As you may remember, I am an only child, and my childhood was lonely. My parents were often absent; there were always parties to attend, tennis matches to play, and work meetings that stretched late into the evening. However, I did have friends — good friends — the kind I would drag the long extension cord of our landline phone into my bedroom to talk with for hours. I would share my secrets with them — who I had a crush on, and often, the contents of the most recent letter I received from you.
They described me as “gullible” for believing in your innocence, but their opinions made no difference to me, perhaps because I was drawn to connect with you for reasons that went beyond the loneliness I felt at home.
Somewhere during my childhood, I figured out that I was supposed to color inside the lines, despite the joy I found in being messy. I loved getting dirty under the hot Arizona sun, building forts, riding my bike for hours, and spending entire days swimming in chlorinated pools. I often got in trouble for talking too much. One of my teachers even yanked me by the ponytail to get me to be quiet. My parents came home from parent-teacher conferences extremely disappointed in me.
By the time I reached high school — and after numerous door-slamming fights with my parents — I stopped pushing boundaries… until I followed the impulse to write to you.
Less than two weeks later, I was retrieving the mail, which I always did before my parents returned home, and saw your return letter addressed to me, written in pencil with the sender marked as Erik Menendez. I was stunned. A mix of excitement and mischief surged through me. I hurried inside and tore open the letter.
The first line read, My name is spelled E-R-I-K. 90% of the time people spell it with a “C” so don’t worry about it.
Of course, I was mortified that I had misspelled your name.
The letter continued, The press has covered almost every part of our lives fairly extensively, but I know very little about your life. When is your birthday? What sports do you like? What are your hobbies? What kind of music do you enjoy?
Your attention and curiosity about my life made me feel important. The guy on the cover of People wanted to know about my obsession with Def Leppard.
I only have a few of our many letters. During my sophomore year of college, a year after we stopped communicating, detectives from Beverly Hills interviewed me at my apartment, kindly allowing my boyfriend to sit with me.
The officers had discovered our ongoing correspondence and asked if you had shared any information with me about the murder of your parents. They seemed disappointed when I told them that you and I rarely discussed the case beyond your occasional update on significant rulings, such as when the judge decided to allow your psychologist’s tapes in court. That was the first time you had expressed frustration. You wrote, Thank you for being optimistic about the tape issue for me, but it didn’t work. We lost. No, we got screwed. Royally screwed. I am so fed up with all the lies. I remember feeling worried for you.
For the most part, however, our letters focused on teenage life (mine is the present, yours pre-arrest) — parties, love interests, college applications, and places we wanted to visit, like Hawaii.
When it came to your case, I was afraid to ask questions. What if I upset you? Looking back, I think I was scared you would tell me the truth, which tells me I must have known deep down that you were guilty.