The story behind the therapist in the Menendez brothers case

HHow important is medical confidentiality in a murder trial? The answer can be complicated.

Ryan Murphy's Monster: The Story of Lyle and Erik Menendezstreaming on Netflix on September 19, addresses that question in a dramatization of the true saga of brothers Lyle and Erik Menendez, who were convicted in 1996 for the murder of their parents, Jose and Kitty Menendez, on August 20, 1989, in their Beverly Hills mansion.

The focus of the murders was not the question of whether the Menendez brothers had shot their parents, but Why They shot their parents. Prosecutors argued the men wanted their inheritance, pointing to their lavish spending in the months following their arrest. The defense argued the men had a violent father and were acting in self-defense. Americans followed the trial on Court TV, which was only two years old but helped popularize true crime as a genre by broadcasting the trial.

The story of Lyle and Erik Menendez begins with the memorial service for Jose and Kitty before flashing forward a few months when the police are still investigating the murders. Lyle (Nicholas Chavez) and Erik (Cooper Koch) live in the same Beverly Hills house, and Erik becomes increasingly concerned about their circumstances. He calls his therapist, Jerome Oziel (Dallas Roberts), and asks if he can visit. Erik reveals that he is haunted by nightmares and feels suicidal. They take a walk and eventually Erik begins to sob and confesses that he and his brother shot their parents. Oziel leads Erik back to his office, where Erik recounts everything that led up to him and Lyle killing their parents. In flashbacks, we see Jose being a domineering and abusive father – yelling at Erik on the tennis court, throwing plates in a drunken fit of rage – while Kitty intervened to only support the abuse. After witnessing a particularly nasty incident in which Kitty became so angry with Lyle that she ripped his hairpieces out of his head, Erik Oziel says he felt motivated to protect his brother more than anything else. The idea of ​​actually killing his parents came, he says, from a movie.

As Erik becomes more and more agitated, an alarmed Oziel calls Lyle over, and Lyle threatens to kill Oziel. Oziel repeatedly assures the duo that their conversations will remain confidential.

What happened to Erik's confession to the therapist?

In fact, the conversation became crucial evidence in the Menendez brothers' case. Five months after Lyle and Erik spoke to Oziel at his office, the therapist's lover, Judalon Smyth, alerted police to Erik's confession.

In the series, Oziel runs out of the therapy session to a pay phone and asks Smyth (Leslie Grossman) to come in so he has a witness when Lyle arrives. She is seen in his waiting room and then presses her ear to Oziel's office door as Erik confesses to the murder. In the second episode, Oziel tells Smyth that he will put Erik's confession in a bank safe deposit box and give her the key. Smyth says Oziel has to go to the police because the boys threatened to kill him and has a panic attack, afraid the boys will come after her too.

In real life, Smyth finally went to the police in March 1990, after she and Oziel separated, and said she had overheard the brothers confessing the murders to their therapist.

On August 7, 1990, a California judge ruled that conversations between the therapist and the Menendez brothers, Erik, 19, and Lyle, 22, could be used as evidence in their murder trial because the brothers were believed to have threatened the therapist. The threat, the judge said, was an exception to the court's rule that conversations between therapists and patients are confidential. Authorities seized tape recordings of the counseling sessions as part of a search warrant for Oziel's home. There was a legal battle over the recordings over the next two years, but a 1992 California Supreme Court ruling declared most of them admissible.

In 1993, Smyth added further drama to the case when she retracted her testimony, claiming she had been brainwashed. She eventually testified for the defense, determined to do whatever she could to discredit Oziel.

In 1996, the Menendez brothers were found guilty of two counts of first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder and are serving life sentences.

Where is Jerome Oziel now?

Jerome Oziel has not been licensed as a psychologist since 1997.

The California Board of Psychology found that he had improperly disclosed information about the Menendez brothers' case to Smyth, and Oziel surrendered his license rather than challenge it in court.

The committee also accused him of sexual misconduct with female patients, which Oziel denied. He then organized seminars to help women have more fulfilling personal relationships.

Ryan Murphy's Monster is not the first dramatization of Oziel on the small screen. He was portrayed in the 2017 show Law & Order – True Crime and called the depiction of him “pure fiction”, in an interview with Hecticand dismissed the show as a “junk soap opera.”