"Behind the Mansion Doors: The Dark Secrets of the Menendez Family"

For much of the 1980s, the Menendez family appeared to be the perfect symbol of the American dream.   

Jose Menendez was a hardworking Cuban immigrant who had become a successful entertainment executive, and his wife Kitty Menendez was a former beauty queen.   

Not only did the couple live in one of the most fashionable areas of Beverly Hills, but they also shared two promising sons, Lyle and Erik. But behind closed doors, all was not well with the Menendez family — and this became painfully clear after 21-year-old Lyle and 18-year-old Erik brutally murdered their parents.   

After they were caught confessing to their crimes on tape, Lyle and Erik would later claim in court that they had only killed their father because he had been physically, emotionally, and sexually abusive toward both of them for years.   

They also alleged that their mother constantly looked the other way during the abuse and then eventually began an incestuous relationship with both of the boys herself. 

Lyle and Erik even said that they slept in their mother's bed as teenagers whenever their father was away and that they would touch her "everywhere."   

Meanwhile, the prosecutors argued that the young men were simply after their father's $14 million fortune, as they had already blown through $700,000 of it just months after his gruesome death.