Reading List · Lisanne Swart
Books on the Menendez Brothers
On the night of 20 August 1989, Lyle and Erik Menendez shot their parents José and Kitty in their Beverly Hills home. They were teenagers. The trials that followed — televised, polarising, running for years — turned the case into something the American justice system had never quite seen before: a public argument about whether victims of abuse could also be perpetrators of murder. Every book on this list takes that question seriously. Some answer it differently than others. None of them let you off easily.
By Lisanne Swart · 4 books · True Crime · Non-Fiction · Updated June 2026
The Menendez Murders
Robert Rand began covering the Menendez case the day after the killings in 1989 for the Miami Herald, attended both trials in full, and has continued reporting on the brothers for more than three decades. This updated edition incorporates newly uncovered findings — including a multi-generational history of abuse in the Menendez family and a previously unreported connection to the 1980s boy band Menudo — as well as a first-hand account of the emotional reunion between Erik and Lyle after years of separation. No other reporter has this depth of access or this span of time on the case.
If you read only one book on the Menendez brothers, this is the one. Rand is not a commentator looking in from the outside — he was there from the beginning, knew both brothers before and after their arrest, and has spent thirty years accumulating the kind of detail that changes how the whole story reads. The updated edition makes the original case feel newly urgent. It is the most complete account of what actually happened, and why it matters.
The Defense Is Ready: Life in the Trenches of Criminal Law
Leslie Abramson was Erik Menendez’s defense attorney in both trials. Widely regarded as one of the finest criminal defense lawyers in Los Angeles history, she built her career in the public defender’s office before becoming the person you called when the case was unwinnable. This memoir covers the arc of that career — the philosophy behind defending people accused of the worst crimes, the strategy of the Menendez case, and what it costs to do this work for decades. Abramson has never given a television interview about the case. This book is the closest she has come to speaking publicly about it.
The Menendez case is often discussed from the prosecution’s perspective, or through the lens of spectacle. Abramson gives you the other angle: what it looked like from inside the defense, what she believed about her clients, and what she thought the trial was actually about. Her argument — that these were not murderers but broken children who cracked — is made here with more precision and more weight than anywhere else. Now retired and rarely public, this remains her definitive statement on the case.
Hung Jury: The Diary of a Menendez Juror
Hazel Thornton was a telecommunications engineer in Pasadena when she was called to jury duty in 1993. She served for seven months as Juror #9 on the first Menendez trial — the one that ended in two hung juries, one for each brother. She kept a journal throughout. This book is that journal, with a new preface and postscript essay covering the second trial added for the 2018 edition. It includes psychological commentary from Lawrence Wrightsman and Amy Posey, and legal commentary from Alan Scheflin.
The Menendez case divided the country and it divided the jury. Thornton’s account is valuable precisely because it is not the view of a journalist, a lawyer, or a true crime commentator — it is the view of an ordinary person who sat in that room for seven months and had to decide what she believed. She was moved by the abuse testimony. She could not convict on first-degree murder. What this book captures is the lived experience of a hung jury: the slow accretion of doubt, the weight of the decision, and what it does to a person to carry it.
Bad Blood: The Shocking True Story Behind the Menendez Killings
Written close to the events as the first trial was underway, Don Davis’s account chronicles the Menendez case from the killings through the televised proceedings, drawing on court records and contemporaneous reporting. It was one of the first full-length treatments of the case and captures the atmosphere of the early 1990s trial — the courtroom drama, the celebrity lawyers, the media frenzy — before the verdict was in and before the cultural reassessment that would come decades later.
Reading this now, with the benefit of what we know from Rand’s later reporting and from the Netflix series, is its own kind of experience. Davis writes from the prosecutorial common sense of the time — two wealthy young men who killed for money — and that perspective, even if you disagree with it, is useful for understanding why the case polarised people the way it did. It is a document of a particular cultural moment as much as a record of the facts.
Not sure where to start?
If you want the most complete, authoritative account of the case
→ Start with The Menendez Murders by Robert Rand. Thirty years of reporting, unparalleled access, and a perspective that has shifted as new evidence has emerged. This is the foundation.
If you want to understand how the defense was built — and what Abramson actually believed
→ Read The Defense Is Ready. Abramson has never spoken publicly about the case. This book is all you will get, and it is more than enough.
If you want the view from inside the jury room
→ Read Hung Jury. Hazel Thornton’s diary is the only account of what it actually felt like to sit with that evidence for seven months and be unable to agree on a verdict.
Frequently asked questions about the Menendez brothers
Watch
Menendez Brothers interview with Barbara Walters (1996)
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