merica’s bizarre fascination with the Menendez brothers’ killing of their parents did not end when Lyle Menendez’s hung jury resulted in a mistrial 15 days after Erik’s hung jury had resulted in one. The airwaves and print media became saturated with opinion-makers, offering both admiration and outrage over the audacity of the defense tactic of abuse/excuse. Dateline, Now, PrimeTime Live, 20/20, Nightline, Larry King Live, and Court TV devoted segments or entire shows to the trial’s astonishing dénouement, as did the less prestigious but highly popular tabloid and chat shows.

No one was more visible or more vocal than the old scene-stealer Leslie Abramson, the head of the defense team, who, continuing her march toward glory and national recognition, …show more content…
True to form, she charmed as many people as she angered. Outside the courthouse in Van Nuys, she claimed that her client, Erik Menendez, once an heir to the $14 million fortune of the parents he and his brother had shotgunned to death, was now indigent. She asked on television for donations to the Erik Menendez Legal Defense Fund for the next trial, and said that checks should be mailed to her office on Wilshire Boulevard. The request was looked upon as tasteless by many of those court watchers in the Van Nuys area who had lost their homes and belongings a few days earlier in the earthquake and were badly in need of aid themselves. With great fanfare, Abramson took under her wing four women on Erik’s jury who had voted for manslaughter, rather than first-degree murder, and two