Kitty Menendez(1941-1989)
Kitty Menendez was born to a middle-class family in suburban Chicago,
where her father owned an air-conditioning business. Her home life was
very unhappy, with a cruel, abusive father and a despondent, battered
mother. While Kitty was still a child her father abandoned the family
to move in with a mistress. Embittered, she turned into a moody and
depressed child and had few friends. Eventually she cut off all contact
with her father, whom she came to despise. She attended college at
Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, Illinois. There she met her
future husband, Jose Menendez, whom she married in 1964. Both of their
families were opposed to the marriage, his because her parents were
divorced, hers because of Jose's Cuban heritage. In their early married
life she was an elementary school teacher, but after giving birth to
her children, Lyle Menendez and Erik Menendez, she became a full-time homemaker. As
her husband climbed up the corporate ladder, their life looked idyllic
on the surface. Intelligent, attractive, charming in public, she
appeared to be the ideal wife and mother. However, those who came to
know her described her as a high-strung woman who had great difficulty
coping with stress, and her husband's repeated extramarital affairs
drove her to despair. She coped with her problems by consuming increasing amounts of alcohol and prescription pills and some of her friends feared she had become dependent on them.. In 1987 she attempted suicide, ingesting a bottle
of sleeping pills. She recovered, but she and Jose continued to have
marital problems, and their relationships with their sons became
increasingly strained. On August 20, 1989, she and her husband were
shot to death in their living room while watching television together.
The killers were their sons.
