CONTENT WARNING: This article discusses allegations of child sexual abuse.
One day after it was revealed that their infamous murder case was being reopened, Kim Kardashian has shared an open letter calling from Erik and Lyle Menendez to be released from prison.
The reality star vouched for the brothers’ release more than three decades after they received two life sentences for killing their parents, Jose and Kitty Menendez, in their Beverly Hills mansion back in 1989.
“I have spent time with Lyle and Erik,” Kardashian wrote in a personal essay for NBC News, “they are not monsters”.
Throughout the piece, Kardashian — who has been an advocate for criminal justice and prison reform in recent years — described the Menendez brothers as “kind, intelligent, and honest men,” and claimed they have both maintained “exemplary disciplinary records” while in prison.
Whille Kardashian described the siblings’ murder of their parents as “vicious” and “not excusable”, she said their already three-decade prison stay, and their claims of sexual abuse committed by their father, have warranted their sentences being “reconsidered”.
“Following years of abuse and a real fear for their lives, Erik and Lyle chose what they thought at the time was their only way out — an unimaginable way to escape their living nightmare,” Kardashian wrote.
Those same claims of sexual abuse are what prompted LA county’s district attorney to reopen the murder case earlier this week, after the brothers’ lawyers put forth new evidence corroborating the allegations.
A hearing related to the siblings’ sentences in light of this new evidence is scheduled for November.
Elsewhere in the piece, Kardashian listed failings with both the criminal trials and the media frenzy that erupted in the wake of the murders.
She criticised the judge’s decision back in 1995 to exclude all evidence related to the abuse in the brothers’ second trial, and said the media attention had turned them “into monsters and sensationalised eye candy”.
“[They] had no chance of a fair trial against this backdrop,” Kardashian added.
The reality star concluded the piece by arguing that the brothers had received sentences “more befitting a serial killer than two individuals who endured years of sexual abuse”.
It comes a few weeks after it was revealed that Kardashian had visited the brothers in prison. She was joined by actor Cooper Koch, who portrays Erik in the Ryan Murphy-created retelling of the case, Monsters: The Erik & Lyle Menendez Story.
The Netflix series attracted controversy from both audiences and its real-life counterparts, with the Menendez family describing the show as a “grotesque shockadrama”.
In response, Murphy said the brothers “should be sending me flowers” for all the renewed attention Monsters has gotten them.
Lead image: Ted Soqui/Sygma via Getty Images and Taylor Hill/Getty Images
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