Menéndez brothers - LAST CHANCE AT FREEDOM

DOES NEW EVIDENCE CAST DOUBT OVER THE GUILT OF THE INFAMOUS SIBLINGS?

- Michael Crooks

For many in 1989, it was a clear-cut case of greedy rich kids wanting it all when Lyle and Erik Menéndez killed their wealthy parents in their Beverly Hills mansion. Six months after the gruesome shotgun slayings of José and Mary Louise "Kitty" Menéndez, the brothers were arrested, with the prosecution claiming the motive for murder was their parents' $22 million estate. But for FBI criminal profiler Ann Burgess, it made no sense.

"The prosecution was saying it was for money," Burgess said in the new Disney+ true-crime documentary series Mastermind: To Think Like a Killer. "It wasn't adding up.

There had to be something else." What Burgess uncovered, through sessions with Lyle, were claims of years of sexual abuse by José that ultimately led the boys down an unthinkable path. Yet, after nearly seven years and two trials, a jury found Lyle and Erik guilty of first-degree murder in 1996 and they were sent to prison for the rest of their lives.