Rare Violence Shatters Quiet of Street in Beverly Hills

Angela Scott had just finished brushing her teeth when she heard “a horrible, pathetic scream” late Sunday night. She looked out the second-story window of her Beverly Hills mansion and saw a teen-age boy hunched over, sobbing on the lawn across the street.

Two of Scott’s neighbors, Jose E. Menendez, 45, and his wife, Mary Louise (Kitty) Menendez, 44, had been shot to death inside their Mediterranean-style home on North Elm Street, the first murders in Beverly Hills this year, police said.

The couple’s sons--one 18, the other 21 years old--had come home shortly before midnight to find their parents dead on the living room couch from multiple gunshot wounds. Scott, an 18-year North Elm Drive resident, watched from her bedroom window as one of the Menendez boys “cowered in a ball screaming, crying.”

“I was so scared,” Scott, 44, said. “I couldn’t sleep all night.”

The police activity that followed was a rare event for many residents in this posh neighborhood of multimillion-dollar homes.

Squad cars flanked the tree-lined street, and gun-toting officers hid behind cars, neighbors said. A helicopter buzzed overhead. Residents who ventured outside were sternly warned by police to stay behind closed doors. Most of these Beverly Hills residents, who are accustomed to privacy behind electric security gates, tall hedges and ornate wrought iron fences, obeyed the orders, peering at the action through darkened bedroom and living room windows.

One neighbor, who requested anonymity because she was frightened, said police told her it was dangerous outside but did not tell her that her new friend, Kitty Menendez, had been killed.

“She was from New Jersey and was lonely out here,” the neighbor said. “We went out to lunch twice. She was very nice. That’s all I know.”

On Monday, while a team of police investigators scoured the house for evidence, most residents stayed inside again, shunning questions about the family and their neighborhood. Many neighbors, it seems, knew little about the Menendezes, who for less than a year had lived in a mansion once leased by singer Elton John.

“I never saw my neighbors. I never talked to them. I don’t even know what they looked like,” said a gray-haired man who walked out the front door of a white mansion next door to the Menendez home.

He did not hear the gunshots that killed the couple either. “I guess I’m a sound sleeper,” he said.

Tom Zlotlow, who lives directly behind the Menendez house, said he heard some “popping sounds” coming from across the alley. But the noise did not disrupt his viewing of the James Bond movie “The Spy Who Loved Me.”

“I didn’t think anything of it. I didn’t even think it could be gunshots, especially around here,” Zlotlow said. “It was just pops from quite a distance. These houses are quite solid you know, and it really didn’t sound that impressive.

Beverly Hills police said they had no motive in the shootings. Menendez was chairman of the board of LIVE Entertainment Inc. of Van Nuys, a successful firm that buys video rights to feature films. He had previously headed RCA/Ariola records and U.S. operations for the Hertz Corp.

The Menendez house was described by Scott as the “rental house” on the block, the former temporary home to a rock star and a “Saudi Arabian prince,” she said. Elton John’s publicist, Sara McMullen, said the singer leased the home in 1987. In 1988 the lead guitarist for the Irish rock group U2, known as “The Edge,” leased the home.

Yellow police tape was wrapped around the perimeter of the tree-shaded mansion Monday. A six-foot tall security gate was pulled open, and a gold Mercedes sedan was parked on the curved driveway.

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Correction

Mary Louise (Kitty) Menendez was 47 when she died, not 44.

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