Murder In Beverly Hills

On August 20th, 1989, privileged brothers 21-year-old Lyle and 18-year-old Erik Menendez gunned down their parents in their Beverly Hills mansion. Entertainment executive Jose Menendez was shot in the head at point-blank range. Their mother, Kitty, was shot multiple times while trying to escape. They admitted to having committed the murders, but claimed to have been victims of abuse. The jury thought otherwise, and eventually found them guilty of first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder. Nicknamed "the Black Dahlia," Elizabeth Short was brutally murdered in Los Angeles in 1947, her body cut in half and severely mutilated. The Black Dahlia's killer was never found, making her murder one of the oldest cold case files in L.A. to date, and the city's most famous. In the Los Angeles area between August 8th and 10th, 1969, a small group of Charles Manson's followers brutally murdered five people at the Benedict Canyon home of director Roman Polanski. The night after, Manson, displeased at the sloppiness of the previous night's murders, joined his followers for a second night of murder and mayhem at the home of grocery store owner Leno LaBianca and his wife, Rosemary, in the Los Feliz area of L.A. These are just three of the numerous crimes in the area surrounding Beverly Hills California. Some say that those who live in the mansions that dot the landscape are part of an exclusive club. However, we will look at another exclusive club. The Beverly Hills Murder Club.

The very name Beverly Hills conjures images of glamour, wealth and success; in reality, the place has more than its share of malice, mayhem and even murder. In the breathtaking and sometimes macabre pages of Beverly Hills Confidential, the underbelly of the tummy-tucked gets exposed. Investigative reporter Barbara Schroeder and BHPD CSI inspector Clark Fogg re-examine the sensational stories of the past century, such as the Charlie Chaplin paternity trial and the mystery surrounding the death of Jean Harlow's MGM mogul husband.

On August 20th, 1989, privileged brothers 21-year-old Lyle and 18-year-old Erik Menendez gunned down their parents in their Beverly Hills mansion. Entertainment executive Jose Menendez was shot in the head at point-blank range. Their mother, Kitty, was shot multiple times while trying to escape. They admitted to having committed the murders, but claimed to have been victims of abuse. The jury thought otherwise, and eventually found them guilty of first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder. Nicknamed "The Black Dahlia," Elizabeth Short was brutally murdered in Los Angeles in 1947, her body cut in half and severely mutilated. The Black Dahlia's killer was never found, making her murder one of the oldest cold case files in L.A. to date, and the city's most famous. In the Los Angeles area between August 8th and 10th, 1969, a small group of Charles Manson's followers brutally murdered five people at the Benedict Canyon home of director Roman Polanski. The night after, Manson, displeased at the sloppiness of the previous night's murders, joined his followers for a second night of murder and mayhem at the home of grocery store owner Leno LaBianca and his wife, Rosemary, in the Los Feliz area of L.A. These are just three of the numerous crimes in the area surrounding Beverly Hills California. Some say that those who live in the mansions that dot the landscape are part of an exclusive club. However, we will look at another exclusive club. The Beverly Hills Murder Club.

When the pregnant wife and four year old stepdaughter of fading movie star Tom Travis disappear a massive search is launched. Soon after the body of Travis’ wife is discovered only a few miles from where Tom had been riding his dune buggy on the day she vanished he's arrested and placed on trial for capital murder. Only a days away from an almost certain guilty verdict Travis’ lawyer hires suspended Ex-Deputy D.A. Steve Janson to try to find some overlooked clue that might keep Travis off death row. Janson accepts the assignment, not to help Travis, but in the faint hope of finding the missing child still alive. Janson’s investigation leads him on a twisted path from Travis’ mistress to her drug-dealing brother to the writer and producer of his Travis’ last movie and on across the landscape of Southern California until Janson eventually begins to wonder if Travis might really be innocent after all. Visit David Grace's web site at WWW.DavidGraceAuthor.Com

Before there was a trial for O.J. Simpson, Jodi Arias, or Amanda Knox, there was Erik and Lyle Menendez. It was the first trial that was televised and America couldn't get enough. They wanted all the gory details of the murders and as far as the public were concerned, the juicer the better. The Menendez brothers were rich teens that claimed that their father physically, emotionally, and sexually abused them. To end the abuse, they decide to kill both parents, by slaughtering them with a shotgun. The parents' death was a horrifying scene. Jose Menendez died almost instantly. Kitty, however, wasn't as lucky. The boys missed when they aimed at her, and they had to reload their gun which took a few minutes. Imagine how scared she must have been waiting for her own children to come back to kill her? The big question in the Menendez brother's trial was not, did they commit the crime. They admitted they killed their parents early in the investigation. The big question was always "What was the Truth and Lies in Beverly Hills?"

Discover the definitive book on the Menendez case—and the primary source material for NBC's Law and Order True Crime: The Menendez Murders. A successful entertainment executive making $2 million a year. His former beauty queen wife. Their two sons on the fast track to success. But it was all a façade. The Menendez saga has captivated the American public since 1989. The killing of José and Kitty Menendez on a quiet Sunday evening in Beverly Hills didn't make the cover of People magazine until the arrest of their sons seven months later, and the case developed an intense cult following. When the first Menendez trial began in July 1993, the public was convinced that Lyle and Erik were a pair of greedy rich kids who had killed loving, devoted parents. But the real story remained buried beneath years of dark secrets. Until now. Journalist Robert Rand, who originally reported on the case for the Miami Herald and Playboy, has followed the Menendez murders from the beginning and has continued investigating and interviewing key sources for 28 years. Rand is the only reporter who covered the original investigation as well as both trials. With unparalleled access to the Menendez family and their history, including interviews with both brothers before and after their arrest, Rand has uncovered extraordinary details that certainly would have changed the fate of the brothers' first-degree murder conviction and sentencing to life without parole. In The Menendez Murders: The Shocking Untold Story of the Menedez Family and the Killings That Stunned the Nation, Rand shares these intimate, never-before-revealed findings, including a deeply disturbing history of child abuse and sexual molestation in the Menendez family going back generations, and the shocking admission O.J. Simpson made to one of the Menendez brothers when they were inmates at the L.A. County Men's Central Jail.

Perhaps no one's death has stirred more interest, controversy, and theories than Marilyn Monroe's August 4 of 1962. In Murder Orthodoxies, author Donald R. McGovern analyzes and examines the many theories that Monroe was murdered by a host of curious characters-from the middle Kennedy brothers to brutal gangsters to aliens. McGovern separates fact from fiction and theory from outlandish rumor. He addresses and debunks the usual allegations related to Monroe's death, the secrets recorded in her little red diary, her scheduled whistle-blowing press conference, the murder plots by organized crime and the brothers Kennedy, and the fatal injection of drugs, along with many others. In Murder Orthodoxies, McGovern restores logic and sanity to the investigation of Monroe's death. His thesis is based upon the premise that the engines of conspiracies are started and fueled by opinion, not by facts. His credible conclusions are based on logic, science, toxicology, and forensic evidence.