Dr. Ann Burgess, an original Menendez Brother Witness, On Freeing Both

Intro what's up SDS nation and welcome to another episode of surviving Survivor the podcast that promises to bring you the very best guess in true crime and every once in a while we bring you a legend and that's happening tonight this is an STS special event uh as you know by now Lyle and Eric Menendez were convicted of the grizzly 1989 shotgun murders of their parents Jose and Mary Louise Kitty Menendez it happened at the family sprawling Beverly Hills mansion uh they've been uh Behind Bars ever since uh but do they have a new shot at Freedom after a bombshell letter that we're going to get into surface recently as well as the release of a new documentary supporting the brothers claims of sexual abuse by their dad Jose Menendez tonight you're going to hear from an original expert witness for the defense and a friend of the show the Great Dr Ann Burgess if you don't know her yet you will for sure by the end of this show she is an internationally recognized Pioneer in the assessment and treatment of victims of trauma and abuse and the author of a Killer By Design murders mind hunters and my quest to decipher the Criminal Mind among her many awards and accolades in 2016 she was named a living legend by the American Academy of nursing not a lot of people can say that they've actually been named a living legend while they're still alive so there you go she has also worked with the FBI Academy uh special agents to study serial offenders and the links between child abuse juvenile delinquency and subsequent perpetration if you know the super successful Netflix show mind Hunter about the FBI's first day of criminal profiling well that's Loosely based on Ann burgess's work as they are working on another show about her work currently right now Dakota Fanning and her sister are doing that and then another Powerhouse this is the Boston Duo right here you do not mess with these two women you've got Wendy Murphy she serves as an Adjunct professor of sexual violence law at New England law Boston where she also co-directs the Women's and Children's Advocacy project under the Center for Law and social responsibility she is a former visiting scholar at Harvard Law School uh Wendy prosecuted child abuse and sex crimes cases for many many years so we could not have two finer guests if I heard and correctly big shout out to the Newton Mass police department they are apparently watching this evening go law enforcement go Newton Mass um you can follow us on Facebook insta Twitter we are at podcast STS you can follow us or support us on patreon as well as YouTube and the merch stores open uh someone sent me a picture today they're working out in an STS shirt don't miss out get your STS sure maybe we'll make a mug with Ann Burgess on it how about that um so uh before we get to Dr Ann Burgess let me actually throw a curveball and start here with Wendy Murphy uh Wendy your old friend uh Mark aragos Fame criminal defense attorney he filed a uh uh motion in court to have this case either retried or uh to see if they could vacate the conviction um what are the chances in your opinion that this does in fact happen The odds well you know the odds are never good when you're trying to challenge a conviction especially years and years later um looking just in general at numbers the odds are terrible that this voice this will succeed however if you compare this case to the kinds of cases where a sense of Enlightenment or the new development of DNA technology has come into the picture where something truly revolutionary has entered the story in terms of the evidence that we know now versus what we knew then then your odds go up dramatically so in my view there's a good chance this will succeed whether it succeeds in terms of a new trial being granted or just an outright let the guys go um I mean I think he has a better chance of just getting the conviction overturned and a new trial will be ordered and then it's more of a political question will the D.A say well I'm not going to waste the Public's resources retrying these guys because they've been in for almost three decades why why go through all this again when in fact the evidence we're going to talk about tonight supports the claim that they shouldn't have been in prison this long anyway I mean most people would say this is at best a manslaughter case and if true they would have been out by now so if he wins just what feels like not a complete Victory but a motion for a new trial so they reverse the conviction and let the trial uh happen again I think we won't see another trial and they will be released from prison but it's anybody's guess the one thing I want to say to Gary ghost I wish he was watching and I hope he is watching he might come on tomorrow to follow this up at around 12 noon Eastern so we're waiting to hear from him but I will ask him whatever well I would have said to him if I'd known he was doing this let me sign on with you because there's nothing better when you're a defense attorney trying to overturn a conviction uh in a murder case than to have a you know a well-known advocate for victims not all due respect to Dr Burgess I mean she was the expert in the case she they might think she doesn't have objectivity she's biased Etc but you know for someone like me because I was on TV constantly at the time and and I remember not knowing a lot at all about the abuse and thinking oh these horrible boys should go to prison for the rest of their life these greedy sons of [ __ ] they just wanted money because that was what I was being told and that was what the evidence was and that's what came out and that was the overwhelming picture that was the narrative so I mean I really like it when somebody's filing a motion for new trial whether right after the conviction or decades later and you can team up a defense attorney especially somebody like Mark we I don't think we've ever agreed on any case ever in the history of our of our time as pundits on television this is one where we could have agreed and I think it's a lot stronger when you can go to the judge and say this isn't just me as a defense attorney being an advocate for my clients this is me and the lawyers who are usually on the other side agreeing with me this conviction should be overturned so you tell that to Mark garages well he's famous but he's obviously not that smart if he didn't bring me on so I will I will mention it and maybe you will get it maybe you will get a call from him tomorrow um one more legal question just for the lay people so he files called a writ of habeas corpus what does that mean in English and he filed this a while ago I don't have the days in front of me but he is quoted as saying uh he was expecting to hear from the court within 45 days and we're we've got to be coming up on that fairly soon um but what is a writ of habeas corpus well if you're asking me for the Latin definition I just think it means bring us the body um but in terms of why it's a habeas corpus uh action at this point it's because he's they've exhausted all their appeals so it's really not technically an appeal because they did appeal and they lost and they may have had multiple appeals I don't know off the top of my head but the time for a regular appeal has come and gone many decades later the mechanism you use as a lawyer to essentially appeal again is a habeas corpus petition you can't call it an appeal you call it a habeas petition but the effect of it is you're getting another bite at the Appellate Apple um but the but the habeas corpus language basically means look somebody's in prison and we want the body that's what habeas corpus means give us the body and and you're really you know the Latin is correct we want the body out of prison because they ought to be behind bars really you know to boil it down to to the simplest way I can it's a procedural device to file what is effectively an appeal but it literally means give us the body these guys should not be behind bars their bodies should be released um for those of you who don't know uh Wendy Murphy and Anne uh not only are they uh sort of legendary in each of their fields but they did a ton of TV and continue to do uh but this case as Wendy alluded to for those of you who are a little bit younger was the biggest case going in America was all over the place um you couldn't you know you couldn't miss it if you flipped on the news in the early 90s um and just to kind of give a quick recap here for those who do not know the Menendez brothers Lyle and Eric they're serving life sentences without the possibility of parole uh they were both convicted of first-degree murder for fatally shooting both of their parents um they were each tried separately the first time and each of those juries were deadlocked so then they were tried together and in that second trial the judge essentially and I'll ask Wendy about this a little bit because I don't think this would ever happen in 2023 but would not allow in any of this sexual abuse but now on to Dr Ann Burgess um and how did you how did you become involved with this case originally take us back to that period of time what were you doing back then and how are you asked to get involved well back then I was just minding my own How did you become involved business and teaching and doing the usual uh academic things and I got a call from John Conte now John Conte was uh in Chicago and then out in Seattle Washington one of the um the best uh Advocates if you will for teaching about abuse of children and he was one of the founders of abstract which is a a an organization that really speaks for the victim and he called and he just said have you heard about the case that's Menendez case and I hadn't and he told me to go look at the People magazine where it was written up at and he says the purple cover and you can read all about it so I did I bought a People's magazine I read all about these two brothers that had uh had shotgun their their parents and in the in the meantime he had asked it's kind of what they do where they get somebody to I think attorneys maybe when they can clarify this will get somebody to call on their behalf to see if they're interested in the case rather than just doing uh calling themselves but anyway I said I would so uh I got a call from um uh I'd say it wasn't much later that I got a call from I guess I'm not sure if it was actually from Leslie probably was from Leslie Abramson who was the lead attorney for Eric now John had agreed to be the uh expert for Lyle and his attorney was Jill Jill's last name so anyway uh Leslie called and we talked and she had wanted she said would you be interested and since John was involved in it I thought okay I will uh and anyway I've later learned I wasn't the first person that she had tried uh Leslie's a very interesting attorney and and woman and so she later told me about it but anyway I went out talked with her talked with the went to the prison to uh jail they were in jail at that time and and talk with them and and signed on to the uh to the case so uh Wendy back to you for a minute um so again the first trial they were each tried separately and that's where Ann testified on behalf of Eric which will get to detail about um but at the time uh uh when jury the jury's deadlocked they they retried them a judge um by the way defense attorneys came out uh Leslie Abramson as um Dr Amber just mentioned said that the siblings these two brothers feared their parents were going to kill them after they threatened to expose the alleged abuse but the judge steps in and deems all testimony of sexual abuse irrelevant and inadmissible um were the times really that different than Wendy because is this even imaginable uh today well some things have gotten a lot worse especially for sexual abuse victims today compared to when I started 35 years ago um and that's for another show but by no means has everything gotten better for victims I think again we'll agree with that um but but the thing I my understanding is more evidence of sexual abuse came in uh during the first trial and less during the second um I could be wrong about that but that's what I remember reading that it was curtailed it was not entirely excluded and the problem was then the defense narrative felt very limp it felt it felt very meager um and I believe some jurors have since said after finding them Guilty Boy if we had known more about that there's no way we would have found him guilty of murder so that's really vital because when a judge excludes evidence if you can show Prejudice I mean you're not supposed to ask juries what they would have done differently if this other evidence had come in but here you have that and you know you're able to make this argument was it prejudicial in a in a significant way that the judge excluded this evidence that basically the judge agreed was relevant he didn't let it all and he let some in which is bad for the judge right because it'd be better almost for the state if the judge kept it all out because then the judge has made what appears to be a rational ruling that that it just doesn't matter that they were sexually abused but some came in so now the question is well why why did you only let some of it in when when now we can show that the jury is actually saying had we known how how how life was for them and how bad it really it really was this wasn't just a one-off grab of the fanny you know this was severe stuff and and so I think the curtailing part is better for the defense at this stage I also you know I also think what's a little bit better for us today and by us I mean advocates for victims who are trying to get the court system to understand the nature of trauma to understand that sometimes people do things because they really have to I mean I hate to say it no one should ever kill anyone there's no justification for killing period even if you're being raped every single day the the what what matters to the law is if you're killing because you're defending yourself this is the way technically works if you if you are and if your life is threatened or someone else's life is threatened you can kill in self-defense or in defense of another what you can't do is kill because you're angry that you got raped but can you kill if you're being raped yes the law allows that can you kill if you're being beaten severely yes the law allows for that this case kind of sits in the middle this is where uh two boys over the period of many many years suffered not only horrendous sexual abuse but also physical abuse and perhaps even more importantly mental abuse where they couldn't even think straight about what was going on in their lives nor could they reasonably expect to ever be able to defend themselves against a monster a monster and a mother who refused to protect them and she knew what was going on so talk about feeling utterly helpless and that your life is on the line and you finally get to the age where you can say to your parents I'm going to tell on you and your father who is a zillionaire and will lose his business overnight if you tell of course is going to react in a way that makes you feel like your life is in danger because you've elevated it for good reason but you've elevated this this isn't all any more about I was sexually abused and it was so upsetting to me I killed somebody no this is about and when I tried to confront my parents and say this was unacceptable and and I'm going to tell someone because I need to tell someone I'm out of my mind I need to tell to protect myself to be safe and to hold you accountable when a kid does that in the response of the parents is oh you are hell not going to tell under no condition are you going to tell um then your life really is in danger and that's where I think the The Narrative of this state lies this story lies today um that it that it really is about the dynamic and the long-term nature of trauma that just sizzles and Fizzles over time it's not like a knife in your face or a gun in your face it's this very slow burn that doesn't just erupt into murder but it can erupt into that moment of Confrontation which then poses the risk that somebody's going to die the father's gonna kill someone to keep them quiet or the kids are going to kill to save themselves from being killed that's how I feel about this case and that's why I think they have to be let out because because we don't we may not have understood this 35 years ago we may not have understood the desperation that children felt because we didn't listen to kids very well back then and these days kids are a little bit more capable they're more knowledgeable we're teaching them things at a younger age about what you need to tell who to tell um you know what's acceptable what's not acceptable these kids do these boys knew when they were little that what was going on was wrong but did they have an opportunity to tell absolutely not were they were they completely enslaved by their family situation absolutely do you expect slaves to be able to protect themselves from their Master no so you know now that we see it in that light and maybe it took both distance and a little bit of Enlightenment culturally speaking we've reached the point where we can not only let them out but apologize for keeping them in oh it definitely Toes that delicate uh legal line uh no doubt about it I was told that well I know both Menendez brothers are married I was told that the wives uh have been watching some of these episodes and that they watch Believe It or Not uh inside the prison outside of San Diego and I bet you right now they're saying we better hire Wendy Murphy so I will not be surprised just promise me Wendy when they call you that you'll let us know um so uh Sally says oh wow Wendy Murphy's back this will be interesting no doubt every time Wendy's on uh this will be interesting at the time of the murders they came off as smarmy Rich boys who murdered their parents and went out to spend the money which is what Wendy alluded to uh and then kind of had a change of heart uh GX says we cannot lose you again Dr Ann Burgess but when he doesn't know is we had her on a couple weeks ago and she had a bad connection which is why we are reconnecting now but we will not lose her so um and back to you here tell me I mean I know you interviewed Eric uh according to the reports I read for over 50 hours and you ultimately determined uh that he was telling the truth about his history of physical psychological uh and sexual abuse can you recall the first time that you were these in-person interviews um what was your initial reaction how did it sort of change over the over the course of time as you continue to speak to him well one Two juries of the things that was very interesting about this cases that there were two juries and sometimes as we developed what I was going to be testifying to sometimes I would just speak to one to Eric's jury but very often they brought me in on both juries and what I was trying to do at that point was to as Wendy was saying trying to give them some of the current research of that time don't forget this is back in the 90s about the fear response and the um I I can remember and what we call the neurobiology of trauma that was just coming into the literature wow I have written on it other people had written on it it was really the decade of the brain the 90s when so much research was going on with that and so trying to impress upon the jury how the brain works when they're if you're when they're under fear and I can remember talking one of the research projects was the Appalachian snail now the snail is a very I won't go into all of that I talked about but what does a snail do with it withdraws you know you agitate it and it withdraws and so that's what these brothers had done for so long and how long can that go on there comes a point when they're just not going to do it anymore and the one thing that doesn't get talked about I think as I've reviewed this case is the anger that can build up in a traumatized child or a person and I think that's when they have the when both brothers got together whenever you have that Dynamic if you will there was more power behind what they were going to do Jose Menendez was unbelievably controlling I mean the the examples that we tried to bring out our family members uncles and aunts would come over and they couldn't go to talk with the brothers if Jose had them they had to stay out I mean it was incredible the the um how intimidated they felt these are just family members I remember in talking with one of the teachers of the teachers were intimidated if they got a bad grade those parents would go in and especially Jose and so frightened teachers that they would you know give the a or whatever it was and I I was thinking at the time I said I couldn't believe that parents would come in to a teacher I I've never had that experience and luckily haven't since but at any rate I I just wanted to impress upon you how controlling Jose was I I if you don't understand that it's it's a it's a hard case but the other big thing is the times if these are male on male pedophilic kind of behavior and it's incest and what are that we could hardly talk about female being abused by males let alone uh males abusing their own child their own son so we had a lot of uh of backwinds you could say in moving forward but I testified actually to that I spent a lot of time on that and I know how people kept saying do you believe them do you believe them and I thought they were on the stand for days and I thought if people couldn't themselves listen to Eric or Lyle talk about what went on and couldn't make their mind up of course they had made their mind up in the first trial that was a mistrial they they couldn't get I think it was split uh six and six if there were 12 I think it was that so and that's when all of the abuse was able to get in obviously second trial wasn't allowed in so it was they could run their Narrative of these are just Rich Kids I can remember thinking yeah they they were rich but they never needed money the father always gave them money there was they were not without money so if it wasn't money what else could it be uh and I know that was my thinking at the time I tried to rule out everything I possibly could but it came back down to it was the control the abuse the the uh not being able to talk about it uh by the way I watched this testimony it's on the YouTube and uh Dr Ann Burgess looks younger today than she did then today I could barely get through the day my four-year-old was driving me crazy I felt like I was walking through mud I need to start I don't know uh what's the word I need to uh what's the word I can't think of the word but anyway I need to become more like Anne let's put it that way and uh get that get that energy but Anne let's take a two second detour here uh I'm so jealous I want to be named a living legend Carly says and what is the secret to your success is it that you have such a passion for what you do um you know you're still going strong all these years later uh let's let the audience in on this how does someone you know there's that famous book by uh Malcolm Gladwell you've got to put ten thousand hours in you've definitely done that but what is it that makes you so successful in what you do in Success well I I think I give access to wonderful people that can work and work in the field I mean I just look at Wendy I haven't seen Wendy in years but you feel like it hasn't been that long and and there are were so many people that were it was a time when you wanted to do something we were seeing these uh the maltreatment of kids especially was very prominent and not getting anywhere in the courts and the women I I hand it to the second movement for the women that got this all going they put the pressure on to get rape and sexual assault on the front burner and to do something about the problem so I just happened to be at the time I I really look at Linda holmstrom she was the one that got me into this I didn't know anything about this and she taught me the kind of research that really made a difference it was doing the actual interview bringing the material to the to the Rape Crisis person so I'd have to say being able to work and I think law enforcement I was very fortunate in being able to meet up with um Bob Ressler and and and his um unit down at Quantico so all of it kind of came together and once you get something going I've just gone into other areas of the same issue but right now the whole issue of Elders and nursing homes is horrendous I I mean I just you know it just seems to never stop so I just answer you with um having an opportunity to get the information out and then seeing it happen by the way the word I was looking for that I couldn't find with my senior moment was Channel I'm gonna get a shirt that says Channel your inner and STS we'll have a shirt um Patty girl says wonderful women you have there with you heart emojis followed by Sarah Ann Bostonian here love seeing this Boston Duo on STS best guess you can say that again um to you Wendy Murphy so one of the there's pieces of evidence if you could call in that that are are new in this uh Saga this decades-long Saga one of them is a documentary called Menendez and menudo uh boys betrayed and I've been in touch with the directors who are not ready to speak publicly yet because they're still working on some stuff but in that a former member of the boy band menudo which of course is where Ricky Martin came from there were a lot of members of this band over time but this guy Ray a Roy I should say Roy rosello uh he alleges in this docky series that Jose Menendez molested drugged and raped him um when he was performing with this Puerto Rican boy band Jose Menendez he was the head of RCA records and he says in this documentary that's the man here that raped me um in this clip that's the pedophile it's time for the world to know the truth um does this hold water in a court of law or is it more for a court of public opinion or both wow that's a really hard question to What about prior bad acts answer simply because the answer is it might be relevant in a court of law um a judge has discretion to let in what's called a prior bad Act in this case another sexual assault incident or multiple ones involving another person because you know the courts say well we can't we can't let a jury just think of he's such a bad guy let's just find him guilty but on the other hand if someone has a pattern or if they are a repeat sex offender you don't want to deny to the jury uh evidence showing that they um have not so much a propensity but but like a pattern that they that they target certain boys certain ages or they have an inclination to do certain things in certain ways um it's really it's really important I think that jurors know someone um is not like what they appear this is where I would come down as a judge my my inclination would be to stop focusing on whether gun fair to let the jury hear about all this past stuff what I would say is look this guy this dead father this so-called victim of this case had enormous wealth and he was able to manufacture for himself a reputation that is going to mislead the jury to find these boys guilty because they think he's a certain type of guy they think he's an upstanding member of the community maybe he donates to the boys club or whatever and a lot of perpetrators do exactly that to insulate themselves from suspicion in the event they do get caught so to to kind of fight back against that I would want the jury to hear what kind of guy he really is and that would mean to me allowing other evidence of other victimizations to come in because once the jury is willing to let the bloom off the rose and see this guy as just a regular guy they're more likely to assess the evidence fairly and that's what we want we don't want anybody being judged unfairly we want it to be done fairly but there's almost an unfair advantage to perpetrators like this because they have this glimmering gloss Beverly Hills you know lots of money that's not the type of guy who does this not to mention the stuff about male on mail and you know um incestuous style of of pedophilia it's and I even hate that word pedophilia because it literally means child love and this is the opposite of child love right there should be another word called like whatever the Great word is for hatred that's what it should be changed to but I digress um so for me the most important thing as a judge and as an advocate for victims what I say as often as I can in any space where I can when I talk about these issues because again I've been doing this for 35 years and what I've confronted when I've tried cases is jurors being reluctant to believe that the perpetrator is the type of person who would do this the other reluctance they have is understanding why and jurors would say this to me why would he do this it makes no sense if you've got a lot of money you can just go pay a prostitute right you don't have to rape your own kid why would someone do this and I would always argue to jurors just to relieve them of that burden in their brain you don't have to understand why this guy did it he may not understand why your job is is just to understand who you believe is the evidence credible and if you find the evidence credible usually that meant if you find the victim credible then your obligation is to is to is to vote guilty you don't have to understand the why the problem is humans want to understand the why and if you can't give it to them they're more likely to vote not guilty so for a case like this where I would feel that pressure that this this guy is going to walk and it has nothing to do with the evidence it has everything to do with the predisposition the kind of irrational predisposition of jurors to think men like that don't do things like that that's Injustice in the same way that it's Injustice you know to lock up an innocent man it's also Injustice to not find a guy guilty because you don't think he's the type I mean that is just grotesque Injustice in my experience and it's a hard Injustice to fix because it comes from the victim's side of things so the other thing to remember about jurors is what they're always trying to make things make sense in their gut you know what's their core sense of how the world works it's not that this Rich Neighbor Next Door rapes little boys so so they're going to be very reluctant to believe that evidence when it comes in it just whooshes by because it doesn't stick to their inner sense of how the world Works how do you get yours to accept what makes them feel terribly uncomfortable that is the challenge of these cases still although it's a little bit better that part is a little bit better today because we've had so many high-profile cases where seemingly nice guys did horrendous things you know dream date Ken Scott Peterson slices up his his wife and and unborn baby let's talk about garagos another time on that case um but you know we look at him and think he's a man who looks like that doesn't kill his pregnant wife an unborn child well yes he does because he did and he looks like that you really have to get jurors comfortable with that even though it could be that that they don't know exactly exactly the dangerous people are which scares them people want to believe that they can look at their neighbor and know they're not dangerous that they can look at Uncle Charlie and know that he's not dangerous and when you start putting seemingly non-dangerous people on the stand for doing these grotesque things to Children it shakes people up and and it and it's much harder to get a conviction as a result so you know my my my problem with this case is really that that the victim Jose Menendez had a terribly unfair Advantage even in death when this case went to trial because jurors would have had a very difficult time thinking he was the type and that was and that was partly because they were denied the evidence that you mentioned Joel which is this menudo singer and I did see that video but that menudo singer being able to testify and I know he wasn't ready back then and we have to respect that but had that evidence been been around back then I would have let it in and it would have changed everything because then the jurors would have been more comfortable accepting oh yes he is the type he is this wasn't a one-off these aren't crazy kids this is this is a problem this guy is a bad guy once they can turn their minds around to accept the reality that people who look like Jose Menendez are potentially child rapists then they can judge the evidence fairly that's what I would you know that's what I would argue in a case like this at this point in time is had that menudo singer been around to testify back then and what I mean by that is had he been able capable as a person to testify back then the outcome of this case would have been dramatically different therefore they have to be released because it's not that child's fault it's not that menudo child's fault that he wasn't capable of testifying back then he was a terribly traumatized sexually abused raped little boy you know we can't punish him that he wasn't available to testify but we can do the right thing now late in the day though it might be uh Dr Ann um Wendy said something interesting which is you know he was a powerful the the victim here Jose Menendez uh who could also be termed as suspect I guess or perpetrator um Wendy posed the question or positive the question why didn't he just hire a prostitute um what part of this abuse is sexual what part of it is control um you know for Jose at the time Polymorphous experiences well certainly the control was a major factor he had to have everything controlled and not only his family but also from a sexual standpoint and as far as going to a prostitute he probably did you know but we know that um they have a polymorphous kinds of experiences and I remember at the time they really they tried to find and thought they had found someone that would come in and testify and if I remember correctly was in Mexico or one of those uh types that and and they just couldn't get them and that's understandable like when they just said you can't get at that time to try to get a teenager to come in and testify especially when there had been some drinking or drugging and and the fear that all they're going to blame me for all of this it's the same kinds of problems that we run into all the time when there is is the um uh the use of of drugs or alcohol and I think that's what he did now I don't know I don't remember his doing that with his sons but they were pretty clear in the kinds of uh acts that the father forced on them and you know you don't even have to drug your own kids because you have total control over them Porn addiction right you can keep them quiet in other ways strangers you might have to drug to keep them quiet to interfere with their memory and so forth but by I'm going to toss one other thing out there which is um I bet he was a porn addict remember he was in the porn industry right he was making gobs of dough from whatever the porn video thing was that he was involved in so there's always a possibility when anyone's involved in the porn business that they're raping kids and making videos and selling them because they know that's a that's a big lucrative business but even when they're not making videos of the rapes they're doing which he may not have done but it's possible um because he had plenty of money from other sources right but but if you're a porn addict which is not a it's not difficult for a guy to become a porn addict and it is devastating and I don't want to make him into a victim but if that was part of his problem um you know working in the business of Distributing porn and not you know feeling like that was a delightful thing to do because everyone in the videos is having a grand old time raping God knows who children animals whatever you know that's what porn can destroy especially men it can destroy their brain's ability to think straight to have healthy relationships to understand intimacy um I wish we had found out more about him in that sense what's his name the guy that handsome guy that killed all those women um what's that handsome answered was famously giving interviews in prison he said look I was so addicted to porn and that is why I killed and raped all these women I just couldn't get enough and and in prison he said he'd talk to all these other guys who were in prison for raping or killing women and they were all porn addicts so you know the story that may need to be told here in addition to let's remember the experiences of these victims is well what turned this I don't know if he was ever a nice guy but let's say he started off as a nice guy until he got into this business what role did that business play and turning him into a beast well Society is in trouble if it's porn Audience comments because now it's uh imagine how hard it was in 93 now anyone can get it whenever they want which is crazy eflo knows says yeah fellow Bostonian here Boston ladies are no joke uh we're gonna get to this in a little while uh to show how the audience is split a little bit the letter just appeared now very suspicious we'll tell you about that letter uh Becky says hi from Ohio I watched the original trial and felt the brothers were telling the truth between the first and second trial the state played calls from jail and it really made me wonder that's interesting um and to you to Wendy's Point again did we ever did you ever get more background on Jose himself and why potentially he was abusing his was he abused himself do we know yeah we weren't able to get that but I know that um my Huntress he would also tell the brothers that this is is what the father does with the son so there could have been that hook in that also the um um I think there was some testimony around that but as far as I certainly knew that the music industry or the whatever industry Jose was in certainly happened certainly was selling pornography no question about it but they never they kept trying to find the child pornography not the adult pornography I know that was something that they had investigators looking for and there's so much to get to uh uh here The crime scene with you uh so one of the things that you evaluated was the crime scene which was horrific uh and you determined it was an unplanned killing done with a high level of emotion you were interviewed extensively by the Los Angeles Times at the time I'm just looking for this one quote um but you talked about how um they were basically uh this is it the night of the killings the parents and Sons got into an argument in the Mansion of foyer and the parents closed the door to the TV room you say that Eric Menendez viewed that action the closing of the door as a sign of imminent danger uh an outsider might not view the closing of that door that way but Eric Menendez you said was hyper Vigilant after years of abuse his brain biologically altered to be attuned to cues that Outsiders would ignore was it the closing of that foyer door that's you know they used the word snap too often but made the boys jump into action thinking that maybe they were going to be uh found out or or made men uh was that it yes uh there are actually a series of incidents that happened that last week it was very important to look time wise at that very last week leading up to it one of the incidents that had happened in the foyer is where the mother had grabbed the Lyle was wearing a toupee and had grabbed the toupee and laughed and really humiliated the sun right there so those were some of the things that she would do and then right after that is when then Jose came and they they also realized that the mother was not going to come with them they had tried to get the mother to go with them to the east coast well I'll go back to Princeton and they would get um Eric go to a East Coast College and they wanted the mother and she said No and when that happened they realized that there was no way that the mother was going to in any way separate from the father and they had to get away from the father so when people say well gee why was the mother killed well the mother didn't protect them so there was uh that was that wasn't should not have been a surprise that they would shoot both of the parents I mean when this especially that to get back to your question about when those doors closed they were sure that something was going on now later of course they can admit that their thinking was not clear at that time and nobody was trying to say well this actually it was their thinking was the high emotion and the low thinking is what I tried to tell people when people have that combination you want it's not planned in terms of precisely and they got into Remember The Alibi that they had to go to the movies and meet somebody and they kept saying well that was an alibi and I kept saying well it's not an alibi if it doesn't work so and it didn't work it went and came back and with they had they had me in this 10 o'clock and 1107 I'll never forget those two numbers and that's only because neighbors had said oh I think I heard a noise at 10 o'clock or I think I heard a noise at 1107 and I thought the way they were trying trying to the prosecution was trying to put this case together rather than just looking at it and logically looking at it was it was really tough to do that but I did testify at the crime scene called the disorganized at that time agents were very much into what's organized and what's disorganized and for the disorganized it wouldn't fall into the premeditated they're trying to get me into the premeditated plan murder so that they could have a first degree murder charge which ultimately I guess the second top trial they did yet but um those were and I tried to also tell them that we have three levels of planning if you will or not planning but the way any type of crime happened pre-crime the crime itself and then post crime the behavior can be all the same or can be very different and in this case it was all very different because even remember the shells they had to uh they picked up the shells and they said well that showed planning and I said first of all these two brothers had never shot any guns before they had to take a lesson after they bought the guns they really wanted a handgun and there was a I don't know 14 day wait so and to me the logic was if they wanted to kill them and plan that they could have waited 14 days but no they couldn't they had such imminent fear that something was going to happen and they just played this in their own minds and it just built and built and built so the emotion was there and there's a famous photo of them Spending spree sitting I think Center Court at a Lakers playoff game not not very long after the murders and a lot of people say well look these guys were on a spending spree they just wanted the money they were greedy we already saw a comment to that effect uh what is your response to those people well what was the money used for one of them and one of them I forget which one bought three Rolex watches well you can say well that's very expensive of course it is they gave them all away so they bought things but then they gave them away so it was never anything that was going to definitely benefit them and the other important thing I felt my opinion is that the uncle was the executor of the of the estate he had to approve everything right I mean an Executor generally approved so it wasn't that they were just taking this money and spending it there was a certain process and structure to it so I was never I know that was a prosecution's theory and of course it was an easy one for them to use all these rich kids and um and their brats I think the prosecutor called them brats and and also you can imagine and people would identify with us oh gee I don't want you know my the idea that uh boys that you raised could come and kill you was very hard of course for um so the identification when you want to identify you're going to have them identify with the the prosecution got them identifying with the kitty and Jose and and have you had any contact with Contact with Eric and Lyle Eric or Lyle but presumably Eric uh since this time since I haven't no I have not I've talked to Leslie but I haven't talked to um to them well they've been in separate prisons it's been hot you know it's not been a very and I didn't testify it obviously at the second trial yeah and now uh and now they're together uh in San Diego Joels story um Wendy this is to you a quick Joel story which I've shared on the show before but uh I grew up an average tennis player in New Jersey a lot of people don't know that Lyle and Eric are from Princeton New Jersey they only move to Beverly Hills so I grew up playing at the East Brunswick Racquet Club on court two and those guys were always on court one I saw them every single day basically of my childhood they were the phenomenal athletes one went to Princeton to play tennis um but I can very vividly remember this story a bunch of my high school friends was a kind of a close circle of people and I was not very close friends with them but my tennis coach he was subpoenaed for the trial um long story short a bunch of my friends were invited to their house in Princeton one night for a party and someone spilled red wine on a white carpet and the reaction that Lyle and Eric had they said that their father was going to kill them and it wasn't like my dad's gonna kill me hahaha it was like complete and utter fear uh and at that point the party broke up they sent everyone home and everyone was kind of like that was really weird that was a really weird reaction it obviously all made a lot of sense um after all this came out but that's my little uh Rush with Lyle and Eric uh this is an interesting point Wendy from Kristen Grogan Eric needs to be released possibly Lyle too I think Eric thought he had to do Legal perspective this because of what Lyle told him that Lyle was being abused but from a legal standpoint here I've always looked at them as basically one entity uh when Mark aragos is doing what Mark aragos is doing right now does the court look at the brothers this way or could one of them they were tried together and uh the nature of the prosecution's case in terms of the theory of why they should be convicted is that they acted together shared one state of mind I'm you know it's it is possible to try them separately and when defendants even if they acted at the same time when they are tried separately um things are things look very different all these years later in terms of how you want to get them out because um because you really might want to separate them if one has a stronger case you want to put all your resources into that person's case see if you can get them out and then kind of piggyback uh the second case um but it almost doesn't matter uh you know two close Brothers even if only one was sexually abused um the closeness of brothers and what you would do to protect your beloved brother it really the mindset is sort of the same and and the thing that matters to me most is everybody seems to agree that this was emotional filled to the brim and then some emotional killing and and in almost any other case when you see what's called an Overkill whether it's a lot of stabbing or a lot of extra bullets the law enforcement automatic reaction you don't even need to be a genius or a law enforcement trained person to know this the overkill is because of emotion you know you because if you're just trying to kill someone because you want their money one bullet to the head will do it or maybe two but you don't have to do all this bloody gory stuff so just that alone you would think would convey to the jury that this wasn't just two guys who wanted money because if that were the case they wouldn't they would have done it cleaner especially guys that are picking up casings afterwards right just a couple of bullets and you're good to go um the fact that this was such an Overkill to me begs questions as a juror I want to know the answers to the questions where was that emotion coming from and I want to make sense of that and the trauma the trauma experience really fits nicely into it and then you really one of the things we really have to do better with jurors and it was hard back then and I'm sure Ann did a brilliant job I haven't read the transcript but you have to be able to put yours in the shoes of these guys and that is exceedingly difficult to do because number one and this is the law in most ly if you've ever been a sexual you picked off the jury think about how sick that is think about how unjust and outrageous that is if you who could understand our state of mind are good or too biased to sit in judgment that's bizarre Beyond bizarre but guess what's not true if you've ever been a sex offender a pornographer you know all the things Jose was um you are allowed to sit in judgment nobody even asks the only kinds of sex offenders who aren't allowed to sit as jurors are the ones who've been convicted and that number is about one percent so all the sex offenders and all the pornographers are allowed to sit in judgment in sex crimes cases just like this back then and today because we don't screen them out we don't ask them if we don't act them do you do you have a history of being a sex offender have you ever raped a child I mean and I know there's a fifth amendment piece of this but the way to ask the question would be to say to the potential jurors um have you or anyone close to you ever been accused of committing a sex crime period then you don't have to violate your fifth amendment rights right you can just say raise your hand and say well I know someone and and boom you're off if we think if we think a victim is too biased then you're off to we got to get rid of both sides or we let both sides in and the reality is even today the people who could have understood the Menendez brother's state of mind because they too were raped by their fathers or by their Uncle Charlie or by somebody whether it was child sexual abuse that was pervasive or in a one-time incident they know tra they know what happens to the mind and to the brain they understand what seems to be irrational they understand why the irrational is quite rational when you when you've experienced what they've been through those are the jurors who should be sitting in judgment in these cases and they never ever get selected they get booted and the defense doesn't even have to object they just get booted they don't even have to use one of their peremptories to get rid of them that's why we have so many not guilty verdicts in this country and people don't I mean I know people who know this is a systemic problem and there is no one in any state in this country doing anything about that so you wonder why we have Injustice sometimes they go in this direction in a case like this where the victims have killed someone but it's more often the case where the victim is testifying about someone who raped her and and the jurors don't understand why she behaved so weird after the rape well that's weird I wouldn't do that if I was raped well first of all you don't know because if you were raped you wouldn't be on the jury and you don't know what it feels like to be in her shoes you don't know what trauma feels like don't you go passing judgment on how she's supposed to behave afterwards so so my concern about this case as a symbol of that problem is that we're not going to learn from it that we're going to continue to perpetuate the problem and it won't just be um victims who become so desperate they kill which and that's not that rare by the way I don't know if you remember the um the king boys case I think it was from Florida similar case two brothers very young killed their father and everyone's like oh those boys what's wrong with them they're terrible isn't that terrible no I was like he was obviously raping them that doesn't they don't just kill they don't just kill so my concern is that in a case like this where the victims end up killing number one we need more systemic appreciation for how they got to that stage and not only their psyche but how the system the system is built to insulate those children from being able to call police from being able to be protected from feeling like they have an opportunity or resources or someone they can turn to when you're a kid and you realize no one's going to believe me no one's going to help me my father's too rich my father's too powerful that's a that's a form of slavery that you're living in that family environment and the system is doing that to you because we don't offer those kinds of kids any hope and when they become hopeless they become desperate they kill that's not vigilantism that's I have no choice so it's for kids in this kind of case that I feel terrible but I also feel terrible for the kids who testify in a court of law this man raped me and the jurors can't understand them because we we don't we just don't have that sense of appreciation for what it feels like how so the question then is how do you help a juror feel what they felt that was a challenge I'm not sure I know the answer to it but sometimes you have to make comparisons and you say have you ever you know been in an automobile accident or some really horrendously traumatic incident happened to you in your life do you remember how your brain didn't work for a while after that happened it's the problem is you don't know if any jurors have had something similar in terms of trauma most people have been traumatized by something I mean it just the nature of you being a human but because you don't know you can't speak to the jury and engage them and bring them to the table bring them to that sense of understanding get them to feel what those boys felt it's a near impossible task because of how our system is designed our system is designed to make children hopeless to leave them no choice but to kill and then when they kill we put them in jail welcome to America and we see that to a certain degree going on right now uh with the Idaho four the two surviving roommates a lot of people pointing the finger at those victims saying they should have reacted in a certain way to make a comparison there but if you want to know why Wendy Murphy is as successful as she is all you have to do is listen to that passion and you will understand uh that is the key to succeeding I'm going to make both my daughters watch this even though they're too young but eventually I'll make them watch this um and back to you a couple just a quick stroll down memory lane here not only did the state and prosecution and um you know Not only was sexual abuse kind of omitted by the judge here but the state went so far as to say this abuse is quote unquote fiction judge Stanley Weisberg he warned yours not to take Ann burgess's testimony as gospel he came out and literally said that do not take doc what Dan what Dr Ann Burgess is going to tell you do not take his gospel um Leah from Austria and says I have a question for you I listened to an interview with Anne about two years ago and she talked about Eric drawing pictures for her about certain events uh can you explain that more before Anne answers that and went on to say that Eric referred to oral sex he had a name for it it was called knees as in like bend your knees uh Ann says that children have their own terminology and he used to have a nightmare called the green face nightmare which included a cow a a horse and a green face which got larger while he got smaller and then the green face turns into his father which chases him through the darkness so obviously there's a lot going on here but Anne if you want to respond to any of that but also uh these drawings did these drawings help you did they help Eric well the drawings I always if uh if it's appropriate try to get them I will say sketch with kids I'll say drawings but I would get them to sketch and because that week prior to the actual shootings was so important I had Eric draw each night or each day and they were profound they really were even what you just described he drove one of his Nightmares of the fathers the green monster and then turns into this uh his face comes through and I use that as a way to get at the emotion and the thinking and would then I had something concrete so they would draw for example one was the uh the two pay incident as I called it and you could go back and forth over instead of just sitting there with someone and saying well now tell me what this happened and tell me that you could say now what does this mean here that you have like uh he would put movement lines over things to show his emotion and we could spend at least an hour just going through one of the drawings um so I thought that was really important we weren't sure if we were going to use them in the um in the trial we obviously we didn't they were making so much there was so much I think the other thing that was important to know is how people would would try to make fun and mock the kinds of theories that I was presenting which was the research uh the you know the snails Theory they talked about that and of course the the judge as you said he said it's uh you can't um it's you can't believe it or I think he whatever he said I've never heard a judge specifically pick out one expert now maybe Wendy has she can fill us in but uh there are other experts so I don't know why he picked on me to say don't believe her but I was trying to give him the best of the research and the research is there the research now is everywhere so it's not like it's brand new it's you just do neurobiology of trauma put it in Google and and lots of stuff comes up so that explains the drawings uh there was a second part to the question Joel what was the what's the other one I think we're talking about um names that uh oh the names that he used yeah yeah he uh and and because of the drawings I was able to use that he could label them and so forth and you know there was physical evidence that they really didn't want to pay attention to he had a hospital record when he was six or eight that showed the um a soft palate in his throat injury and also a whole lot of sore throats and they said Oh all kids have sore throats yeah a lot of kids have sore throats but they don't go to the hospital for a sore throat I mean there can be it might not have been written as um that the of what was in his throat but anyway there certainly was I felt more evidence that could have been highlighted for a jury and don't forget in the first trial half of the jury believed that yeah you know they were ready I don't know whether they would have acquitted but they certainly would not have given first degree so the it made sense to certain ones and I do believe I I haven't seen the actual numbers but I think the half that believed they were female and then the half that didn't believe it were male so I think that gets to that the males this could not believe uh or did not want to believe that fathers could do this to their sons are plenty of cases out there yeah there's a this is a little graphic everyone so if you're squeamish uh earmuff yourself right now but uh you you brought this up in court and saying that there were certain details he provided to you that you just couldn't make up like you wouldn't be able to cover your tracks and one of one of them was that um Eric testified that he used to put cinnamon in his father's coffee and oatmeal hoping to make oral sex more palatable uh in your interviews with him um when he was in jail Eric told you he had his own special way of describing the abuse um I mean he just offered up this information about this cinnamon to change the taste presumably of his dad's semen uh that's something that I mean if it was someone Faking It just would never think to bring up is that right no I'm noticing he volunteered this this isn't something I specifically so yeah so I thought that was very important and yes he did say that I don't know if he did testify to it but it certainly was in my notes yes uh Leticia here says uh based on your personal valuation of Eric Dr Burgess do you think that had the killings not taken place Eric would have ultimately killed himself over the abuse what are your thoughts on that well he certainly went more suicidal and actually that was the reason that I think some of this came out after the when he was seeing the therapists that they were the family was concerned that he was getting suicidal so that certainly was a possibility and I think if they'll if you read the letter that the cousin received from him it really gives a very powerful um account of how he was feeling at the time and I I always felt the main reason that he had in his mind is he thought he could get away from the father by going to UCLA and the father wanted him to go to UC Berkeley and saw the father and he claimed was just disappointed but he was more than disappointed he said you're going to come home he was going to get him a moped I I can't I to to take to and from so he could come home um and and Eric just that was not going to be something he could tolerate that was his one chance to get away college and a dorm and the father was going to control that uh Bonnie Lee Lopez just to show you that there is some divisiveness here uh so now the bleeding hearts feel the jury verdict means nothing and we should just let the killers free she's been vocal uh in the chat area of this show every time we do this show that they should remain in prison um Wendy to you uh to the letter here Eric sent a letter to his cousin a guy named Andy Cano who has since passed uh and this letter resurfaced recently uh but he sent this letter about eight months before the killings and the quote is the following uh this is from Eric to Andy his cousin I've been trying to avoid Dad it's still happening Andy but it's worse for me now I cannot explain it he's so overweight that I can't stand to see him um I never know when it's gonna start to happen and it's driving me crazy every night I stay up thinking he might come in I need to put this out of my mind I know what you said before but I'm afraid you just don't know Dad like I do he's crazy he's warned me a hundred times about tenant telling anyone especially Lyle so we've got the documentary Roy russello and now this letter surfaced I believe Andy Cano's mother who is still alive and he died of I think a heroin overdose uh so this is had a ripple effect I don't know if it was directly related but there's a lot of trauma obviously in the family um Wendy does this letter hold legal water emotionally obviously but legally is it something that will work uh in favor of the Minneapolis you know as a matter of evidence any statement of the defendant that's relevant is admissible and it and it's okay if it's hearsay which is what a letter is um and it's certainly relevant it may need some explanation because it doesn't say sexual abuse and I do think that's partly why it has a lot of credence um but he didn't I was doing this let's just say it's let's assume that he was clever enough to begin faking the sexual abuse stuff a year before the killing and he was laying the groundwork for a good defense um that's kind of a weird way to do it because he doesn't say which is what a contrived plan would really probably say if it were written down uh my father's raping me and I just wanted to you know make sure someone knew because I'm finally ready to tell and so forth there's a lot missing in that letter um so it doesn't come across as contrived for any specific purpose in that sense it has it has credibility to me um and it indicates that there was a they had a conversation previously and the conversation was was what we he was referencing that this was an ongoing thing they must have had some kind of a conversation where the cousin maybe suggested a solution but again it's not clear from the letter um it's relevant it but but the bottom line is what does it actually prove let's assume some judge says I'm going to let it in and let's say you know some juror in the future if they retry the case which they won't um if if these guys get out they're going to walk this case will never be retried but if some during the future got to see that letter what would they think of it you'd have to be pretty dense not to see how that number one corroborates the testimony that he was sexually abused because of how it's written and the way it's written and the fact that it's written in you know to sort of not say the obvious um and and then again you know what do you think as a juror what do you think about the fact that you now believe that this sexual abuse did happen is that enough for you as a juror to find um this guy not guilty there are plenty of jurors in this country who would say I believe he was raped I believed he was I believe he was abused I believed it subjectively he fear he was going to die I believe all of that and I'm still going to find him guilty because we don't want vigilantism we don't want people killing in response to um rage fill in the blank however you want to characterize his state of mind um but in fact we live under Constitution that demands of us civility right it's not only uh that we have strict black and white rules of Law and whether whether this Behavior fits in the box or not you know me determines whether you win or lose the reason we have humans sitting in judgment as jurors is because they bring their not so black and white life experiences to the table and that's part of why I'm so outraged that jurors who have been sexually abused aren't allowed to sit in judgment in these cases it's outrageous to me it's official government-sanctioned discrimination primarily against women um but in this case really against children too but you know for for for this letter to be the thing that makes all the difference you'd have to be a fool to think that this letter is the be-all and the end-all the the real question for the court is going to be is there critical evidence regardless of the letter is there enough credible evidence to believe that these two guys um acted out of some kind of traumatic threatening really terroristic fear of their parents and if there is then the right result regardless of what the law says regardless of the black and white law the right result is they probably should have been convicted of manslaughter and it's time to let them go I want to emphasize this thing about terrorism because I think it's probably a word we we don't use often enough in this context but it's the right word we all know a lot more about trauma today than we did back then but we haven't done a good enough job understanding how the word terrorism applies to a case like this what does terrorism mean to us we think of you know some foreign nation is going to come shoot bombs at us that's one kind of terrorism or they you know they they threaten to do something in order to control your behavior but terrorism actually means even in a in a micro sense in a domestic sense that that a person doesn't act freely they don't live their life in a free manner because they are terrorized that by someone because they're because they know something awful is going to happen if they live their life freely that is not just against the law that is inhumane on a grand scale globally in all countries at all times terrorism whether you do it to another Nation or to a child the nature of terrorizing someone is so grotesque that it eclipses even the idea of killing in response because to to terrorize a person is to take away their free will and then you can't convict them of a crime for which they had no free will that's really what this case is about I don't want to get up on the details of what did the law say about this and what about self-defense and now this is a much bigger issue it's a much bigger um it's kind of beyond the rule of law that if you make a child desperate if you give them no hope if you terrorize them this is what happens and we own that and the right thing to do the right thing to do if you believe there was sexual abuse and I do and I don't think there's any reason not to believe that this child was sexually abused over the course of the time in horrendous ways if you believe that's true then there should be no reluctance to let them both out now they've suffered enough should they have been punished probably is 28 years enough absolutely and then some to me it's it's too much and when they come out how do we treat them as as guys who you know for the wrong reasons got people to support them getting out of prison no we should treat them with kindness we should treat them with understanding we should listen to them we should urge them to speak and we should be open-minded that maybe we got this wrong maybe and I don't say that about many cases you will not find me anywhere saying oh yeah let the bad guy out that's a great idea but in a case like this because I believe in the the grander picture I believe in the power of civil civility the power of our government to enhance civility and you enhance civility sometimes when you let the bad guy out and right now those guys are Googling your number once again a few more things to get through and then I'll let the two uh bostonians on their way on their way but via here um and I don't know if you care to address this what do you think of Alan dershowitz of course a Harvard uh law professor his opinion on the case and his use of the term abuse excuse to dismiss the brother's claim of abuse any comment well yeah that was a big one up here that was used a lot the abuse excuse and I think the Judge at Weisberg in the case even used that at some point well I would say that Professor Burke uh dershowitz has never had a client that has been abused so he wouldn't understand it I think everything that Wendy has said is something that he wouldn't necessarily understand but it's uh it's clear that he doesn't understand what trauma is or uh about abuse and victimization I just think he needs to uh he needs a client that uh can educate him well that is that's interesting very gentle and what I would say good professor me I've just lectured in dershowitz's class by the way he he taught criminal law and when he taught a section on rape and I came in to guest lecture I almost needed therapy myself after the class it was awful he not only doesn't understand trauma although he probably does I mean he's certainly intellectually capable but I think he is so comfortable representing the traumatizer the the person who's destroying lives the person who's doing the raping and the sexual abusing he's so comfortable representing them but it's just not in his repertoire to care because he his job as a defense attorney is to crush all of that but I can guarantee you this if the right client came along and the the check was on the table and dershowitz's job because he's really only an appellate attorney he doesn't try cases he does the Appellate stuff I mean he's very talented he really he's a very bright guy he can't take that away but he would never shy away from using trauma if he had to to argue on appeal in a case of his that his client deserves to be let out of jail he would absolutely do it because it's ethical it's it's his obligation as an attorney and there's cash on the table did I mention the cash on the table I mean lawyers you know sometimes lawyers do stupid things they put on nonsense defenses they and and let's be honest you as a defense attorney can hire an expert to testify that up is down and black is white and all kinds of crap if you pay an expert enough they can and they do lie under oath in courts across this country every day all the time it's the nature of our system we let experts lie under oath and I believe that breeds the sort of cynicism that makes jurors ask crazy questions about um you know corruption and all this stuff like it is a kind of corruption it is a kind of corruption if you let experts lie under oath but this system does now mind you the prosecution doesn't have as much flexibility to hire experts to lie they're really their hands are tied a bit more because they can get in trouble their evidence can get suppressed the judge can dismiss the charges to punish the prosecution if they don't play fair we don't require the defense to play fair we we constitutionally require them to try to win and win at any cost is the name of the game so they are allowed to do crazy things and on that point I can agree with dershowitz that you can make up some kind of cockamamie idea just pull it out of the air slap it onto an expert witness's buy though and and they're going to show up in court and make some kind of hey with it and you're going to turn to the jury and say you have to let them go because of this gobbledygook thing that just had this defense I just made up out of my ass you can do that in this country in that sense dershowitz is right but on this issue he's a fool love it uh kilo who's in Boston with the Boston accent the whole nine yards um and we hear this comment almost reflexively anytime there's an abuse case she says I just really want to know why the menudo person Roy Rosella waited this long how do you respond to people that say well they waited three decades well that's not unusual first of all especially when it's a male tell you that they may never ever and ever tell and sometimes they'll only tell if they have a witness that said I saw him do this to you it's just something that is more or less ingrained in the male Gene that doesn't surprise me it's I think that we have to educate and we are trying to get that out and trying to look at the red flags and get the identify it earlier I don't um unfortunately it's just that's just the way it is it's been case after case I've had like that when it's male on mail yeah yeah uh I can't defend us sorry Katie told her therapist two weeks before she was killed that she had uh sick and disgusting secrets we now know what that is uh someone who doesn't is Papa Bear from Moscow Idaho a place that's near and dear to her heart uh shout out to papa bear out there um and a couple more quick things and I promise I'll let you go but um so things kind of got to a uh Crescendo level at the end um there were these recurring nightmares but you also said that uh you felt Eric was out of options and there was a fear I think he had that Lyle um was going to expose uh then probably not the best word to use there but you get what I'm saying that he was going to come out and out the father as a molester uh do you recall that um was Eric's fear that Lyle was going to you know blow the whistle was that also what kind of propelled them into action yeah you really have when you look at the Dynamics as it was a very good as Wendy's already said a complex complicated case not only do you have the Dynamics with the parents to have Dynamics between the two brothers and that was trying to keep the secret that's you know a secret is only a secret as long as it's not uh no one tells her once it's out the power is gone so there's a lot of power in having a secret and that would mean a lot to Eric if uh Lyle in any way brought the secret out so I thought that was really really important and another very big part of this um Dr Ozil uh Leon jeromo Zeal so Eric was ordered to see this guy um he's since been um strict of his psychology license um he made him sign something that Ozil could tell the parents Anything Eric was telling them in therapy which obviously goes contrary to what therapy is all about um and then on November 11th prior I guess to these or after the murders he had him uh record what amounted to some sort of confession what is the deal with Dr Ozil and his testimony was admitted right and it really um helped shape the a lot of people think the uh jury's decision here correct right there was a taped confession uh and that that was one of the things that the judge had to rule on whether it get admitted or not the interesting thing about that was it helped both the prosecution and it also helped the defense and so it was a kind of a wash if you will but he was what Ozil did is instead of saying you we've got to take this to the law enforcement or we've got to tell someone about this he said oh let me he gave him his card he said let's let's talk about going in and making a deal on some kind of money that you've got we can build something I mean he was trying to help them spend the money where he would be involved I mean it was really very so unethical and unbelievably so but uh the way it came out of course is his girlfriend was sitting outside and Smith I think was her name and she heard it and he wanted her outside because he was afraid that something would happen and she heard what had happened and I think that's how it finally came out where she went to the police or or or somehow but at any rate it was certainly um that whole how does the secret get told was as much a part of this whole case as as anything uh Wendy Murphy I'm sure you will uh get a sort of a giggle out of this so Ozil this therapist was stripped of his license in 1997. he had been accused of breaking confidentiality rules and having sex with female patients so he surrendered surrendered his license he's now listed on his website as just Jerry currently in the business of Hosting relationship marriage and sex seminars in Portland Oregon so um this is our expert Witnesses [Laughter] you can't make uh knightwood says why didn't their appeal succeed since the judge disallowed testimony of sexual assault in the second trial why did that go nowhere yeah and I guarantee you that was raised the the trial and how Heavenly but what I would say is this virtually all of the so-called uh new DNA cases that you're you're seeing today get reversed those convictions are getting reversed today and it was years ago that those convictions went forward and and in like 90 of those cases the so-called Innocence Project cases the guys are actually guilty but the DNA technology wasn't around back then so now they come forward 30 years later and say well we now have technology where we could test the evidence and had it been around back then we would have done this test and the jury would have heard it and it might have made a difference so even though they're technically guilty and basically everybody agrees they're guilty would that evidence have been admissible if DNA had been around back then yet would the jury have heard it yes what would the results have been we don't know we don't know we can speculate that it still would have been a guilty verdict but we don't know so this case is kind of like that what is different all these years later even though they already lost all their appeals what is different and the answer is first of all the menudo person coming forward that's new evidence that's kind of like new DNA evidence it's new and so you get to have your day in court you get to go to the judge and say had this evidence been around back then would it have been admitted yes would it have made a difference you know you argue yes it would have maybe you're right maybe you're wrong but you get to make that argument and for that reason you get to also point at the Appellate Court and say look even the Appellate Court got it wrong because they didn't have access to this evidence had the Appellate Court had access to this menudo singers um testimony the Appellate Court would have felt differently about the exclusion of this evidence from the second trial that's what I would argue and be you know there's no hard and fast rule about how how a court today is going to feel about the fact that an earlier appeal was upheld but the point you're going to make as a defense attorney is things are different now and here's how they're different and this and whether Justice becomes clear whether what Justice Means in this case becomes clear 30 years later or at the time of trial it doesn't matter the time to do justice is when you know about the evidence it's when the thing happens that gives you new clarity about about the past there's always an opportunity in this country which is a wonderful thing about our Bill of Rights there's always an opportunity to file something with the court to say what happened to me in the past was wrong whether it's new technology new evidence knew anything if it comes along and it really does raise a sincere question about the Integrity of that verdict who cares what the Appellate Court said if the Integrity of that verdict deserves to be challenged thank God we live in a country where you can always do that you can always go to court and mount a challenge and we'll see what happens in this case but this is one of those rare cases and I don't say this often this is one of those rare cases where when I heard they were filing this and when I heard about the menudo information and when I you know when I kind of took another look at this story I thought oh my God I was gypped I was gypped of the truth when I watched this case and was talking about it as a legal analyst I was lied to I deserve to know and I'm not even a juror but I felt jib because I was speaking on television about this case and that and it was wrong what I was saying was wrong what I want to say now is let these guys out and have a parade have a parade in the name of justice and then say to other children use this case as an example to say to other children and young people who've been through something similar tell don't kill tell and you too can have a parade you know like in other words we need to make Heroes out of the kids who tell so they feel like it's a good thing it might be a scary thing but if they also think that they will be embraced that it will be celebrated that they will be seen as heroic when we when somebody is an eyewitness to a bank robbery and they tell they call police they offer themselves up as a witness we call them Heroes we put them on the front page of the local paper eyewitness to bank robbery six days the day testifies in court the bad guy robber is now locked up yay you're a hero we need to do that to child sex abuse victims to women who are raped to women who report domestic abuse two men who are beaten or harmed in some fashion we need to reward people who come forward whether it's about a bank robbery or about an abuse of their own body we haven't conveyed that message in this country at all in the way we should because again we're trying to promote civility you don't get civility if all the injured people stay silent so to promote civility we need to reward people for coming forward even if what they're reporting is embodies them this crime to themselves is not personal a crime to one child abuse incident against one child is an offense against Society it's not a personal problem it's not a private matter it's a public concern it's a public matter it's an offense against society and we really need I think to use this case as a launch pad from which we start to teach other people who are suffering and similar often behind closed doors and who feel hopeless don't feel hopeless speak tell we will reward you we will embrace you we will help you we will support you just getting that message out is so vital and this case is a really good example of why you don't want to force kids to keep things secret it's not just about the pain of secrecy it's about it's about the harm to our entire legal system when you have made the message clear that there's no benefit in coming forward we need to reverse that and that's why I say have a parade when these guys get out I'm being a little tongue-in-cheek but you know have a parade so that other people say wow you mean if I tell I'm not going to suffer I'm actually going to be embraced and loved and supported and hugged yes you will yes you will and we are going to wrap in one second Janet says Dr Burgess is a genius a Pioneer for women as is Wendy Murphy I spoke to Neri yanklin she's one of the directors of this movie menudo Menendez boys betrayed um and she said to me that cases of patricide are extremely rare and triggered by one of two things mental illness or horrible abuse this is interesting if Eric and Lyle Menendez had been 18 and 20 year old young women who had been raped and threatened by their fathers since they were five years old would the system have shown them Mercy after 20 25 30 years do you think it would be a different story if they were the Menendez sisters not the brothers we're brutal to what women suffer far worse punishment when they act because it's inconsistent with our cultural expectations of them oh she wasn't a nice girl she pulled a gun we're so angry when women get violent and and and those studies are very clear that when women commit a certain crime the same kind of crime a guy did the woman got much longer punishments much harsher punishment so no I don't think there would have been mercy no absolutely aggressive so in some ways when they act aggressive we're like Ah that's what guys do now this is a little bit different but it is all about social expectations in terms of how harshly we punish people that's interesting but again you think that maybe yeah I think that men would be more inclined to entertain the abuse issue where they certainly weren't when it was uh male on mail so and certainly now I think that there there would be more but I I hear what you what Wendy sang I just uh that's often asked I think that's an interesting question about whether they had been two sisters and this had happened I'm trying to think if there were anything there are studies there are studies of jurors which is very interesting which is a little different said the jurors did here that show female jurors on average are much more likely to vote not guilty in a rape case where the victim is a woman and that's because they're they're almost and I'm sorry let me be clear they're more likely to vote not guilty if the perpetrator is not a stranger if the perpetrator is a stranger women will vote guilty in a heartbeat because they feel afraid that he could do that to them and so they vote guilty because it makes them feel safer the reverse is true if the perpetrator is not a stranger then they think oh I can't identify with her because that would make my husband dangerous or my boyfriend or the guy that was dating in college so they tend to vote not guilty because it scares them to think that a guy like that would be seen as makes them feel better to to think that that's not a rape or you know that she's not telling the truth the studies are very consistent on that this case is a little different because it's male on male and I believe Anne when she says the males felt a certain way especially back then the notion of a man is you know just listening to the evidence and saying I don't know any father who would do that to a son so this must be a lie that inclination goes back to what I said you have to pick your jury carefully in a case like this a defense attorney's job should have been I want to make sure that there are men on this jury who aren't homophobic for example right who are not like just freaked out about the very idea of male on male um I hate to call it activity because this was a brutal crime but you know you don't want somebody to vote guilty because they hate gay men and that could have been a part of this case I don't know how the jurors were screamed but but that would be outrageous too in a different form than what we were talking about before the Discrimination that jurors bring to the process it includes things like I would never believe that a man would do that because it grosses me out that you shouldn't be allowed to be a juror if that's how you feel uh and Leticia says uh Dr Burgess is so many people in this chat seem incapable of understanding what learned helplessness is do you mind explaining it uh what is learned helplessness well learn helplessness is uh that that really started with the uh domestic violence case where the woman it's usually going to be a a woman that is unable to act and in her defense aggressively anyway because of the kind of codependence on the partner usually going to be a male um Wendy Murphy you know her now if you didn't before she is a professor of sexual violence at New England law Boston where she also co-directs the Women's and Children's Advocacy project under the Center for Law and social responsibility as you heard her say she uh taught a class in Alan dershowitz's classroom at the Harvard Law School she's a former visiting scholar um your final thoughts Wendy and this question here the dad was the pedophile answer me this why did they kill the mother brutally killed the mother who was trying to crawl away from them uh that is something that always comes up when the year responds and yep your final Thoughts by the way your your Boston cereal serial rapist accused rapist he's out now um he bonded out as you predicted but yes we'll see we'll see whether he uh leaves the country I hope they took his passport um because he probably can afford to give up 500 000. I I just hope he shows up again we'll find out okay he's due back in court next month um you know my thoughts about this case although I have said them repeatedly and I don't want to repeat myself but focusing on just the mother um the the question bothers me when someone says if the father was the rapist why kill the mother I when I was Prosecuting child sex cases um child sex abuse cases many of them had what I called incest mother problems these were mothers who either through willful ignorance or or open participation were not protecting their children or were wanting to harm their children and I saw them as co-conspirators I saw them as co-defendants I saw them as uncharged co-conspirators I wanted to charge them um and it wasn't I would feel the same way if the if the reverse was true and the mother was doing the raping and the father was non-protective so this isn't really about bias between males and females as parents it's if one of them is doing the raping and the other one is allowing it to happen which by the way is not that uncommon in this country especially especially now that the porn industry is so crazy and billions and billions of dollars and the number one makers of child porn in this country are parents you know it's sometimes the mother doing it but it's often the father or the boyfriend is using the kids making money behind closed doors and the mother's letting it happen either because she has a drug habit she needs fed or she needs money for whatever so I blame I blame the mother just as much it's just like being a getaway driver for a bank robbery you deserve equal punishment equal prosecution you're equally responsible now you can argue to me that the mother was also being abused and she shouldn't be held again that's a case-by-case analysis but generally speaking if the mother is not protecting the child or if the father is not protecting the child and the other parent is doing the abusing I I don't see them as legally distinct I would like both of them to be prosecuted and equally punished kind of like Lyle and Eric right how they they both did the crime but in terms of what the motive was the fact that they kind of came together in the same state of mind to commit the crime everybody says well you know they're equally responsible even though only one of them was sexually abused we assume but you can't break things up sometimes right because it's about the the authority and the responsibility of the people involved so to me as a mom I've had five children and I think of I I just can put myself in this position and I'm thinking if I knew what was happening and you know my husband was doing something grotesque I should be prosecuted because it's my job to protect my children it's my I don't have to be a mother bear to be aware that it's my job to protect them I would expect to be prosecuted to the fullest extent on par with the perpetrator because because the children's dependency on you as a parent mother or father is is complete is a hundred percent they are 100 and if they feel hopeless in their house because they're being raped that's not the where hopelessness comes from it also comes from the fact that their other protector is watching it happen and doing nothing in some ways that's worse I hate to say the feeling in terms of the relationship with the mother is different but it can be and and you know for that I know there's evidence in this case that the mother would hear the rape going on and and turn the television up to drown out the noise that is the most vile betrayal of the mother child relationship imaginable and it doesn't matter to me that there's not in the room doing the raping it's almost worse that she's putting up the volume that level of betrayal you a child cannot recover from that a child cannot recover from that so that's how I view it is um absolutely they should have filtered too and when I say should have killed her nobody should have been killed let me be clear about that but what they did and when they did it and why they did it the fact that they felt the same way about both of them is logical to me next time I bring Wendy on I'm going to make sure she has coffee so she has some energy um Dr Ann Burgess is an internationally recognized Pioneer in the assessment and treatment of victims of trauma and abuse she is the author of a Killer By Design among her long long list of awards and accolades in 2016 she was named a living legend by the American Academy of nursing that's why Dakota Fanning is making a docu-series about her and that's why mind Hunter was a success on Netflix it's uh based Loosely on Anne's uh work at the FBI in the early days um Legend and to you the Godmother of profiling um first of all Amy in Boston says are you able to be an expert again in one of their trials if it ever got to that my question to you if you want to answer that is if um you were subpoenaed or summoned by a a judge what would you say to the judge if he wanted your opinion on this case now I would say my opinion hasn't changed I would happily testify to what I've done before I I think it's been a strengthened with the evidence that's come forward I think that uh has been well discussed tonight so you you wouldn't waiver at all no why would I waver and here's Sally Vela are they safe and sane enough to let out of prison do you feel that these would be uh that they would ever offend again uh and if they were let out no I don't think they would offend again I think that the research also shows that both clinically and and the research that when it's a target a specific person for whatever reason that it doesn't extend to any anyone else um I don't know what Wendy thinks but that would be my opinion is that they are safe I think the bigger thing is can you imagine being locked up for 30 years and how are our society has changed you know um I don't know they don't usually get you know iPhones and all that kind of thing that I've heard people that have been locked up that long that just have a terrible time adjusting to all the changes so it will be interesting now I know that they both have married and so that they certainly have been kept up on some of the changes but that would be a shock to have to uh be very interesting just to talk to them about that how do you adjust after 30 years yeah it's crazy Marshall dub because she is most prisons have programs to help so let's hope they have a program and let's hope we find out this person says because she's a Trailblazer ahead of her time as we know Ann would have seen all this way back then before the others and a final comment here we love van we love Wendy thanks to both of you thank you so much tomorrow not one but I think we're doing two shows and I don't know what either of them are yet because Mark aragos is leaving me hanging but he might come on at noon Eastern so you've got to follow me on Twitter now at podcast STS and I will tell you what time the shows are tomorrow uh and when there will be what they will be on Wendy Murphy do you believe in aliens we did that last night are they here Wendy Murphy Oh I'm smart enough to say I have no idea and Burgess are there is there alien life on our planet and I don't know I can't answer that either oh my gosh then there'll be other things to worry about besides Democrats Republicans until then love you America love you Boston love you Newton Mass I went to Brandeis and wall fan love you wall fan all right till next time thank you all hang on one sec women hang on one second