Menendez Brothers Case: L.A. DA Eyes Early Release Of Siblings As Family & Rosie O’Donnell Gather To Demand Leniency
Despite his waffling press conference this month, the fate and freedom of the long-imprisoned Menendez brothers might already have been decided by the Los Angeles County District Attorney.
In the midst of a tough re-election campaign that has DA George Gascón trailing by double digits, the prosecutor has offered his strongest opinion yet on the siblings’ murder case. It’s a point of view that might be music to the ears of Menendez family members gathering today in the City of Angels to advocate for Lyle and Erik Menendez’s early release.
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The subject of media frenzy at the time, the brothers were convicted in a second trial in 1996 of first-degree murder for the 1989 shooting of their parents Jose and Kitty Menendez in their Beverly Hills mansion. After going on an ostentatious spending spree before being arrest, now 56-year old Lyle and 53-year old Erik were sentenced to two consecutive life prison terms without the possibility of parole.
“Given the totality of the circumstances, I don’t think they deserve to be in prison until they die,” Gascón remarkably told ABC News Nightline co-anchor Juju Chang in an interview shot on October 10. The interview will be seen on the October 17 debuting special IMPACT x Nightline: Menendez Brothers: Monsters or Victims?, streaming on Hulu.
Having said on October 3 that his divided office believed they had “a moral and an ethical obligation to review what is being presented to us and make a determination based on a resentencing side, whether they deserve to be resentenced, even though they were clearly the murderers,” Gascón’s recent statement to ABC seems to push the matter way beyond the review stage that the DA stuck to earlier this month.
“He is tipping his hand to the totality of evidence that his office has been considering,” Nightline’s Chang told Deadline this morning of her reaction to Gascón’s much firmer stance. “He also added that there are deep differences of opinion about this case within the DA’s office and that this is not a decision he is taking lightly, she noted.
A hearing on the Menendez brothers’ case is set for November 26 in downtown LA. Any “final” decision on early release, new trial or any other scenario lies with Gascón, as he made clear earlier this month. The LA DA’s office did not respond to request from Deadline on Gascón’s remarks in the ABC News special. If they do, this post will be updated.
Oddly, this weekend Gascón posted a picture on social media of the 1988 letter that Erik Menendez wrote to a cousin detailing the sexual abuse he was supposedly suffering from his father. The handwritten note read in part: “I’ve been trying to avoid dad. It’s still happening Andy but it’s worse for me now. I can’t explain it. He’s so overweight that I just can’t stand to see him. I never know when it’s going to happen and it’s driving me crazy.”
The incumbent DA deleted the post no long after putting it up on Instagram.
With the new-ish evidence of the apparent pervasiveness of the sexual abuse music executive Jose Menendez was subjecting his sons and others, including members of boy band Menudo, to now part of the case and its review, around two dozen members of the family will be in LA today outside the Clara Shortridge Foltz Criminal Justice Center – the very building where both the brothers’ trials took place.
Defense attorneys, Mark Geragos and Cliff Gardner, family lawyer Bryan Freedman, as well as Menendez advocate Rosie O’Donnell will be joining Anamaria Baralt, (niece of Jose Menendez), Joan Andersen VanderMolen (sister of Kitty Menendez), Karen VanderMolen (niece of Kitty Menendez and Brian A. Andersen Jr. (nephew of Kitty Menendez. In addition, Natascha Leonardo (niece of Kitty Menendez), Arnold VanderMolen (nephew of Kitty Menendez), Kathleen Simonton (niece of Kitty Menendez), Karen Copley (niece of Kitty Menendez), Diane Hernandez (niece of Kitty Menendez, Alicia Barbour (niece of Jose Menende) Erik VanderMolen (great nephew of Kitty Menendez), Sarah Mallas (great niece of Kitty Menendez), Alexander Hernandez (great nephew of Kitty Menendez), Sylvia Bolock (niece of Jose Menendez), Rebecca Frascone (family friend) and Tamara Goodell (niece of Kitty Menendez) will be in attendance in DTLA this afternoon too.
Other supporters of the brothers, such as Kim Kardashian, could be showing up, but that has not been confirmed by organizers. The family are expected to walk over to the DA’s office to talk to the Sexual Abuse unit and discuss victims role in the matter after the press conference.
The greater depth of the sexual abuse the brother had long claimed they suffered was first unearthed in last year’s three-part Peacock docuseries Menendez + Menudo: Boys Betrayed, as ex-Menudo member Roy Rosselló detailed his repeated rapes in the mid-1980s by the band’s manager and then RCA Records president Jose Menendez. That letter that the younger Menendez wrote mere months before the killing of his parents to one of his cousins of the rapes by his father has also alter perspective on the case, as has changing societal standards around male sexual assault victims.
Unsuccessfully pleading self-defense, the brothers claims of sexual abuse were attacked by the then LA DA’s office in the 1996 trial and the presiding judge allowed very little of the Menendez’s evidence of that abuse to be seen by the jury.
Looking at a ballot box defeat in November against ex-U.S. Assistant Attorney General Hochman, the media savvy Gascón has picked up on the attention Ryan Murphy’s Netflix hit Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story had generated around the case too. Adding to that spotlight, the streamer dropped the true crime documentary The Menendez Brothers on October 7.
Of course, this is all playing out in the real world as well as on the small screen. In fact, it may prove a factor, one way or another, in the DA race. “The timing is incredibly suspicious,” Hochman said of Gascón’s sudden new interest in the Menendez case in an October 8 televised debate between the two candidates. “You certainly would not have me hold a press conference to tell you I’m just thinking about it,” Gascón’s rival added, with no small degree of contempt in his voice.
Reunited behind bars in 2018, the Menendez Brothers are currently housed at the Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility near San Diego.
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