When the Los Angeles district attorney announced last week that his office would review new evidence in the Menéndez case, it marked the first time in decades that the brothers had any hope of a release.
Erik and Lyle Menéndez have been in prison since their 1996 conviction in the killings of their parents, José and Kitty, in 1989. The fatal shooting of a prominent entertainment executive and his wife in Beverly Hills, at the hands of their own children, captured international attention three decades ago – their first trial was televised by Court TV – and has reached a new generation thanks to social media and numerous TV dramas and documentaries.
The brothers have long denied the prosecution’s claims that they were driven by greed and a desire to inherit a multimillion-dollar fortune, and argued that they killed their parents in self-defense after years of sexual, physical and psychological abuse by their father. Earlier this month, George Gascón, the LA district attorney, said his office would review new evidence and decide whether the case should be considered for resentencing or a new trial.
The new evidence includes a letter written by Erik Menéndez that his attorneys say corroborates the allegations that he had been sexually abused by his father as well as allegations from a former member of the boy band Menudo who said that José Menéndez, previously an executive at RCA records, had sexually abused him. The issue is not whether the brothers killed their parents, but their degree of culpability, Gascón said.
“We have not decided on the outcome,” Gascón said at a press conference last week. “We are reviewing the information, but I think it’s also important that we recognize that both men and women can be the victims of sexual assault.”
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In August 1989, Lyle and Erik, then 21 and 18, shot their parents with shotguns multiple times as the couple was eating ice-cream and watching television in their Beverly Hills mansion. The killings were so violent, police suspected it could have been connected to organized crime, the Los Angeles Times reported.
About six months later, police arrested the brothers, who prosecutors said went on a major spending spree in the wake of the killings. They were charged with first-degree murder.
At their first trial, they testified that their mother had done nothing to stop their father’s abuse and that they feared their parents were about to kill them to prevent them from telling anyone about the abuse. The trial included testimony from family members corroborating their abuse allegations and an expert witness for the defense who found the allegations valid and an “originating cause” in the crime.
Jurors were unable to reach a verdict, resulting in a mistrial, but at a second trial in 1996, in which testimony about the abuse allegations was limited, they were convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison.
In the years since, the brothers have been reunited in prison, where they have earned college degrees and served as mentors and caregivers, wrote Kim Kardashian, who has met the brothers, in a recent essay advocating for their release.
A slew of documentaries and TV shows helped keep the story in the public eye. During the pandemic, the case was highlighted in viral TikToks that helped bring it into the spotlight for a much younger audience. The killings were the subject of a Ryan Murphy show released last month (which was criticized by the Menéndez family), which Murphy has said was inspired by content creators who had taken up the cause, criticizing media coverage of the case and advocating for the brothers’ release.
“There are thousands of TikToks from young people, specifically young women, talking about the Lyle and Erik case,” Murphy said at an event last month. “I was blown away because it seemed so current to them.”
Tray Gober, a Texas trial lawyer who previously worked with the New York-based Innocence Project, said social media had been pivotal to the case.
“Social media has played a crucial role in keeping the Menéndez brothers’ case in the public eye, captivating public interest and putting political pressure on the district attorney to re-examine the evidence,” he argued.
The brothers have expressed gratitude and support for the movement online. “The followers who are younger that are on that sort of TikTok social media generation, they really have tremendous hope,” Lyle Menéndez said, according to the Hollywood Reporter. “I feel more hope when society seems to be understanding these experiences and sex abuse better.”
Erik Menéndez has warned against minimizing their crimes.
“This tragedy has been deep, and every member of my family has been impacted. And sometimes I think a lot of that pain and tragedy gets lost in translation in some of the TikTok videos,” he said, according to the outlet. “So I think that it is important that we remember that two people are no longer alive and families have been devastated by this tragedy, and that I am at the center of it. I am the one responsible. I don’t want that to be diminished or minimized in any way by people that support me and believe in me.”
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Now, for the first time since their convictions, the brothers have a chance at being released from prison. The district attorney’s office has received intense interest in the case nationally in recent weeks following the release of a new documentary and the TV show, Gascón said.
The district attorney has received petitions from the brothers asking for a resentencing as well as a review of the new evidence, which includes a letter sent to a family member before the killings in which Erik Menéndez talked about being a victim of molestation, Gascón said, adding: “None of this information has been confirmed.”
“We have a moral and an ethical obligation to review what is being presented to us and make a determination,” he said. “Whether they deserve to be resentenced even though they were clearly the murderers, because they have been in prison for 35 years and have paid back their dues to society, or whether habeas is appropriate if there was evidence that was not presented to the court at that time and had [it] been perhaps a jury would have come to a different conclusion.”
Sensitivity to sexual abuse has changed, Gascón told CNN, and a jury today would probably look at this case very differently. “There is no question they committed the killing. The question is to what degree of culpability should they be held accountable to given the totality of the circumstance,” he said.
Neama Rahmani, the president of West Coast Trial Lawyers and a former federal prosecutor, told the outlet that a resentencing seemed like the best option. “I believe that Erik and Lyle were abused and they should be released,” he said. “If [Gascón] agrees to a resentencing in the interest of justice, I think that’s the clearest path for the brothers.”
Gober said the brothers could also be granted a new trial, in which a jury could examine the new evidence, or a plea deal, perhaps to a lesser charge, that would allow them to be released with time served.
“It’s also important to note that many individuals who don’t receive as much attention won’t have the same opportunity for their cases to be re-examined,” he said. “For every Menéndez brother, there are 10 more inmates who never got this kind of publicity, and they will die in prison.”
