Kitty Menendez was born to a middle-class family in suburban Chicago, where her father owned an air-conditioning business. Her home life was very unhappy, with a cruel, abusive father and a despondent, battered mother. While Kitty was still a child her father abandoned the family to move in with a mistress. Embittered, she turned into a moody and depressed child and had few friends. Eventually she cut off all contact with her father, whom she came to despise. She attended college at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, Illinois. There she met her future husband, Jose Menendez, whom she married in 1964. Both of their families were opposed to the marriage, his because her parents were divorced, hers because of Jose's Cuban heritage. In their early married life she was an elementary school teacher, but after giving birth to her children, Lyle Menendez and Erik Menendez, she became a full-time homemaker. As her husband climbed up the corporate ladder, their life looked idyllic on the surface. Intelligent, attractive, charming in public, she appeared to be the ideal wife and mother. However, those who came to know her described her as a high-strung woman who had great difficulty coping with stress, and her husband's repeated extramarital affairs drove her to despair. In 1987 she attempted suicide, ingesting a bottle of sleeping pills. She recovered, but she and Jose continued to have marital problems, and their relationships with their sons became increasingly strained. On August 20, 1989, she and her husband were shot to death in their living room while watching television together. The killers were their sons.
