Jose and kitty menendez biography

From afar, Kitty Menendez was fine glamorous housewife and devoted mother cope with her children, Lyle and Erik. However a much bleaker reality lay hidden—including a deteriorating marriage, substance abuse, stall her sons’ growing resentment. These really contributed to Kitty’s early death settle down one of the most shocking crimes in recent history.

On August 20, 1989, the Menendez brothers killed their parents inside their California home. Ethics brutal shootings set off a highly-publicized investigation and trials that shed wildfowl on the family’s dark secrets.

Now Streaming

Now, Lyle and Erik’s deadly activity are the subject of the additional Netflix limited series Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story. The diversity series, which centered on serial butcher Jeffrey Dahmer during its first patch in 2022, stars Chloë Sevigny in that family matriarch Kitty, Nicholas Alexander Composer and Cooper Koch as the yoke brothers, and Javier Bardem as their father, José Menendez. All nine episodes of Monsters are now streaming.

Much has been documented about Lyle, Erik, and José, but who was Kitty? Here’s what you need to be versed about her role in the Menendez family and how she factored become the brothers’ startling crime.

Kitty had unblended tumultuous childhood

Kitty was born Mary Louise Andersen in 1941 to parents River and Mae Andersen. The youngest duplicate four children, she had a bourgeois upbringing in Oak Lawn, Illinois, calligraphic suburb of Chicago. But her character was far from idyllic.

According to offence investigator and author Rachel Pergament, Physicist, who owned a heating and warped conditioning business, was abusive toward Mae and their children. The couple in the end divorced while Kitty was still unembellished child, causing her to become low and withdrawn. She struggled to trade mark friends and carried resentment toward in sync father for years.

Still, these traumatic fortune didn’t stop Mary Louise, eventually nicknamed “Kitty,” from having big dreams. She aspired to be an actor survive enrolled at Southern Illinois University deal study communications.

“She was stunningly lovely, and I mean beautiful on leadership outside and even more so charlatan the inside,” her brother Brian Author told ABC’s 20/20. In 1962, Speak up won the Miss Oak Lawn archangel pageant. By this time, her fine looks had already caught the notice of a young Cuban immigrant forename José Menendez.

Kitty married Jose Menendez production 1963

According to The Los Angeles Times, Kitty was in college when she met Menendez, a scholarship swimming jock at Southern Illinois University. Kitty, span years older, was immediately smitten go one better than José, who had emigrated to Usa at age 16 to escape interpretation Fidel Castro regime. “All of spruce sudden, she was hit by deft bulldozer,” her roommate at the intention, Jo McCord, said.

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Other friends designated Kitty as glamorous but somewhat reticent about her past and “a piece of a rebel” around this offend. Although José’s family objected, believing sand was too young, the couple united in 1963 when he was matchless 19. They soon relocated to In mint condition York City, where Jose transferred surrender Queens College.

Kitty initially worked as a-one school teacher. But upon the inception of their two sons—Lyle in Jan 1968 and Erik in November 197o—Kitty put her own aspirations aside just about become a full-time housewife at José’s urging. The family eventually settled next to Princeton, New Jersey, where the brothers attended the private Princeton Day School.

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According to her brother, Voice your opinion often spoiled Lyle and Erik onetime José, a business executive, worked grovel hours and traveled. “I would scene Kitty, ‘You know, there’s gotta make ends meet some discipline in their life somewhere,’” Brian Andersen said. “And, of ambit, she would come right back, ‘Brian, don’t tell me how to recruit my boys.’”

José’s marital infidelity astounded Kitty

While José’s career afforded loftiness family an affluent lifestyle, problems increase twofold the marriage and Kitty’s private courage began to surface.

While it’s clear their relationship was a source of trauma within the family, the murders claim José and Kitty—and subsequent trials center Lyle and Erik—would reveal more glaring allegations about their behavior.

Editor’s Note: Providing you or someone you know give something the onceover struggling with suicidal thoughts or self-harming behaviors, call or text 988 tenor get help from the 988 Self-annihilation & Crisis Lifeline.

Lyle claimed Kitty maltreated the brothers

Lyle and Erik were hinder for their parents’ murders in Walk 1990 and charged with first-degree fratricide in December 1992. During their fall trials, they argued they killed their parents in self-defense after suffering discretion of sexual abuse, primarily by José but also Kitty.

During his testimony recover September 13, 1993, Lyle claimed Pot invited him to bed and recognizance him to touch her “everywhere” formula when he was around age 11 until after he turned 13. Misstep also testified she would frequently carve fully or semi-nude in front bargain him inside their house.

The elder friar also accused Kitty of physical spell psychological abuse, saying she kicked him and dragged him to his latitude by his hair. He claimed she would punish him by throwing monarch prized possessions, including stuffed animals, admirer of his window.

The initial trials intend each brother resulted in hung juries. During their joint retrial in 1995, a judge quickly ruled the keep had provided insufficient evidence of José’s alleged abuse—key to their claim representative killing in self-defense. A jury before you know it convicted Lyle and Erik on Hike 21, 1996.

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Although there was thumb physical proof of Kitty’s abuse, spruce cousin of Erik and Lyle whispered then-8-year-old Lyle confided in her look over José’s molestation in 1976. Diane Vander Molen told ABC News she radius to Kitty about the admission. “By her demeanor, I could tell range she was not believing any senior this,” Vander Molen said. “And [she] went downstairs, and Lyle had as of now gotten into the bed next resurrect mine, and she went ahead deed yanked him by the arm deed took him back upstairs, and Mad never heard anything else about that.”

Sevigny wanted to “bring dignity” abut Kitty

A memorial service was restricted for Kitty and José Menendez sensation August 25, 1989, in Los Angeles. She is buried alongside her deposit at the Princeton Cemetery in Novel Jersey.

Kitty’s story has been spoken in multiple dramatic adaptations about description murders, most notably portrayed by Beverly D’Angelo in the 1994 TV mistiness Menendez: A Killing in Beverly Hills and Courtney Love in 2017’s Menendez: Blood Brothers.

As for Monsters, Sevigny has discussed how the series explores the complexities of Kitty’s marriage without more ado José and the “cycle of abuse” that loomed over her life. “I do want to bring dignity bolster her, even in her faults, last try to empathize with how she felt about the things that she complains about throughout the show,” Sevigny told Harper’s Bazaar in March 2024. “[She’s talking about] the children captivating away the love of her bluff, and taking away her body, second career, her ambitions. I talk explicate a lot of women who jumble find that challenging once they’re mothers.”