In the latest update to the Menendez brothers case, LA County district attorney George Gascón recommended that the brothers should be resentenced by a judge and released on parole. The brothers were convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole for brutally murdering their parents Jose and Kitty Menendez.
Erik and Lyle
admitted to the cold-blooded murders but claimed that they were abused by their father. Their case recently gained attention after Ryan Murphy’s Netflix series, Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story. They have since been receiving support from various corners. The final say over their resentencing lies with a judge and a parole board will decide on their parole.
What Happened To The Menendez Brothers?
Erik and Lyle Menendez were portrayed as two greedy brothers who murdered their parents for money in the media at the time. The brothers were not the primary suspects of the Beverly Hills police department when they arrived on the scene. When the police finally caught up to their crime, there was a whole media circus.
Lyle Menendez shared in the recent Netflix documentary, The Menendez Brothers, that his highly publicized arrest was staged for the media. He shared, “They arrested me with a SWAT team, you know, cornering the car on the road, like I was a fugitive drug dealer or something.” The media wrote extensively about the case, sometimes not separating facts from fiction.
The media interference also affected the trial as the writings already contributed to a biased jury. The first trial in the Menendez case ended up in a hung jury. According to the documentary, the abuse evidence convinced one-half of the jury while others still found them to be cold-blooded killers. The judge declared a mistrial and the case went to a second trial.
The second trial was deeply affected by the O.J. Simpson trial, as his acquittal came eight days prior to the Menendez brothers’ trial. The defense was not allowed to present evidence and testimony of the alleged abuse against the brothers. Erik explained about the rejection of abuse evidence in the Netflix documentary:
The judge said well Erik and Lyle are not women so the battered women syndrome doesn’t apply, so all of that trauma it’s not relevant and it’s not allowed into the second trial.
They were convicted of first-degree murder and were sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.
The Menendez Brothers May Get Out Of Prison In Light Of The New Evidence
After the release of Netflix’s Monsters, the Menendez brothers received support from various people. Kim Kardashian wrote a personal essay for NBC News, sharing that the brothers lost their childhood due to the case, where they were never given the “chance to be heard, helped, or saved.” She added that the exclusion of “crucial abuse evidence” undermined the “fairness of their conviction”.
In the Netflix documentary, Erik and Lyle’s cousin Diane Vander Molen revealed the alleged violent behavior of Jose Menendez. She shared that Jose once asked Lyle to jump off a kitchen counter, telling him that he was going to catch him. Molen shared, “As Lyle did so, Jose backed off, and let him fall to the ground, telling him that you can never trust anybody.”
Defense expert Dr. Ann Burgess also detailed how Erik Menendez responded to one of her “mini-Rorschach” techniques. She asked him to draw about the week before the murders. Burgess shared that Erik did about 12 or 14 frames. The drawings included lines like “Get back here you bastard” and “I’m not going to let you touch my little brother ever again.”
The evidence forced LA County District Attorney George Gascón to give a fresh look into the case. In a press conference, the brothers’ family members called for the brothers to be resentenced. On October 24, Gascón shared in a press conference that new evidence in the case merited a review of their life sentences.
The attorney recommended that they should be resentenced and released on parole. The brothers have a long road ahead before they get their freedom as the final decision lies with a judge.
