LYLE and Erik Menendez inherited their parents’ multi-million dollar fortune after killing them on August 20, 1989.
Erik spent his share of the money on a private tennis instructor, but Lyle made the decision to buy a chicken wing spot named Chuck’s Spring Street Cafe.
Lyle’s buffalo wing dream
Lyle attended Princeton University in New Jersey and developed a fondness for Chuck’s Spring Street Cafe.
He was thrown out of the university after a plagiarism row, but later returned to New Jersey with the money he had inherited from his parents.
He bought the chicken shop and renamed it Mr Buffalo, before phoning up his Princeton suitmate Hayden Rogers.
Lyle asked Hayden to be the brand’s CFO and had big dreams for the company.
Hayden told Roll Call in 2012: “He called me up and — I was working in construction—and he called me up and asked me if I would be interested in managing a restaurant he was looking at buying.
“I went up, talked about it, decided it was a good opportunity, so I went to work for him.”
However, Lyle’s plans to expand the chain were thwarted when he was arrested for the murder of his parents.
Hayden was with him in Los Angeles when he was arrested, as the pair were looking to open a branch of Mr Buffalo near UCLA.
They were about to get lunch when the police took Lyle into custody.
The shop remained open after Lyle’s arrest but eventually renamed itself Chuck’s Spring Street Cafe.
Lyle and Erik’s crime
Lyle was arrested for the murder of his parents, which he committed alongside his brother Erik in August 1989.
They later claimed in court that this was motivated by sexual abuse perpetrated by their father José.
After their arrest, they received a lifetime prison sentence with no possibility of parole, despite their lawyer Leslie Abramson’s fierce attempt to spare them such a harsh verdict.
Death penalty litigation specialist Charles Gessler was able to save them from execution however, which was hailed as a victory for the brothers’ legal battle.
Life after the trial
Calls for the brothers’ release have increased after a Netflix series named Monsters dramatized their crimes and the subsequent trial.
The show brought a lot of attention to the brothers’ case and put a magnifying glass on a shocking new piece of evidence.
A letter, written from Erik to his cousin Andy, was uncovered which suggested that the brothers might have been telling the truth about the abuse they had suffered.
Also, Menudo member Roy Rossello claimed that he had also been abused by José and this has raised hopes that the brothers’ may have a stronger case to put to the court than they did in the 1990s.
Erik’s daughter, Talia, even has an Instagram account dedicated to freeing the brothers named @seterikmenendezfree.
