You knew this was coming....
III. Beverly Hills Cops: No Laughing Matter
The initial investigation was pretty much a shambles. To some degree, this wasn’t the fault of the cops. As mentioned, in Beverly Hills about the only action a cop would get might be if someone’s expensive pedigree dog got lost, or maybe a domestic row, though it’s hard really to think of anyone daring to disturb the almost sepulchral quiet of the exclusive area. So they were not qualified, nor experienced enough to investigate a major murder like this, and that led to some pretty big errors that would come back to haunt them, and lead to delays in the arrest of the brothers.
First, they failed to administer a gunshot residue test to Lyle and Erik at the scene. This would have shown that they had both recently fired weapons, which would be difficult for the brothers to explain. A normal police force would have suspected everyone, no matter their status or relationship to the deceased, and don’t they say that in many cases the culprit is always close to home? Didn’t they know that the Menendez brothers stood to gain a fortune if their parents died? Did they even probe the strained relationships within the family? None of these questions seem to have occurred to them, which is bad enough, but when Zoeller refused Lyle permission to enter the house the day after the murder - on the pretext of getting his tennis racquet but in reality to check his car for evidence they might have forgotten to dispose of - a later trip was successful, when a cop told him it was okay.
Why did the cop do this? Had Zoeller not given orders that the crime scene - and that would include the car - had been sealed and that nobody was to enter? Even if he had not, is this not Policing 101? What sort of idiot risks his job by granting access to the scene to what could be potentially a suspect? And how, in the name of all that’s holy, did an entire police team - admittedly a BHPD one but still - miss shell casings, wrappings for the shells and other incriminating evidence that was still in the car the next day? Did nobody think to check the car? Really?
Erik and Lyle may have thought they were master criminals, and revelled in and congratulated themselves on getting away with the perfect murder (and robbery really, as they had essentially stolen their inheritance) but after the killing they were as far from unobtrusive and calm as it’s possible to be. Erik kept jabbering on, nervously dropping hints about what they had done to friends who, luckily for them, discounted his words as just a symptom of the shock he was in. Then the two brothers phoned the gun store where they had bought the shotguns, out of state. They asked about the CCTV footage: when was it kept till? Why would anyone who had nothing to hide want to know this?
As might be expected, the two went wild spending their ill-gotten gains, and there was little if any remorse for or even remembrance of the two people who had brought them up, now just twin piles of ashes in urns. Lyle even got in a computer expert to erase files on Kitty’s computer, one in particular titled WILL. Perhaps he was afraid his parents had been about to write the two of them out of their will, and while a screen detailing changes would not be legally binding, it might very well provide a partial motive for the boys killing their parents, if it was proved that they had known about it. Unable to get at the file - which was corrupted - Lyle ensured it was completely erased from the computer.
Ken Soble and his friend who had interviewed the boys for their paper went to see Glenn Stevens, a name Lyle had given them when asked for a list of their friends they could interview or speak to. Stevens was angry at Lyle, who had begun to emulate his late father and was condescending about his friend, denigrating him and treating him like a lackey. Stevens hinted that not only did he, Stevens, feel the brothers had something to do with the murders, but that the police suspected them too, and had told him. That could of course just be a case of sour grapes, but Zoeller decided to push Erik and see what he could squeeze out. Erik remained relatively defiant, asking why they suspected him and his brother, and Zoeller remarked that they appeared to be avoiding him, not returning his calls, and when certain questions were put to them, the answers could at best be described as evasive, certainly not helpful. In short, they didn’t seem to want to offer any assistance to the police, as if they didn’t want the killers of their parents caught.
It now emerged that the close bond between the two brothers was under considerable strain as Lyle, the elder now acting as the father, spent money like water and also seemed to be dipping into his brother’s share. Erik was beginning to fight back, realising he was being treated badly. Seeing his chance, Zoeller asked Erik outright if his brother had been involved, if he had hired someone to kill their parents. Erik remained loyal to his sibling, but once Zoeller had left the younger brother began frantically ringing Princeton, looking for Lyle. He got, worse luck, Glenn Stevens, and stammered that the police suspected them and he had to talk to Lyle. He was no good on his own, he had to have his brother to talk to.
Soble and his partner decided before they could write a story naming the boys as suspects they had to know from the police if they were on the right track, so they asked for a meeting. At that meeting, each side felt the other out but each left with about as much, or as little, as they had come in with. The only real result was that both sides now believed their suspicions to be at least not groundless. Soble requested, and got, a follow-up interview from the brothers, but this time found them more close-mouthed, more guarded, as if they knew they were on the suspect list and were determined not to do anything to move themselves to the top of it.
There was one addition: this time, the boys had brought their lawyer.
After Soble had quizzed him on his reckless spending, and the fact that he planned to go back to school in the winter, Lyle remarking that by January the murders would be a long time in the past, the answers began to dry up. No comment, my lawyer advises and so on, made the interview seem more like a police one after they had been cautioned. Something had clearly changed. Something was up. And very quickly the reporters were shown the door, but not before Soble had gone for broke and asked Erik if he thought Lyle had done it. “No”, said Erik, but did not elaborate as the door was closed in the reporters’ faces.
But what’s the old saying? As one door closes another opens? When Zoeller and his partner went to see Craig Cignarelli, Erik’s best friend had a tale to tell, a tale that potentially could blow the case wide open. He told of how he and Erik had been having dinner when the younger Menendez began to describe how he and his brother had shot their parents. There was a lot of critical detail in the account Erik Menendez gave, and inwardly Zoeller was salivating, this amounting to a confession, until Erik said (according to Cignarelli) “It might have happened.” That took their enthusiasm down several notches. Still, the question remained: why even broach the subject? Why risk putting he and his brother in the frame, even if only hypothetically? And how did they have such gruesome details about the deaths?
The Deputy DA, Pam Ferrero, listened to their retelling of their conversation with Cignarelli, and decided it was good, but they needed more before they could go for an arrest. She suggested Zoeller and Linehan ask the kid to wear a wire. They were surprised and gratified that he agreed to do so. All they needed now was for him to get Erik talking again and make the same confession, even if as a hypothetical, and they would have him. Unfortunately Erik got spooked - he surely didn’t suspect his friend of wearing a listening device, but he might have considered it a bad idea to repeat the “confession”, in case anyone took it for the truth - and laughed the whole thing off. Still, the conversation between the two young men did prove at least that Cignarelli had been telling the truth when he had said Erik had made the confession.
Then there was Greg Guest, a friend of his brother’s who, when borrowing Lyle’s Porsche (recently purchased with his inheritance, a snip at sixty four thousand dollars) found a spent shell casing in Lyle’s leather jacket. Having mailed the shell to the cops, he then tried to back away from it, changing his story as to where it had been found, but as it happened a ballistics expert assured Zoeller it had not come from the murder weapon. On this, he would later be proven wrong.
All this time, the Menendez will was slowly but indefatigably making its way through probate court. The cops knew that once it was approved and the boys could get their hands on the real money, they would likely skip the country and be out of the jurisdiction of law enforcement. Time was not on the side of the police, and was running out. They needed to find those shotguns, which would then tie their owners to the weapons and provide irrefutable proof as to the identity of the killers of Jose and Kitty Menendez.
The search would not be an easy one. Within a ten-mile radius of Los Angeles there were over three hundred gun shops (at least, registered ones) and most likely the brothers had been careful enough not to buy close to home, so ten miles might not be a large enough area to cover. But LA is roughly 500 square miles in area, so work that one out! Zoeller and his team would have had to expand, if the ratio held true, their search to about fifteen thousand shops! And this assuming the boys had not gone further afield, and bought the guns out of state! It seemed a hopeless task, certainly one that would not be completed before the looming deadline of the probate.
And then, finally, out of the blue, they got a break.
Judalon Rose Smyth came to the BHPD with a complaint, and when her contact heard what was in that complaint he knew Zoeller would want to be told, so he brought her to meet him. Turned out Smyth was a friend of Dr. Oziel, Erik’s psychiatrist, and she told an extraordinary story about his asking her to eavesdrop on the conversation he had had with Lyle and Erik, where Erik had told him about the murder. Lyle, apparently, lost it and shouted “Now we have to kill him, and everyone associated with him!” while Erik sobbed and declared he couldn't kill anymore. Oziel was so scared he armed himself and told his wife to go into hiding with his children. She said he had the whole thing on tape - confessions, descriptions of how the two brothers had killed their parents, Lyle’s crowing about having got away with it, everything.
Accordingly a search warrant was issued for Oziel’s house, office and the safety deposit box he was known to keep. He was reluctant to hand over the tapes - scared, more like - but had no choice in the end. Before sealing the tapes for the court, Zoeller and his team listened and they knew they finally had the evidence they needed. It was time to move on the brothers.