in a quiet rural township in michigan, as october chilled into autumn, two young women prepared for the social event of the season. it s gonna be great. there will be so many people. so they imagined. , so they hoped, in their naivete. then so many others of a particular demographic of the farms and in the small towns around moran county. it was a buildup that whole summer that we coordinate way to go to the halloween party. halloween! becky brinson and her friend chelsea bruck just loved dressing up for halloween. chelsea and becky worked together at a restaurant called olga s kitchen in monroe and, as they served their customers, they talked endlessly about what was coming. this wasn t going to be just any halloween party. it was big mike s annual halloween bash of 2014. everyone just everyone knew, big mike has the biggest halloween party. and after all, their friends were going and there d be bands and noise and excitement and, who knew what all there d
were ready for the cameras. it was the first televiseda courtroom drama that captivated the united states. it was a huge deal. spoke erik and lyle menendez convicted of murdering their own parents. i shut my mom. it wasn t real. it just wasn t real. they are sociopaths. and big ones. chilling details. a letter ending in secrets, too dark to imagine. this is so out of the norm. did they kill in cold blood? or in crippling fear? it was gut wrenching. they spoke the truth about what happened. here from the brothers themselves. let s go through this bit by bit. there was no way he was going to let this secret get out. silence destroyed our s whole family. . symbol of their success. here ait was, the shining symbol of their success. here finally an address for the of their long struggle, their amazing rise, beverly hills, california. careful what you wish for. all these years later, it s still the case that has the power to shock. it s beverly hills, th
and he says, well, is he saying that s what he thinks happened here at the house? or did they actually commit the crime? strange. as was the story the brothers told about discovering their parents bodies. the brothers said they saw this haze in the air and some smoke that they smelled. like gunpowder smoke or gunpowder smoke. but i mean, that dissipates pretty darned quick. well, the officers got there right after they did. and they didn t smell anything. the gunpowder smoke, and fantasizing about the perfect crime, and the screenplay, and even what might be called a confession. it all led detective zoeller to start thinking the unthinkable, that the brothers had murdered their mom and dad. and he wondered, would erik tell the story of the shooting to craig again? this time on tape. they decided to wire up craig and go to this restaurant. but this time, erik wasn t at all talkative.
find any scrap metal that i could take out. i was in a rock in a hard place and i needed money pretty quickly and what do we call that, scrapping, or something? yeah. it was scrapping. erik wasn t having much luck. and then inside this half-collapsed ruin, he turned over a piece of disintegrating plywood and i saw what i thought was like it looked kinda like a plant, like a fake plant, so i went and picked it up. i didn t realize what it was, because it was all bunched up. it had leafs on it, like fake leafs. sewn on? yeah. there was also a maroon wig. i did see the wig and kinda creeped me out, so i didn t wanna pick it up at all. so what d you and your friend do at that point?
as it turned out their testimony gave the state a big opening. they offered their mental state as a defense. so when you offer your mental state as a defense you have waived your psychiatric patient privilege. the oziel tape. remember that? by testifying, the brothers had put their mental state on center stage meaning the tape was now fair game. the defense played the tape to take the sting out of it. what erik and i did took courage beyond belief. detective zoeller remember had never heard the tape before, and he was dumbfounded. this was supposedly a candid confession tape, but on it the brothers never once mentioned the issue that was now the very core of their defense. why did you ever murder your parents? oh, because they were sexually molesting us. that never came out. why wouldn t he tell his therapist? big deal? the prosecution thought so, but by then the jury had already heard many hours of tearful