Jose Menendez came from a wealthy family that lost a lot of its wealth to the communist government during the Fidel Castro uprising. Despite the mutual lack of familial blessings and the fact that Menendez was three years younger than Kitty, the lovers decided to elope in New York City in 1963. His family disapproved of her because she was a child of divorce, while her parents distrusted Menendez merely because he was Cuban.
Her mother, Mae Helen, worked in an airport before meeting her husband.
Her father, Charles Milton Andersen, was a United States Army veteran who started his own air conditioning and heating company. 14, 1941, in Oak Lawn, Illinois, Mary Louise “Kitty” Andersen was the youngest of four children. Kitty Menendez was shot in the leg, arm, chest, and face, leaving the 47-year-old unrecognizable. On a warm summer evening, the two brothers crept into the den of their home where Jose and Kitty Menendez were sleeping - and fired into their skulls. The disturbing double-homicide had been in motion for months and involved the calculated purchase of 12-gauge Mossberg shotguns. Despite growing up lavishly in the opulent Mediterranean-style mansion of their parents, the 21 and 18-year-old brothers had allegedly been so tormented by their father that they decided to murder them both in one fell swoop. Instead, it was the couple’s children, brothers Lyle and Erik Menendez, who were found to be the murderers. Their deaths seemed to come at the hands of burglars, which left locals in mortal fear - until months later when authorities realized this hadn’t been a robbery gone wrong, at all. 20, 1989, an entire nation waited for answers. When affluent Beverly Hills couple Jose and Kitty Menendez were found murdered in their home on Aug. Yasemin/Pinterest Jose and Kitty Menendez, parents to killer siblings Lyle and Erik.