Menendez Family Clamors for Erik and Lyle’s Release: ‘It’s Time’

Family members of Erik and Lyle Menendez gathered outside a courthouse in downtown Los Angeles Wednesday to call for the brothers’ release from prison. The relatives, more than 20, gathered amid ongoing concerns that key evidence was excluded or not yet available when the brothers were convicted and sentenced to life in prison for the shocking shotgun slayings of their parents José and Kitty Menendez more than 30 years ago.

At the press conference, Kitty’s 92-year-old sister Joan Andersen VanderMolen said she believes evidence that the brothers were routinely sexually abused by their father would have been accepted and portrayed in a much different light if the trial took place today.

“For many years, I struggled [with] what happened in my sister’s family. It was a nightmare none of us could have imagined. But as details of Lyle’s 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,” Andersen VanderMolen said. She said the brothers were “just children” when they were “brutalized in the most horrific way,” and that at the time of their trial, the world was “not ready” to believe that young men could be victims of sexual assault.

“No jury today would issue such a harsh sentence without taking their trauma into account,” VanderMolen continued. “Lyle and Erik have already paid a heavy price, discarded by a system that failed to recognize their pain. They have grown. They have changed and 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.”

Another relative said she believes the outcome of the case would have been much different if the siblings were “The Menendez sisters,” not brothers. “From the beginning, I believed Lyle and Erik were victims of their father’s abuse. I grew up knowing, and feeling, something wasn’t right. The feeling in their house, and the father-son interactions, were just off. But it wasn’t until the first trial that the full horror of what they had to live through came to light,” Kitty’s niece Karen VanderMolen said. “I forgive my cousins because I know they were acting out of fear and desperation.” She said the brothers were six and eight years old when the alleged abuse started. “It terrified them,” she said. “We live in a time now where we understand how abuse can shape a person’s actions, male or female. We live in a time now where we understand what trauma does to the brain development of a child. …It’s time for Erik and Lyle to come home.”

Anamaria Baralt, a niece of José Menendez, called the brothers “victims of a culture that was not ready to listen.” She said it was time to recognize “the injustice” they suffered. “If Lyle and Erik’s case were heard today, with the understanding we now have about abuse, and PTSD, there is no doubt in my mind that their sentencing would have been very different.”

The statements followed after Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón announced he would be reviewing new evidence in the brothers’ case following increased calls from their supporters. Lyle and Erik rocketed to national prominence when they were implicated in the 1989 murders of their parents inside the family’s $4 million Beverly Hills mansion. Late that August night, Beverly Hills police responded to an emergency call from Lyle that his parents had been mysteriously murdered. Investigators found the parents’ bodies riddled with shotgun wounds amid a horrific, blood-soaked scene. While Lyle and Erik were first treated by police as grieving orphans, the brothers were arrested and charged with first-degree murder in 1990.

During their now-infamous initial court trial, which was broadcast live by Court TV in 1993, Erik and Lyle testified that they killed their parents in self-defense because they were sexually assaulted by their father and feared for their lives. Prosecutors, meanwhile, claimed the boys wanted their inheritance and murdered their parents for greed. Separate juries, one for each of the brothers, deadlocked after the first trial. Lyle and Erik were convicted of first-degree murder in a retrial that started in October 1995.

In a new writ of habeas corpus, a request to challenge a person’s imprisonment, attorneys for both Lyle and Erik argue that their retrial, in which jurors were told Erik and Lyle’s sexual assault claims were a “total fabrication,” didn’t include crucial evidence that would have corroborated their claims. For example, Lyle’s older cousin, Diane VanderMolen, testified at the first trial that she stayed at the Menendez home for the summer when she was 16 and that one night, when Lyle was only eight years old, he came into her room and said he was afraid to sleep in his own room because his father allegedly was touching his genitals. Diane’s testimony was excluded from the second trial.

The pending habeas petition also relies heavily on new evidence. After the convictions, journalist Robert Rand obtained a letter that Erik wrote to his cousin, Andy Cano, eight months before the shooting deaths, when he was 17. In the letter excerpted in the habeas petition, Erik described being abused by his father and how fearful he was. “It’s still happening Andy but it’s worse for me now,” Erik wrote. “I never know when it’s going to happen and its driving me crazy. Every night I stay up thinking he might come in. …He’s warned me a 100 times about telling anyone.”

In his 2023 Peacock docuseries, Menendez + Menudo: Boys Betrayed, Rand also detailed new allegations from Roy Rossello, a former member of the Puerto Rican boy band Menudo. Rossello claimed that José Menendez, a music executive, had sexually abused him too.

Rand was at the press conference Wednesday and tells Rolling Stone he hopes the brothers will be released soon. “After 35 years of covering this case, I hope they’re released next month, but if it’s six months or a year from now, I’ll be fine with that. The important thing is they need to be re-sentenced to time served, and they need to go home to their wives and be reunited with their family,” Rand said. “Both of their aunts — they’re in their eighties and nineties now – their dream is, before they die, they want to see Erik and Lyle as free men.”

In the recent Netflix documentary The Menendez Brothers, Joan VanderMolan said that she was disheartened by how much the public made light of Lyle and Erik’s sexual abuse claims. “I called Jay Leno’s show one time to protest them making fun of them. And that’s all they did. They just made fun of them,” their aunt said. “I was told that we were public property now and they could do what they wanted.” 

Since American Horror Story creator Ryan Murphy released his retelling of the case in Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story in October, Kim Kardashian has also gone on a public campaign to free the brothers from prison. “With their case back in the spotlight — and considering the revelation of a 1988 letter from Erik to his cousin describing the abuse — my hope is that Erik and Lyle Menendez’s life sentences are reconsidered,” she wrote in an NBC op-ed. “We owe it to those little boys who lost their childhoods, who never had a chance to be heard, helped or saved.”

The brothers’ criminal lawyer, Mark Geragos, said he hopes Erik and Lyle will be out of custody by Thanksgiving. “We have evolved. It’s time,” he said at the press conference. Afterward, Geragos joined the family at a private meeting with a Resentencing Unit of the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office across the street from the courthouse at the Hall of Justice. Gascón’s office issued a statement after the meeting expressing “empathy for all the victims involved in these tragic incidents.”

“We have heard the heartfelt pleas from the Menendez family regarding a review of this case. While we cannot formally comment on any decisions at this time, please know that our office is dedicated to a thorough and fair process and is exploring every avenue available to our office to ensure justice is served,” the statement said. “In addition to the habeas filing that is being handled by the office’s Writs and Appeals Division, which will be considered by the court, the Menendez brothers’ cases are being reviewed by the office’s Resentencing Unit for possible resentencing. While the habeas filing raises questions about the evidence in the previous trials, the Resentencing Unit focuses on the individuals’ rehabilitation and behavior during time served.”

The statement said prosecutors are still seeking full documentation of the defense’s claims. “Our office has developed a more modern understanding of sexual violence since the Menendez brothers first faced prosecution,” the statement continued. “Today, our office acknowledges that sexual violence is a pervasive issue affecting countless individuals—of all gender identities—and we are committed to supporting all victims as they navigate the profound impacts of such trauma.”

The office promised to provide updates “as new information becomes available.” The next court date in the matter is set for Nov. 26.

At a press conference earlier this month, Gascón said his office had a “moral and an ethical obligation to review what is being presented to us and make a determination.”

From Rolling Stone US.