The Mansions of Limbo Read Online Free PDF

the killers of their parents that usually supersedes all else in the wake of such a tragedy.
    As the C.E.O. of Live Entertainment, Jose Menendez earned a base pay of $500,000 a year, with a maximum bonus of $850,000 based on the company’s yearly earnings. On top of that, there were life-insurance policies. An interesting sidebar to the story concerns two policies that were thought to have been taken out on Menendez by Live Entertainment. The bigger of the two was a $15 million keyman policy; $10 million of which was with Bankers Trust and $5 million with Credit Lyonnais. Taking out a keyman life-insurance policy on a top executive is common practice in business, with the company being named as beneficiary. Live Entertainment was also required to maintain a second policy on Menendez in the amount of $5 million, with the beneficiary to be named by him. Given the family’s much-talked-about closeness, it is not unlikely that Kitty and the boys were aware of this policy. Presumably, the beneficiary of the insurance policy would have been the same as the beneficiary of Jose’s will. In the will, it was stated that if Kitty died first everything would go to Jose, and if Jose died first everything would go to Kitty. In the event that both died, everything would go to the boys.
    The murders happened on a Sunday night. On the afternoon of the following Tuesday, Lyle and Erik, accompanied by two uncles, Kitty’s brother Brian Andersen and Jose’s brother-in-law Carlos Baralt, who was the executor of Jose’s will, met with officials of Live Entertainment at the company’s headquarters to go over Jose’s financial situation. At that meeting, it became the difficult duty of Jose’ssuccessor to inform the heirs that the $5 million policy with beneficiaries named by Jose had not gone into effect, because Jose had failed to take the required physical examination, believing that the one he had taken for the $15 million policy applied to both policies. It did not. A person present at that meeting told me of the resounding silence that followed the reception of that information. To expect $5 million, payable upon death, and to find that it was not forthcoming, would be a crushing disappointment. Finally, Erik Menendez spoke. His voice was cold. “And the $15 million policy in favor of the company? Was that in order?” he asked. It was. Jose had apparently been told that he would have to take another physical for the second policy, but he had postponed it. As an officer of the company said to me, “That anything could ever happen to Jose never occurred to Jose.”
    The news that the policy was invalid caused bad blood between the family and the company, especially since the immediate payment of the $15 million keyman policy gave Carolco one of its biggest quarters since the inception of the company. One of Jose’s former employees in New York, who was close enough to the family to warrant having a limousine sent to take him from a suburb of New York to the funeral in Princeton, said to me, “The grandmother? Did you talk to her? Did she tell you her theory? Did she tell you the company had Jose taken care of for the $15 million insurance policy?” The grandmother had not told me this, but it is a theory that the dwindling group of people who believe in the innocence of the Menendez boys cling to with passion. The same former employee continued, “Jose must have made a lot of money in California. I don’t know where all that money came from what I’ve been hearing about and reading about.”
    Further bad feelings between the family and Live Entertainmenthave arisen over the house on Elm Drive, which, like the house in Calabasas, is heavily mortgaged: Approximately $2 million is still owed on the Elm Drive house, with estimated payments of $225,000 a year, plus $40,000 a year in taxes and approximately $40,000 in maintenance. In addition, the house in Calabasas has been on the market for some time and remains unsold; $1.5 million