Who Is Judalon Smyth From Netflix's Monsters: The Lyle And Erik Menendez Story?

A key witness in the Menendez brothers murder trial, the testimony of Judalon Smyth added an extra layer of drama to an already shocking case. As seen in Netflix's 2024 anthology series, "Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story," Smyth's actions led to the brothers' arrest for the murder of their parents in 1989. However, in a bizarre twist, she wound up testifying for the defense. Details about Smyth's disturbing relationship with the brothers' married psychiatrist came to light as a result of the first televised trial, which was one of the most watched court cases in TV history, leaving her open to mockery and abuse. That trial ended in a mistrial, but a second, non-televised trial, ended with a guilty verdict. 

Erik, 18, and Lyle, 21, killed their parents, José and Mary "Kitty" Menendez, with shotguns on August 20, 1989, and were finally convicted of first-degree murder in 1996. The prosecution argued that the pair killed their parents for money, while the defense maintained that the Menendez brothers were childhood victims of abuse. They raised suspicions when they went on a spending spree with their parents' fortune in the immediate aftermath of the killings.

Both brothers ultimately confessed their crime to their psychiatrist, Dr. Jerome Oziel. However, it was Smyth, Oziel's lover, who first went to the police about the killings after the couple broke up. Because she came forward, the Menendez Brothers have been in prison for nearly 30 years. 

Judalon Smyth is described in the book "Blood Brothers: The Inside Story of the Menendez Murders" as a one-time actress who had a deep interest in new age and metaphysical genres and ran a store that sold things like crystals and a series of "self-help tapes," with titles like "Insights into the Sensuality and Sexuality of the Aquarius Woman." Smyth was well-versed in doing tape recordings, as Lawyer Monthly reported, by the time she met Dr. Jerome Oziel in 1989, she operated a business doing tape duplication. She had the idea for Oziel to make and sell tapes on which he discussed psychology. Other ideas were hatched between the doctor and the businesswoman as well. 

As Vanity Fair reports, Smyth met Oziel after contacting him for therapy, but she couldn't afford his $150 per hour fee (about $390 in 2024). However, she still became his patient and his mistress. They had an unusual relationship, with Smyth testifying that she once gave Oziel a sex IOU for "500 sex acts to be paid over 105 years or life, whichever comes first. Until this I.O.U. is paid in full the giving and the acceptance of this I.O.U. grants exclusive rights to any and all sexual activity on both parties' side until the debt is satisfied." For the witness's signature, she used her cat's paw prints.

She also said that while Oziel made her empty promises about leaving his wife, Laurel Oziel, Smyth ended up living with the Oziel family for two months during which time she became "good friends" with Laurel. Later, Smyth would make many abuse claims against Oziel during the Menendez trial. 

All of this was happening the same year that Lyle and Erik Menendez shot their parents to death and turned to Dr. Jerome Oziel for counseling, as he was already known to the family. Oziel eventually recorded his sessions with the brothers with their consent. Some of those tapes contained confessions, and though according to Vanity Fair, Judalon Smyth never actually met the Menendez brothers, her proximity to Oziel meant she had inside information. She eventually went to the police to tell them about the tapes and what she said she overheard, including that the boys talked about Kitty's eye coming out of its socket when they shot her, per People.

Prior to recording his therapy sessions with Lyle and Erik Menendez, Oziel asked Smyth to eavesdrop on their conversations. On October 31, 1989, Erik, wracked with guilt and feeling suicidal, confessed to Oziel that he'd killed his parents, per Lawyer Monthly. Oziel said to call Lyle and make him part of the conversation. 

Smyth said she heard the confession from outside of the room, and she'd heard Lyle's outrage when he learned Erik confessed. She told law enforcement of a heated argument in Oziel's office in which she claimed Lyle said: I can't believe you did this! I can't believe you told him! I don't even have a brother now! I could get rid of you for this! I hope you know what we have to do. We've got to kill him and anyone associated to him," per "Blood Brothers."

With that, Oziel feared for his life, bought guns for himself, his wife, and Smyth, and moved them all out of his home, yet he kept the Menendez therapy sessions going. On December 11 he began recording their sessions, and by March 1990 both Lyle and Erik were charged with the murders. 

During her time living in the Oziel house, while she says she became chummy with her lover's wife, Judalon Smyth claimed that Dr. Jerome Oziel behaved monstrously, raping and beating her, and force-feeding her drugs in a manner violent enough to give her blood blisters at the back of her throat, according to the Los Angeles Times. Smyth also told police that Oziel had sex with her without her consent, saying, "One of the times we had sex it was definitely rape because I pretended to be asleep and he went ahead and had sex with me," per "Blood Brothers." She also said he would threaten and choke her, and that he attempted to hypnotize her, using the word "thorns" as a trigger phrase.

Smyth began secretly recording conversations with Oziel before finally fleeing the house in March 1990. In an interview with Vanity Fair, actress Heather Graham revealed that she has read the transcripts from Smyth's tapes and that they really are truly bizarre. Graham, who played Smyth on NBC's "Law & Order True Crime: The Menendez Murders" noted that Oziel does indeed say "thorns" many times during the course of their conversations for no apparent reason. In another one of the tapes Smyth made, Oziel tells Smyth that her mother was a witch plotting to feed her a poisoned apple, according to the LA Times. Oziel denied the abuse claims, saying Smyth was obsessed with him and became a "woman scorned," according to "Blood Brothers."

The messy relationship between Judalon Smyth and Jerome Oziel would eventually become part of the trial itself. In a surprise twist, Smyth opted to speak for the defense, retracting her previous statement that she had overheard the brothers' confession, and claiming that her lover had "brainwashed" her into saying it, per The New York Times.

During the trial, Smyth said that Oziel plotted to get the boys to confess on tape so that he had some evidence against them, but in the session, he told the brothers that he was recording them so that they would sound remorseful if they were caught. She also added that the adulterous psychiatrist hoped that the drama surrounding the case would give him an excuse to get out of his marriage.

Smyth's testimony was used as part of a tactic by the defense to discredit Oziel, who was painted at the trial as a fundamentally dishonest person with a history of using extortion and blackmail on people he knew. As a result of the case, Oziel was accused of breaking client confidentially, having sex with female patients, and assaulting another woman he was having an affair with. During the uproar, Oziel ultimately surrendered his psychiatry license.

Judalon Smyth's role in the trial was met with skepticism by the public, in large part because of the way the sordid details of her relationship with Dr. Jerome Oziel were put on display but also, as previously mentioned, because she changed her story. Initially she claimed she'd heard the Menedez brothers' confessions, then said that never happened, but rather Oziel had played mind tricks on her. According to a 1993 New York Times article, she'd changed other statements too, eroding her credibility. 

In 2015, Smyth spoke out on the Reelz show, "Murder Made Me Famous." At that point, she told the interviewer, "I did overhear them say that they killed their parents," (via YouTube). She said that at the time, she was slow to go to the police because she was afraid for her life, saying, "If you'll kill your parents, who won't you kill?" 

After things went sour with Oziel, she decided to go to the police with what she knew, and she was caught by surprise when publicly she was persecuted during the televised trial. "It was a little confusing for me the way the media was," she said. "I really didn't understand the attack I was going to come under for doing the right thing" (via People). "There was one newscaster that called me a 'nutball' on the radio. It was frightening. Someone comes forward and then you crucify them."

Because Judalon Smyth was such a critical part of the Menendez case, she's had a couple of different actors portray her in dramatizations of the true crime story. In doing so, Leslie Grossman, who played Smyth in "Monsters: Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story" and Heather Graham, who portrayed the maligned mistress in NBC's "Law & Order True Crime: The Menendez Murders" approached the character using their takeaways from watching her testimony and interviews.

Grossman, who lived near where the murders happened in 1989 and graduated high school that year said she remembered her well. She told Newsweek, "People laughed when she did her testimony," Grossman said. "She was not trying to be funny, but she was really memorable. ...The truth is, I do not think she was particularly concerned with the murders. I think her real goal was to take down Dr. Oziel. It was a personal vendetta. ... Some of the stuff is wild and elicited laughs in the courtroom, but to me, it was dead serious, and that is how I played it." Grossman called Smyth "a victim of the doctor," and said, "... I just tried to lean into her absolute truth and reality of what she experienced."

Graham's take also echoed sentiments of how Oziel's actions led to Smyth coming forward, telling Vanity Fair, "If [Oziel] was loyal and faithful to his wife, the Menendez brothers might not be in jail." Graham pointed out that Oziel first lied to Smyth and told her he wasn't married, but she thinks Smyth went to the police because she truly feared for her life. "As an actor playing a part, it's your job to be on your character's side, so you have to see it all from that perspective," she said.  

Since the Menendez trial, Judalon Smyth has kept a low profile, but on her LinkedIn page, she describes herself: "I am a low-key-high-energy person," she wrote. "I believe no one should work, but everyone should be engage[d] in a productive passion that sustains their lifestyle and in some way benefits others. I have many facets and talents, so have had many careers depending on the adventure at hand."

The page looks relatively abandoned, but it says she lives in Beverly Hills. Her experience spans back to 1980, but there is a 10-year gap between her job titles and descriptions from 1996 to 2006. Since then, she reported working in the travel industry from 2006 until switching gears to become an EMT in 2012. She wrote that she works in that capacity at "movie, television, and commercial productions." 

She also has a Facebook page but the last entries were from 2021 when she posted regularly, mostly of things espousing conservative political views. One post mentions that she misses living in Japan, though it's not clear when or if that happened.