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Judalon Smyth may not have known the Menendez brothers personally, but she played a significant role in their decades-long incarceration.
Netflix's Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story tells the story of Erik and Lyle Menendez, brothers who killed their parents, José and Kitty Menendez, on Aug. 20, 1989. The siblings, who were 18 and 21 at the time, were arrested in March 1990, but it wasn't until 1996, after two trials, that Erik and Lyle were convicted and sentenced to life in prison.
The brothers were caught after they confessed to their therapist, L. Jerome Oziel, who then told his mistress, Smyth. After he and Smyth broke up, she went to the police and told them everything she knew. Within days, Erik and Lyle were arrested.
Now, Smyth has stayed mainly out of the public eye for the last decade after appearing in 2015's true-crime docuseries Murder Made Me Famous, which marked her first public interview in 25 years.
"There was some paper that said something about me having loose lips," she said in the show. "It's like, excuse me. If that was your mother and father getting murdered, would you like someone to have tight lips or loose lips?"
Three decades after testifying against the Menendez brothers in court, here's everything to know about where Judalon Smyth is now.
Smyth was Lyle and Erik's therapist, Oziel's, former mistress while he was treating the brothers. Before he met the Menendez brothers, Smyth allegedly also sought out Oziel's services, but after realizing she could not afford his therapy, they began an affair.
Smyth alleged that the two had a relationship in which he manipulated her, sharing during her testimony in the Menendez trial that she moved into his house after he got the brothers on tape confessing to the crime, per the Los Angeles Times.
In 1990, Smyth sued Oziel, alleging that he assaulted, raped, kidnapped and medicated her. Oziel denied any wrongdoing, and the case was ultimately settled.
Smyth claimed that while she lived in Oziel's home with his wife, Laurel Oziel, and two kids, she was "very good friends" with Laurel. During that time, she alleged that Oziel "victimized" her and she was "raped . . . beaten . . . isolated."
"I wouldn't call it romantic. But there was sex," she said of their relationship.
Meanwhile, Laurel described the time differently, claiming in a statement, "We were held hostage by this woman in our own home," per the Los Angeles Times.
Erik first confessed to the murder on Oct. 31, 1989, during a session with Oziel, which Smyth claimed she overheard as she was standing outside the door. She testified that Oziel had asked her to listen in to their conversation, but the psychologist denied this in a statement.
"Smyth was never asked to eavesdrop on any of my patients in therapy, nor do I believe she ever did," Oziel said, per the Los Angeles Times.
After the October session, Oziel convinced the brothers to allow him to record their confession on a Dec. 11 tape in which they told the therapist they killed their mom to put her "out of her misery" and that their dad deserved to die for having an affair that led to Kitty's despair.
Following the taped confession, Smyth said Oziel told her that "he got what he needed."
Four months later, after "escaping" from Oziel's house following their breakup, Smyth went to the police and informed them of the tapes Oziel possessed of the Menendez brothers confessing to their parents' murder, and four days later, the brothers were arrested.
During the 1993 trial, Smyth mainly testified about the tapes that Oziel had of the confessions. While she originally came to the police with information against the Menendez brothers, she soon changed her tune and was called by the defense in an effort to discredit Oziel.
She testified that Oziel "needed to get them to say incriminating things on a tape so we would have the tape to protect us" while telling the brothers that they should allow him to record them so that they could "prove to a jury that, you know, they were remorseful or whatever."
Smyth claimed that her past statements against the Menendez brothers were a result of being "brainwashed" by Oziel.
Since she finished her testimony, Smyth had not spoken in any interviews about the case until her 2015 appearance in Murder Made Me Famous, in which she opened up about the media attention she received after the trial.
"It was a little confusing for me the way the media was," she recalled. "I really didn't understand the attack I was going to come under for doing the right thing."
She added that while she knew it took her a "long time" to "do the right thing" in coming forward to the police, what mattered was that "ultimately, I did." However, the negative media coverage frustrated and scared her, she said.
"There was one newscaster that called me a 'nutball' on the radio," Smyth said. "It was frightening. Someone comes forward and then you crucify them."
Since the case, Smyth has mainly stayed out of the public eye. She last updated her LinkedIn in 2012, when, at the time, she was working as an EMT and living in Beverly Hills, Calif.
"I am a low-key-high-energy person," she wrote in her bio. "I believe no one should work, but everyone should be engage [sic] in a productive passion that sustains their lifestyle and in some way benefits others."
In Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story, Smyth is portrayed by Leslie Grossman, who told PEOPLE in September 2024 that while she didn't meet with Smyth before playing her, she would be open to it.
"If Judalon reached out and wanted to meet me, I would be happy to talk to her," she said, adding, "I don't have some strong need to connect with a person that I played. But if they really felt strongly about meeting me, I'd be definitely open to it."