it just wasn t real. they re sociopaths and pretty big ones. now almost 30 years later chilling new details. evidence never broadcast before! a letter, hinting at secrets too dark to imagine. this is so outside of the norm something is going on in that house. did they kill in cold blood or in crippling fear? oh man it was gut-wrenching. i wanted to bust the door down. they spoke the truth about what had happened. tonight, hear from the brothers themselves. people were afraid of him. let s go through this bit by bit. there was no way he was gonna let this secret get out. silence destroyed our whole family. here it was the shining symbol of their success. here, finally, an address worthy of their long struggle their amazing rise. beverly hills, california. beverly hills emergency. careful what you wish for. someone killed my parents! 28 years later it s still the case that has the power to shock. it s beverly hills. it s the movie bus
Perfect crime. he killed, he ran, he was caught by tenacious law. yazeed essa we will be eligible for parole after serving 20 years. that is all for this edition of dateline, i m natalie morales, thank you for watching. this was a gruesome murder, a high profile executive and his wife shot to death in beverly hills. we don t really think that children can murder their parents. you have to have a lot of evil in you to shoot your mom and dad. young. rich. handsome. in a case made for hollywood, they were ready for the cameras it was the first televised courtroom drama that captivated the united states, it was a huge deal. erik and lyle menendez convicted of murdering their own parents. i ran around and shot my mom! it wasn t real.
Half after rosie s death, her mom and dad got a phone call from their local police chief. and he said, are you sitting down? he says, i have big news for you. he said, we got him. yaz had finally slipped up. he d left the security of lebanon. the fbi was aware he was going to be on a flight into cyprus airport. how they knew, they won t say. but cypriot police were waiting for him. when he got off the plane. and in cyprus, unlike lebanon, a person can be extradited to the u.s. but yaz would fight every inch of the way to avoid facing aggravated murder charges in ohio. that s our guy. it wasn t until january 2009 that yazeed essa, the man in this grainy footage, was finally brought back to the united states. and detective mckee, the
How are you going to going about it? the mission is to define his character and let the jury get another glimpse of who he is as opposed to how he appears there in the courtroom. as the trial started, the prosecution s challenge was to convince the jury that yazeed essa was a jekyll and hyde, one face showing the emergency room doctor who saved lives and seemed the ideal husband. the other, an evil poisoner who planned the murder of his wife, the mother of his two children. so when you look across this room and you look at this man that you see here in the courtroom wearing that wedding ring, the picture that you re going to get is that yazeed essa was living two lives. rosie s sister-in-law may have seen one of those masks slip. right after rosie had died. she testified as to how cold and disrespectful yaz had seemed in the way he treated his wife s body lying on the hospital bed. yaz walked over to rosie. and very abruptly lifted her up and pulled the sheet down.
Ground, you got an agent say i just saw him leave his apartment, he red the paper and went home, you can t move in and serve papers on him? right. back in the u.s., rosie s family desperately tried to get yaz to turn himself in. they held news conferences. what we re doing today is making a plea to yazeed, if he is watching, to come back to cleveland and answer to the charges before him. by then, the doctor had officially been charged with aggravated murder in the death of his wife. but it appeared he had no intention of coming back. officials would later learn that yaz took on a new identity. maurice khalife. he was a single good looking guy always up for a party. here he s seen at a wedding. months went by. then a year. did you ever get the feeling he was thumbing his nose at you and all the other people looking for him? yeah, i think so. and what you have to do is lure him off the security of his home base where he s safe in beirut? we hope at some point he leaves the