A former member of Menudo affirms that he was raped by the controversial music executive José Menéndez

A documentary is about to unite one of the most important Latino musical groups with a chilling parricide that occurred in Beverly Hills in the late eighties.

The link between the two is José Menéndez, a powerful music executive.

The name may go unnoticed by many, but its mere mention touches the legend of Menudo, the popular group that left Puerto Rico to take the markets of Latin America and the United States by storm.

Roy Roselló, one of its five members, affirms that he was raped by Menéndez.

His words hit the wall because the alleged rapist is dead.

He was murdered in 1989 by his sons, Lyle and Erik Menéndez, who also killed his mother.

“I know what he did to me at his house,” Roselló says on

.

A preview of the documentary was published this morning on the NBCUniversal Today program.

The documentary will be broadcast on May 2 on the company's digital platform, Peacock.

The fragment indicates that Roselló would have been a victim of abuse in the Menéndezen New Jersey mansion, when the artist was 14 years old.

The documentary series will have three chapters and has been created by Nery Ynclan and Robert Rand, a former journalist for

and one of the most knowledgeable investigators in the case of the Menéndez brothers, who were sentenced to life in prison in 1996 for the murder of His parents.

It is not the first time that Roselló has made a complaint of sexual abuse public.

In an interview for

, a gossip program on Mexican television, the singer stated that he was the only one who did not audition to enter the group that became famous for songs such as Claridad and Súbete a mi moto.

The group was made up of four other teenagers: Carlos Rivera, Ray Reyes, Robert Rosa and Enrique Martin, known worldwide as Ricky Martin.

"Everyone knows that I joined the group because Edgardo Díaz [the group's manager] simply saw me and fell in love with me," Roselló assured the Mexican press.

In 2014 she had made similar revelations to a Brazilian broadcast.

“He sexually abused us.

I was 13 years old and it happened several times.

He threatened me saying that if I refused he would throw me out of the group (...) I never told my family, I was ashamed”, explained Roselló, who was part of Menudo between 1983 and 1986, and who today is a Christian pastor. father of three children.

Díaz was responsible for one of the internal policies that defined Menudo: when one of its members turned 16 he had to leave the group.

This made the lineup of the group constantly comply, until adding several dozen members until today.

It is not the first time that a shadow of suspicion has been cast over the figure of Jose Menéndez, an executive with a meteoric career in the entertainment industry.

The businessman was born into a wealthy family in Cuba and emigrated when Fidel Castro came to power on the island.

He arrived in the United States at the age of 16.

At a university in Illinois he met a beauty queen, Mary Louise Andersen, whom everyone called Kitty.

The couple married and moved to New York soon after.

After working at various companies, Menéndez landed at RCA, where he became president of Ariola, its record division.

At that time, in the early eighties, he opened the catalog to Latino artists and signed successful groups of the time such as the Eurythmics and Duran Duran to his label.

RCA-Victor and RCA-Ariola were Menudo's company when the group took off among the international audience, between 1977 and 1988. Menéndez, who opened the door to the Puerto Rican phenomenon, left the company in 1986, when General Electric bought RCA and the executive he lost the battle to become president.

Menéndez and Kitty were murdered around 10:00 p.m. on August 20, 1989 while they were watching television in their Beverly Hills mansion, just a few blocks from exclusive Rodeo Drive, which had previously belonged to Elton John and Michael Jackson.

That night almost 30 shots were heard, which were spat from two rifles.

The weapons were wielded by the couple's sons: Erik, 22, and Lyle, 25.

The grave of José and Kitty Menéndez covered in snow, in Princeton, New Jersey, in 1994. Yvonne Hemsey (Getty Images)

What followed these violent events was widely documented by the US press, which followed in detail the bloody parricide in one of the richest neighborhoods in the country.

The first trial took place in September 1993 in Los Angeles.

The prosecution then assured that the two brothers had acted out of greed and to take over the family fortune of 15 million dollars.

The jury could not agree and the process was declared null and void.

Another opened three years later

Something jumped in the two trials, where the brothers accepted having killed their parents.

The cruelty used by Lyle, a Princeton student, and Erik, a professional tennis player, to get rid of their parents.

Menéndez was shot at point-blank range in the back of the head.

Four more bullets penetrated his arms and a thigh.

But the worst part was taken by Kitty Anderson, who was disfigured by lead as she tried to flee.

She received four bullets in the head and another one of hers almost blew off her hand.

The brothers collected the shell casings before leaving their home.

During the process, Lyle Menéndez affirmed that they had acted out of fear, not greed.

Before the jury, the eldest of the brothers said that he had been sexually abused by his father when he was 7 years old.

He also admitted to groping his younger brother, who was present in the room.

"I don't know why I did it, I'm very sorry," he said crying.

The brothers Lyle and Erik Menéndez during their trial.Ted Soqui (Getty Images)

The defense tried to prove that Jose Menéndez was not just the successful businessman, but a monster inside his house.

An attorney produced photographs Menendez allegedly had taken of Lyle's member that were found in an envelope along with pictures of a family birthday.

Lyle also recounted how his father began to tell him from an early age that homosexual relationships had been common among soldiers since ancient Greece.

“I asked my mother to tell dad to leave me alone, that he kept touching me.

He told me to stop, that he was exaggerating, that my dad had to punish me when he did bad things and that he loved me, ”he said from the bench.

One of the journalists who heard the Menéndez drama live was Robert Rand, who has become one of the greatest specialists in the case.

Rand is behind the Peacock series, which promises revelations.

The journalist had previously worked for a fiction,

, an eight-hour series broadcast on NBC in 2017. 30 years later, a new version of the story will be told.

It remains to be seen if Roselló's version can benefit the brothers, who have been seeking a new judicial process for years.