Sixteen years ago today, Erik and Lyle Menendez were convicted of murdering their parents. Their crimes were bloody, and the trials that followed -- with their often gruesome details -- created a national sensation.
The brothers grew up in Princeton, N.J., before moving with their parents to Beverly Hills, where their father, Jose, was an entertainment industry executive. Their mother, Kitty, was a former small-town beauty queen and schoolteacher.
It was in the den of their Beverly Hills mansion on North Elm Drive that Erik and Lyle gunned down their parents on Aug. 20, 1989. Jose was shot point-blank in the back of the head. Kitty, who made a run for it, was shot multiple times.
PHOTOS: Menendez trial
The prosecution contended the brothers ambushed their parents, blasting them with pump-action shotguns, and then covered up the crime, beginning with shrieks and tears on their front lawn on the night of the killings. Lyle was 21 at the time; Erik was 18.
The brothers' first trial, broadcast on Court TV, created a national frenzy. Erik and Lyle were tried together but had separate juries. Both juries deadlocked in the first trial -- split between murder and manslaughter convictions after defense attorneys surprised prosecutors with an abuse defense.
During the first trial, the brothers admitted killing their parents -- which they'd confessed to their therapist. The defense said the brothers had been sexually and psychologically abused since they were small children. It was profound fear and rage over the family's incest secret that led to the killings, the defense said.
In the retrial, gruesome details and horrific images were the focus, as The Times reported: The blood-encrusted polo shirt of Jose Menendez; Kitty's death mask -- one eye gone, virtually every facial bone and most of her teeth broken; an image of her nearly severed right hand.
"If the first trial of Erik and Lyle Menendez was a soap opera wrapped within a psychodrama," wrote The Times' Ann O'Neill, "so far the retrial has been a horror show."
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