Inside the Twists and Turns of Menendez Brothers Case After DA Supports Resentencing

On the evening of Sunday, Aug. 20, 1989, Jose and Kitty Menendez were watching TV inside their Beverly Hills mansion when their sons, Lyle, 21, and Erik, 18, burst into the room with 12-gauge shotguns.

Jose, a 45-year-old business executive, was shot multiple times, including point blank in the head. Kitty, 47, also suffered multiple gunshot wounds, including one to the face.

At their 1993 trial, prosecutors claimed the brothers fatally shot their parents for their $14 million fortune. However, the brothers testified that they didn’t kill their parents for money but rather because they feared Jose, after years of alleged sexual abuse, and Kitty, who they claim knew about the molestation but never tried to stop it, were planning to kill their sons. 

The sensational trial ended with a deadlock. The brothers were tried again and were convicted of the first-degree murders in 1996 and subsequently sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Over the years, the brothers appealed their convictions but were denied.

More recently, the case, which has become the subject of a Netflix documentary, The Menendez Brothers, as well as the Ryan Murphy-produced Netflix dramatic series Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story, gained traction after the brothers’ lawyers filed a habeas corpus petition asking to have the case reviewed.

The petition cited sexual abuse allegations by Roy Rosselló, a former member of the Puerto Rican boy band Menudo, against Jose, whom he claims raped him in the 1980s. It also cited a letter Erik wrote to his now-deceased cousin Andy Cano describing his father’s alleged sexual abuse months before the killings.

On Thursday, Oct. 24, more than a year after the petition was filed, Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón said he supports that the siblings be resentenced.

Here are some of the case’s twists and turns.

Social Media Support

The case gained new attention after young people across social media, mostly on TikTok and Instagram, offered a new take on the Menendez murder trials, most of which was sympathetic to the brothers, who claimed they were sexually abused by their father. 

In an interview with News Nation, comedian Rosie O’Donnell thanked the younger generation for starting the online movement and advocating for their release.

“It got people interested in the documentary about Roy Rosselló, the Menudo member, and how he was savagely raped by Jose and was bleeding,” she alleged. “And it was a very horrifying depiction of what happened to him and what happened to him ever since. And then with the Lyle letter that came out, it was like, there’s so much new evidence that they must take a look at the fact that in 1989 right, no one was ready to believe that fathers raped their sons. But they do.”

2023’s Peacock docuseries Menendez + Menudo: Boys Betrayed, released in 2023, included claims by Rosselló about the abuse he allegedly suffered at the hands of Jose Menendez. In the documentary, Rosselló alleged he was drugged and raped when he was a teen by the business executive in the 1980s.

Habeas Corpus Petition

In May 2023, the brothers’ lawyers filed a habeas corpus petition with the Los Angeles County Superior Court, citing new evidence in the case.  

The new evidence were the sexual abuse allegations by Rosselló, who in a declaration alleged the group’s manager asked him at a hotel “to ‘do a favor’ and “do something great” for Menudo and him and instructed him to go downstairs and join Jose Menendez in a limousine.

According to the petition, Rosselló was allegedly driven to Menendez’s home in New Jersey, given wine by Jose and then raped. “Roy lost consciousness and woke up back in his hotel,” the petition alleges.

Rosselló was allegedly raped by Menendez a second time in a New York City hotel, per the petition.

In the petition, defense attorneys also pointed to a letter Erik wrote to his now-deceased cousin Andy Cano describing his father’s alleged sexual abuse months before the killings.

“I don’t know I’ll make it through this,” Erik wrote in the letter.

“I think the letter itself was fascinating to me,” the Menendez brothers’ post-conviction attorney told PEOPLE. The fact that there was a letter that was found that corroborated the testimony by Cano and of Erik, and that that was found more than 20 years after the trial, and it predated the killings by eight months. That to me was a game changer.”

Netflix Programming Brings Attention to Case

In late 2024, Netflix aired two productions focused on the brothers. The first was Ryan Murphy’s true-crime drama Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story.

On Friday, Sept. 20, the day after the Murphy series aired, Erik slammed the show saying it was “rooted in horrible and blatant lies” about him and Lyle, and slammed Murphy for airing false information.

“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 said.

Murphy told The Hollywood Reporter on Tuesday, Oct. 1 that the brothers “should be sending me flowers,” he said. “They haven’t had so much attention in 30 years. And it’s gotten the attention of not only this country, but all over the world. There’s sort of an outpouring of interest in their lives and in the case.”

“I know for a fact that many people have offered to help them because of the interest of my show and what we did,” he continued. “There is no world that we live in where the Menéndez brothers or their wives or lawyers would say, ‘You know what, that was a wonderful, accurate depiction of our clients.’ That was never going to happen, and I wasn’t interested in that happening.”

Murphy said he and co-creator Ian Brennan  felt that they had an “obligation” to tell the stories of other people in the Erik and Lyle’s orbit, including their parents.

In the Netflix documentary The Menendez Brothers, which began streaming Oct. 7, the brothers spent more than 20 hours opening up to director Alejandro Hartmann about growing up in Beverly Hills with a hard-driving father who they accuse of sexually abusing them to how horrified they said they felt after gunning down their parents in 1989.

DA Previously Said He Was Keeping ‘Open Mind’ About Case

On Thursday, Oct. 3, just days after the Monster was released, Gascón announced at a press conference that he was “keeping an open” mind about the Menendez brothers’ bid for release.

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“I’m not leaning in any direction right now,” said. “We have people in the office that are looking at this very carefully, very experienced lawyers that are looking at this. Their recommendation will be presented to me, but the final decision will be mine.”

Acknowledging that the brothers “were clearly the murderers,” Gascón said his office had “a moral and an ethical obligation to review what is being presented to us” and to determine if such evidence could have swayed jurors away from first-degree murder convictions.

If you or someone you know has been a victim of sexual abuse, text “STRENGTH” to the Crisis Text Line at 741-741 to be connected to a certified crisis counselor.