It was 35 years ago when a fresh-faced former Princeton student posed for a photo in front of Chuck’s Spring Street Cafe and smiled big.

The young man, Lyle Menendez, then 22, had recently come into some money. A lot of money. And he loved the chicken wings at Chuck’s so much, he decided to buy the place in 1990 for $550,000.

He would take his local spot national, he told a Princeton newspaper at the time, to university towns from New Jersey to California. It would have a “Midwestern motif centered around health food and Buffalo wings,” he told the newspaper, Town Topics. He would later testify that at the time of his purchase, some family members thought he needed direction in his life and believed running this business could provide it. His parents had been brutally murdered months earlier.

He renamed the restaurant Mr. Buffalo’s. And he appointed a friend to help him run and expand what he thought would soon become a chicken-wing empire. “I would love to get the education,” he told Town Topics in explaining why he had withdrawn from Princeton. “But I can’t justify postponing my dreams.”

His big dreams for chicken wings fell apart when the authorities — and later the world — realized what he and his brother had done.

Lyle and Erik Menendez had marched into their home in Beverly Hills, Calif., and killed their father Jose and their mother Kitty, opening fire on them with shotguns. The authorities believed at the time that the brothers had been motivated by greed, knowing that killing their parents could allow them to access a $14 million estate. Lyle Menendez was taken into custody just a few weeks after he spoke to Town Topics. He ended up surrendering Mr. Buffalo’s.