in you to shoot your mom and dad. young rich handsome in a case made for hollywood they were ready for the camera it was the first televised courtroom drama that captivated the united states it was a huge deal erik and lyle menendez convicted of murdering their own parents. i ran around and shot my mom! it wasn t real. it just wasn t real. they re sociopaths and pretty big ones. now almost 30 years late chilling new details. evidence never broadcast before! a letter, hinting at secrets too dark to imagine. this is so outside of the norm something is going on i that house did they kill in cold blood or in crippling fear oh man it was gut-wrenching i wanted to bust the door down they spoke the truth abou what had happened. tonight, hear from the brother themselves people were afraid of him let s go through this bit b bit. there was no way he was gonna let this secret get out. silence destroyed our whole family here it was the shinin s
and here their parents are murdered we don t have a suspect yet. it s looking like a perfec crime to me, at that point zoeller began to wonder i erik s fantasy could be playin out in reality and then craig told zoelle about his visit to the menende house after the murders. erik said, do you wann know what happened? and he described shooting the parents and then he summed it all by saying, it could happen. and craig thought about it and he says, well, is h saying that s what he thinks happened here at the house or did they actually commit th crime? strange. as was the story the brother told about discovering their parents bodies the brothers said they sa this haze in the air and som smoke that they smelled. like gunpowder smoke or - gunpowder smoke but i mean, that dissipate pretty darned quick.
murder was unlawful, unjustified, and wholl premeditated in basic english, the prosecution s case was this. just the facts, ma am. fact number one lyle and erik driving down t san diego two days before th murders, to buy shotguns and with a stolen i.d. why are you using the fak i.d. cause you know you re going to be using the gun to do something you shouldn t be doing. that is evidence of intent after the murders, th prosecution showed the brother lied to the police, for months starting from the very momen lyle called 911. someone killed my parents and they did it all for the family fortune, the state said remember, lyle and erik ha searched for the will, jus days after their parents murders. and went on a lavish multi-state spending spree they were very aggressive about spending money, as soo as possible. yeah. which i thought was ver
on obscenity charges, but neve convicted. still, with the brothers publi accusations. he was nervous were you sorta day-by-day waiting for somebody to call you oh, yes be taken and put in handcuffs and yes. oh, the cops would be calling and the investigatio would take a turn one that n one expected coming up. new questions about the case and about the grieving sons. lyle, the way he wa spending money was ver strange. you begin to see a patter here and begin to think of greed. when dateline continues. [ music playing ] when we first arrived at st. jude, it was just claire and i. she was still recovering from her brain surgery. and side effects of that surgery meant that she had to relearn how to walk and how to speak.