Who Were the Menendez Brothers’ Parents? Inside the Lives of José and Kitty Menendez Before Their 1989 Murders

Erik and Lyle Menendez claimed to have murdered their parents after years of abuse

Lyle and Erik Menendez became household names after murdering their parents, Kitty and José Menendez, on Aug. 20, 1989.

The Menendez brothers, born into a life of wealth and privilege, testified that they killed their mother and father in self-defense after a lifetime of emotional, physical and sexual abuse. At the time, Lyle was 21, and Erik was 18.

The case, which is featured in Ryan Murphy's Netflix series Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story, took two different trials to reach a unanimous jury verdict, and the siblings were each found guilty of two counts of first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder in 1996.

"It's really a regret every day, but at the same time ... I can't escape what happened anymore than I can escape the memories of what happened to me," Lyle told Today in 2017.

Erik echoed a similar sentiment during an interview with PEOPLE in 2005. "People say that I had everything, that I was rich and lived in Beverly Hills," he said. "But if you had photos of the events of my childhood, they would be crime photos. I was dying long before the night I killed my parents."

While Lyle and Erik, who are each serving life sentences for the murders, have spoken publicly numerous times about their experiences in the aftermath, their parents' life stories were left to be told by their survivors.

Here's everything to know about Lyle and Erik Menendez's parents, José and Kitty Menendez.

José immigrated to the United States as a teen

José was born in Cuba to a onetime soccer star father, who encouraged him to immigrate to the United States on his own when he was 16 years old, PEOPLE previously reported in 1990.

A former colleague told the Los Angeles Times that José claimed to have been born into Cuban nobility and that his family was "very aristocratic and very rich" until many of them were either killed or imprisoned under Fidel Castro's regime.

José lived with family friends in Pennsylvania when he first moved to the U.S., where he earned a swimming scholarship to Southern Illinois University in Carbondale.

However, he decided to move to New York City and transferred schools. José chose to pursue a career in business instead, getting an accounting degree from Queens College.

José and Kitty met in college

Mary Louise "Kitty" Andersen was born and raised in Chicago, where she competed in beauty pageants, according to Los Angeles Times. She met José in a debate class at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, and they quickly fell in love.

When José made plans to move to New York City, he proposed to Kitty, who was two years older than he was. José's father initially opposed the union, writing in a letter that he was too young to wed, to which José replied, "If I was old enough to be on my own at 16, I'm old enough to be married at 19."

After marrying in 1963, José and Kitty relocated to the Big Apple, where he worked washing dishes while studying at Queens College. Meanwhile, she worked as a teacher until Lyle and Erik, when José asked her to stay at home and raise their sons full time, per ABC News.

The Menendez brothers' dad was a music and entertainment executive

After graduating from Queens College, José worked as an accountant for Coopers & Lybrand and eventually became the manager of commercial leasing for Hertz rental cars.

After RCA acquired Hertz, José transitioned his role to RCA Records, where he worked on record deals for artists like the Eurythmics, Duran Duran, José Feliciano and boy band Menudo. In 1986, he moved on to Carolco Pictures, an independent film studio that later acquired International Video Entertainment (abbreviated as IVE, later renamed Live Entertainment). according to Los Angeles Times.

IVE was $20 million in debt, but under José's leadership, it finally had net incomes of $8 million in 1987 and $16 million in 1988. He signed deals with filmmakers, including Sylvester Stallone (for the Rambo franchise), director Taylor Hackford and Wall Street producer Ed Pressman. He also cut nearly 400 jobs from the company.

Peter Hoffman, who was president of Carolco Pictures at the time of José's murder, told Los Angeles Times in 1989 that José was "an aggressive businessman," noting, "He can often be insensitive. He's a guy who reaches for every advantage in a transaction. He's very self-conscious, self-confident and charismatic in the way he deals with things."

During the 1993 trial, José's second-in-command at Live Entertainment reportedly called his former boss "totally controlling, belittling," who "instilled fear" in his subordinates.

José "controlled" different aspects of his sons' lives

José demanded perfection from Lyle and Erik from a young age, putting them under immense pressure.

"My father suffered from being a perfectionist," Lyle told Los Angeles Times in 1990. "It carried over into his home life, and it was sometimes difficult for Erik and me. So much so that he really couldn't do something well enough. It wore on him tremendously mentally. And it wore on us."

A lifeguard at a country club pool where the boys competed said on the stand that their father would berate them to "swim harder" during meets, United Press International reported in 1993.

Erik's former tennis coach testified in court that José was controlling of his sons "academically, socially," even down to dictating "the girls they went out with," according to Los Angeles Times. Another tennis instructor described the patriarch as "the harshest person [he'd] ever met."

One of the boys' sixth grade teachers remembered their father as "belligerent" and Kitty as "negligent." Lyle later testified in court that his father wrote his papers when he was enrolled in Princeton. José also reportedly tried to talk the school's brass out of suspending Lyle when he was caught plagiarizing but it didn't work.

Their father was accused of cheating on their mother

José was accused of having affairs during his marriage to Kitty, Vanity Fair reported in 1990.

"Kitty called Jose at his office every 30 minutes, sometimes just to tell him what kind of pizza to bring home for supper," one of his colleagues told the magazine. "She was a dependent person."

Though Kitty was described as "very warm," she also "had a history of drinking and pills."

A friend of Kitty explained to the outlet that the Menendez matriarch attempted to take her own life three separate times, which Kitty's therapist corroborated on the stand during the brothers' trial, according to Los Angeles Times.

The Menendez brothers' dad planned to disinherit them before they killed him

Prosecutors accused Lyle and Erik of murdering their parents to get their multi-million dollar inheritance — but sources close to the family alleged that José was going to disinherit his sons.

José's brother-in-law Carlos Baralt testified that José told him about a month before the slayings that Lyle and Erik knew they weren't going to be in his will.

However, Associated Press reported (via Los Angeles Times) that the will hadn't been amended before the murders, and several family members attempted to find a new will on one of the family's computers but there was nothing.

The Menendez family estate, which included the family's Beverly Hills home and a Calabasas property where José's mother Maria lived, was reportedly valued at about $14 million before the slayings, but dwindled to nearly nothing by 1993, Lyle and Erik's attorney Leslie Abramson claimed in court, citing legal fees, taxes and other expenses for its steep decline.

Kitty's brother and his family claimed in a filing that if Kitty was murdered after José's death, they would stand to inherit the estate. Still, Abramson alleged that if Erik and Lyle were convicted, the estate would go to Maria, per the Los Angeles Times.

In March 2024, the Beverly Hills home where the murders took place sold for $17 million — on the 28th anniversary of Lyle and Erik's conviction.

Lyle and Erik accused both of their parents of sexual abuse

When they were on trial, both Lyle and Erik accused their father of sexually abusing them when they were children.

Lyle alleged that his father molested him between the ages of 6 and 8 years old and that their mother insisted on bathing him until he was 13 and made him share a bed with and touch her into his adolescence, Los Angeles Times reported. The brothers also accused José of molesting Erik from when he was a young child until the murders.

"The most overwhelming memory of my dad was him pounding on my door, telling me to open the door of the bedroom," Erik recalled in the 2017 A&E documentary The Menéndez Murders: Erik Tells All. "He would have me massage him, and he would have me perform oral sex on him. He would graphically describe to me how he would kill me if I ran away."

Prosecutors expressed doubt over the claims and questioned why the brothers would mention the killings in therapy but not the abuse that led to them. Lyle later said that he and Erik just felt "shame" about what they endured and didn't want it publicized.

Lyle and Erik's extended family members were divided on the veracity of the abuse claims. One family member told the Los Angeles Times in 1990 that their father never spanked them as children, but other relatives stood by the brothers.

José's sister alleged on the stand that he was abusive, but that when police initially asked her about Erik and Lyle's relationship with their father, she lied to protect his image.

Lyle and Erik's cousin, Brian Alan Anderson, recalled on 48 Hours that José would shower with the boys and that Kitty wouldn't let anyone else near the room when it happened. Anderson also testified in court that José would beat Erik and Lyle with belts until they were bruised.

Another cousin, Andy Cano, had a letter from Erik describing the abuse eight months before the slayings.

Kitty's older sister, Joan Vander Molen, said she believed Lyle and Erik, as did her daughter, Diane Vander Molen, who revealed that Lyle told her about his father sexually abusing him in 1976 when he was 8 years old — and that she knows "100 percent" that the brothers told the truth about the abuse they endured.

José was accused of sexually abusing a boy band star

Erik and Lyle weren't the only people to accuse José of sexual abuse. In April 2023, Roy Rosselló alleged that José sexually abused him when he was a member of the boy band Menudo, which José signed to RCA Records.

In the 2023 Peacock docuseries Menendez + Menudo: Boys Betrayed, Rosselló said that when he was a teen, José drugged and raped him.

Referring to a photo of José, Rosselló said firmly, "That's the man here that raped me. That's the pedophile."

Attorneys for Erik and Lyle filed a petition to vacate their convictions, saying that Rosselló's claims gave more credibility to the brothers' own abuse allegations against their father.

For more information or help dealing with sexual abuse, contact The Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN) at 800-656-4673 or visit their website at RAINN.org.

If you suspect child abuse, call the Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline at 1-800-4-A-Child or 1-800-422-4453, or go to www.childhelp.org. All calls are toll-free and confidential. The hotline is available 24/7 in more than 170 languages.

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