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“July 25, 1956, is the last time we’d ever stood on a stage together. We didn’t know where we were going, but we were at that place where men get to where they have no recourse. Twenty years we didn’t talk. The night that Frank [Sinatra] brought Dean on the telethon [Lewis’ annual Muscular Dystrophy Telethon in 1976], we were so thrilled to see one another. It’s all there on film for everyone to see. You can see it in his eyes, you can see it in mine. When he walked toward me all I thought was “Dear God, give me something to say.” So I looked at him and asked “Are you working?” That got a laugh. It relaxed him, it relaxed me. And we never talked after that for another 10 or 15 years. When Dean’s son was killed, I knew that Dean was dead. I made myself accessible. I went to the funeral without his knowledge. Dean heard that I was there. He called me and we talked for a couple of hours. He sobbed for the first time I’d ever heard. He said “Don’t you understand? I just lost one of the only two male loves I had in my life. Him and you.” That was the first time he had said that or ever related to loving me. He showed it enough, it was just difficult for him to say.” - Jerry Lewis

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So many what if, so little time 🥺

what if i was. what if you were. what if we. what if. wh-

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[ALL BROKEN LINKS FIXED] 75 Links to Celebrate 75 Years of Martin and Lewis

Are you new to Martin and Lewis?

Do you want to dive deeper than the movies or their appearances on the Colgate Comedy Hour?

Perhaps you care to know more about their personal relationship?

Below is a list of resources made by me and others to aid you in that journey.

I wrote this for people who are new to the wonderful and sometimes headache inducing world of Martin and Lewis.

Here's the long story short on Martin and Lewis from a fan who has been writing about them for close to a decade.

Jerry Lewis was born a complete individual. I lovingly refer to him as the unicorn. His capacity to feel emotions so much deeper than the average person made him a groundbreaking artist as an adult and he considered it to be one of his strengths. But to have a childhood filled with abuse, trauma and abandonment was especially difficult for him and he couldn't heal and move on from his emotional pain. Growing up he felt alone and often referred to himself as 'nothing'.

Dean Martin also had a difficult childhood that helped foster his avoidant behavior. He had the natural ability to be good at anything he tried and life was nice and easy. This life, however, was solitary because no one could get close enough to him to see past the handsome good looks and the happy go lucky attitude.

When these two found each other sometime between 1942 and 1944 they balanced out the other. Dean helped Jerry deal with his overwhelming emotions and gave him the supportive father figure he so desperately needed. Jerry brought out Dean's nurturing side and kind nature. He taught Dean to not completely close himself off from his emotions and not be so protective of his true self that no one else can see it. But what they found is what they needed most of all, a friend.

Through this friendship and deep understanding of each other they formed a professional partnership. The act was officially billed as sex and slapstick, though it was the love that the audience responded to. Dean and Jerry's dynamic in their personal relationship had many different levels and this carried into the dynamic of their act. Dean would play the father as well as the best friend, practically inventing the buddy comedy concept, but oftentimes he played the lover too. In modern times this kind of comedy was called "bromance" but the subtext (to be honest it was all TEXT) of Martin and Lewis being romantic partners WAS NOT THE PUNCHLINE.

Jerry prided himself on being the anti-conformist and pushing the limits on what 1950s America could handle. His character's sexuality was not the joke but the commentary. Martin and Lewis threw heteronormativity out the freaking window. There was no "man" of the relationship. They traded power dynamics back and forth and before you knew what was happening Dean all of a sudden has a feminine lilt to his voice and is lusting after Jerry. In fact, at times they might both be the girl.

Jerry felt that comedy could change the world and he wouldn't settle for anything less. Dean wanted to make the world laugh. Together they became the most revolutionary comedic act in history.

On July 25, 1956 Martin and Lewis ended their professional relationship. To Jerry their personal relationship had ended as well but Dean didn’t get that memo and later found out from reading Jerry’s interview in Look Magazine several months later. This perfectly illustrates their problems with miscommunication.

There isn’t agreement over who was the first one to initiate the divorce and there are many competing theories as to what was the ultimate cause.

I can, however, tell you what was not the cause. Golf did not end a ten year marriage. Jerry wanting to sing was not the last straw for Dean. Jerry had been singing since their first movie together. And it wasn’t Jerry’s directing aspirations either. Dean praised Jerry as a director as early as 1952. He also was aware that Jerry had to be involved in everything from the very beginning. None of that could be surprising to Dean so Jerry’s ego had nothing to do with it either.

Outside forces were the main source of tension to their relationship. I suggest looking back to when these problems stopped being brushed to the side and what could have been the underlying cause.

I feel what keeps us coming back for more is that Dean and Jerry did not go their separate ways. They were in each other’s lives for decades, having one reunion after the next, after the next, after the next. Every year secrets get revealed and we get more pieces to the puzzle. This can be both the wonderful and headache inducing part.

It does help us to know that this story has a happy ending. Dean and Jerry reconciled in 1987 and there is footage of Dean telling Jerry, “I love you” at his engagement at Bally’s when Jerry surprised him with a 72nd birthday cake in 1989.

Heteronormativity is a doity word

Heteronormativity is out the freaking window— examples in the form of gifs

“Helffrich cut entire sequences, proscribing any overt sexual impropriety or underlying gay motif.”

Dean and Jerry dancing

Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis in bed-no really

Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis in bed again...

Dean and Jerry kissing infront of Mona Freeman

colourcharcoal: Kiss and Kiss and Kiss

Reunions-they could never go twenty years without talking

Source: Jerrylevitch

Dean and Jerry reunions —A master list of photos and article and newspaper clippings

You won’t find this in any of the books in 1958 Dean and Jerry were friends and they were happy

Early 1960s reunion— Jerry has been visiting Dean on the set of “Whose Got the Action?” Newspaper clipping

Early 1960s reunion—Dean confronts Jerry for running away from him

1966 reunion— “Tragedy reunites Martin and Lewis” article about Dean and Jerry’s short lived reconciliation after the death of their mutual friend Sy Devore

1967 reunion-Jerry consoles a grieving Dean

Late 1960s reunion— Jerry dances in the background of a taping of the Dean Martin Show

The Divorce and the events that lead up to it

Trouble before 3 Ring Circus filming?— “Well, if Jerry gets too tough, then maybe I can go it alone”

Dean and Jerry’s response to the 3 Ring Circus script- “We’re supposed to be partners. We want to be together.”

Dean on the set of 3 Ring Circus — “If people would only leave us alone, my partner and I wouldn’t have any trouble.”

“No marriage of any kind ever runs smoothly”— “The Martin and Lewis Feud” article

Dean Martin returns from vacation after not showing up to the You’re Never Too Young premier

Dean Martin dressed as a cop in 1950s promotional photo

Jerry Lewis approaches Don McGuire to write The Delicate Delinquent — “But its got a theme about friendship…”

Excerpt from Dean and Me about Dean’s reaction to playing a cop in the Delicate Delinquent

Shirley Maclaine’s version of Dean’s reaction to playing a cop from My Lucky Stars

Don McGuire writer of the Delicate Delinquent — “It wasn’t actually the cop thing…Dino simply thought I had written him out”

Dean initiates divorce after finding out he’s playing a cop—in this version at least

“I didn’t think that Dean Martin was the act. Jerry was the guy who made him a hit, made him funny…Dean was a terrible actor he could barely talk.”— Don McGuire writer of 3 Ring Circus and The Delicate Delinquent

Don McGuire says he was the first to tell Dean he was playing a cop— “That’s alright, man, you know…a cop, and everything else…it’s all been done, anyway.”

The Future for Dean and Jerry— 1956 article

Dean’s response to Jerry’s interview in Look Magazine-“I thought we broke up an act, a partnership, not a friendship.”

Dean Martin irritated by Look Magazine Jerry Lewis interview two years later

Jerry on the Martin and Lewis divorce — “The love affair was so strong. And the break, though we wanted it, must have psychologically shattered us more than we knew.”

Martin and Lewis Personal and Professional Relationship

Source: Fuzzysebastianstan

Everybody Loves Somebody Sometime left some things out of chapter 18

Dean loves Jerry— A list of evidence

Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis Anything for a laugh— From a 1951 promotional book

Fun at any Price— article

Martin and Lewis 1950s article 1

Martin and Lewis 1950s article 2

Martin and Lewis 1950s article 3

Martin and Lewis article—Two Wives, Two Lives

Crazy like a Fox— “If it’s okay with (Jerry) then it’s okay with me”

Martin and Lewis are my Bosses— Jack Keller talks about bosses Dean and Jerry

Going...Going...Real Gone — An article about Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis European Tour

Will Dean Martin outlast Jerry Lewis— 1954 article

Martin and Lewis 1950s article — “A partnership like ours is almost like marriage”

Dean Martin looks at Jerry Lewis —“Professionally we think so much alike and our interests are so mutual I trust him implicitly.”

Dean Martin Looks at Jerry Lewis — “Our partnership in many ways is a marriage.”

Dean Martin Looks at Jerry Lewis — “And psychologists will tell you the first ten years of a marriage are the toughest.”

Dean Martin looks at Jerry Lewis — “Of course, I think Jerry works too hard.”

Dean Martin Looks at Jerry Lewis — “Someday Jerry will be a highly successful producer, if he wants to.”

Dean Martin Looks at Jerry Lewis — “Indeed, until a bunch of outsiders got into the act we never had an argument which wasn’t settled by sundown.”

Dean Martin Looks at Jerry Lewis — “Until a bunch of outsiders got into the act…”

Book excerpt Jerry at Dean’s 29th birthday-“Because I was the only human on God’s earth that he would communicate with then.”

Jerry gets ready for new houseguest Dean

Jerry Lewis watches Dean perform in 1943— article clipping

Dean being protective of Jerry yet again— Dean fights back against English critics

Dean visit Jerry daily in the hospital after his scooter accident

Jerry Lewis leaves family vacation to console Dean — “You’ve got to be with your other wife.”

Jerry Lewis leaves family vacation to console his ‘other wife’— Everybody Loves Somebody Sometime Especially Himself says this happened in 1954 before shooting You’re Never Too Young

The bicycle incident — 1953 newspaper clipping

Dean after the bicycle incident—“It’s only our particular way of showing our love and respect for one another.”

Dean Martin SAYS HE LOVES JERRY LEWIS IN PRINT—1953 newspaper clipping after the bicycle incident

Examples of Dean being protective of Jerry— article clipping

Dean being protective of Jerry after his 1951 accident on stage

“I like Jerry. I even kiss him when we run into each other.”—newspaper clipping

-it's technically 74 links because this one had to be removed-

— Outside of my wonderful wife, Dean is the person...

Dean quote — “In the beginning of our relationship Jerry was just wonderful...”

Why Lewis needs Martin — “But what I did would have never worked without him.”

“Because the secret with us is people never knew when who was doing straight for who”— Jerry Lewis

“When you talk to the writers, I want you to be sure to remind them that Dean and I are TWO comics-not a comic and a straight man.”

Dean saying meeting Jerry was his biggest break

Dean's gift to Jerry an inscibed watch

Dean shows off his Martin and Lewis mural…

Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, 1944

Dean and Jerry on their 4th anniversary

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Can you explain more about dean martin and Jerry lewis? I dont go here but my interest has been peaked

okay i don’t know what to say so i’ll try to give you the rundown off my dome. bear with me it might get hefty.

Martin and Lewis were a comedy duo that lasted for 10 years to the day from July 25, 1946 to July 25, 1956.

Jerry was a teen dad trying to make it in the show biz world to impress his vaudevillian parents, Dean was an easygoing drifter without a care in the world, not even his wife who was living in her parents house with two kids and another on the way. It was a match made in heaven.

Jerry, as I mentioned, was the child of two vaudevillian parents, Daniel “Danny” and Rachel “Rae” Levitch. His identity crisis can be traced back to the day he was born, seeing as even he doesn’t seem to know if he was named Joseph or Jerome. As an only child with parents who were constantly on the road, Jerry lived a solitary life, being passed around the homes of various family members. He recounts as a child aged six or seven, he wandered the streets alone looking for his mother, only to find her entertaining a saloon of noisy drunks. On another particularly egregious occasion, Danny and Rae neglected their son’s Bar Mitzvah.

“Here’s a famous one from when he was a kid.”

His favorite childhood memories more than often were of his grandmother, who cared for him when his parents would not. She became the ideal woman he would search for in all others, the immaculate maternal figure, which he would soon find in his more experienced wife, Patti Palmer. But the spectre of his life was his father, Danny, who had abandoned him as a child, needled his talents as an adolescent, then jealously leeched off his famous name as an adult. He was the one whom Jerry always strove to emulate and impress, and whom he resented and did all to avoid becoming like him.

“In some incomprehensible way I felt guilty, as if everything I had become only made [my father’s] life more painful, much harder to bear.”

Only a few years after he left school at 15 for the allure of the stage his parents couldn’t resist, Jerry would meet the man his biographer, Shawn Levy, dubbed “Danny’s evil twin”: the handsome, lady-loving, baritone club singer Dean Martin.

Danny and Rae Levitch; a young, pre-rhinoplasty Dean Martin. I’ll let you decide if there’s any resemblance.

Whatever Jerry Lewis was, Dean Martin was not. Dino was born and raised in Steubenville, Ohio, the second son to more humble parents of Italian origin, Gaetano “Guy” and Angela Crocetti. Where Jerry knew he was born to be a star, Dino never seemed particularly ambitious one way or the other. And while Jerry was singing his little nine-year-old heart out to Al Jolson tunes, Dino was filling his time with various jobs from boxer (of his twelve fights: “I won all but eleven.”), to steel mill worker, to illegal casino dealer, pocketing money from the house. Singing might not have been his great passion, but he liked it, and he knew he had a pretty enough voice, and so did others, and sooner or later, he ended up singing in bands all the way up to Cleveland. When he was 24, he married pretty and athletic Elizabeth Anne McDonald, and soon enough, Dino was an up-and-coming singer with a new name, an agent, and enough bookings to move his steadily growing family up north.

When they finally met performing in the same club in Atlantic City, circumstances weren’t exactly great for Dean or Jerry. Jerry was floundering with his act that consisted of him putting on outfits and lip-syncing goofily to records (not sure why anyone hired him to do this tbh), and he had to do what he felt was stooping: becoming an MC like his dad to make ends meet while his wife was pregnant. Dean was married too, and already had a couple kids of his own, but was feeling the pressures of fatherhood a little less than Jerry. Dean wasn’t made for marriage. Dean lived his life Dean-style, which consisted mainly of girls, midday naps, gambling, and Saturdays with the boys. Already, Betty was becoming troubled with her husband, and hated her life living between her parents in Philadelphia and the New York apartment Dean was leeching off a friend.

“Suddenly, at Broadway and Fifty-fourth, Sonny spotted someone across the street: a tall, dark, and incredibly handsome man in a camel’s hair coat. His name, Sonny said, was Dean Martin. Just looking at him intimidated me: How does anybody get that handsome?”

They would meet a few other times after crossing on the street that one day. Playing the same clubs, hanging out with friends of friends. They weren’t officially friends yet, and Dean likely gave the scrawny 19-year-old little mind, but Jerry was in love from the moment he set eyes on him. He was nine years older than Jerry, incredibly attractive, charming, cool, “worldly”, as Jerry would say.

“Following Danny around burlie houses and Borscht Belt rec rooms was all Jerry ever wanted out of his childhood; now, following Dean as he catted and sang around New York looked like a marvelous career. Just as he’d wanted to marry every girl singer who’d paid him attention, Jerry was smitten with Dean for deigning to spend time with him. That Dean possessed so many of Danny’s attributes—dark good looks, sexual confidence, a great voice—only made the attraction that much stronger.”

Forever after that, Jerry would use Dean as a fulfillment for his ultimate fantasy: to have an older brother, someone who could be his companion, to love him unconditionally, to care for him and understand him. Years later, Jerry would still reminisce about his “big brother” that “[he] had always longed for”.

Dean, a youngest child himself, was probably not so eager for a new member of the family, but even he knew Jerry was an asset that couldn’t be lost.

I’m convinced that there’s no way to describe in words Martin and Lewis’s act that makes it sound funny. It’s a “you had to be there” thing. Hearing a singer shout at a guy spilling water all over patrons for an hour isn’t my idea of a good night out, but it must’ve been something, because people loved Dean and Jerry even before they were Martin and Lewis. Their days of crossing paths evolved into a casual friendship where they would heckle each other and do little bits in the middle of their respective acts. Jerry lived to get laughs and attention from the crowd and his beloved big brother, and Dean’s lazy, unaffected exterior made the perfect foil to his outrageous shenanigans. Then came the fateful day in July.

“He smiled, and it was like the sun coming out on the rest of my life.”

Long story short, a club Jerry had booked had an empty spot needing a singer, and Jerry, having realized very early on he wanted to be with him forever and always, suggested Dean. Somehow, it worked. And everything from there kept on working.

For the first time, they were billed together as Martin and Lewis, contrary to the normal convention of billing in alphabetical order. In no time at all, Martin and Lewis would be appearing above every club in America, and sooner, on magazine covers and movie theater marquees.

The formula was stupidly simple. Dean was the playboy and Jerry was the Idiot. Dean looked perfect as is, Jerry perfected his signature high-pitched whine and had his hair buzzed into an overgrown crew cut to appear closer to an eight-year-old.

“It was like watching the two halves of a personality you wished you could have: insane and unrepressed on the one hand, smoothly poised and confident on the other. And serendipitously enough, they actually enhanced one another, sanding away each other’s brittle edges.”

Throughout their 10 year run, there was very little variation on this dichotomy. There was very little originality in their jokes too, of which they had approximately five of. But it worked. Maybe Jerry was right when he said that people liked to see two men in love (fujoshi ally).

In those years, Martin and Lewis managed a radio show, regular spots hosting variety show, The Colgate Comedy Hour, 16 feature films, endless T.V. appearances, live tours, 12 combined children, and a stinking amount of fame and money. They were the hottest couple in Hollywood. Everyone knew you couldn’t have Dean without Jerry or Jerry without Dean. The names “Damon and Pythias” would quickly become one of Jerry’s favorite ways to describe them.

And they were close, genuinely. When Dean’s marriage imploded, Jerry was the best man at his wedding to his affair partner, Jeanne Biegger. He accompanied him on his honeymoon, and he was just as eager to let Dean a room in his house when the two fought. Jerry found the companionship and security he always longed for in his “big brother” (whom he affectionately called Paul, his middle name), who got physical with anyone who said a word against Jerry, and tearfully accompanied him in the ambulance after a pratfall gone wrong.

Such was it that Jerry felt he was the only person in the world who understood Dean, and vice versa. He would refer to them as twins separated at birth, or like one person. Another was that they had a telepathic bond and felt pain and illness at the same time (I honestly believe it. Explain the Jerry getting sick while filming The Bellboy at the same time as Dean’s Ocean’s 11 cancer scare, and their shared Percodan addiction. Little Charlie voice “Do you believe in telepathy?”)

“My fantasy big brother.”

Their act was more risqué than how Jerry recalls them in the “innocent ‘50s”, between Jerry’s exaggeratedly effeminate affectations and the amount of innuendo they manage to cram into those 100 minute family pictures (see: Jerry spraying Dean’s face with milk and Dean forcing Jerry to lick and eat a cigar— in the same movie! Where Jerry is pretending to be a 12 year old boy, nonetheless!) And most sketches on Colgate involve the two in bed together, or kissing, or groping one another, etc etc. Honestly don’t think they could pull off the bits where Dean plays Jerry’s dad and they end up on top of each other in 2025. Mostly because those are advocating for beating your kid. Idk.

“There was an edge of cruelty to Dean—especially on screen, where he was always cast as a conniver who at the last minute turned good—while Jerry was more like a puppy dog that kept wagging its tail even when it was being kicked. It was a new concept in comedy, and it was widely imitated: A case can be made for their being the models for Gelsomina and Zampanò, the innocent clown and the egoistic brute of Federico Fellini’s La Strada[.]”

While the audience became so accustomed to Martin and Lewis that they struggled to extricate their comedic personas from their real identities, so too, it seemed, did Jerry.

In his 20s, he was still a child desperate for validation, with a paralyzing fear of being abandoned. I suppose most comedians must be like that, but Jerry was truly a severe case. Like a child, he swung from sensitive and cloying to selfish and cruel. But children are only like that because they’re only children and still figuring out people also have feelings and needs and shit. Jerry never seemed to reach that stage.

He loved Dean, but was petty and jealous when it came to him. Whenever Dean would come up with an ad-lib that got a particular amount of laughs, Jerry would coincidentally wind up with a terrible stomachache that required the attentions of everyone in the room. It’s embarrassingly immature to the point where you can’t even get mad about it.

More sinister, he told David Letterman that one time he dosed Dean with Seconal then went on stage alone.

“Each person is really two people.”

You may be wondering, what’s Dean’s feelings about all this?

Listen,

I don’t know.

He’s just too enigmatic. Maybe Jerry was right in saying he was the only one who really knew him. Maybe Dean was right in saying no one knew him.

I think maybe Mack Grey had it figured out, but he’s for a different post.

Anyways. Jerry is too simple. It’s all Psych 101. But what does Dean have going on? It’s either genuinely nothing, or inside he’s more fucked up than anyone can possibly imagine. Jerry would chalk it up to simple repression. Dean’s parents told him having feelings was for fags so he resolved never to have one again. I. Don’t. Know.

Surely, he must’ve felt some type of way about Jerry. At times, he was referring to their relationship in the terms of a marriage (“Till death to us part,” and sorta weirdly, “We’ll be together until Jerry dies.”) at other times, he seemed more or less indifferent. He clearly loved and was affectionate towards Jerry, but I wonder how much he considered the actual depth of Jerry’s feelings. His son, Ricci, wrote that a motivator for the break-up was that Dean didn’t want to father Jerry, and that the latter “seemed to want more warmth and compassion than [Dean] provided.”

The truth may be that Dean was a tulpa manifested by Jerry’s overwhelming desire to have a brother to freak on. The truth may be that Dean was destined to die in a horrific steel mill accident, but he somehow evaded his fate and was living as a half-zombie. The truth… we shall never know.

"Those close to him could sense it: He was there, but he was not really there; a part of them, but apart from them as well. The glint in his eye was disarming, so captivating and so chilling at once, like lantern-light gleaming on nighttime sea: the tiny soft twinkling so gaily inviting, belying for an instant, then illuminating, a vast unseen cold blackness beneath and beyond. The secret in its depth seemed to be the most horrible secret of all: that there was no secret, no mystery other than that which resides, not as a puzzle to be solved or a revelation to be discovered, but as blank immanence, in emptiness itself."

The real reason for breakup, in my opinion, was kind of simple. They were burnt out on each other. Jerry had ambitions of making films on his own, just like his idol, Charlie Chaplin, and Dean was sort of a pleb who didn’t think movies were real art. Plus, his tolerance for Jerry’s antics was hitting its threshold, and he was fed up with the roles he was getting in their movies (asshole, asshole but he’s a gangster, asshole but he’s super rapey, list goes on) and Jerry undermining him to the public. Dean was lazy, Jerry was controlling. Dean was unsympathetic, Jerry was needy. They feuded, but made up, for the most part. It was likely easier for Dean, who treated the rest of the world like water off a duck’s back, than for Jerry, who spent his entire adulthood thus far attached to Dean. By 1954, their fighting hit its peak on the set of 3 Ring Circus, but they had two more years to tough out. It was very easy to send Jerry to the hospital by stressing him out. Times were hard.

“My partner was drifting away from me. Or had he drifted away already? The uncertainty tapped into my childhood fear of being deserted. An icy look from Dean would turn me into a scared nine-year-old.”

Still, they would make up, and continue their going around in circles. It lead to some memorable moments: Dean kicking and stomping on Jerry’s bicycle after an argument, Jerry knocking Dean’s head around during his performance of That’s Amore, Dean maybe breaking Jerry’s toe, Dean waterboarding him in a giant tank. And of course, Dean’s infamous “You can talk about love all you want, you’re nothing to me but a fucking dollar sign.”

There were four more movies after 3 Ring Circus. Actually very impressive. Jerry did a lot of public crying about how Dean didn’t love him. Dean, who had a valid enough reason to hate Jerry, might’ve actually kept the partnership together despite it all, worried that he’d flounder without Jerry and that public opinion was already against him. But for Jerry, the world he had built around Dean Martin was gone forever and there was no coming back. Anyways, he needed the freedom to make the greatest comedy film of all time: City Lights Part Two: Return of the Tramp.

Their last show was played at the Copacabana, exactly 10 years after their debut. They ended with the title number from their second to last film, Pardners (Hollywood or Bust wouldn’t be released until after the breakup). “When other friendships fail / We’ll still be on that long, long trail…”

It is said that there wasn’t a dry eye in the house.

And when the show was over, the only thing that made everyone feel safe that Jerry didn’t hang himself was the three hours of wailing coming from his dressing room…

“We had some good times, didn’t we, Paul?” “There’ll be more.”

Jerry would go on to become one of the most polarizing figures in film with works like The Bellboy and The Ladies Man. His most popular film, The Nutty Professor, is really also his most psychological. But really it’s my least favorite… Anyways, some people would tell you that Buddy Love, the evil bisexual that Jerry turns into after drinking his potion, is supposed to be a parody of Dean, which I don’t really see. Jerry conflates himself, Dean, and his father a lot, and I think that’s what The Nutty Professor is about. There’s not enough time now to go into it.

Dean, as everyone predicted, flopped a little at first. But it was a very minor bump, and soon he started palling around with Frank Sinatra (an obsessive, lonely, only child from New Jersey in his own right) which made him into the Dean Martin we all know today. Though, Dean would lapse into some familiar old ways, getting laughs out of a crowd by heckling Sinatra while he crooned, or pretending to be a busboy and getting in the way of his show. But Frank Sinatra was really no Dean Martin (not intended as hate because I love Frank like a sonboyfriend).

In the immediate aftermath of the “divorce”, as they all referred to it, they had their run going at each other in the press. Dean got bitter and snide, blaming Jerry’s immaturity and accusing him of being jealous of his wife (which was true, as Jerry would be the first to say, but he didn’t have to say it.) A weird one was when he got really heated about Jerry removing all photographs of Dean from his home. He was going on about how Jerry was an asshole for that since he was still genial enough to leave up a picture of Jerry in his kids’ bedroom (which is true. On an Architectural Digest style program where he gives a house tour, the only decor on his children’s walls are a wooden crucifix and a picture of him and Jerry.)

Jerry was wandering the moors and shit. He wrote columns about how Dean broke his soul and held him back as an artists and about how he had to go to therapy and his therapist told him to stop looking at Dean as his father and instead rely on the maternal support of his wife. Good ol’ 1950s style psychoanalysis.

"Everybody likes to hear ‘I like you.’ Now because of Dean's personality and the way he was with his bravado, yet, I think, scared of his innermost feelings, I'd have to rush these things. That's a terrible frustration. That's like loving a girl or boy for years and years, and waiting for them to tell you that they love you too, and just at the exact moment when they are getting ready to say it, being yanked back into the real world only to realize that your happiness was a flimsy dream that didn't come true. That's what it has been like for me."

In 1966, Jerry picked up his 24 hour Muscular Dystrophy Association telethons. Martin and Lewis had been associated with the charity, but Dean wasn’t ever into that kind of thing. It was on this Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon, September the first, 1976, 20 years after their break up, that Dean and Jerry had their great reunion.

“I got a friend who loves what you do every year…”

It wasn’t really that great. Thanks Frank Sinatra.

To clear a few things up: Jerry and the rest of the world want to have you convinced they really hadn’t spoken for 20 years. This is not true. They had varying degrees of contact from the late fifties to early sixties, and had mini-reunions performing short bits if they happened to be in the same club. Dean had even expressed that he wanted to be friends again, but with the implicit understanding that the relationship would now be on his terms. For Jerry, it was incestuous roleplay codependent marriage or bust.

The next thing is, Jerry told an extremely easily disprovable lie that he and Dean became close friends after this moment and spoke every day. Idk why he said that it’s actually sad. He tried sending a heartfelt note to Dean, but he never responded. Just one time, did Jerry confess that he was on pills at the time and he didn’t actually remember that Dean had come on.

They wouldn’t speak again until 1987, after the death of Dean Paul Jr., Dean’s fifth child and the first from his second marriage, in an Air Force training accident. Since Jerry had telephoned his sincere condolences, they rekindled a long-distance friendship. They were never to achieve the intimacy they once had, and that Jerry had once dreamed of them having when they were both older and more mature, but Dean, who already seemed septuagenarian since his youth, was now matching that physically, and he liked Jerry best two or three arms’ lengths away. He had divorced Jeanne years before for a short-lived marriage to 26-year-old receptionist Catherine Hawn, and after that, he never remarried. He had also met the fate that all members of Frank Sinatra’s inner circle suffered sooner or later: he got booted, or rather he quit, in the middle of the Rat Pack’s 1988 Together Again tour. His spot was filled by Liza Minnelli.

By all accounts, Dean spent most of the later years of his life eating alone in his favorite restaurant. To Jerry, who had divorced his wife of nearly 40 years and was re-wed to SanDee Pitnick, and was still puttering along with films (notably, King of Comedy and his last directorial effort, Cracking Up/Smorgasbord) and MDA work, this listless existence seemed miserable. But Dean always took things as they came.

They would meet again face-to-face in 1989, when Jerry surprised Dean on his 72nd birthday while he was playing Bally’s Hotel in Las Vegas. They embraced, Dean was nostalgically warm: “I love you and I mean it.”

“I gotta kiss you on the lips.”

On Christmas day in 1995, Dean passed away.

He had never dreamed of fame, rather it was “thrust upon him by ambitious friends”, as Shawn Levy puts it in Rat Pack Confidential. But today, Dean Martin is remembered as a symbol of the good ol’ days, when men were men and Vegas was run by the mob. His songs are ubiquitous, his sleazing drunk character beloved by oldheads globally. Life has a funny way of working out.

A New York Times article published in 2002 (for the release of the made for T.V. biopic, Martin and Lewis) described the two as America’s Catherine and Heathcliff. And so it was, for Jerry who had dreams of Dean after his passing. He penned his 2005 memoir, Dean & Me (A Love Story), he played the clip of the two reuniting in 1976 at his shows, mentioning Dean's name in interviews was an easy way to get the old man in a bittersweet, reminiscent mood. Until the day he died (in the year of Dean's centennial, coincidentally), Jerry remembered Dean as the greatest love of his life, the singular person who was more important to him than his parents, his wife, his children.

“I always wanted to do good for him. I wanted him to be proud of me, my big brother.”

"I happen to love the kid like a brother."

"He was my hero. He was my father, my brother, my friend."

There's still so much gone unsaid. There was the time Dean bought Jerry a scooter and he fell off and hit his head and had to go the hospital. There was the time he wrote a love song for Jerry's birthday. There was the time they were reported to the FBI for being on a list of known homosexuals. There was the time Jerry misread Dirk Bogarde's name as Dick Bogarde. There was the time they were at the same Judy Garland show in 1958, but Jerry was also making out with Frank Sinatra. There was the time they owed hundreds of thousands of dollars to the IRS and Jerry had to get them out of it without letting Dean know because in his 78 years of living, he never seemed to fully understand the concept of money. There was the time Atom Egoyan made an erotic thriller that was very obviously based off of them, written by the guy who wrote the piña colada song and starring Kevin Bacon and Colin Firth, and Colin Firth, who’s the Dean of the situation, tries to stick his dick inside Kevin Bacon during a threesome and then kills himself. There was Martin Scorsese and there was Rainer Werner Fassbinder. There was Wiseguy and there was The Sopranos. There were tears of sorrow and tears of joy. And most of all... There was Amore.

(If you made it this far, thank you, and you are entitled to a free shirt at the door.)

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“We didn’t really go out anymore because he would spend ALL THE TIME with Stacey 🙄🙄” he sounded so resentful lol

I mean, Lyle was the only person he had at that time so it makes sense.

But I am also happy Erik got to then develop a really strong relationship with Andy at that time.

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What Exactly Is The Menendez Brothers Confession Tape?

There is so much misinformation about this tape, so let me start by saying what it is not. This tape IS NOT Erik’s original confession to his therapist. It was not recorded secretly and it is not the only place they confessed.

On August 20th, 1989, Lyle and Erik shot their parents. On October 31st, 1989, Erik confesses to his therapist, Dr. Oziel. Dr. Oziel calls Lyle and tells him to come down right away because “he knows his secret.”

 Oziel tells Lyle and Erik if they don’t come back for more therapy sessions, he will go to the police. He also tells them he has some theories and he will be able to figure out why they did it. That he could be helpful in a trial.

When Lyle and Erik leave, Oziel claims that Lyle threatens him at the elevator door and this is why he breached their confidentiality. Judalon Smyth is there and says Lyle did not threaten him. Judalon testifies that Oziel called and asked her to come and listen at the door, to Lyle and Erik’s therapy session after Erik’s confession. Meaning, he broke confidentiality before the supposed threat. She also said, she did not hear any threats against Oziel inside the session either.

Lyle and Erik decide they must go back to Oziel to keep him from going to the police. They decide to go along with his theory, because they do not want to reveal their history of sexual abuse by their parents, which is what ultimately lead to the shooting. Erik’s friend David Mraovitch testified that Erik told him he did not trust Dr. Oziel, that Oziel did not care that he was suicidal and that he thought he was after his money.

In early November, Oziel makes The Confession Tape with the brothers. The tape starts, and stops, in the middle of a sentence. The tape consists of mostly talking by Oziel, and almost no talking by Erik.

Even though the brothers have agreed to go along with Oziel’s theory, that it was a planned killing, the boys make statements on the tape that directly contradict this. Statements like “I had no choice”, “I would have taken any other choice” and “I didn’t think it would ever actually happen.” On the tape, Oziel ignores Erik’s suicidal statements. He does not pick up on what therapists call “metaphors”, which are supposed to be followed up on, and he does not encourage Lyle and Erik to confess to the police. Which is what therapists are supposed to do in cases like this.

One false narrative is that Judalon Smyth hears this tape and then goes to the police. That is not what happened. Oziel used the threat of Lyle and Erik coming to kill her as a way to blackmail Smyth into continuing their sexual relationship. Judalon goes to the police after Oziel rapes her, feels she is not being taken seriously, and so tells them about the tape in an attempt to get Oziel arrested.

Instead, Judalon begins recording phone calls with Oziel where he admits he is not scared of the boys, is blackmailing them for their money, and that his notes on their sessions are inaccurate.

Dr. Ann Burgess testified that Lyle is clearly lying on the tape and speaking in metaphors, and that Erik is hysterical and not saying anything that suggests a planned killing. Erik and Lyle both, on tape, adamantly disagree with Oziel’s characterization of their father as controlling, going against his theory they planned to kill him to get away from his control.

Erik: “I don’t like hearing these things about my father.”

Lyle: “True.”

Dr. Burgess said Lyle saying “I just couldn’t live with what he was doing to my mother” was an obvious metaphor for brother, referring to his attempt to get Jose to stop molesting Erik, which eventually lead to the shooting. She also noted that Erik compared himself and Lyle to John and Robert Kennedy, two brothers who were shot to death. An obvious metaphor for their fear that their parents were planning to kill them.

Furthermore, on the tape, Oziel forces Erik and Lyle to hug, which they refuse to do several times.  

Lyle: “We hate that hugging shit.”

Dr. Burgess noted this is not only improper for a therapist to do, but it is yet another piece of evidence that Lyle and Erik hated being touched. Yet another behavioural sign they exhibited, consistent with having been sexually abused. 

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“Did you feel an obligation to your brother? I mean, why didn’t you just say I’m really sorry it’s too bad and I’m headed back to Princeton soon and I hope it works out. Why didn’t you say that to him?”

“…I would never say that to him and he would never expect me to say that.”

“Why?”

“Just cause we were brothers.”

— Lyle Menendez with his attorney Jill Lansing describing the closeness between him and Erik

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ERIK, JOSE, & LYLE MENENDEZ ca. 1976.

“He asked, he went on about how we weren’t a family and that I was the only person he had and he asked me to remember back to the time when I confronted my dad about him and uh… ya know, I remembered, I said yes and uh… ya know, I asked him what was wrong cause he was really, didn’t want… it was like… ya know, he was basically shaking and um… I asked him what was the matter and uh… at some point, ya know he couldn’t tell me and he just started crying and I said, you can tell me what is it and uh… he told me that those things with his dad were still going on and uh.. I was just completely, not believing and uh…”

“What’d you say to him?”

“… I said what things? He said, you know what things, uh… I said, how come you didn’t tell me before? I said a lot of nasty things to him basically.”

“What’d you say to him?”

“… I asked him if he liked it, I asked him why he didn’t tell me a long time ago, I asked him uh… why he didn’t fight back, cause he said that dad was forcing him and he was just crying, he had no answers for any of it… just crying.”

“Were you mean to him?”

“… um… unintentionally.”

“But you were mean?”

“Yes… and uh… that made me feel… that was…I don’t know, I was feeling extremely guilty.” [sighs]

“Why were you feeling guilty?”

“I was feeling guilty because um… ya know the thirteen year old conversation I had just sort of let go and uh… I never really followed up on it, I didn’t really want to follow up on it, I was so happy it went that well with my dad and I just kind of let it go and he told me this and I was kind of like… he didn’t say that but I felt like ya know, why didn’t I do anything about it?”

“Like he was blaming you somehow?”

“Maybe, he wasn’t but I felt that way.”

“Were you blaming you?”

“Yes and uh… also feeling guilty when I asked him if he liked it and uh…”

“What did he do when you asked him if he liked it?”

“What did he do?”

“Yes.”

“He said of course he didn’t like it and uh… he just , I don’t remember exact words but he was crying and I told him I believed him uh… and I did believe him.”

“Did you believe him at first?”

“Uh… not really. I really, I wasn’t sure, it was just the shock of it. That was just my response.”

“What made you believe him?”

“Um… just the way he was talking about it, just his tears and um… I mean it was obvious that it was true and uh… and I just didn’t feel my brother was gonna… there was no reason to lie, clearly he was coming to me, he wanted me to do something about it and uh.. and it was true cause my dad never denied it when I talked to him about it, so I knew it was true.”

“So after you got through telling him you didn’t believe him, asking him why he didn’t fight back and everything like that, then suddenly you, did you talk to him differently about it?”

“… yes, when he started crying that was very hard for me and so I sat down with him and told him to relax and let’s talk and uh… I was very shaky myself, just from the idea that… ya know, my dad was still doing this and uh… basically uh… trying to think about what we could do.”

“Did he want you to do something? Or did he just want to tell you?”

“…. I got the sense he wanted me to do something, that’s why he was telling me for the first time.”

“What’d you think he wanted you to do?”

“… help him, somehow. He had no answers, he was at that time he was suicidal um…”

“Why do you say he was suicidal?”

“Just in talks with him over the summer he was very depressed, my dad had been um… extremely rough with him um… ya know, I saw my dad punch him, I saw my dad be forceful with him over his grades in school and he was having problems with a chemistry course or something like that and uh… he was feeling like, he was sort of falling apart over the summer, although he was having some success at tennis, then when he lost this time and he came back home I knew how depressed he was and uh… I was concerned for that and when he was telling me this I thought part of it was just to tell me but also to want me to do something cause he might kill himself.”

“Did you want to do something to help him?”

“Yes.”

“And did you uh… did you think of a solution? Did you have an idea of how you were gonna handle this?”

“Yes.”

“What was your idea?”

“… just to tell him… the same thing I had done before… ya know obviously didn’t work but I was able to talk to him about it, basically I told my brother and we discussed it and I told him that… I felt I could sit down with dad when he came back and essentially ya know, we held all the cards and if i needed to …. Ya know I could threaten to tell people.”

“What do you mean you held all the cards?”

“…. Well, in so far as that I could threaten to uh… tell people, obviously this is something that would ruin my dad and uh…”

“This is a man that you couldn’t tell to stay out of what room you lived in or who your girlfriend was or… how could you… how did you think you could tell him this?”

“…. Because what was happening to my brother, ya know, I mean I had no choice at that point my brother had told me and he obviously wasn’t gonna go on with it, he was trying, ya know I felt he was maybe gonna kill himself or something of that sort and I told him ya know, I was glad he came to me obviously and I was still in shock of this whole thing but I felt like I was gonna talk to my dad, I was gonna stand up for my brother, I had hurt him in the past this way and um… I needed to do something and I really believed that my dad would uh… let him go.”

“Why? What did you have that was gonna give you all this power over your dad?”

“…. Just really nothing except for that I knew and that was enough.”

“Why wouldn’t your dad say, go ahead tell everybody you want?”

“Ya know he… I could ruin him with this and uh… I thought he would, once he knew that I knew and I was making him… we were gonna make a great deal with him. I was gonna go in there and just say all we wanted was for Erik… for it to stop obviously and then for Erik and I to go to the same school and that’s it and uh… ya know, no retaliation, nothing uh… of that sort, no exposing him which I knew would be his number one concern, really only concern and uh… and he knew I could do that obviously he would know that and so… I really felt if I just mentioned to him that I knew and that it was gonna stop and if I was forceful and I wasn’t weak with it, um… h would have no choice… at least that’s what I felt that day.”

“Once you thought about it were you fairly confident that this would work?”

“We were very confident, much more than we should have been and uh… my brother seemed relieved, although very nervous about me talking to my dad and ya know, started to set in for me, that this might not go as well as I hope but I still felt like what would he do?”

“Did you feel an obligation to your brother? I mean why didn’t you just say, I’m real sorry it’s too bad and I’m headed back to Princeton soon and I hope it works out. Why didn’t you say that to him?”

“… I would never say that to him and he would never expect me to say that.”

“Why?”

“Just cause we were brothers.”

“Did he stay with you in the guest house that night or did he go back into the main house?”

“He stayed with me in the guest house and uh… I had a king sized bed and we slept there and uh… I sort of stayed up and thought about my life.”

“What did you think about?”

“I thought back and uh… mostly I was trying to not think about my conversation with my dad and I was just going back and trying to figure out how this could of happened without me knowing for so many years and um… I basically felt that it could.”

“Why? How could it have happened in the house that you were in for at least a substantial part of the time?”

“… only that uh… ya know I hadn’t talked to my brother… I hadn’t really… really didn’t know any details about what happened and uh… but I felt that uh… based on what had happened to me that I’m sure it had happened in his bedroom, times when I wasn’t there, and I felt like ya know, my dad lectured us behind closed doors and ya know, punishments were always behind closed doors, I got beaten behind closed doors and at times when cousins were living in the house and I felt like uh… this is something that was going on behind the doors.”

“Were there times when you would see your dad in Erik’s bedroom?”

“Yes.”

“Would you have ever gone in when your dad was in there with Erik?”

“No. Nobody would have gone in.”

“Why?”

“That was just the rule from when we were real little… just did not go in when my dad was in there with either my brother or myself, nobody ever came in um… and I also thought about how my brother sort of…how he could of fought back, just things like that, just wishing that he could of done something.”

“Did you stay up most of the night?”

“Stayed up all night.”

“Were you troubled by this?”

“We were both… the world was gonna be different.”

“Did you think you were gonna have no relationship with your family after this?”

“No, no. We um… well I don’t know what my relationship, Erik’s relationship was gonna be but um… I sort of… I expected that mine wouldn’t change, hopefully with my dad, ya know I still expected to go to school, although Erik with me, unless I could transfer in time, maybe go to UCLA where Erik was supposed to go um… but I really didn’t expect a change, I mean at that point I’d figured my dad knew… that I would have to do something about this and I didn’t feel he would hold that against me and um… I figured my brother’s eighteen years old, ya know I don’t know how long he expected… I didn’t know why it was going on but I had… ya know, I had always thought that that was something… I dismissed what happened to me as something that happens to little boys and uh… I really… even at the time when I confronted my dad before, I thought it was a strange thing because my brother was already ten years old or so and at eighteen I figured my dad would let him go and uh… I didn’t know why it was going on but I felt confident it would work out and I wasn’t gonna mention it to anybody and as long as my brother was okay we would just go on.”

“Was your dad home at the time or was he gone?”

“He was gone.”

“When was he due to come back?”

“On Thursday.”

— Lyle Menendez direct examination by his attorney Jill Lansing about the talk he had with Erik regarding their father still abusing him in 1989.

[mobvirus]

Lyle Menendez: And I was feeling a tremendous amount of outrage. I mean the fact that my mother knew - I just - I don't know, I can't even really explain the downward spiral I was in that week.

Q: Take us up to that night in 1989 and what you believed your - your existence was about during that weekend. Where were emotionally, where were youin terms of your relationship with your parents and your brother at that time?

Lyle Menendez: I certainly did not know that my - my father was still in a sexual relationship with my brother. When he told me that weekend, I think in part because he was concerned that I was about to go back to school and you know continue my life and sort of leave him behind, my brother was suicidal, was emotional, and revealed this, uh, horrific, uh, you know, uh history of what had been going on with his father - you know

I had the reaction that I still, today you know how complicit was he in it? I mean he's - he's an 18-year-old kid obviously this isn't something where you're being forced, it's but I don't know that's just complicated whether it - you know how emotionally uh, beaten down he was at that point but they were obviously in a sexual relationship that he wanted to stop.

I certainly did not kill my father because he was doing that. My intention was to take my brother back to Princeton find some way out of this figure out what we should do. My brother thinks it's you know the fatal error in all of this that I told, I decided to tell my father, uh threatened him basically and said that this is going to stop and I'm going to take my brother out of this. I expected his reaction to be okay you know I'm done with it, go ahead. uh, and, he did not that reaction. His reaction was you should go - go back to Princeton deal with your life, you've got your things set up and let - and let Erik be he's going to stay here in California.

I felt like my brother had given up. Uh, there was, he, this is - it started when he was an early teenager or younger and he had just sort of given up and ended up in this sort of sick sexual relationship with my father uh and, I didn't really know what honestly I didn't really know what to think other than just uh, horrified by it and just shocked that I did not know. Um, and I think my shock really grew when I,(realized) had a conversation with my mother about it and it was clear that she knew.

For me, it was just trying to end it and then being threatened uh, that my father was never gonna let that happen - more, more concerned that I was going to reveal what had happened with my father because you have to understand my father was a very successful media executive, very high profile media executive. There was no way he was going to go through a child molestation trial. And I was feeling a tremendous amount of outrage. I mean the fact that my mother knew - I just - I don't know, I can't even really explain the downward spiral I was in that week.

I mean my whole life that I was a puppy goat started again at Princeton and that you know uh, I was the last thing I was even thinking about. I was just really in this sort of consumed place of uh, so many emotions you know, I can say anger and hatred and outrage and fear and those things because it's hard to separate them. I just was overwhelmed, I didn't know what was going to happen we were just - I felt like it was a very uh, you know, grave situation.

Link to YouTube Video

[mobvirus]

Ninth Circuit Appeals Court Brothers appeal the denial - Part One. Part Two.

Erik: 2nd trial - penalty phase - attorney's plea to the jury.

Lyle: 2nd trial - penatly phase - attorney's plea to the jury.

Erik's declaration || (Andy Cano letter/Roy Rosello)

Written by Erik "coming home"

Erik's letter to Andy Cano

The Menendez Family website

Menendez Legacy Lyle Menendez's Essay - "I will change your verdict."

Erik Menendez Insight Statement

Lyle Menendez, Personal Rehabilitation Narrative.

Report and Recommendation 2003 (Erik)

Report and Recommendation 2003 (Lyle)

Habeas - May 3, 2023 MEMORANDUM OF POINTS AND AUTHORITIES IN SUPPORT OF PETITION FOR WRIT OF HABEAS CORPUS

PETITION FOR WRIT OF HABEAS CORPUS - May 3, 2023

Resentencing memo one, two, three

Habeas

Request to Grant Clemency for Erik Menendez, CDCR #K14101

Request to Grant Clemency for Lyle Menendez, CDCR # K13758

Clemency 10/30/24

DEFENDANTS’ REPLY TO PEOPLE’S MOTION TO WITHDRAW MOTION REQUESTING 1172.1 RECALL OF SENTENCE & RESENTENCING HEARING. (PDF) Google Drive JPG

VICTIMS' FAMILY MEMBERS' MOTION TO COMPEL COMPLIANCE WITH MARSY'S LAW. (pdf) (X Tumblr Link)

PEOPLE'S CONDITIONAL MOTION TO CONTINUE RESENTENCING HEARING IF NECESITATED FOR THE COURT TO OBTAIN ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

Justice For Erik and Lyle

Law Offices of Cliff Gardner

Los Angeles District Attorney

Attorney Mark Geragos on X

Ana Maria Baralt-TikTok

Ana Maria Baralt - Instagram

Robert Rand on X -

Robert Rand on Instagram

Hazel Thornton on Instagram

Lyle Menendez on Facebook

Rebecca on X

Tammi Menendez Instagram

Tammi Menendez on X

Talia Menendez IG

Robert Rand's Blog (menendezmurders.com)

Hazel Thornton You Tube Juror in Erik's jury in the 1st trial.

Court TV- (Trial) Menendez Trials on YouTube

The Menendez Brothers: The Official Companion Podcast  Netlfix - The Menendez Brothers Documentary.

[mobvirus]

Useful links

Erik and Lyle's discipline record.

Confession tape transcripts.

Erik's C-File

Lyle's C-File

Ninth Circuit Appeals Court Brothers appeal the denial - Part One. Part Two.

Erik: 2nd trial - penalty phase - attorney's plea to the jury.

Lyle: 2nd trial - penatly phase - attorney's plea to the jury.

Erik's declaration || (Andy Cano letter/Roy Rosello)

Written by Erik "coming home"

Erik's letter to Andy Cano

The Menendez Family website Lyle Menendez's Essay - "I will change your verdict."

Erik Menendez Insight Statement

Lyle Menendez, Personal Rehabilitation Narrative.

Report and Recommendation 2003 (Erik)

Report and Recommendation 2003 (Lyle)

Habeas - May 3, 2023 MEMORANDUM OF POINTS AND AUTHORITIES IN SUPPORT OF PETITION FOR WRIT OF HABEAS CORPUS

PETITION FOR WRIT OF HABEAS CORPUS - May 3, 2023

Resentencing memo one, two, three

Habeas

Request to Grant Clemency for Erik Menendez, CDCR #K14101

Request to Grant Clemency for Lyle Menendez, CDCR # K13758

Clemency 10/30/24

Justice For Erik and Lyle

Law Offices of Cliff Gardner

Los Angeles District Attorney

Attorney Mark Geragos on X

Ana Maria Baralt-TikTok

Ana Maria Baralt - Instagram

Robert Rand on X -

Robert Rand on Instagram

Hazel Thornton on Instagram

Lyle Menendez on Facebook

Rebecca on X

Tammi Menendez Instagram

Tammi Menendez on X

Talia Menendez IG

Robert Rand's Blog (menendezmurders.com)

Hazel Thornton You Tube Juror in Erik's jury in the 1st trial.

Court TV- (Trial) Menendez Trials on YouTube

The Menendez Brothers: The Official Companion Podcast  Netlfix - The Menendez Brothers Documentary.

Book - They Said We'd Never Make It - My Life With Erik Menendez (Tammi Menendez)

Book - Norma Novelli - The private diary of Lyle Menendez

[mobvirus]

Erik's reaction to finding out Lyle threatened Jose. [Erik & Lyle video clips]

Relevant dialogue below. Original post.

Q: Take us up to that night in 1989 and what you believed your - your existence was about during that weekend. Where were emotionally, where were youin terms of your relationship with your parents and your brother at that time?

Lyle Menendez: I certainly did not know that my - my father was still in a sexual relationship with my brother. When he told me that weekend, I think in part because he was concerned that I was about to go back to school and you know continue my life and sort of leave him behind, my brother was suicidal, was emotional, and revealed this, uh, horrific, uh, you know, uh history of what had been going on with his father - you know

I had the reaction that I still, today you know how complicit was he in it? I mean he’s - he’s an 18-year-old kid obviously this isn’t something where you’re being forced, it’s but I don’t know that’s just complicated whether it - you know how emotionally uh, beaten down he was at that point but they were obviously in a sexual relationship that he wanted to stop.

I certainly did not kill my father because he was doing that. My intention was to take my brother back to Princeton find some way out of this figure out what we should do. My brother thinks it’s you know the fatal error in all of this that I told, I decided to tell my father, uh threatened him basically and said that this is going to stop and I’m going to take my brother out of this. I expected his reaction to be okay you know I’m done with it, go ahead. uh, and, he did not that reaction. His reaction was you should go - go back to Princeton deal with your life, you’ve got your things set up and let - and let Erik be he’s going to stay here in California.

I felt like my brother had given up. Uh, there was, he, this is - it started when he was an early teenager or younger and he had just sort of given up and ended up in this sort of sick sexual relationship with my father uh and, I didn’t really know what honestly I didn’t really know what to think other than just uh, horrified by it and just shocked that I did not know. Um, and I think my shock really grew when I,(realized) had a conversation with my mother about it and it was clear that she knew.

For me, it was just trying to end it and then being threatened uh, that my father was never gonna let that happen - more, more concerned that I was going to reveal what had happened with my father because you have to understand my father was a very successful media executive, very high profile media executive. There was no way he was going to go through a child molestation trial. And I was feeling a tremendous amount of outrage. I mean the fact that my mother knew - I just - I don’t know, I can’t even really explain the downward spiral I was in that week.

I mean my whole life that I was a puppy goat started again at Princeton and that you know uh, I was the last thing I was even thinking about. I was just really in this sort of consumed place of uh, so many emotions you know, I can say anger and hatred and outrage and fear and those things because it’s hard to separate them. I just was overwhelmed, I didn’t know what was going to happen we were just - I felt like it was a very uh, you know, grave situation.

[mobvirus]

LYLE TESTIFIED THAT AT AGE THIRTEEN, HE WORRIED ABOUT CONFRONTING HIS FATHER WITH HIS SUSPICIONS OF WHAT HE WAS DOING TO ERIK. HE WAS AFRAID THAT JOSE WOULD "BEAT ME UP" OR GET "INCREDIBLY ANGRY" AND HURT ERIK. STILL, HE DECIDED HE HAD TO DO SOMETHING. TO PREPARE, LYLE TURNED OUT THE LIGHTS AND PLAYED THE LIONEL RICHIE SONG "YOU ARE" OVER AND OVER AS HE TRIED TO CONCENTRATE. — The Menendez Murders by Robert Rand

“It stopped for you with your dad when you were eight. When you were about thirteen, did you think it might be happening to someone else?”

“Yes.”

“And who did you think it was happening to?”

“… Erik.”

“And did you do something about it?”

“…yes.”

“What did you do?”

“I talked to my dad.”

“What did you say to your dad?”

“I told him that I knew what was going on with him and Erik and that I heard noises and that I wanted him to leave Erik alone.”

“And what did he say to you?”

“He told me that Erik was… that Erik made things up sometimes but it… that it would stop and uh that we should keep it just between us or he’d kill me.”

“Did you ever tell anybody what you thought was going on?”

“No, I told him I would never tell anybody. I just wanted it to stop.”

“Did he tell you it stopped?”

“He did.”

———

“You were telling us last thing on Friday about a talk that you had with your father when you were thirteen years of age, do you remember that?”

“Yes.”

“And I believe that you told us you had heard some noises that made you believe that your brother was being molested by your father, is that right?”

“Yes.”

“Now, as soon as you heard those noises did you go right up and confront your dad?”

“No.”

“What did you do?”

“Well I was hearing the noises for a long period of time and uh after a while and I just felt that I should talk to my dad about it. And uh, so it took me a couple days but I finally did. One time when he came up to the bedroom I heard him and I just sort of spent the day thinking about it and then I uh went and I told him.”

“Why did it take you, you said you heard the noises for a period of time, did you immediately think you knew what it was?”

“ no, I didn’t know what it was when I was talking to him really. Um… I had just guessed.”

“Why didn’t you go up to him immediately?”

“Well… I just felt that if I decided to talk to him about it he would probably beat me up and he’d probably get incredibly angry and I just he might hurt my brother, I just wasn’t sure what was gonna happen and so I thought about doing nothing. I really felt at some point I really didn’t have a lot of choice, I should just go talk to my dad and maybe he would talk to me about it and I felt like he might and he did.”

“He did talk to you about it?”

“mhm.”

“Now when you finally decided to talk to him did you just go up and confront him right then or did you prepare in some way?”

“I prepared just by sitting in my bedroom and uh, pretty much the same way I did when the stress level got real high I put on this little Lionel Richie single I had and I just turned the lights out and I just try and concentrate and my dad had taught me to do this and um I tried to just relax cuz I was so tense and I wanted to be relaxed and at the same time brace myself because I thought he would you know, he probably would do something to me.”

“Did you tell your mom you were going to talk to your dad?”

“No.”

“Did you tell your mom what you thought was happening to your little brother?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“My mom wasn’t going to do anything about it.”

“Why didn’t you think your mom was going to do anything about it?”

“Well at that point I was thirteen and my relationship with my mother was extremely bad and uh she was really out of control and it would just be a lot worse I felt if I talked to my dad about it, I also thought it would be worse if I talked to my brother about it first cuz I figured he would deny it and then he might go to dad, I just I thought it was better to just surprise my dad just talk to him about it and not tell anyone else but I wasn’t gonna tell my mother.”

“Did you talk to your brother about it afterwards that you had had this talk with your dad?”

“Yes.”

“And did he tell you that things had changed for him?”

“He never admitted that anything was going on but he said that um, he was glad I talked to dad and that things had gotten better and things had changed, didn’t use those exact words but left me with the impression that it was resolved.”

— Lyle Menendez direct examination with his attorney Jill Lansing regarding confronting his father when he was thirteen about the abuse of Erik

[mobvirus]

ford definitely doesnt have a favorite brother guys

inspired by Ford when talking about Stan hitting us with the constant MY BROTHER MY BROTHER MY BROTHER

vs him just calling Shermie by the full name for some reason and literally never mentioning him again ever😭

[mobvirus]

ERIK, JOSE, & LYLE MENENDEZ ca. 1976.

“He asked, he went on about how we weren’t a family and that I was the only person he had and he asked me to remember back to the time when I confronted my dad about him and uh… ya know, I remembered, I said yes and uh… ya know, I asked him what was wrong cause he was really, didn’t want… it was like… ya know, he was basically shaking and um… I asked him what was the matter and uh… at some point, ya know he couldn’t tell me and he just started crying and I said, you can tell me what is it and uh… he told me that those things with his dad were still going on and uh.. I was just completely, not believing and uh…”

“What’d you say to him?”

“… I said what things? He said, you know what things, uh… I said, how come you didn’t tell me before? I said a lot of nasty things to him basically.”

“What’d you say to him?”

“… I asked him if he liked it, I asked him why he didn’t tell me a long time ago, I asked him uh… why he didn’t fight back, cause he said that dad was forcing him and he was just crying, he had no answers for any of it… just crying.”

“Were you mean to him?”

“… um… unintentionally.”

“But you were mean?”

“Yes… and uh… that made me feel… that was…I don’t know, I was feeling extremely guilty.” [sighs]

“Why were you feeling guilty?”

“I was feeling guilty because um… ya know the thirteen year old conversation I had just sort of let go and uh… I never really followed up on it, I didn’t really want to follow up on it, I was so happy it went that well with my dad and I just kind of let it go and he told me this and I was kind of like… he didn’t say that but I felt like ya know, why didn’t I do anything about it?”

“Like he was blaming you somehow?”

“Maybe, he wasn’t but I felt that way.”

“Were you blaming you?”

“Yes and uh… also feeling guilty when I asked him if he liked it and uh…”

“What did he do when you asked him if he liked it?”

“What did he do?”

“Yes.”

“He said of course he didn’t like it and uh… he just , I don’t remember exact words but he was crying and I told him I believed him uh… and I did believe him.”

“Did you believe him at first?”

“Uh… not really. I really, I wasn’t sure, it was just the shock of it. That was just my response.”

“What made you believe him?”

“Um… just the way he was talking about it, just his tears and um… I mean it was obvious that it was true and uh… and I just didn’t feel my brother was gonna… there was no reason to lie, clearly he was coming to me, he wanted me to do something about it and uh.. and it was true cause my dad never denied it when I talked to him about it, so I knew it was true.”

“So after you got through telling him you didn’t believe him, asking him why he didn’t fight back and everything like that, then suddenly you, did you talk to him differently about it?”

“… yes, when he started crying that was very hard for me and so I sat down with him and told him to relax and let’s talk and uh… I was very shaky myself, just from the idea that… ya know, my dad was still doing this and uh… basically uh… trying to think about what we could do.”

“Did he want you to do something? Or did he just want to tell you?”

“…. I got the sense he wanted me to do something, that’s why he was telling me for the first time.”

“What’d you think he wanted you to do?”

“… help him, somehow. He had no answers, he was at that time he was suicidal um…”

“Why do you say he was suicidal?”

“Just in talks with him over the summer he was very depressed, my dad had been um… extremely rough with him um… ya know, I saw my dad punch him, I saw my dad be forceful with him over his grades in school and he was having problems with a chemistry course or something like that and uh… he was feeling like, he was sort of falling apart over the summer, although he was having some success at tennis, then when he lost this time and he came back home I knew how depressed he was and uh… I was concerned for that and when he was telling me this I thought part of it was just to tell me but also to want me to do something cause he might kill himself.”

“Did you want to do something to help him?”

“Yes.”

“And did you uh… did you think of a solution? Did you have an idea of how you were gonna handle this?”

“Yes.”

“What was your idea?”

“… just to tell him… the same thing I had done before… ya know obviously didn’t work but I was able to talk to him about it, basically I told my brother and we discussed it and I told him that… I felt I could sit down with dad when he came back and essentially ya know, we held all the cards and if i needed to …. Ya know I could threaten to tell people.”

“What do you mean you held all the cards?”

“…. Well, in so far as that I could threaten to uh… tell people, obviously this is something that would ruin my dad and uh…”

“This is a man that you couldn’t tell to stay out of what room you lived in or who your girlfriend was or… how could you… how did you think you could tell him this?”

“…. Because what was happening to my brother, ya know, I mean I had no choice at that point my brother had told me and he obviously wasn’t gonna go on with it, he was trying, ya know I felt he was maybe gonna kill himself or something of that sort and I told him ya know, I was glad he came to me obviously and I was still in shock of this whole thing but I felt like I was gonna talk to my dad, I was gonna stand up for my brother, I had hurt him in the past this way and um… I needed to do something and I really believed that my dad would uh… let him go.”

“Why? What did you have that was gonna give you all this power over your dad?”

“…. Just really nothing except for that I knew and that was enough.”

“Why wouldn’t your dad say, go ahead tell everybody you want?”

“Ya know he… I could ruin him with this and uh… I thought he would, once he knew that I knew and I was making him… we were gonna make a great deal with him. I was gonna go in there and just say all we wanted was for Erik… for it to stop obviously and then for Erik and I to go to the same school and that’s it and uh… ya know, no retaliation, nothing uh… of that sort, no exposing him which I knew would be his number one concern, really only concern and uh… and he knew I could do that obviously he would know that and so… I really felt if I just mentioned to him that I knew and that it was gonna stop and if I was forceful and I wasn’t weak with it, um… h would have no choice… at least that’s what I felt that day.”

“Once you thought about it were you fairly confident that this would work?”

“We were very confident, much more than we should have been and uh… my brother seemed relieved, although very nervous about me talking to my dad and ya know, started to set in for me, that this might not go as well as I hope but I still felt like what would he do?”

“Did you feel an obligation to your brother? I mean why didn’t you just say, I’m real sorry it’s too bad and I’m headed back to Princeton soon and I hope it works out. Why didn’t you say that to him?”

“… I would never say that to him and he would never expect me to say that.”

“Why?”

“Just cause we were brothers.”

“Did he stay with you in the guest house that night or did he go back into the main house?”

“He stayed with me in the guest house and uh… I had a king sized bed and we slept there and uh… I sort of stayed up and thought about my life.”

“What did you think about?”

“I thought back and uh… mostly I was trying to not think about my conversation with my dad and I was just going back and trying to figure out how this could of happened without me knowing for so many years and um… I basically felt that it could.”

“Why? How could it have happened in the house that you were in for at least a substantial part of the time?”

“… only that uh… ya know I hadn’t talked to my brother… I hadn’t really… really didn’t know any details about what happened and uh… but I felt that uh… based on what had happened to me that I’m sure it had happened in his bedroom, times when I wasn’t there, and I felt like ya know, my dad lectured us behind closed doors and ya know, punishments were always behind closed doors, I got beaten behind closed doors and at times when cousins were living in the house and I felt like uh… this is something that was going on behind the doors.”

“Were there times when you would see your dad in Erik’s bedroom?”

“Yes.”

“Would you have ever gone in when your dad was in there with Erik?”

“No. Nobody would have gone in.”

“Why?”

“That was just the rule from when we were real little… just did not go in when my dad was in there with either my brother or myself, nobody ever came in um… and I also thought about how my brother sort of…how he could of fought back, just things like that, just wishing that he could of done something.”

“Did you stay up most of the night?”

“Stayed up all night.”

“Were you troubled by this?”

“We were both… the world was gonna be different.”

“Did you think you were gonna have no relationship with your family after this?”

“No, no. We um… well I don’t know what my relationship, Erik’s relationship was gonna be but um… I sort of… I expected that mine wouldn’t change, hopefully with my dad, ya know I still expected to go to school, although Erik with me, unless I could transfer in time, maybe go to UCLA where Erik was supposed to go um… but I really didn’t expect a change, I mean at that point I’d figured my dad knew… that I would have to do something about this and I didn’t feel he would hold that against me and um… I figured my brother’s eighteen years old, ya know I don’t know how long he expected… I didn’t know why it was going on but I had… ya know, I had always thought that that was something… I dismissed what happened to me as something that happens to little boys and uh… I really… even at the time when I confronted my dad before, I thought it was a strange thing because my brother was already ten years old or so and at eighteen I figured my dad would let him go and uh… I didn’t know why it was going on but I felt confident it would work out and I wasn’t gonna mention it to anybody and as long as my brother was okay we would just go on.”

“Was your dad home at the time or was he gone?”

“He was gone.”

“When was he due to come back?”

“On Thursday.”

— Lyle Menendez direct examination by his attorney Jill Lansing about the talk he had with Erik regarding their father still abusing him in 1989.

[mobvirus]

LYLE, JOSE, & ERIK MENENDEZ ca. 1983.

“Were there other incidents that you could describe, where similar types of events occurred between your father and Lyle Menendez and yourself?”

“Incidents where Lyle saved me?”

“Yes.”

“Other incidents where my father put us out on the lake?”

“Where Lyle Menendez intervened and did something you interpreted as being your protector?”

“Yes.”

“And what comes to mind?”

“Several different things, but I guess in relation to the lake, there was a time we had a canoe and a sailboat and we had to make sure that they were tied up to a tree because the current would drag the boats away. Different people had a dock, we didn’t. And one day, I guess it was in the summer, I was out in the canoe and I came back and it was beginning to be… it was a windy day and I think there was a storm coming. Anyway, I tied up the canoe and I didn’t tie it up well enough and the canoe started… by the time I saw it again, it was at the end of the lake.”

“What happened?”

“I went to my brother and I was crying and I was panicking and I was saying, I got to get the canoe. And he said, dad’s going to be home any second. And I started to shake because I knew what was going to happen.”

“What was gonna happen?”

“I was going to get beaten or whipped.”

“Why would you possibly believe that your father would beat or whip you for that?”

“Just what my dad did.”

“Did when?”

“Throughout my life.”

“Go ahead.”

“And so I’m sort of out by the Sunfish thinking of a, some type of reason I can give to him, why I was… I didn’t tie the boat well enough and I went back up into the house and at some point my brother had had a conversation with my dad and had told my dad that he was the one that didn’t tie up the canoe and that the canoe had drifted down because it was his fault. And I remember being in my room and hearing the sound of the belt and just feeling a great sense of relief and pain, and I guess happiness, because I was beginning to realize that Lyle really loved me.”

“Did you ask Lyle Menendez to take the blame for you?”

“No.”

“Did you ask Lyle Menendez to take a beating for you?”

“No.”

“You mentioned a belt, did your father use a belt to beat you or hit you?”

“Yes.”

“Where did he keep the belt?”

“Hanging in my closet.”

“Whose belt was it?”

“His belt.”

“And were you told anything with respect to this belt?”

“Not to move it or touch it.”

“Were there other incidents where Lyle Menendez had protected you from a beating that you believed you were going to get from your father?”

“Yes, there was a time when I was spray painting my bicycle and didn’t realize that my bike was a little too close to the car and I’d gotten spray paint on the car, and there was sort of the outline of the bike or spray paint on the car, and I went to Lyle and I said, what am I going to do? I’ve got to clean this off. And I’d already tried some sort of brush that sort of… that wiped away the paint of the car along with the spray paint and made a big mark on the car. The paint had come off, and Lyle had told dad that he was the one who did that when dad finally got home.”

—Erik Menendez direct examination with his attorney Barry Levin regarding Lyle being his protector, during the second trial

[mobvirus]

LYLE & ERIK MENENDEZ ca. 1977.

“I’d like to turn your attention to your relationship with your brother, ok? You heard your brother testify when you were small probably around five he did something to you.”

“Yes.”

“And how did you feel about him when those things were going on?”

“I didn’t like him, I didn’t like him at all. I uh.. I didn’t want those things to happen.”

“And were there other things that he was encouraged to do to you by your father? That made you not like him also?”

“Yes.”

“Would you hear your father egging him on to do things?”

“Yes.”

“What would he egg him on to do?”

“When Lyle and I were roughhousing he would tell Lyle where he should um… grab my joints so it would hurt most, where he should hit me. Different things like that.”

“And did Lyle hit you and grab you when you were little?”

“Um… yes.”

“So was he your favorite person during those years?”

“He wasn’t my favorite person.”

“Did he eventually become your favorite person in the family?”

“Yes.”

“Did your relationship with him over the years change?”

“Yes.”

“Now you said that based on these things that he did to you, that he talked about that you didn’t like it and you didn’t like him. Did your attitude about those things and him change?”

“Eventually.”

“And what changed them?”

“I resented Lyle for a few years, uh… because of the things he had done to me and once the things with dad started to happen then I felt real guilty about that.”

“You felt guilty about what?”

“Resenting Lyle.”

“Why did you feel guilty about resenting Lyle when, I take it you mean the sexual things with your father were happening?”

“Yes.”

“So why did you feel guilty about resenting Lyle?”

“Because I thought that this was supposed to be natural when dad explained to me why it was supposed to be and Lyle didn’t explain to me any of those things and so I felt that it wasn’t.”

“You thought it wasn’t when Lyle did it and then when your father explained…”

“I realized that it was and I felt guilty for resenting Lyle.”

“Ok. Now did there come a time in your life when Lyle began to intercede on your behalf particularly with your father?”

“Yeah, there came a time when Lyle started to intercede for me with all kinds of things.”

— Erik Menendez direct examination with his attorney Leslie Abramson regarding his relationship with Lyle through the years