Please don't extradite him.

"I will get him back.

I will get him back immediately."

- I was in Tel Aviv

and, using my passport, bought a plane ticket,

and I assumed that would pop up on the computer screen.

As it turned out, that did not happen.

I remember flying into Miami,

and that's when I was met with my aunt Marta

and my cousin Andy and a Miami detective.

I went on the plane with my cousin Andy,

not the detective, no police officers, nobody.

And I flew to Los Angeles with Andy.

I told him what happened.

We had a special connection.

We were like brothers.

Those were the last few hours that I was able to spend free,

which turned out to be

very precious moments in my life,

because Andy would later die in 2003.

I knew that I was going to be arrested and sent to jail.

There was a firestorm happening in Los Angeles,

and they were waiting for me, and that's where I was headed.

And I knew that I would no longer be

in control of anything that happened to me.

I'm Erik Menendez.

I'm speaking to you from the Donovan Correctional Facility

in California, near the Mexican border.

I'm serving a sentence of life in prison

without the possibility of parole.

I've heard many different versions of my life

told in the media, and those stories are fiction.

I think it's time people hear the truth

from my own words,

without the restrictions of a courtroom.

You may think you know my story,

but, really, you couldn't possibly,

because I'm telling it to you now for the first time.

*

- When Lyle and Erik Menendez were arrested,

it was shocking.

- When they were both arrested,

the first thought was, "Oh, my God!"

and then "Oh, my God."

Sort of a second thought was, "Wow,

maybe the pieces fit here."

- I promise you everyone was stunned.

There was nobody who said,

"Ah, I figured that from the beginning."

Nobody.

*

- I was in the back of the police car,

and Detectives Zoeller and Linehan

were driving me to Los Angeles County Jail.

They actually said that they regretted

that I had to go there, because they were worried

that I wouldn't make it to trial.

That's how dangerous the place was.

The Los Angeles County Jail was packed

with some of the most violent criminals of the day.

When you first enter it, it actually looks

like a dark nightmare.

It's dirty. It smells like urine.

At night, rats come out.

Literally, these large rats, they take over.

Then you hear screams.

You hear screams echoing through the halls

of people being beaten.

You hear people being tortured.

You hear people being assaulted

in other cells or raped.

In quiet, you'll hear just people start crying.

They're sobbing.

My first week there,

the guy three cells down from me hung himself.

*

Dr. Vicary was coming to visit me in the county jail

and trying to basically save my life.

Many of my thoughts were simply suicide.

Emotionally, I was collapsing.

- My impression of Erik

during my first hours that I spent with him

was that he was so distraught, he was so emotional,

he was so depressed

that he would break down and start sobbing

at any discussion about his family

that even involved me asking simple background questions

about his parents.

My impression of Erik was, "Boy, this kid is a mess."

- And so Dr. Vicary was there,

I think, just about every week,

and I pretty much just spent the whole time just crying.

- For months and months, all he did was tell me

how wonderful his parents were,

how his mother was heroic in her own history

and his father was a heroic figure

and came from a heroic family.

- José Menendez

was a Cuban refugee

who came to this country with nothing,

just with the clothes on his back.

- The Menendez family history was told

over and over and over again to Lyle and I.

The legend and the stories

that my father was eager to tell

were of the extraordinary story

of my family's rise in Cuba

to a kind of--like, almost like a nobility state

where they were-- where my grandmother was

this Olympic swimmer

that had won medals in the Panama Olympics

and my grandfather was a national soccer star

and they were this power couple in Cuba

and they had this terrific sort of fairy-tale life.

When Castro eventually betrayed the country

and executed 600 people, their homes were raided,

and they were under the threat of being imprisoned,

and so they had to escape the country.

And when they escaped the country one at a time,

they had to leave everything behind.

*

He's now in Midwest America.

He's alone.

He didn't look like everyone else.

He doesn't speak like everyone else.

So he's derided.

Now, my mother is a senior,

and she is just the opposite of my father.

She's very popular.

She works for the television--

for the whole-- you know, for the university

in the communications department.

She's a good-looking woman, and she's outgoing,

and she's charismatic.

I think that my mother represented to my father

everything that he wanted to be in America.

My mother was attracted to my father

because my father represented

this kind of mysterious Latin figure

that was also very focused on her.

- They get married in '63,

and they came to Arizona to visit,

and that was when I met him.

Kitty loved him, I loved him,

and that was all that mattered.

My brothers and my father weren't happy

that he wasn't...

Caucasian, perhaps.

Once he started making money,

everything looked better to them.

*

- It was a mission on his part

that he had to become the richest, the most powerful,

with the most beautiful sons, with the most beautiful wife,

with the--he was going to accomplish everything.

- José told me a number of times

the thing that was the scarring thing in his life

was, he worked as a dishwasher at the 21 Club.

And that job, in which he sensed his terrible fall

from a solid upper-middle-class life

to that kind of position,

he never, ever got over it.

- With José, it was only work.

Every time he came to town,

somebody got fired.

And he was--he was just a--

you know, no-emotion type of guy.

- He was this radically determined person,

and he had this almost--

almost a delusional self-confidence.

- José Menendez is chairman of the board,

president, and chief executive officer

of Live Entertainment, joining us here in Los Angeles.

And I should point out this is the company, folks,

that brings you the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles video,

which, seriously, is a hot video right now.

- It is.

So the company is broad-based,

and it provides pretty much what the consumer wants.

- Mm-hmm.

And you must have projections for down the road,

what you're expecting to make at some point.

- We think 1989 will be a tremendous year.

- He was not the most popular person

in the entertainment industry.

And he was ruthless.

I think that is the word for José.

He was known for being ruthless.

And he was ruthless with his kids.

He could have whatever he wanted

except the love of his sons.

And that was what killed him.

*

- In Los Angeles, two brothers have pleaded innocent.

- First the Menendez brothers.

- The Menendez brothers,

accused of murdering their parents in Beverly Hills.

- It was the trial of the century.

- The Menendez case was a real shocker.

- It was sensational almost from day one.

- The Menendez murder case has become so sensational

that every development in it

becomes the center of public fascination.

- The Menendez brothers-- the media goes wild,

puts them on the cover of "People" magazine,

and makes heroes out of them.

- The Menendez trial was classic human drama.

- The world was riveted to it.

- The Menendez trial

launched Court TV.

- There will be

television camera in the courtroom.

- Cameras were all over.

- It was just a spectacle.

[dramatic music]

- Were you shocked to hear

that Mr. Menendez was murdered by his own sons, possibly?

- Beyond belief. It's beyond belief.

- This was supposed to be a slam-dunk case.

- Guilty, guilty, guilty.

There were those kinds of cases

where it kind of felt like

a jury would go into the jury room,

say that, and come right back out and say it.

- As a juror, you were aware of why they were there,

and they had confessed.

It wasn't ever a question

of finding whether they were guilty or not.

You knew that was a given.

- The real explosion of media became so overwhelming

that I was in shock.

I was being portrayed as a monster,

someone who would kill for money.

When I first came into the arraignments,

I was so nervous, and so I walked out there,

and Leslie made a joke,

and it was so nerve-racking that I smiled.

And it was this defense mechanism that came out,

but on the cameras,

from then until the rest of eternity,

have me smiling as if I think the whole thing is a joke.

And, ironically, it's exactly the opposite

of how I felt, because behind the scenes,

I can't stop crying.

I'm on massive doses of antidepressants,

and I just want to die.

Instead, what's portrayed is this arrogant kid

who thinks that this is all a joke.

And who does he think he is?

And what an awful person.

And it's exactly the opposite

of what was actually happening.

- Erik Galen Menendez, how do you plead?

- Not guilty, Your Honor.

Because the media attention became so extreme,

there was no reconciling the trial

with the district attorney.

It became a fight

with the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office

that wouldn't not normally have happened.

- Erik was out on the lawn weeping.

mm hmm.

-in agony.

mm hmm.

That's your characterization of it. Not mine.

- We had a number of high-profile trials,

and we had pretty much lost 'em all.

And so each time a new one came up,

one would end and we'd lose,

a new one would come up, you know,

and we were like, "Oh, my God."

- Both juries are present.

Good morning to you all, ladies and gentlemen.

all: Good morning.

- And we're ready to resume with the trial.

- Judge Weisberg was a prominent judge

in Los Angeles, superior court judge.

He was a former prosecutor.

He had presided over the McMartin trial.

- Through more than 2 1/2 years on trial,

Raymond Buckey and his mother, Peggy McMartin Buckey,

sat accused of horrendous acts of child abuse.

In the end, the jury reached a verdict on 52 charges.

- We, the jury, in the above-entitled action,

find the varied defendants not guilty.

- He was also the presiding judge

over the Rodney King beating trial

of the four officers that were accused

of beating Rodney King,

and then the four officers were acquitted.

[people shouting]

And that sparked widespread looting and riots

and burning in Los Angeles.

crowd: No justice, no peace!

- And he became pretty famous for that.

- There was just a lot of concern

that we in Los Angeles were all flakes

and we couldn't convict anybody.

- The DA's office needed vindication,

and the Menendez brothers case looked to them

to be a slam dunk.

- When you're the prosecutor,

when you get a high-profile case

where you know you're the shizzle in that office,

to get that kind of case means you made it.

The case went to Lester Kuriyama

and Pam Bozanich.

- Pam Bozanich was an excellent lawyer.

She was absolutely convinced

that these young men should be convicted of murder.

- This is the woman who gave birth to them.

This is what they did to their mother.

- Let's be honest.

In our Los Angeles County,

most murder cases, prosecutors easily win.

They're the tough ones,

and Pam in particular was known as being tough.

- At the time you had the conversation

with Erik Menendez, was there anything about it

that made you think you should go run and write it down

for later reference?

- The judge determined

they would have to have two juries.

Each boy would be tried separately, in essence.

And Jill was chosen to represent Lyle,

and Leslie represented Erik.

They were an interesting team, Leslie and Jill,

because Jill was elegant, almost patrician, subdued.

- He's anxious. He's frightened.

It's very difficult to be facing a trial

where your life is at stake.

- Leslie, on the other hand,

was very fierce, very articulate,

and she dominated the courtroom

when she was talking to a jury.

- Ms. Abramson for the defense.

- Good afternoon.

- I remember when Leslie came in.

She's a whirlwind:

high energy, eccentric personality,

very smart, talking a mile a minute,

just larger-than-life personality.

And it became really clear

from just meeting her for five minutes

that this is someone who will fight for you.

- Leslie Abramson. [laughs]

- I'm surprised he doesn't just

take out a rifle in the courtroom and shoot him.

That's a fascinating theory.

- Well, fascinating or not, that's what happened.

- Well, I object to it.

- They called her a ball cutter.

She was tenacious,

she was a good lawyer,

and she was intimidating.

And she scared people.

- Isn't that what happened?

- Ms. Abramson, I'm sure--

- Is that what happened?

- She was very nurturing.

She was compassionate.

But she was also very tough.

Leslie Abramson is a tough person.

She's got a huge heart, but she's very strong.

And so there was a lot of accountability with her,

not a lot of excuses and excuse-making.

She was motherly but sort of like a tough mother bear.

- I admit to an enormous bias in favor of this client.

- If I ever got in trouble,

if I ever got accused of murder,

I'd want her to defend me.

- It had been three to four years

after we were arrested that the first trial began.

It was just long sort of waiting periods

in the Los Angeles County Jail.

*

- I'll now turn to the lawyers,

and they may make their opening statements.

- The evidence will show that Erik Menendez is guilty

of the premeditated and deliberate murders

of Mary and José Menendez.

*

- There is no issue

as to who killed José and Mary Louise Menendez.

Why they were killed is what the focus

of all of our evidence will be on.

- The prosecution went first

and made the case that they had killed the parents for money.

- The defendants lied a great deal

before they were caught.

What makes you think they would stop lying now?

- These two men did it for selfish financial reasons.

- Did you consider his intelligence and his acting

in evaluating the truthfulness of the information

that he gave you about what had happened to him?

- I took that into consideration, yes.

- Did you reject those?

- Yes. Essentially, yes.

- They cared about their sons.

They might not have been perfect.

But they were human beings, and they had the right to live.

- The whole prosecution strategy

was to show that the reason for the killings

was that they thought that their father

was going to disinherit them.

- We had a pretty good case.

- They just kept saying the same old phrases

over and over.

- And what was the phrase?

- "Oh, my God. Oh, my God."

- What was the cause of death?

- Multiple shotgun wounds.

- What was the mode of death?

- Homicide.

- We had their spending.

- Do you remember about how much this automobile cost?

- Between $60,000 and $70,000.

- Now, I believe you indicated

you did other shopping.

What kind of shopping did you do with them,

aside from homes and vehicles?

- We went clothes shopping.

We bought suits and shoes.

- We had the record of sale of the shotguns

that we thought they used.

- It's a Mossberg 12-gauge shotgun.

It's a pump-action shotgun.

And it has an 18 1/2 inch barrel

and is capable of holding a total

of six 12-gauge shot shells.

- The break in the case had come from a woman

by the name of Judalon Smyth.

She said, "I have some information

"about this guy that was treating me,

"and he turned out to be my boyfriend,

and he was also the psychologist for the Menendez brothers."

- Erik unburdened himself to Dr. Oziel

and he, in turn, to Judalon Smyth,

and that was, as you know, what caused them

to ultimately be arrested.

*

- Seeing Dr. Oziel, I was falling apart,

and I needed extensive help and therapy.

I had huge, huge waves of guilt and remorse,

and I just broke down, and I told him what I had done.

When I went to him, he was married with children,

but he was having an affair with this woman,

Judalon Smyth.

And he would tell her things

that his clients talked to him about.

- She fed enough information

that we knew that there were tapes.

- He's recording

their therapy sessions

without the consent of the patient.

You cannot do that.

This is confidential,

and everything a patient is telling you

is privileged communication.

- If you otherwise fit the definition of "patient"

and they fit the definition of "therapist,"

what you tell them is like talking to God.

It is sacrosanct.

- Then he has his mistress,

who I believe was also a patient of his,

standing at the door and listening in

on their therapy sessions.

And then she gets pissed off and calls the police

when he breaks up with her.

- She wanted-- I guess you'd call it revenge.

- Because he told Judalon Smyth,

he was facing disbarment

if he didn't specifically say

that he was afraid of Lyle and I.

There was a clause in the law that said

if he claims that he was afraid,

that he could legally divulge that

to anther person.

- A state court ruled that audiotapes made

while the Menendez brothers were undergoing therapy

could be admitted as evidence in their murder trial.

- It went back and forth for a while in the court.

They finally were allowed to admit the evidence

of the recordings, which were wrong to begin with,

because the doctor-patient privilege

had been violated or nullified

because Lyle had threatened the psychologist.

- And could you please describe his demeanor

when he came into the office where you and Erik were?

- He was extremely upset, threatening, menacing.

- The only legal reason he could give for doing that

is to say that he was afraid,

but he was never, ever afraid or threatened.

- And what did he respond to you

when you said that you did not choose

to life your life in fear?

- He said, "Neither did my father."

- Nothing upset me more about the Menendez brothers case

than the admission of the Oziel tapes

and the behavior of Jerry Oziel.

When Erik was burdened so heavily

with what was on his mind,

he went to the one person he thought he could trust,

his psychologist.

The idea that Dr. Oziel got on the witness stand

and talked about that confidential communication

outrages me.

It's indefensible.

- It just really pisses me off that somebody could do this,

somebody could violate the privacy and the safety

of their patient.

That idea that they should never tell anybody anything,

it was proven to them.

*

- You wound up moving your unstable girlfriend

into your family home for three months,

starting in December, didn't you?

- Would you like to ask me why?

- No, I would like to ask you what I would like to ask you,

and that's what I just asked you.

Now, can you answer it?

- Okay, let's not argue.

- There are good lessons to learn from what Leslie did.

Most prosecutors are used to defense lawyers stipulating

or being conciliatory to the experts.

Not her.

- And after all, you did take these notes.

These are all your words, correct?

- It was such a crazy, crazy case.

The Menendez brothers in those sweaters.

I'd like to know the science behind the sweaters.

Now, we always thought, "Oh, yeah, they're dressing them up

to look like Joe College."

- Now, looking back on it, okay, yeah,

maybe the sweaters were a little too much.

But I get the idea.

You were trying to make them look like, you know,

everyday kids.

- For us, they were butchers.

They were just spoiled, rotten kids

who loved money more than they loved their parents.

*

- And I started receiving letters from people,

and then there would be people outside the courtroom

with signs either for me or against me.

It was just too much

for me to sort of cope with in my brain.

- I was really surprised at kind of the groupies

that have been here for a while.

- I'm kind of obsessed with the trial.

It's a real interesting trial, and I--

I want them to acquitted.

- I think they're really cute. [laughs]

- Not being on the jury and not being their lawyer,

there's a limit to what I can do,

other than show my support.

*

- I wrote one letter to Erik.

Generally, the letter was, "I support you.

"I feel sorry for what you're going through.

I believe in your testimony."

We started a communication through letter writing

through the trial.

He was telling me about how they put him on Xanax

and how stressed he was

about how the trial was going.

- I was being portrayed as someone

who would kill for money,

someone who had no empathy

or had a disregard for the lives of my parents.

These were horrible, horrible things.

And the truth of what happened wasn't being told,

and I had to get used to simply being the villain,

and there was nothing I could do about it.

If you can imagine the worst moment of your life,

the one moment you want to undo

and would give your own life to go back in time and change

suddenly becoming the center of a media storm,

it was horrifying.

What was surreal and bizarre

was me reading a newspaper

and there'd be an article about Lyle and I,

some of which were simply false.

- The "LA Times" sensationalized this case.

I read their stories. I read them every single day.

I couldn't believe it. It was not objective.

It was overtly slanted against the Menendez brothers.

- If you're portrayed

as a greedy, arrogant, playboy bastard kid,

then that's what you're going to be seen as,

and that's how you're going to be judged.

That was the narrative,

and that was the narrative I was seeing,

this persona of me being portrayed.

I didn't like the persona of Erik Menendez.

- They did take certain actions

that brought this upon themselves.

They're not entirely victims here.

In fact, they're more--

they're more perpetrators than victims

when you consider that they took two lives.

- They were known as "the boys" throughout the trial,

even though they actually went into their 20s

by the time the trial was over.

- Boys are not supposed to be "victims."

- At 18, you're not a boy.

You're not a child.

You're not this young little victim, basically.

- The people of the state of California

rest their case in chief

against defendant Erik Menendez.

*

- Everyone thinks the case is going pretty well.

But, I mean, I know Leslie,

and I know how good she is,

so I was just wondering.

I said, "Is it really?"

But there's nothing I could do at this point.

- I don't believe that there is any such thing

as an all-American family.

What the facade is, it has nothing to do

with what's really going on inside.

Every family has a secret.

It just depends on how bad that secret really is.

- At some point, I think Leslie fully understood

everything that happened

and the trauma that has happened in my life

and just built up a presentation for a jury

about the most horrible stuff of my life.

*

- Between the ages of 6 and 18,

my client, Erik Menendez,

was sexually molested by his father.

If a boy, even a teenage boy,

is being sexually molested,

is it his fault?

- It was a very strange case

unlike anything that we had seen in LA.

It was the first case to bring out

what I call the dir-- America's dirty little secret

of child sexual abuse in upper-class families.

- Well, the big question is, do you believe him?

I mean, I think people were really surprised

by the defense in this case.

- What mattered in the trial--

I think the only thing that mattered--

was what happened that week

that caused me to be so terrified

that I could ever pull that trigger.

And so to get there,

to understand how I could think this,

who's gonna tell that story?

- This family was living the American dream.

But all of a sudden, this American dream

was just a facade.

- I have tried, but I can't remember one time

when I ever saw Kitty and José hug each other.

They would pose for pictures.

They put on the airs

of being this great, happy, well-together family.

Inside, there was threatening.

There was yelling.

I lived with them for over a year.

I couldn't take it anymore.

- I wish I never lived with them,

because I wouldn't have known

the behind-the-doors scenario was going on in that house.

- My bedroom was downstairs,

and there were two single beds.

And Lyle came downstairs one night--

it was before bedtime and--

wanting to sleep in the other bed.

And he said that he was afraid

that his dad was going to come into his room,

that he and his dad

had been touching each other "down there."

And he indicated his groin area.

So I went to get Kitty,

and I told her what was going on.

She didn't say anything.

She just took him by the arm and took him back upstairs

and took him back to his bedroom,

and that was it.

Kitty and José were like king and queen,

and so it was just not in my head

to second-guess what they did.

- What I experienced while living with them

was kind of strange.

One time, I went into their room.

I was talking with Lyle,

and as I'm sitting on the bed, I'm looking,

and under the bed is a Tupperware container.

"What the hell is that for?"

And then Lyle goes, "No, don't touch that."

Only it was too late; I'm already on that,

and I just went over, and I grabbed it out.

And to my dismay, it was a Tupperware container

that had feces in it.

And I looked over at him, and I said,

"What the [bleep] is this?"

He looked at me, and he says, "Oh, I get nervous.

"I don't want to go to the bathroom

"or tell Mom that I have to go to the bathroom,

so I just go to the bathroom, and I close it up."

I'm like, "What the [bleep]?"

*

- You learned, "Don't talk

about what goes on in this home."

And the reason is

that climate of secrecy.

And these families often are isolated,

so they don't have a sense of even what's normal.

- The trauma that both of the brothers suffered

not only involved verbal and psychological humiliation

and hypercriticism.

Erik told me it involved physical abuse at times.

But there was something more going on as well.

- Lyle and I had fought so hard

to keep the secrets from coming out.

But when I was first molested, it was by Lyle.

He would take me out to the woods,

and he would have me bent over,

and he would stick things in me.

He was an abuser, a bullier, and he hurt me.

- My father would fondle me,

and he would ask me to do the same with him,

and I would-- I would touch him.

We would undress.

He used a toothbrush

and some sort of shaving utensil brush

in the bedroom.

We'd have what we called object sessions,

and he'd just slide my pants down

or take my pants off.

He'd have a tube of Vaseline, and he'd rape me.

I took Erik out to the woods.

I took a toothbrush also,

and I played with Erik in the same way.

[in shaky voice] And I'm sorry.

- Lyle was just modeling behavior

that he had experienced.

This occurred when they were very, very young,

and they didn't quite fully understand

what was right and what was wrong,

and they didn't know it was wrong at the time.

Lyle was mimicking what his father had done to him.

- It was about six to eight months of work with him

before it started to come out

in a very halting, limited way.

Erik said the father began touching their genitals,

and this made the brothers uncomfortable,

but Erik didn't know what to make of it.

He thought that this was normal,

'cause his father said, "This is all normal.

"This is part of helping you be a better athlete,

helping you to relax" and so forth.

*

- This house in Monsey,

that's where a lot of the bad stuff

began to happen in my life.

The scariness and the violence for me as a child

began in that house

and in the forest outside that house.

The darkness started when I was six.

At the time, I actually saw it as just the opposite.

I saw it as a way of my dad expressing

that he loved me.

I believe he was a brilliant man

and a sick man.

I loved him, and I hated him.

But the most overwhelming memory of my dad

is that I feared him.

He had a darkness.

- Objection, Your Honor, and move to strike.

- Overruled.

- Speculation, Your Honor. - Overruled.

- Leslie Abramson wouldn't back down.

And the judge would reprimand her.

- Somehow, it seems that you might be interrupting

just a bit here.

- She would keep going, and she would keep going.

- You tend to shake your head negatively

when the court rules against you.

- Yes, I do, Your Honor.

- And you had better stop doing that,

or the court's going to find you in contempt.

- Well, the court may be finding me in contempt

pretty soon anyway,

because I'm finding the court's rulings

astonishingly biased.

- It was like a prize fight

when you watched those two in the courtroom.

- She knew who she represented,

and Leslie could care less

about whether she made a judge angry

or she made the prosecution angry

or even reporters.

- You want that? That's what you get today.

- It was her job to be a warrior.

- You want to convict him for his crime? Fine.

You want to victimize him more? Not fine.

Do you have another question?

- Leslie was a fighter and a believer.

I dated Angie Dickinson during that time,

and Angie hated the Menendez brothers,

hated everything they stood for

to kill their parents.

You know, she was law-and-order Angie.

And we had dinner with Leslie Abramson,

and Leslie Abramson said at the dinner,

"These boys, I would adopt them.

That's how much I love them."

And Angie kicked me under the table

with a kick I still feel the pain in the shin

with the high heels.

She gave me a schwerzach schachamug.

But she was very mad at Leslie, but Leslie believed it.

Leslie, she did a hell of a job that first trial.

- In the early stages

of José Menendez's seduction of his son,

which our experts will tell you is a classic pattern

among incestuous males,

he told the child that this was their special secret,

to be shared with no one.

- A couple of years, we moved to Pennington.

And I know that my night terrors,

the things where it began to manifest inside of me, began.

In Pennington, things had progressed

where he would have me massage him,

and I would do so with my mouth.

And I remember one time him holding my head

and I started to gag,

and he forced himself in my mouth,

and I got scared.

I remember that moment,

because that was the first time

that I really remember feeling fear.

And I remember afterwards, he kind of rubbed my head

and said that, you know, I'd been good and a good boy.

- This is page 41 of my notes.

The molestation started at age six.

That was the massages.

Then it became sexual at the age of seven,

and it involved oral copulation.

Then there was intercourse

between the ages of nine and ten.

- The first time that he tried to penetrate me,

I--I didn't just feel fear.

I wanted to scream inside.

I wanted to--I wanted to scream.

I remember the moment that things really changed.

I was--pretty sure I was, like, 11.

And I remember there was an argument

that he was having with my mom,

and it had become, like, a violent argument.

And I could hear him coming up the stairs,

and he came, and he opened the door,

and he slammed the door, and he...

made me get down on my knees.

He had me perform oral sex on him.

I remember afterwards, he pushed me away,

and I started to-- I started crying.

He said, "Why can't you just be more like your brother?

"And why do you have to cry all the time?

"Why can't you just be good enough

to be a Menendez?"

And then he said, "You'll get used to it."

There was no more "this is something I am doing

"because I love you and because we have a special bond

that I don't want anyone to know about."

That was no longer a part of what was happening.

- It wasn't anything that came up

until after the attorneys got ahold of them.

They're arrested, and lawyers come in,

and then the next thing you know,

"I was abused."

It was too pat.

It just didn't seem real.

- The fact that they didn't report it at the time

did not mean that it was a lie.

The fact that they were healthy, good-looking, wealthy young men

didn't mean that it was a lie,

that certainly child sexual abuse happens

in every kind of a family.

- Children who've been abused oftentimes don't tell,

because sometimes they don't know that they've been abused

until later in their lives.

Children tend to trust adults,

so at certain times in their development,

if they've been abused or punished,

they feel that they've done something wrong.

- We were taken aback

at this revelation of what caused this murder.

We even interviewed, in New York, a girlfriend

that José had at the time.

He was having an affair with another woman,

and he was married to a woman.

- Having mistresses has nothing to do

with being a pedophile.

You can have mistresses and still, you know,

be sexually inappropriate in other areas of your life.

- You know, this is kind of a farfetched defense.

Let's see how this plays out.

- You heard about some of the things

that he liked to do to his little boy.

- In the media, that's all you would hear,

is that these two rich boys killed parents for money.

The people who think that

did not sit through the same trial that I did.

- He'd rape me.

- Would you cry?

- Yes.

- Gut-wrenching.

And then the grief that they shared, really,

between each other, I think,

was extremely compelling.

- I thought the testimony was compelling,

just as watching Laurence Olivier act

is very compelling as well.

- You will have to ask the question,

"Why did she never enter her son's room

when José Menendez was alone with him?"

- I think there could have been some abuse.

I always tend to think, in these high-profile cases,

that the truth is somewhere in between.