The Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office has pulled its support for resentencing Lyle and Erik Menendez.
After his predecessor opened the door to making the brothers, who are serving life sentences, eligible for parole, Los Angeles District Attorney Nathan Hochman reversed the office’s position and said they still pose an “unreasonable risk of danger to the community” because they haven’t fully accepted responsibility for killing their parents. He pointed to “deliberate and meditative” actions they took immediately following the crime in which they looked to cover it up.
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The brothers “basically engaged in not just the ultimate lie of self defense but a series of lies around it,” Hochman said.
The brothers are currently serving sentences for life without parole for the 1989 murders of their parents, José and Kitty Menendez. They’re pursuing multiple legal avenues to be released from prison, including through Gov. Gavin Newsom, who last month signaled that he may offer clemency to the convicted killers should all other options fail, by calling for the California Parole Board to conduct a risk assessment investigation of the men as they seek freedom.
Their potential release garnered major momentum after the release of a hit Netflix series from Ryan Murphy and evidence that emerged in a 2023 documentary that suggested the brothers were not lying in their mid-’90s trials when they claimed self-defense in the double murders after a lifetime of sexual, physical and emotional abuse by their parents.
That momentum was derailed on Monday by Hochman, who said that the “interest of justice justifies” his withdrawal of support for releasing the brothers. He stressed their original position during the trial in which they were convicted that they didn’t kill their parents.
“The first iteration of their defense was that it wasn’t them,” he said. They “persisted in this lie” and “kept that lie going for months and months and months. Had Erik not confessed to his therapist months later and had that confession not been taped and turned over to the police, they would’ve maintained it wasn’t them.”
Last year, former Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascón announced a review of the brothers’ convictions. The reexamination related to new evidence that José Menendez, then president of RCA Records, sexually assaulted the brothers. If evidence of sexual abuse was presented at their trial, the jury could’ve voted to convict for manslaughter, which would’ve allowed for the brothers’ release decades ago.
“I believe the brothers were subjected to a tremendous amount of dysfunction and molestation in their home,” Gascón said at the time. “But they went to prison for life without the possibility of parole, which meant that, under law at the time, they had no hope of ever getting out.”
Gascón didn’t opt to recommended that the brothers be resentenced under convictions for manslaughter due to evidence that the murders were premeditated.
During his press conference, Hochman detailed the steps that Lyle and Erik took in planning the killing of their parents in a salvo of shotgun blasts in the den of their Beverly Hills mansion. In the days before the murder, he said, they drove to San Diego to purchase guns and ammunition using a fake ID to ensure that the weapons couldn’t be traced back to them. Their alibi for the crime was an evening showing of Tim Burton’s Batman.
Hochman also detailed the gruesome nature of the murders, which he said were set up to make it appear like a “gangland killing.”
José and Kitty Menendez were shot through the back of the head before being shot through their knees. The brothers then retrieved the shotgun casings and threw them off a hill on Mulholland Drive before going back home. They “fully expected for them never to go to prison, because they successfully convinced everyone they didn’t do it,” Hochman said.
By his telling of his motivation for the crime, Erik denied killing his father because of sexual molestation, according Hochman. He attributed the crime to being afraid that his parents would kill him.
In a statement, the Justice for Erik and Lyle Coalition, an initiative representing members of the family that supports the brothers’ release, said that Hochman broke his promise to support resentencing and is being driven by politics. He “appears fixated on their trauma-driven response to the killings in 1989 with blinders on to the fact they were repeatedly abused, feared for their lives and have atoned for their actions,” it said.
Newsom’s risk assessment for the brothers will involve whether they now pose an unreasonable risk to public safety if they’re released. Across 35 years in prison, Erik and Lyle have earned degrees and have led programs intended to help other inmates heal trauma. Their risk assessment scores hover among the lowest levels, with each receiving letters of support from prison officials.
