Menendez Brothers: Victims or Villains Episode Rating Graph

It's a gruesome murder scene, with wealthy, innocent parents as the victims and their good-looking sons, the perpetrators. But is the TV-movie-of-the-week narrative what really happened?

After the prosecution rests, the defence launches their case: years of horrific abuse made Lyle and Erik Menendez so fearful that they believed they had no choice but to kill or be killed.

The Menendez murder trial is a courtroom spectacle that ends in deadlocked jurors and public outrage, the culmination of a series of high-profile losses for the Los Angeles District Attorney's office.

In the brothers' retrial, a new prosecution strategy is aided by a judge more amenable to ruling in favour of the D.A. the second time around. The resulting verdict is controversial to this day.