Los Angeles prosecutors were expected Thursday to request a resentencing of Lyle and Erik Menendez, two brothers who were convicted of killing their parents over three decades ago despite their claims that they were sexually molested as children.
Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón planned to hold a press conference Thursday afternoon to formally announce his decision, according to a source who spoke with The New York Times.
A judge will ultimately decide what comes of the brothers’ life sentences, which were handed down after they were found guilty for the 1989 murders of their parents José and Mary Louise “Kitty” Menendez.
A Nov. 26 hearing on the case has been on the DA’s calendar for a few weeks, according to Deadline.
Mr. Gascón acknowledged that his interest in revisiting the case stemmed from the public attention it’s been getting — most of that stemming from “The Menendez Brothers,” a hit Netflix documentary released this month about the murders and featuring lengthy prison interviews with Lyle and Erik.
“Given the totality of the circumstances, I don’t think they deserve to be in prison until they die,” Mr. Gascón told ABC News’ “Nightline” in an interview taped less than a week after the Netflix series debuted.
The embattled prosecutor’s announcement also comes as he faces an uphill re-election bid to challenger Nathan Hochman, a former assistant U.S. attorney general.
Lyle and Erik were convicted of murder in 1996 during a second trial and sentenced to life without parole.
Prosecutors’ first attempt to convict the brothers, which ended with a mistrial, was much-televised due to the lavish lifestyle Lyle and Erik adopted after their parents’ deaths.
The murders themselves were particularly brutal. Lyle and Erik shot and killed their parents at point-blank range with shotguns. Investigators said that the boys left the house to reload a shotgun so they could shoot their mother again, who was trying to crawl away from the carnage.
The brothers argued at their first trial that they bought the shotguns out of self-defense because their father threatened to kill them if they discussed the sexual abuse.
The prosecution challenged the sexual abuse claims since they were never mentioned in recorded conversations with their psychologist shared at trial.
Lyle and Erik failed to appeal their sentence in the years after they were imprisoned, but two new pieces of evidence have swayed prosecutorial opinion in recent years.
The first piece was discovered in 2018 by Robert Rand, author of “The Menendez Murders,” when he said he found a letter Erik wrote to his cousin Andy Cano discussing ongoing sexual abuse from his father.
The letter was dated nine months before the murders, when Erik was 17.
The second piece of evidence originated from claims by ex-Menudo member Roy Rosselló, who said in a 2023 docuseries that he was repeatedly raped Jose Menendez in 1980s when the slain father was the band’s manager and the president of RCA Records.
Mark Geragos, a defense attorney for the brothers, said he had a signed declaration from the former Menudo band member that confirmed the sexual abuse at the hands of Jose Menendez.
• Matt Delaney can be reached at mdelaney@washingtontimes.com.
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