The Menendez Murders: The Shocking Untold Story of the Menendez Family and the Killings that Stunned the Nation

by Robert Rand

Overview

Discover the definitive book on the Menendez case—and the primary source material for NBC's Law and Order True Crime: The Menendez Murders. 

A successful entertainment executive making $2 million a year. His former beauty queen wife. Their two sons on the fast track to success. But it was all a façade. 

The Menendez saga has captivated the American public since 1989. The killing of José and Kitty Menendez on a quiet Sunday evening in Beverly Hills didn't make the cover of People magazine until the arrest of their sons seven months later, and the case developed an intense cult following. When the first Menendez trial began in July 1993, the public was convinced that Lyle and Erik were a pair of greedy rich kids who had killed loving, devoted parents. 

But the real story remained buried beneath years of dark secrets. Until now. 

Journalist Robert Rand, who originally reported on the case for the Miami Herald and Playboy, has followed the Menendez murders from the beginning and has continued investigating and interviewing key sources for 28 years. Rand is the only reporter who covered the original investigation as well as both trials. With unparalleled access to the Menendez family and their history, including interviews with both brothers before and after their arrest, Rand has uncovered extraordinary details that certainly would have changed the fate of the brothers' first-degree murder conviction and sentencing to life without parole.

In The Menendez Murders: The Shocking Untold Story of the Menedez Family and the Killings That Stunned the Nation, Rand shares these intimate, never-before-revealed findings, including a deeply disturbing history of child abuse and sexual molestation in the Menendez family going back generations, and the shocking admission O.J. Simpson made to one of the Menendez brothers when they were inmates at the L.A. County Men's Central Jail.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781946885265
Publisher:	BenBella Books, Inc.
Publication date:	09/04/2018
Pages:	376
Sales rank:	237,968
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Robert Rand is an Emmy Award–winning journalist who works in TV, print, and digital media. He began covering the Menendez brothers case for the Miami Herald the day after the killings on August 21, 1989. He was in court daily for both trials and provided analysis for Court TV, ABC, and CBS News. In March 1991, Playboy published Rand's article "The Killing of Jose Menendez." The 14,000-word story was the longest article ever published by Playboy. Rand's print work includes stories contributed to People, The Guardian, Stern, Grazia, and Tropic, the Sunday magazine of the Miami Herald. He covered the William Kennedy Smith rape trial for Paris Match. 

In July 2016, Rand was hired by Wolf Films as a consultant working on the development of the NBC eight-hour limited series Law & Order True Crime: The Menendez Murders, which aired in the fall of 2017. Rand's unpublished manuscript of The Menendez Murders provided the primary source material for the series.

Rand has appeared as the primary interview in dozens of documentaries about the Menendez case, including ABC 20/20's "Truth and Lies: The Menendez Brothers" and Dateline NBC's "Unthinkable: The Menendez Murders," which both aired in 2017. 

Rand was awarded a Los Angeles Emmy Award for two years of stories at KCOP-TV in L.A. about an illegal immigrant who was wrongly convicted. The stories resulted in the overturning of a ten-year-old conviction and the release of the man from jail. He was a member of the Special Assignment investigative reporting group at CBS 2 in L.A. and the I-Team at KYW TV (Philadelphia) that won a Columbia-DuPont Silver Baton Award for a year-long series about wealthy property tax dodgers.

Table of Contents

Contents

Part I: Murder in Beverly Hills

Chapter 1: Nightmare on Elm Drive

Chapter 2: No Suspect(s). No Weapon(s).

Chapter 3: Living in Fear—Hollywood and the Mob

Chapter 4: A Family Mourns

Chapter 5: The Investigation Begins

Chapter 6: Millionaire Orphans

Chapter 7: Who Killed the Next Senator from Florida?

Part II: The Parents: Jose and Kitty

Chapter 8: The Menendezes of Havana

Chapter 9: True Love

Chapter 10: The American Dream

Part III: “The Boys”: Erik and Lyle

Chapter 11: A Close-Knit Family?

Chapter 12: Growing Up Menendez

Chapter 13: Hertz Man

Part IV: California Dreaming

Chapter 14: Inconvenient Women

Chapter 15: Troubled Sons

Chapter 16: Kitty’s World

Chapter 17: Friends

Chapter 18: Princeton

Chapter 19: Exposed Secrets

Chapter 20: Choices and Fears

Chapter 21: Kill or Be Killed

Chapter 22: What Have We Done?

Part V: Jerry and Judalon

Chapter 23: A Fateful Meeting

Chapter 24: The Confession

Chapter 25: November 2, 1989

Chapter 26: “Don’t Go to the Cops!”

Part VI: Closing In

Chapter 27: One Night in Malibu

Chapter 28: The Oziels—She Held Us Hostage

Chapter 29: The Informant—Judalon Smyth

Chapter 30: The BHPD Search Warrant

Part VII: Who Knows What Goes On Within a Family?

Chapter 31: The Arrest—Inside the Beverly Hills Bunker

Chapter 32: First-Degree Murder

Chapter 33: Unanswered Questions

Part VIII: Trial by Media

Chapter 34: The Escape Attempt

Chapter 35: Judalon Goes Public

Chapter 36: “Now We Can’t Succeed”

Part IX: Trial By Two Juries

Chapter 37: Showtime—Opening Statements

Chapter 38: The Prosecution—Guiltier than Sin?

Chapter 39: I Don’t Recall—Donovan Goodreau

Chapter 40: Trial Within a Trial—Dr. Leon Jerome Oziel

Chapter 41: The Prosecution Rests

Chapter 42: The Defense

Chapter 43: Sisters in Conflict

Chapter 44: A Compelling Witness

Chapter 45: Lyle’s Cross Examination

Chapter 46: Strange Sins—Erik Testifies

Chapter 47: The Return of Donovan Goodreau

Chapter 48: The Therapy Experts

Chapter 49: More Family Secrets Revealed

Chapter 50: Privilege Denied—The “Therapy Tape”

Chapter 51: The Soap Opera of Judalon Smyth

Chapter 52: Don’t Turn Away from the Pain

Chapter 53: Choose Your Victim

Chapter 54: Mistrials

Part X: Aftermath

Chapter 55: Erik, Lyle, and O.J.

Chapter 56: The Second Trial

Chapter 57: Defense on the Ropes

Chapter 58: The Verdicts—Life or Death?

Chapter 59: LWOP and a Wedding

Chapter 60: Erik and Andy Cano—The Letter

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

About the Author

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"Through his unparalleled access—and his relentlessly detailed reporting—Robert Rand became America’s unofficial ‘Menendez-whisperer’ when this story dominated the news. Now, Rand is back, with stunning, never-before seen revelations in The Menendez Murders—a landmark work that upends everything we thought we knew about these crimes, and may rock the criminal justice system. Deeply compelling and meticulously sourced, it’s the essential read of the year."

—Evan Wright, author Generation Kill

"What kind of journalist stays on a single story for 30 years? Meet Robert Rand . . . Even now he’s exposed new, hard-fought, deeply-concealed pieces that flip the entire story on its head."

—Arthur Jay Harris, author of Speed Kills and The Unsolved Murder of Adam Walsh

"Robert Rand, having covered this case from the beginning, is the only journalist who attended both trials gavel to gavel . . . Robert has spent the time required to understand this complicated case and has presented it in an unbiased, factual, compelling manner. This book tells the whole truth, and nothing but the truth."

—Hazel Thornton, author of Hung Jury: The Diary of a Menendez Juror

Editorial Reviews

"Through his unparalleled access—and his relentlessly detailed reporting—Robert Rand became America's unofficial ‘Menendez-whisperer' when this story dominated the news. Now, Rand is back, with stunning, never-before seen revelations  in The Menendez Murders—a landmark work that upends everything we thought we knew about these crimes, and may rock the criminal justice system. Deeply compelling and meticulously sourced, it's the essential read of the year."

—Evan Wright, author Generation Kill 

"What kind of journalist stays on a single story for 30 years? Meet Robert Rand . . . Even now he's exposed new, hard-fought, deeply-concealed pieces that flip the entire story on its head."

—Arthur Jay Harris, author of Speed Kills and The Unsolved Murder of Adam Walsh

"Robert Rand, having covered this case from the beginning, is the only journalist who attended both trials gavel to gavel . . . Robert has spent the time required to understand this complicated case and has presented it in an unbiased, factual, compelling manner. This book tells the whole truth, and nothing but the truth." 

—Hazel Thornton, author of Hung Jury: The Diary of a Menendez Juror

From the Publisher