Erik and Lyle Menendez could be released after serving more than 30 years for killing their parents, amid a dramatic change in public perception.
Celebrities from Kim Kardashian to Rosie O’Donnell have lined up to support the brothers, while a new Netflix documentary series has cast new publicity on their case.
The brothers gunned down their parents, José and Kitty Menendez, with 14 shots as the couple sat watching TV in the den of their Beverly Hills home on August 20, 1989. Erik, then 18, and Lyle, then 21, admitted they shot their entertainment-executive father and their mother, but said they feared their parents were about to kill them to prevent the disclosure of the father’s alleged long-term sexual molestation of Erik.
In an open letter published on October 3, Kardashian said that, at the time of their convictions, the brothers were seen as arrogant and greedy but that this perception is now changing.
“The media turned the brothers into monsters and sensationalized eye candy—two arrogant, rich kids from Beverly Hills who killed their parents out of greed. There was no room for empathy, let alone sympathy,” Kardashian wrote.
Erik (left) and Lyle (right) Menendez converse in the courtroom during a hearing in Los Angeles, in this February 2, 1995 file picture. The brothers are accused of murdering their parents in 1989.
Kim Kulish/Getty Images
The brothers have also protested their innocence in a 2024 Netflix series The Menendez Brothers, which has helped galvanize their release campaign.
Attorney Colleen Kerwick told Newsweek that the change in perception of the Menendez brothers mirrors society’s greater understanding of sexual abuse.
“The Menendez brothers have spent most of their lives in prison, for killing their parents after allegedly enduring alleged sexual abuse at the hands of their father, José Menendez.”
“When they were convicted and sentenced 30 years ago, society expected victims to be docile, perpetrators violent, and sexual-abuse survivors liars. However, society’s attitude toward sexual abuse slowly changed in the aftermath of cases like Harvey Weinstein, R. Kelly, and Sean Combs,” Kerwick said.
“Moreover, [former boy band member] Roy Rosselló recently corroborated Lyle and Erik’s story by coming forward as another victim of their father’s abuse.”
“The context and circumstance of their crime is significant as to whether they are victims who turned violent versus a threat to society at large. If the former, which it appears to be, it may be in the best interests of society to grant them parole,” Kerwick said.
In 2023, Roy Rosselló of the boy band Menudo said that he was drugged and raped by José Menendez, an entertainment executive, in the 1980s.
“I was in terrible pain for a week,” said Rosselló, when speaking of the assault in a Peacock documentary Menendez + Menudo: Boys Betrayed.
Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón has filed a petition to resentence Erik and Lyle—now 53 and 56, respectively—which would allow them to apply for parole for the first time. On October 24, Gascón said the brothers had “paid their debt to society.”
Gascón said he believes they “were subjected to a large amount of dysfunction in the home and molestation” but added that others in his office do not believe that narrative.
Newsweek sought email comment from Gascón’s office and from José and Kitty Menendez’s families on Thursday.
Comedian and TV presenter Rosie O’Donnell first publicly supported them on Larry King Live in 1996.
She decided to take up the cause again after watching Menendez + Menudo: Boys Betrayed. She visited the Menendez brothers at the Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility in California.
“I saw Lyle and gave him a hug,” she told Variety in October. “Then Erik came over to me, hugged me, and whispered in my ear, ‘Thank you for loving my brother.’ It was very, very moving to me.”
