The main issue was sexual/physical abuse. I don't think children will murder parents because they failed an exam because their parents did their homework. We're going into the weeds here.
Parricide is an appalling and heinous act that can only be offset by equally horrific abuse that a child or children suffer. Two boys that savagely murder their sleeping parents need an awfully good reason for having done so. Sadly, our nation reports a 2% parricide rate of all homicides. So parricide is relatively rare. Lyle and Erik are previous offenders, having burglarized homes of approximately $100,000 of jewels and money. And money was their motive in the burglaries. This was not a fact brought to trial. Lyle deleted computer info titled Will, Erik and Lyle and hired a computer expert to make sure the deleted info could not be retrieved.
The biggest problem for some of us is that child abuse is very hard to prove or disprove and that's because it's secretive. There are no corroborations from others that have no skin in the game. Both prosecution and defense are alleging that the other side lied and manipulated. And how does the public know who to believe? We know family members will lie for family so we have to base our decisions on how credible someone appears on the stand, as well as the evidence that's presented.
The educational neglect played a part in this because it was a contributing factor as to why the brothers had very little in the way of life skills - because they were not allowed or given the opportunity to develop any. They were rarely allowed to make their own decisions. This, coupled with ongoing abuse and dysfunction, left them emotionally stunted and led up to the events that happened. That's why is crucial to know and understand this. Trauma changes the way the brain develops, and this abuse starts during their babyhood. While they were legally of age when they killed their parents, they were not adults emotionally - their emotional age was estimated to be 8 to 10 years old, according to a psychologist who examined them in the L.A. County Jail. They had lived with this abuse and threats all their lives. which caused them to become hyper-vigilent. In addition, in the days leading up to the killings, they were not sleeping well which added to their nervous and frightened mental state. Lyle wanted to protect Erik, and in confronting Jose to get him to stop the abuse, he threatened to expose his father and realized immediately that he made a mistake in doing so. He felt that Jose would not allow them to live, as being exposed would ruin him, and given that Kitty always put Jose first, he didn't think she would be on her sons' side either. Kitty told Erik that she knew all along what Jose was doing to him. While this may sound irrational to us, Jose and Kitty were frightening figures, who had controlled their sons from birth and made them dependent on them. The brothers knew that their relatives, who were just as frightened of their parents as they were, would not be able to help them, they didn't think the police would believe them (Jose was a Hollywood executive after all, the #MeToo Movement has taught us a lot about power in Hollywood) and since their father controlled everything, and had resources to track them down, it's easy to see why they didn't think they could escape. Jose and Kitty also owned shotguns themselves. Lyle and Erik bought shotguns for protection because they didn't think they would be alive when the two-week waiting period for handguns was up. This is another indication that it was done out of fear - shotguns are very loud, if they truly wanted to get away with it, why not wait the two weeks for handguns, which are much quieter?
Jose and Kitty were not asleep when they were shot. If you scroll back further in this thread, I posted the testimony from the first trial of the medical examiner, Dr. Irwin Golden. During cross-examination, Golden testified that the parents were most likely standing when they were shot; he was able to determine this by the pattern of wounds, as well as the fact that there were no bullet holes in the couch. In the second trial, the prosecutors did not call Dr. Golden as a witness. I wonder why? Another myth that has been debunked (despite people like Pamela Bozanich claiming it as fact) is that Jose and Kitty were not eating ice cream, or eating anything, when they were shot. The videotape footage of the crime scene and the testimony of Detective Les Zoeller, who stated that there was one empty glass with a spoon in it on the coffee table, confirms this; there was no food or bowls anywhere in the room.
Erik committed two burglaries, with his friends (something that tends to be downplayed or outright omitted). In the first burglary, one of the accomplices was the son of the owner of the house that was robbed, the other was Craig Cignarelli (who conveniently never mentions his involvement), Lyle was involved in the second burglary. They called them "hot prowls" and they saw it as a prank. However, the brothers attempted to return some of the stolen items, and accidentally returned them to the wrong house! Criminal masterminds, they were not. They had no use for any of the items they stole. I want to point out that this is not uncommon behavior for teenage and young adult males who were abused to engage in. While this doesn't make it right in any way, shape or form, this is not necessarily an indication of psychopathy (and by the way, the brothers have never been diagnosed as such).
While parricide is relatively rare, however, filicide (parents killing their children) is far more common, just as it is far more common for abusers to kill their victims rather than the other way around. According to a study published by CNN in 2016, 13% of victims of filicide were adults - 18 to 40 years old, when they were killed by one or both parents. That shows that being an adult doesn't mean the threat of that goes away, nor does it mean that abuse will necessarily stop from your parents once you are legally of age.
Lyle and Erik later realized that their parents were not going to kill them that night, but they were not thinking rationally. Lyle, however, still believes that Jose and Kitty would have killed them at some point.
The file marked "will" on the computer was corrupted, and even the computer expert that Lyle had hired was unable to access it. He was able to determine that there were only a few words in it, and even if there had been a draft of a will on the computer, it wouldn't have made any difference because a will is not valid unless it is signed. Lyle had the entire hard drive wiped because he was planning on selling the computer and didn't want there to be any private family information in it. As previously stated, there is corroborative testimony that Lyle and Erik believed they were disinherited at the time of the killings, and the financial motive offered up by the prosecution was never proven in either trial.
Lyle and Erik should have been arrested immediately; the fact that they were not is not because they were brilliant, it was due to police incompetency, in large part because the Beverly Hills Police Department was not used to dealing with homicides. They did not test the brothers' hands for gunpowder residue, which is police protocol. If they had, Lyle and Erik would have been arrested that night. They did not check the vehicles in the driveway - Erik still had some bloody clothes in his car. In a tape-recorded interview with Sergeant Tom Edmonds, Erik gave himself away several times, yet Edmonds didn't pick up on it.
As I previously stated, there was a lot of evidence in this case to support that the abuse happened, which went beyond eyewitness testimony. Expert testimony (including by Dr. Ann Burgess, FBI criminal profiler, crime scene analyst, and psychiatric nurse who specializes in the treatment of SA victims, including children), photographs, and medical records all corroborate the abuse. While physical evidence of SA is rare, the fact that the parents took CP photos of their sons and kept them is very significant, and it's the kind of evidence that would please a prosecutor in a child abuse case. There was far more evidence of abuse here than in most child abuse cases. Those CP photos should not exist, but the fact that they do is very strong confirmation. And then, there are the Menudo allegations, which have been around for years. Jose's West Coast Consultant Steve Wax stated that Jose joked about the Menudo sexual abuse allegations shortly before his death; in an article that I posted further back in this thread from when the jurors in the first trial were deliberating, Erik's attorney Leslie Abramson considered calling former band members as witnesses. Still, she didn't want to force them to talk if they weren't ready, and reasoned that it would probably ruin their careers, and she was likely right. Then, in the past year, former Menudo member Roy Rosello publicly came forward and stated that Jose, along with the group owner, Edgardo Diaz, sexually assaulted him when he was 14 years old. I don't think the "The brothers made up the SA" and the "Jose was not a sexual predator" statements can be considered with any kind of validity any longer.
Having said that, this does not mean that Lyle and Erik should not have been punished for their crime. An acquittal was never on the table. What they should have been convicted of is manslaughter, which 15 of the 24 jurors (there were two juries, one for each brother in the first trial) were in favor of. They were going to serve time in prison no matter what, it was about the degree of guilt.
I recommend watching the full first trial if you want to learn more details. I realize that it is very long, but it is crucial if you want not only to see the evidence and the facts, but to see that the prosecution didn't have much of a leg to stand on (they thought it was a slam dunk and underestimated the defense) and that's why they, along with the judge, blocked and limited the defense evidence in the second trial, because they knew they wouldn't get a conviction otherwise.
www.biography.com
