0:00 August twentieth, 1989.0:01 A frantic 911 call shatters the quiet of Beverly Hills.0:06 On the line is twenty-one-year-old Lyle Menendez, hysterical.0:10 He’s just come home with his younger brother, Erik.0:14 He’s screaming that someone has killed his parents.0:18 When police arrive at the sprawling mansion on Elm Drive, they find a scene of unimaginable carnage.0:26 Jose and Kitty Menendez, a wealthy entertainment executive and his wife, have been executed with shotguns.0:34 It looks like a professional mob hit.0:37 The two sons, orphaned and sobbing, are led away.0:41 For months, they were seen as victims.0:44 Two handsome, grieving boys who had lost everything.0:48 They inherited their parents' fortune and began spending it.0:53 Lavishly.0:54 Rolex watches.0:55 A Porsche.0:55 A new restaurant.0:57 The police watched.0:58 But the money wasn't the real story.1:01 The real story was happening inside the boys' heads.1:05 The family portrait was a lie.1:07 Jose wasn't just a demanding father; he was, according to his sons, a tyrant.1:14 A monster who subjected them to years of horrific psychological and sexual abuse.1:20 Kitty, their mother, was portrayed as a depressed, alcoholic woman who knew about the abuse...1:27 and did nothing.1:28 The boys lived in a prison of silk sheets and unbearable secrets.1:34 The pressure built for years.1:36 Until one night, they decided the only way out was to pull the trigger themselves.1:42 The case broke not with a fingerprint, but with a confession.1:47 Erik, the younger, more sensitive brother, couldn't hold it in.1:52 He confessed everything to his psychologist.1:55 The psychologist's mistress overheard the sessions, and when their relationship soured, she went to the police.2:04 Suddenly, the grieving orphans were the prime suspects.2:08 The story flipped.2:10 This wasn't a mob hit.2:11 This was patricide.2:13 The trial became a national obsession.2:16 Were they spoiled, greedy killers who wanted their inheritance?2:21 Or were they traumatized victims pushed to the brink, acting in a twisted form of self-defense?2:28 The first jury couldn't decide.2:31 But the second one did.2:32 Guilty.2:33 Both of them.2:34 Life in prison, no possibility of parole.2:37 The boys who once had everything were now men who had nothing but time, living out their sentences in separate California prisons.2:47 The gilded cage was gone, replaced by a concrete one.
