LOUISE Maloney appears in the Ryan Murphy series Monsters and is one of the characters José Menendez has an affair with.
In reality, José had many affairs and was even in a secret relationship with another woman for eight years while his wife descended into alcoholism and drug abuse.
Mystery woman
Very little is known about Louise in real life and opinions are divided on whether or not she knew that José was married to Kitty.
José had met his future wife in the early 1960s, around the time that Kitty was said to be dreaming of being an actress and had recently won a prestigious Illinois beauty pageant.
They tied the knot in 1963, but Kitty’s family disapproved of her getting married so young.
Kitty and José moved to New York where they had their two children, Lyle and Erik, before relocating to New Jersey.
José encouraged Kitty to give up her teaching career to become a housewife, but problems in their seemingly perfect marriage began to appear.
Although Kitty was devoted to José, to the point that a business associate of the Menendez patriarch described Kitty as “José with a wig”, her husband was not devoted to her.
He regularly had affairs with women, including Louise, while maintaining his marriage to Kitty.
After her death, Kitty’s former psychologist testified in court that knowledge of her husband’s infidelity drove Kitty to become dependent on drugs and alcohol.
When she discovered that José had been cheating on her for eight years with a woman in New York, Kitty became suicidal.
Kitty and José’s murder
The couple were murdered by their sons, Erik and Lyle, on August 20, 1989, in their family home in Los Angeles.
The killing, carried out with shotguns, was so brutal that the police initially thought the mob was involved.
Eventually, Erik and Lyle were arrested for their crimes after a confession by Erik to his therapist Dr Jerome Oziel, led Jerome’s mistress, Judalon Smyth, to go to the police.
In court, the brothers claimed that they had been sexually abused by their father and that they had murdered their parents out of fear.
Despite the efforts of their all-star legal team, Leslie Abramson, Charles Gessler and Jill Lansing, the brothers were sent to prison for life without the possibility of parole.
A chance at freedom
On October 24, 2024, a former district attorney named George Gascón announced that he would be recommending that a judge should reconsider the Menendez brothers’ sentence.
New evidence related to the case emerged in the form of a letter, written by Erik to his cousin Andy Cano, which detailed the alleged abuse perpetrated by José.
A member of the Puerto Rican boyband Menudo named Roy Rossello also claimed to have been abused by José.
The resentencing has been scheduled for November 26, 2024, and George hopes that the brothers will be resentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole or fifty years in prison with the possibility of parole.