Joseph Lyle Menéndez (born January 10, 1968) and Erik Galen Menéndez (born November 27, 1970) are American brothers from Beverly Hills, California, who were convicted in a high-profile trial in 1994 for the 1989 murder by shotgun of their wealthy parents, entertainment executive José and his wife, Mary ("Kitty").During the trial, the brothers claimed that the murders stemmed from years of sexual and psychological abuse that they had suffered at the hands of their parents. The juries deadlocked in both trials, but in their retrials, the juries both rejected the defense's claim. The brothers received the sentence of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. Wikipedia