Lyle and Erik Menendez will have a chance to leave prison as part of a bombshell resentencing request deal announced Thursday by Los Angeles prosecutors, more than three decades after the brothers shot their parents in a killing they claim was motivated by sexual abuse.
Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascon said his office will file the request Friday, allowing the brothers to petition for release and a judge to set them free before the end of the year.
Lyle Menendez, 56, and Erik Menendez, 53, were sentenced in 1996 to life without parole for the deaths of Jose and Mary Louise “Kitty” Menendez.
Mr. Gascon said the brothers have “paid their debt to society” and further described them as “model citizens” who have been on a “journey of redemption and rehabilitation” in the nearly 30 years they have been behind bars.
He said he believes the brothers’ original defense argument: that they were sexually abused by their father, a former music executive who was accused years after his death of raping a member of a band he managed.
“We often see women, for instance, that have been battered for years, and sometimes they will murder their abuser out of desperation,” Mr. Gascon said. “I do believe that the brothers were subjected to tremendous dysfunction in the home and molestation.”
Because the brothers were younger than 26 when they killed their parents in 1989, they are eligible for youthful parole under California law, Mr. Gascon said.
Line prosecutors overseeing the case said they hope a judge will hear it in the next 30 to 45 days.
Mr. Gascon said there was too much premeditation in the killings for him to support charges being reduced to manslaughter — which, if approved, would have likely guaranteed the immediate release from prison of the brothers.
The Menendez killings were particularly savage. Both victims were shot at point-blank range.
Investigators said the boys, 21 and 18 at the time, left the house to reload a shotgun so they could shoot their mother, who was trying to crawl away from the carnage, in the head again.
The alleged abuse of Jose Menendez convinced some family members, including Kitty Menendez’s sister, that the brothers’ murders were a reaction to that cruelty.
“They were just children. Children who could have been protected and were instead brutalized in the most horrific ways,” Joan Andersen VanderMolen said at the press conference. “Lyle and Erik have already paid a heavy price. … They have grown, they have changed and they have become better men despite everything that they’ve been through. It’s time to give them the opportunity to live the rest of their lives free from the shadow of their past.”
The allegations of sexual abuse were central to the Menendez brothers’ first trial in 1993 and 1994.
The highly publicized case included details of the lavish lifestyle the brothers adopted after their parents’ deaths.
Both brothers testified that they purchased the shotguns used in the killings because their father threatened them if they disclosed the abuse to anyone.
Prosecutors challenged the claims by saying it was a contrived defense strategy. They also said the abuse was never mentioned during recorded conversations the brothers had with their psychologist that were played in court.
The first trial ended in a mistrial, but prosecutors took up the case again shortly afterward.
Media cameras were banned, and testimony about the alleged abuse was limited by the presiding judge for the second trial. The brothers were given life sentences.
The brothers’ appeals were repeatedly denied after imprisonment, but two new pieces of evidence have swayed public 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 killings, when Erik was 17.
The second piece of evidence originated from claims by former Menudo member Roy Rossello, who said in a 2023 docuseries that he was frequently raped by Jose Menendez in the 1980s when the father was the band’s manager and the president of RCA Records.
The district attorney, Mr. Gascon, said the decision to seek resentencing was not influenced by new evidence but by internal deliberations within his office. He admitted that conversations between staffers were fraught at times.
The prosecutor appeared to let slip in recent weeks that his renewed interest in the case stemmed from the public attention it’s been getting — much of that coming 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. Gascon 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 bid for reelection bid in a race against challenger Nathan Hochman, a former assistant U.S. attorney general.
Mr. Hochman called the resentencing request “another desperate political move by a district attorney running a losing campaign scrambling to grab headlines through a made-for-TV decision.”
“D.A. George Gascon received the Menendez habeas corpus petition in May 2023 and request for resentencing in February 2024,” the challenger said. “Yet, he has waited until days before the Nov. 5 election, 30 points down in the polls with articles coming about how his failed policies have led to additional murders of innocent people, to release his recommendation for resentencing.”
Mr. Gascon became defensive about the timing of the request when pressed by journalists at the media event.
The district attorney, whose campaign was once supported by left-wing billionaire George Soros, has made resentencing a central part of his tenure.
Mr. Gascon said more than 300 people have been resentenced since he was first elected in 2020. Twenty-eight of those who were resentenced had been convicted of murder, with four of those felons reoffending later on.
• Matt Delaney can be reached at mdelaney@washingtontimes.com.
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