Lyle Menendez

Bio:
Lyle Menendez (born Joseph Lyle Menendez on January 10, 1968 in New York City, New York) is an American convicted of killing his parents in 1989. Lyle’s father, Jose Menendez, moved to the US following the Cuban Revolution. He married Mary Louise “Kitty” Andersen in 1963, and the two shortly had Lyle and his brother, Erik Menendez. Jose became a successful CEO, working for Lyon Container, The Hertz Corporation and RCA. When elected as the CEO of LIVE Entertainment, Jose moved his family out to Calabasas, California. Lyle was 21 when he and then-18-year-old Erik shot and killed their parents on August 20, 1989. They were arrested in 1990. Lyle and Erik’s trial in 1993 became a national sensation, as it was broadcast live on CourtTV. They claimed they were driven to murder due to alleged sexual abuse by their father. Prosecutors accused the brothers of killing their parents to get ahold of the family fortune. The first trial ended with a deadlocked jury, but a second trial found Lyle and Erik guilty of first-degree murder. They were both sentenced to life in prison without parole in 1996.

Lyle and Erik’s case was depicted in Netflix’s Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story, which premiered in September 2024. The brothers and their family made their opposition to the show and its creator, Ryan Murphy, clear. However, shortly after the series premiered, Lyle and Erik’s Netflix documentary, The Menendez Brothers, was released in October 2024. In it, the siblings told their story via phone calls from prison.

Best Known For:
Lyle Menendez is known as one of the Menendez Brothers, the two men who killed their parents in 1989.

Personal Life:
Lyle and Erik were sent to different prisons. On July 2, 1996, Lyle married pen pal Anna Eriksson, a former model. They were divorced on April 1, 2001, after Anna discovered Lyle was writing to another woman. In 2003, Lyle married Rebecca Sneed. In 2018, Lyle reunited with his brother, Erik, at San Diego’s Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility.