Parents shot dead
Family fights for the release of the Menendez brothers
A Netflix series has brought new attention to the case of the Menendez brothers, who brutally murdered their parents in 1989. Their family is now hoping that they will get the chance to be released despite life sentences.
At a press conference in Los Angeles on Wednesday, several generations of family members of Erik and Lyle Menendez spoke out in favor of the brothers' release. They were victims themselves, as they had been "brutalized" and sexually abused by their father, it was argued.
The jurors who sentenced the brothers to life imprisonment without parole in 1996 were part of a society that was not prepared to accept that men could also be raped.
Aunt of the perpetrators speaks of "desperate reaction"
The victim's 92-year-old sister Kitty Menendez emphasized that the family knew nothing about the extent of the abuse at the time. "It became clear that her actions - although tragic - were the desperate reaction of two boys trying to survive the unspeakable cruelty of their father," explained Joan Andersen VanderMolen.
Would the verdict have turned out very differently today?
"If Lyle and Erik's case were being tried today, given what we know today about abuse and PTSD, there is no doubt in my mind that their sentence would have been very different," said Anamaria Baralt, a niece of Jose Menendez. The prosecutors had claimed at the time that there was no evidence of sexual abuse and that greed for the parents' multi-million dollar fortune was the sole motive for the crime.
Prosecutor examines new conviction
There is also new evidence to support this theory. A former member of the boy band Menudo from Puerto Rico claimed to have been raped by José Menendez in 1984 at the age of 14. The current district attorney George Gascon is also likely to question whether the verdict at the time was fair. The authority will examine whether a new conviction is justified. A hearing was scheduled for November 26.
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