It's the summer of 1993. Evidence is piled up, all of it incriminating the Menendez

brothers in the double homicide of their parents. Surprisingly, their attorneys don't try to argue otherwise.

Just weeks before the trial began, lawyers for Eric and Lyle Menendez dropped a bombshell. Defense lawyers made their announcement in court as

reporters listened from the gallery. The brothers did an about-face. They went from

publicly denying any knowledge of the killings to admitting they pulled the triggers.

The reason was equally shocking. The brothers said they killed in self-defense

after years of sexual and emotional abuse by their parents.

Leslie Abramson with her indignant New Yorker Witt was going to argue that a lifetime

of abuse could justify parasite. This turn of events astounded the nation, but not

Pamela Bazanich. I wasn't surprised by it. She was a seasoned prosecutor by

then, and now that she's retired, she has no problem speaking her mind about this case.

I was trying to think of the worst thing possible that you could say about a parent to justify killing them and that seemed to me to be pretty much the worst thing.

Not only that but this kind of defense had worked for one of Leslie Abramson's other clients.

That client was a teenage boy whose father was a powerful news executive.

Leslie Abramson argued that he murdered his father because of years of abuse and that defense saved him from prison.

The parallels between the cases were uncanny.

Sexual abuse might be the worst thing you could say about apparent to justify murdering them.

That's what Bizanich thought.

But what if Eric and Lyle were the real victims?

What if abuse did explain what pushed these brothers to the edge?

So far, the only other explanation had been inheritance.

But were these sons in so much of a rush that they were willing to kill, it would be up to a jury to decide.

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