Hey, Prime members, you can listen to Cult Leader Early and add free on Amazon Music. Download the app today.

Hello and welcome back to Cult Leader. I'm your Cult Leader Spencer Henry and it is 2021. That's right. We made it through another year. This is the first episode of the year and what a year was. I don't want to talk about it anymore. We are leaving 2020 where she belongs and that is in the past in 30 years when your grandkids ask you about 2020. You're gonna fucking ask your cigarette.

I wasn't sure whether I was gonna say anything about this or not. But I have a big life change happening right now and it feels weirder not to say anything to you guys. But this is my first episode as a full time cult leader. This is now my literal job, which is both exciting and terrifying.

I came to the decision at the end of this last year where I was like, you know what? Now is the time to do it and I am just taking that leap of faith. And you know what? We'll see what happens. Maybe the Hallybop comment will come pick us up. Maybe not. We'll see. It's really exciting and I am genuinely so grateful for your guys' support because this would obviously not be possible without you.

And I'm excited to be able to do more for you guys this year and I'll just have time to do all the episodes and extra things that I've been wanting to do but I was never able to do before.

So let's get it this year. I want to just really get right into today's episode because it is a doozy. But let's talk about how it came to be.

So last week, I'm laying there right, scrolling on Instagram. I was reading some of the troll comments on California Governor Gavin Newsom's latest post when I saw one that was different than the others.

And it said in all caps, the Menendez brothers deserve justice and freedom. I obviously had to click on this Instagram and low and behold it is a fan page for the Menendez brothers. And if you know who I'm talking about already, you're like, what?

And I swear if I'm not looking for a case, a case comes looking for me. Now listen, this story is a classic murder case that I'm sure a lot of you are somewhat familiar with or you've heard the name before.

I've waited to talk about it because I feel like it's also a super divided one.

Let's start the story in Havana, Cuba and meet Jose and Rika Menendez. Jose was born there on May 6th of 1944.

He was raised by a family of athletes, his dad a well-known soccer player and his mom a season swimmer. His dad also owned an accounting firm and according to IMDB, Jose and his sisters never had to worry about money.

Nonetheless, Jose ended up leaving Cuba by the time he was 16 because of the Cuban Revolution. When he got to the US, he went off to live with an aunt in a small town in Pennsylvania called Hazelton, where he remained until he went to college at Southern Illinois University on a sports scholarship.

It's here he meets a woman named Mary Louise Anderson or Kitty for short. Kitty was three years older than Jose and she was born on October 14th of 1941 and raised in Chicago not too far from where they went to school together.

Her early years in family life were said to have been pretty awful. She apparently lived in a very unhealthy home with an abusive father and a mother who was equally as scared as she was of her father.

Jose and Kitty, like I said, met in college and they got married in 1964 despite their family's not approving of their relationship.

Apparently Jose's parents, I read somewhere, were not too keen on him marrying Kitty because her parents had been divorced, which is just such traditional thinking, especially now.

I feel like more of my friends parents are divorced than not. And there's a lot that should be. Anyways, they relocate to New York after getting married and then they end up in New Jersey.

And three years after getting married, Jose and Kitty welcomed their first child, Joseph Lyle Menendez. He was born on January 10th, 1967, and would soon be known as Just Lyle.

Three years after that, on November 27th of 1970, the couple welcomed their second son, Eric Galen Menendez, a perfect little family.

By the mid-80s, the family had made the decision to move over to the west coast when Jose accepted a position as an entertainment executive in Beverly Hills.

They made the move to Beverly Hills. Kitty, meanwhile, is just taking care of the boy. She's a housewife, not just, but she's taking care of the boys being a housewife.

...