Pretending to go to the movies to see the James Bond film, 'License to Kill,' the two boys returned to find their parents watching television together. As Police later reconstructed the killings, both boys wanted their inheritance worth several million dollars and conspired to kill their parents to get it. Over the next twenty years, the family had moved to Princeton, New Jersey, where their sons, Joseph and Erik, were born, and then to Beverly Hills, California, where Jose worked in the Carolco Film Company as an executive. Initially, Jose and Kitty lived in New York City, where Jose obtained an athletic scholarship at Queens College and Kitty found work teaching grade school. In 1963, they eloped, shortly after Betty received her BS degree in communications. In 1962, her senior year at SIU, Kitty had met Jose Menendez, a freshman who was three years younger than her, and they were soon in love. Following high school, she attended Southern Illinois University, working in the school's broadcasting department, where she learned to produce dramas for radio and television. Because of the hostile divorce, Kitty was withdrawn and often depressed while growing up, and she would have nothing to do with her father. When Kitty entered grammar school, her father left the family to marry another woman, and in order to support the family, her mother went to work for United Airlines at Midway Airport outside Chicago. Her father owned a heating and air-conditioning company and provided well for the family. Born Mary Louise 'Kitty' Andersen in Oak Lawn, a suburb of Chicago in 1941, she was the youngest of four children to Charles and Mae Andersen. Both boys were convicted in a highly publicized and televised trial, one of the first publicly televised trials on the new Court Television Channel.

While watching television with her husband, Jose, the two were murdered by their two sons, Joseph Lyle and Erik Galen Menendez.

Kitty menendez