Erik Menendez comments on brothers’ $700,000 spending spree: ‘covering up pain’

The Menendez brothers claim they didn’t kill their wealthy parents for their money.

But in the days and weeks after Kitty and Jose Menendez were brutally killed in the blood-spattered TV room of their $5 million Beverly Hills, Calif., mansion on August 20, 1989, things didn’t look that way, especially not to authorities.

Just days after the violent shotgun murders on August 20, 1989, that shocked the nation, the murdered couple’s sons, Lyle, 21, and Erik, 18, went shopping and spent $15,000 on three Rolex watches like a jewelry saleswoman attempted to testify at their first meeting.

That was just the beginning.

Lyle then purchased a $64,000 Porsche Carrera, while Erik chose a brand new Jeep Wrangler.

Later that year, Lyle put down a $300,000 deposit on a $500,000 restaurant in Princeton, New Jersey, where he had studied at the prestigious Princeton University.

He decided not to attend UCLA as originally planned and shelled out $50,000 for a tennis coach in hopes of turning professional.

During the brothers’ trial in 1993, prosecutors seized on this information and argued that Lyle and Erik, out of greed, shot their 45-year-old music manager father and their 47-year-old stay-at-home mother at close range with 12-gauge rifles -Shotguns would have been living the life they had always dreamed of.

Not true, say the brothers in the upcoming Netflix documentary The Menendez brotherswhich begins streaming on October 7th.

“The idea that I had a good time is absurd,” Erik, now 53, says in a recorded phone call from prison, one of many featured in the documentary. “Everything was meant to cover up this terrible pain of not wanting to be alive anymore.”

After his parents were murdered, Lyle was seen in a limousine with a chauffeur and bodyguards at his side, reportedly fearing for his life.

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But Lyle, now 56, claims in the documentary: “I didn’t enjoy being a playboy, in fact I cried a lot at night, didn’t sleep well, was very disturbed at times and was kind of helpless all the time for all those months .” ”

During their first trial in 1993, which ended with a jury verdict, the brothers testified that they killed their parents not for the money but because of years of alleged sexual abuse by their father, which they said their mother ignored .

At a second trial in March 1996 they were sentenced to life in prison without parole.

The documentary features interviews with Lyle and Erik, who spoke with director Alejandro Hartmann over a series of recorded calls from California’s Donovan Correctional Facility, where they are now incarcerated.

Lyle has not spoken publicly since he and Erik sat down for a television interview with Barbara Walters after the end of her second trial in June 1996.

The Menendenz brothers go into detail about why the brothers killed their parents, the role the murders play in their lives to this day – and how their accomplished, demanding father played a role in their decision-making even after his death.

Erik recounts the deep despair he felt after his parents were murdered: “One of the things that stopped me from killing myself is that at that point I felt like I was a complete failure to my father. “

The Menendez brothers will air on Netflix on October 7th.

The Official Menendez Brothers Podcast, a three-part companion podcast featuring unheard audio interviews with the Menendez brothers not featured in the documentary, arrives on Netflix October 9th, You Can’t Make This Up.