Who was the Menendez brothers' dad, Jose Menendez?

Jose Menendez, the father of Lyle and Erik Menendez , was a successful Los Angeles businessman before he was killed at the age of 45, along with his 47-year-old wife Kitty Menendez , in the family room of their Beverly Hills home in 1989.

The scene was so gruesome it was initially investigated as a mob hit, according to the Los Angeles Times , though authorities eventually narrowed in on the couple's sons, charging them with their parents' murders in 1990.

During Lyle and Erik Menendez's first trial, their defense team argued they killed their parents out of fear for their safety after suffering years of sexual abuse from their father, and at times, their mother.

The trial resulted in deadlocked juries for each brother, and after a new trial, where evidence of their allegations of sexual abuse was ruled as inadmissible, Lyle and Erik Menendez were convicted of first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder by a single jury in 1996. They were both sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

The events leading up to the murders of Jose and Kitty Menendez, and the aftermath, are the subject of a new Netflix series, "Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story," premiering on Sept. 19.

The father of the two is played by Javier Bardem. But who was Jose Menendez? Here's what to know about him.

Jose Menendez moved to the U.S. from Cuba Jose Menendez grew up in Havana, Cuba, but was sent to the U.S. as a teenager to live with distant relatives in Pennsylvania, according to the book "The Menendez Murders" by Robert Rand, a journalist who has covered the Menendez case since 1989.

He was awarded a swimming scholarship at Southern Illinois University, where he would end up meeting his future wife, Mary Louise "Kitty" Andersen, in a philosophy class, according to "The Menendez Murders."

By the spring of 1963, the pair were spending all of their time together, according to the book, and the couple married on July 8, 1963 — despite his family's hesitations.

He wrote, according to an published in 1990 in the Los Angeles Times : "If I'm old enough to live on my own at 16, I'm old enough to get married at 19."

The newlyweds had moved to New York by the end of the summer of 1963, and Jose Menendez enrolled in Queens College, where he earned degrees in economics and accounting, according to "The Menendez Murders."

After a brief stint back in Illinois, Kitty Menendez gave birth to their first son, Joseph "Lyle," in New York in 1968, and their second son, Erik, arrived in 1970, according to "The Menendez Murders."

In the 1980s, Jose Menendez rose the ranks at companies like Hertz and RCA Records, and eventually earned the title of chief operating officer at RCA Records, which came with a $500,000 salary, according to Rand's book.

While at RCA Records, Menendez signed and worked with bands like Duran Duran, The Eurythmics and Puerto Rican boy band Menudo, according to "The Menendez Murders."

While Jose Menendez worked, Kitty Menendez was a stay-at-home mom on their estate in Princeton, New Jersey. At the urging of their father, the boys started strict tennis and soccer training regimens, and when they were ages 9 and 12, he forced them to pick one, according to "The Menendez Murders."

They picked tennis — their father's preference — and he began having them recite lines from a self-help book, and calling home as many as five times per day to check on their tennis progress or their academic performance, according to "The Menendez Murders."

"My father suffered from being a perfectionist," Lyle Menendez said in a 1989 interview, according to the Los Angeles Times . "It carried over into his home life, and it was sometimes difficult for Erik and me. So much so that he really couldn't do something well enough. It wore on him tremendously mentally. And it wore on us."

The Menendez family moved to California in 1986 When Jose Menendez was passed over for the top job at RCA Records after it was bought by General Electric, he got a new job running the home video division of Carolco Pictures in Los Angeles, according to "The Menendez Murders."

The family then moved from New Jersey to Southern California in 1986, first living in an 8,000 square-foot home on nearly 14 acres in Calabasas, California, according to "The Menendez Murders."

Kitty Menendez had a difficult time adjusting to the West Coast, and considered the move from Princeton "devastating," according to "The Menendez Murders."

Lyle Menendez began attending Princeton University, where he had trouble adjusting himself: this time, to the academic rigor. He was accused of plagiarizing a paper for his psychology class, according to "The Menendez Murders."

The university ruled Lyle Menendez would have to voluntarily leave Princeton for a year, or be expelled, according to the book. He chose to leave, but Jose Menendez traveled to New Jersey and appealed the ruling, but his efforts were unsuccessful.

In California, Lyle and Erik Menendez got involved with a group of wealthy and privileged young boys who were suspected of burglarizing homes in the area for a thrill, according to Rand's book and other sources.

Erik Menendez was implicated in two burglaries, in which more than $100,000 worth of money and jewels were stolen, according to a Vanity Fair published in 1990.

Days after Erik Menendez was charged with burglary, Jose Menendez drove to the sheriff's department in Malibu in a van containing most of the stolen items, and wrote an $11,000 check for the items that had not been recovered, according to "The Menendez Murders."

Erik Menendez was sentenced to probation, community service and compulsory counseling, leading Kitty Menendez to ask her psychiatrist for a recommendation for a therapist for her son.

Kitty Menendez got the information for Beverly Hills psychologist Jerome Oziel, who counseled the brothers and who would later become a key witness in their murder trials.

During this time, Jose Menendez was "flagrantly unfaithful" to his wife, and that she was "devastated by his infidelity," Vanity Fair reported.

Kitty Menendez's former therapist Edwin S. Cox testified during the brothers' first trial that she was suicidal over her husband's eight-year affair with a woman in New York, the Los Angeles Times reported in 1993 .

Jose and Kitty Menendez were murdered in 1989 Following the attention of the burglaries, Jose Menendez decided to move the family to Beverly Hills, according to "The Menendez Murders."

In October 1988, Jose Menendez purchased a 9,000 square-foot home on Elm Drive with a pool and a tennis court, according to the Los Angeles Times .

The six-bedroom home would become an infamous crime scene on Aug. 20, 1989, when Jose and Kitty Menendez were shot multiple times in the family room with two 12-gauge shotguns.

Jose Menendez, 45, was shot at point-blank range in the back of the head, and hit three more times in the arms and legs. Kitty Menendez, 47, was shot four times in the head and five other times across her body.

Lyle Menendez, then 21, called 911 saying he and his then 18-year-old brother Erik Menendez had just returned home from the movies to find their parents dead.

It was the brothers' financial decisions after the slayings that led investigators to consider them as suspects: Lyle Menendez bought a Porsche, a Rolex and thousands of dollars worth of clothing, while Erik Menendez purchased a custom Jeep Wrangler.

After police obtained recordings of the brothers' therapy sessions with Oziel that contained confessions of the murders, Lyle Menendez was arrested on March 8, 1990, and his brother surrendered to authorities three days later.

Jose Menendez was accused of sexual abuse by his sons Prosecutors argued during the brothers' first trial that the brothers had killed their parents to collect on their estate — worth between $8 million to $14 million, their aunt told them after their parents' deaths, according to "The Menendez Murders."

However, the defense called on more than a dozen family friends to corroborate the brothers' allegations, in which they both testified about the extensive sexual abuse they faced at the hands of their father.

Lyle Menendez testified his father molested him from age 6 to age 8, and that he confronted his father about his concerns about what he thought might be happening to his younger brother at age 13, according to the book.

Erik Menendez told jurors his father had started abusing him when he was 6 years old, and that the abuse continued until shortly before the shooting.

Jose Menendez put a knife to his younger son's throat at age 17 after he tried to refuse his father's advances, Erik Menendez testified, according to the book.

Lyle and Erik Menendez testified that as Jose Menendez's abuse became more of an open secret throughout their family, they began to fear for their lives.

On the night of the slayings, Erik Menendez testified that his father ordered him to go upstairs to his bedroom.

"I thought he was going to kill me that night," he testified, according to "The Menendez Murders." "And I thought he was going to have sex with me first."

Lyle Menendez then started an argument with his father, telling him not to touch his little brother. When Jose and Kitty Menendez went into the family room afterwards, the brothers thought they had weapons inside.

They then grabbed their own shotguns, and went into the room.

"All I remember was firing," Erik Menendez testified.

Jose Menendez was accused of sexual assault by a member of Menudo in 2023 In 2023, Roy Roselló, who joined Puerto Rican boy band Menudo at age 13 in August 1983, came forward as a victim of Jose Menendez in the Peacock documentary, "Menendez + Menudo: Boys Betrayed." (Peacock is of TODAY's parent company, NBCUniversal.)

Roselló alleged in the series he was molested by Jose Menendez when Menendez was the head of RCA Records. Roselló said Menudo's manager took him to Menendez's home, where Menendez drugged him and raped him.

"That's the man here," Roselló said in the series, pointing to a photo of Jose Menendez posing with Menudo after they signed to RCA in 1983. "This guy — that's the pedophile."

About a day after the documentary premiered in May 2023, attorneys for Lyle and Erik Menendez filed a habeas petition on May 4, 2023, according to court documents obtained by NBC News, based on new evidence uncovered in the documentary that was not included in their trials in the 1990s.

The Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office said in a statement to TODAY.com on Sept. 18, 2024 it was investigating the claims made in the petition, and that "the matter is pending the filing of informal response" by Sept. 26.

The petition could potentially reopen the brothers' case, and could leading to a new trial with the admission of the new evidence. A judge will ultimately rule on the brothers' habeas petition.