() – When 12-year-old Josh said he heard multiple gunshots one summer night in 1989, his mother didn’t believe him. After all, shootings were unimaginable in their wealthy Beverly Hills neighborhood. However, the next day they woke up to the news that, just two doors from their house, neighbors José and Kitty Menéndez had been shot to death.
Police, reporters and onlookers soon flooded the neighborhood as the public began to follow the case that ended in 1996 with brothers Erik and Lyle Menendez sentenced to life in prison for the murder of their parents. Nearly thirty years later, multiple dramatizations and documentaries about the crimes, and the abuse allegations against their parents, have galvanized a movement for the brothers’ early release, which could be decided early next year, and have turned the former U.S. mansion $17 million from the Menéndez family in a major tourist destination once again.
“I think we had all breathed a sigh of relief over the last, I would say, ten years: the number of trucks and tour buses had gone down,” Josh told in a recent interview. “Now, suddenly, everyone is following the case again, and then again the traffic is back, and the tour buses and the people: it’s chaotic.”
Josh, who wishes to be identified only by his first name for privacy and security reasons, is now in his early 40s and frequents his childhood home where his mother still lives.
Over the course of a few hours on a Wednesday afternoon in late October, four vans and tour cars blasting Milli Vanilli’s songs “Blame It on the Rain” and “I’m Gonna Miss You” drove slowly through the street, while dozens of curious onlookers parked nearby to observe and film the former Menéndez house. The curious included large vacationing families from Argentina, Colombia, Guatemala and Sweden, many of whom were talking about the overwhelming popularity of Ryan Murphy’s “Monsters: the Lyle and Erik Menendez Story,” which was released in September.
And insanity is nothing new in the world of true crime.
“There’s a fetishization of these places, (there’s an idea that) somehow you can understand or connect more deeply if you go back to the crime scene,” said Adam Golub, a professor of American studies at California State University, Fullerton. . He added that the crime scenes of serial killers such as Jeffrey Dahmer and John Wayne Gacy have attracted similar public attention.
The fascination with crime scenes has caused inconvenience on the part of those who visit the Menéndez home. The Beverly Hills Police Department told they responded to 16 calls in October for traffic complaints involving buses and tour vans, as well as break-in and noise incidents.
“There’s always a group of people in front of the house, and there are even some people who come into the alley and try to peek over the fence to see what’s going on inside,” Josh said.
The year before he left for college, Josh and his mother testified at the brothers’ first trial as witnesses to the shooting, a crucial piece of evidence for the prosecution, as his mother’s memory of hearing a pause between the gunshots indicated that the brothers had reloaded their weapons, which laid the foundation for the prosecution’s argument of premeditated murder. Aside from vague memories of the brothers practicing tennis at night and offering tennis lessons to neighborhood kids, Josh said the years have worn down the brothers and the judgment of their memory.
But renewed activity in his childhood neighborhood has brought back the familiarity of the chaos that followed the crimes.
With the Menendez case back in the spotlight thanks to the Netflix series, the brothers have achieved a level of celebrity status thanks to a new fan base, according to Golub.
Sympathizers range from those advocating for justice for sibling survivors of abuse, to a strange devotion to them. Some argue that fan-like behavior on social media or on tour buses diminishes the seriousness of the story of the brothers and their crimes; But Golub said public attention can also set a precedent for change.
“If the Menendez brothers’ case leads to a new sentence, there is also an incentive to continue this type of bigotry,” he said.
With a resentencing hearing scheduled for Jan. 30, Josh, who has spent the last three decades growing up, becoming a lawyer and starting his own family, agrees with most supporters who argue that the Menendez brothers have already paid for his crimes.
“I think they’ve spent a lot of time, and they’ve had time to reflect,” Josh said. “I don’t deny what they did, but our taxes would be better spent imprisoning people who are a threat to society.”
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