Los Angeles County district attorney George Gascón has announced that he is recommending that the Menendez brothers, who murdered their parents with shotguns in 1989, be resentenced. This will begin a judicial process that gives them a new chance at freedom.
Today, at a press conference in LA, the DA said that after careful review he believes Erik and Lyle Menendez should be sentenced to life with the possibility of parole.
“I believe they have paid their debt to society,” Gascón said. He added that people who have survived sexual assault are often done great injustice, and he introduced members of Erik and Lyle’s extended family, who were in attendance.
He made clear that he was not excusing murder: “Even if you get abused, the right path is to call police, seek help,” he said. But he said he took into account the age of the brothers at the time of the murders, and the fact that, even without the hope of parole, they have been on “a journey of redemption and a journey of rehabilitation.” Gascón said that some in the DA’s office still believe the brothers should spend the rest of their life in prison, and may appear in court to argue against resentencing.
If Judge William C. Ryan, who is presiding over the case, agrees with the DA’s recommendation, the brothers will appear in front of the parole board.
Gascón is up for reelection on November 5 against Nathan Hochman, who leads him in the polls. Hochman has called the timing of Gascón’s interest in the case “incredibly suspicious.” But Michael Romano, the director of the Three Strikes Project at Stanford Law School, which works to release people serving life sentences for nonviolent crimes, says he doubts that politics have affected the DA’s decision. “I know George pretty well,” he says. “I absolutely think that he [made this announcement] because he thinks it’s the right thing to do. I mean, regardless of the new evidence, sentencing 19- and 21-year-olds to life without parole is very, very harsh and something that Gascón probably opposes across the board.”
If Hochman wins the election, as expected, it’s unknown what his position would be, but he is running on a tough-on-crime platform, and his website criticizes Gascón for “the ‘abandonment’ of victims in favor of lenient policies toward offenders.”
The brothers’ extended family has a right to attend a resentencing hearing under Marsy’s Law. That group could include Kitty Menendez’s older brother, Milton Andersen, who does not support their release. “Mr. Andersen firmly believes that his nephews were not molested,” his attorney, Kathy Cady, said in a statement last week. “He believes that is a fabrication and he believes that the motive was pure greed.”
Kitty’s older sister, Joan VanderMolen, disagrees and has supported her nephews since their arrest. “As details of Lyle and Erik’s abuse came to light it became clear that their actions, while tragic, were the desperate response of two boys trying to survive the unspeakable cruelty of their father,” she said, adding, “Looking back, I see the fear and tension their father had instilled in them. They were just children—children who could have been protected but were instead brutalized in the most horrific of ways.”
The infamous Menendez case captivated the world in the early ’90s, when the brothers’ first trial—which resulted in hung juries—was broadcast on Court TV. The prosecution argued that Erik and Lyle killed their parents, Jose and Kitty Menendez, for their estimated $14 million inheritance. The defense maintained that Jose molested them and that they feared for their lives. The glamorous lifestyle of the wealthy Beverly Hills family and graphic testimony became a true crime sensation, and the brothers were found guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole in a second trial.
The case became top of mind again when Netflix’s hit series, Monsters: The Menendez Brothers, by showrunner Ryan Murphy, was released in September, followed by a new documentary by director Alejandro Hartmann. Gascón said in a press conference earlier this month that his office was fielding calls regarding the brothers’ release, while Erik and Lyle’s attorney, Mark Geragos, says that social media campaigns to free them were an unexpected boon: “It’s the craziest phenomenon I’ve ever seen. It happened at warp speed, mostly because of this younger, kind of more vibrant and, I would argue, evolved [generation].” Eager to keep up the momentum, the brothers’ extended family hosted a press conference last week to express their continued support of their release.
The new evidence that Geragos sent the district attorney’s office in May of 2023 is compelling, says Romano. A letter that Erik purportedly wrote to his late cousin, Andy Cano, eight months before the murders was found in his personal effects in which Erik wrote, “It’s still happening Andy [sic] but it’s worse for me now … Every night I stay up thinking [my father] might come in.” And, in another potentially potent piece of evidence, Roy Rosselló, a former member of the boy band Menudo, has come forward alleging that Jose drugged and raped him when he was 13 or 14.
According to Romano, a parole board hearing may take time. “Even though they become immediately eligible, there’s a long wait list,” he says. The brothers have been behind bars for over three decades.
This story has been updated.
