Yahoo Lifestyle See Inside LA’s Hottest Draw: Menendez Brothers’ Beverly Hills Murder Scene
BEVERLY HILLS—On face value, the empty Mediterranean villa on this quiet, leafy street is an unlikely destination for tour vans and true crime-obsessed looky loos.
But 722 North Elm Drive is a notorious address: the multi-million dollar home where Lyle and Erik Menendez killed their parents with a flurry of shotgun blasts on a summer night in August 1989.
A view of the property at 722 North Elm Drive in Beverly Hills, once owned by the Menendez family, with its expansive pool in the foreground.
Construction barriers are erected outside the former Menendez family home in Beverly Hills, California.
Visitors stand outside the former Menendez family home in Beverly Hills, California.
Just over the neatly trimmed hedge and behind a row of elegant front windows, the brothers slaughtered José and Kitty Menendez in the family’s seemingly cozy family room.
Lyle, 21, and Erik, 18, shot their father in the head and body six times. They shot their mother 10 times, only stopping to reload. As she crawled away, her eldest son delivered a fatal round to her face. (Note: An image below shows the bloody aftermath of the shooting.)
Such was the carnage that Los Angeles police initially suspected a mob hit. Six months later, however, the brothers were arrested after investigators received an apparent confession to the killings Erik had made to a psychologist he was seeing.
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They were tried twice, first separately—in both cases, the juries deadlocked. But after a joint retrial in 1996, Lyle and Erik were convicted on two counts of first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder. They were sentenced to life in prison without parole.
For many years, their house on North Elm Drive has been a routine stop for ghoulish “graveyard” tour vans shepherding gawkers around crime scenes like the site of the Charles Manson “Helter Skelter” murders scene not far away in Benedict Canyon, or O.J. Simpson’s and Nicole Brown Simpson’s condo in Brentwood.
A scene from the Netflix series "Monsters" shows Lyle and Erik Menendez aiming shotguns at their parents.
Now, propelled by the Netflix series Monsters, which retells the infamous saga, there is a steady stream of cars driving by the chain-link construction fence that has gone up in front of the Menendez house, which was recently sold—to the tune of $17,000,000—and is currently being renovated.
On a secluded block where only dog walkers and gardeners usually venture, tourists now gather on the sidewalk and debate whether Lyle and Erik should get a new trial. (The brothers have said they had been abused by their parents, and feared for their own lives on the night of the murders.) The intrepid slip through a gap in the locked gate—clearly marked “NO TRESPASSING”—to take pictures and videos of the property.
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“I like psychological thrillers,” says a 33-year-old woman visiting the scene told The Daily Beast, having and finished watching the Netflix show last week. “This seems like the most secure neighborhood. It feels so safe. And it gives me chills to be here.”
“I can’t judge them,” the woman, a Hollywood camera assistant originally from Kyrgyzstan, said of the Menendez brothers. “They had their issues.” The last time she visited a famous location, she added, was a few years ago when she went to Chicago and saw the “Home Alone house” in Winnetka.
Her friend, a 24-year-old personal trainer who joined her on the visit, had just started watching Monsters. “I didn’t expect to see so many people here,” they told the Beast. “There are so many cars. And so many tourists.”
North Elm Drive residents aren’t sure what to think of the spectacle.
Jen, 50, who grew up two houses from the crime scene, said she can’t believe so many people want the brothers to be freed from prison. “Two horrible, brutal, bloody murders took place in there,” she said of their former home.
A crime scene photo shows bloodstains on a white sofa and floor rug in the Menendez family home's den, where brothers Lyle and Erik Menendez fatally shot their parents in August 1989.
Photos shared by Realtor.com show the current state of the room in which José and Kitty Menendez were murdered.
On that summer night in 1989, Jen said her mother and brother heard what sounded like Chinese firecrackers—and then screaming. (After receiving a 911 call from the house, police found Lyle and Erik weeping on the front lawn, claiming they had come home to find their parents’ bodies.)
“It would haunt me to live there,” Jen added.
Others, though, can’t help wondering what it would be like to own a real-life haunted house.
Built in 1927, the 9,000 square foot villa has 7 bedrooms, 9 bathrooms, a pool and guesthouse that spread out over half an acre. The photos below, courtesy of Realtor.com, provide a tour of the home's interiors—prior to a round of renovations that are currently underway.
An exterior view of the property at 722 North Elm Drive, recently sold for $17,000,000.
The home's downstairs entrance hall.
An expansive, carpeted bedroom suite in the home with wraparound windows.
A living room with a built-in fireplace.
A formal dining room features a multi-tiered chandelier.
Rich wood paneling and marble detailing throughout the eat-in kitchen.
The villa on North Elm Drive had a number of illustrious tenants including Prince, Elton John, and a Saudi prince before José Menendez bought the property in 1988 for $4 million. After he and his wife were killed there a year later in 1989, the house stood empty for a spell. It was sold in 1991, with proceeds going mainly to the IRS.
Over the years, the property changed hands and was renovated a number of times; for eight years, it was owned by the co-creator of the hit TV series Murder, She Wrote. Its newest owners, reportedly a wealthy Persian family, have yet to move in—perhaps fortuitously amid the current furor. After purchasing the home this past March, they have begun a remodeling process of their own.
Editor’s note: Ben Sherwood has followed the Menendez story since 1989 when he began working at ABC News and was assigned to help cover the saga with an award-winning team from PrimeTime Live.
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