Lyle and Eric Menendez get lifeline as DA mulls new
evidence of sex abuse that may lead to resentencing
over parents’ grisly 1989 slaying
The district attorney for Los Angeles announced Thursday that his office will review new evidence of alleged molestation in the case of the parent-murdering Menendez brothers — potentially leading to their resentencing three decades after the horrific slaying.
District Attorney George Gascon announced that new evidence of sexual abuse against the brothers will be reviewed more than 30 years after the notorious trial that captivated America.
“We’re not at this point ready to say we believe or do not believe that information,” the DA said. “But we’re here to tell you that we have a moral and ethical obligation to review what is being presented to us and make a determination.”
In 1989, Erik and Lyle Menendez blew their parents away with a pair of shotguns in their tony Beverly Hills home as the couple watched a movie in the family room.
The brothers shot their father, music executive Jose, a total of five times — and needed to reload before finishing off their mother, Kitty, who crawled in agony on the floor.
Erik was just 18 at the time, while Lyle was 20.
Last year, the brothers filed a petition following revelations from the Peacock docuseries “Menendez + Menudo: Boys Betrayed,” which includes allegations that their father sexually assaulted a former underage member of the 1980s boy band Menudo.
In that docuseries, Roy RoRossello claims he was roughly 13 years old when Jose Menendez, an executive at RCA Records, drugged and raped him.
“This new evidence is indisputable,” Nery Ynclan, one of the journalists behind “Menendez + Menudo,” told the Los Angeles Times on Thursday.
“After 35 years, it’s past due to show these victims of incest the mercy they deserve.”
Lyle and Erik Menendez believe that this new evidence lends credibility to their claims that their father and mother sexually abused them from the time they were young children.
Testimony to that effect was prohibited during the brothers’ joint trial — though it was included in their initial separate trials, which both ended with a hung jury.
The brothers said in their petition that the murders were an act of self-defense and that they feared their parents would kill them if the pair told anyone about the abuse.
In more recent months, the Menendez case has re-entered the popular consciousness in part due to Netflix’s wildly popular Ryan Murphy miniseries “Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story,” which recounts the murders and trials without attempting to rehabilitate their image.
Murphy told Variety that he has “no interest” in talking to the two convicts.
“I don’t know what I would say to them,” the “American Horror Story” creator confessed, adding, “What would I ask them? I know what their perspective is.”
The Menendez brothers’ camp has slammed the show.
“I believe Ryan Murphy cannot be this naive and inaccurate about the facts of our lives so as to do this without bad intent,” Erik Menendez wrote on Facebook days after its release.
Murphy told Variety that the show is “the best thing that has happened to the Menendez brothers in 30 years. They are now being talked about by millions of people all over the world.”
One such person is reality star-turned-prison reform advocate Kim Kardashian, who, in a personal essay released earlier today, is calling for the Menendez brothers’ release.
“We are all products of our experiences,” the 43-year-old wrote. “I doubt anyone would claim to be the same person they were at 18. I know I’m not!”
Kardashian claimed that the joint trial the brothers received was unfair — highlighting that witnesses who were allowed in their initial separate trials were precluded from testifying in their joint trial.
She avers that the allegations of sexual abuse made by the Menendez brothers would be handled differently in today’s climate — and would have been entirely different if they were of a different gender.
“Can anyone honestly deny that the justice system would have treated the Menendez sisters more leniently?” the SKIMS founder mused.
“I have spent time with Lyle and Erik; they are not monsters. They are kind, intelligent, honest men.”
She also called the two confessed murderers “sensationalized eye candy.”
The “Keeping Up With the Kardashians” vet also points out that 24 of the Menendez brothers’ family members — including their parents’ siblings — have called for their release from jail.
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