Lyle Menendez, 21, and his 18-year-old brother Erik were both armed with 12-gauge shotguns when they burst into the den of their home in Beverly Hills, Calif., and fatally shot their parents, Jose and Kitty Menendez, while the couple watched TV.
The Aug. 20, 1989, murders, now the subject of season 2 of Ryan Murphy’s Netflix show Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story, starring Javier Bardem and Chloë Sevigny, which began streaming Thursday, Sept. 19, made national headlines and spawned several documentaries.
The killings, according to the brothers, came after years of sexual abuse by their Hollywood executive father — abuse which they insisted was ignored by their mom, a former pageant queen.
However, authorities said the two brothers’ motive was greed, citing the lavish spending spree — which involved expensive watches, cars, and tennis lessons — the two brothers went on after the slayings.
In 1996, three years after their first trial ended in a deadlock, the siblings were convicted of the first-degree murders of their parents and sentenced to life in prison without parole.
Jose Menendez .
AP
Since then, there have been efforts to overturn their convictions. Most recently, in May 2023, attorneys for the brothers filed a petition with Los Angeles County Superior Court, citing new evidence in the case.
In the Habeas Corpus petition, attorneys pointed to sexual abuse allegations by Roy Rosselló, a former member of the Puerto Rican boy band Menudo against Jose, who he claimed raped him in the 1980s.
The attorneys also cite a newly discovered letter Erik wrote to his cousin Andy Cano describing his father’s alleged sexual abuse months before the murders.
Jose, Erik and Lyle Menendez. Los Angeles Times/AP
“Nobody had looked at [the cousin’s personal] effects until 2015, and that’s when it was found, 10 years after our last appeal,” Menendez brother’s post-conviction attorney Mark Geragos tells PEOPLE.
“We’re saying the second trial did not comport with constitutional protections for a variety of reasons,” says Geragos. “And a Habeas [Corpus petition] has new evidence. It requires new evidence because this case had basically been moribund for close to 17 years. And the new evidence was the Menudo accuser and the letter that Andy Cano wrote or received from Erik eight months before the killing.”
“The judge can do basically three things,” adds Geragos. “The judge can deny it, the judge can order the DA to respond, or the judge can do what he did, which was issue an order for the DA to informally respond, which they have taken very seriously over the last 15 months because we’ve presented evidence to them.”
Geragos says the brothers’ defense team has conducted a conditional examination of Kitty’s oldest sister and provided statements from 24 family members who “have all asked that they be resentenced, presented a number of other documents and evidence for them to take a look at and consider while making a decision.”
Geragos says the Menendez brothers, who have spent over three decades in prison and are now both in Donovan State Correctional Facility, are “cautiously optimistic.”
Geragos claims that if the case was taken to trial today there would have been a much different outcome.
“I tried this case today, 99 times out of 100, it’s a voluntary manslaughter. Twenty years, 30 years, the culture moves, and I think more enlightened or evolved, and people start to realize that maybe there was a feeding frenzy at the time, and on a more sober reflection, that they didn’t get a fair trial,” he says.
A spokesperson for the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office tells PEOPLE that the office “is investigating the claims submitted in the petition.”
“The matter is pending the filing of an informal response, which is currently due on September 26, 2024,” per the district attorney’s office.
Los Angeles defense attorney and former Los Angeles County senior deputy district attorney Dmitry Gorin says the chances the brothers are released from prison are slim.
“I don’t know how much this new evidence moves the needle,” he tells PEOPLE. “It’s still very much a long shot because of the history of the case, because of the prior trial rulings and because materially, this doesn’t really change the evidence in the case. It’s more of the same. It’s horrible evidence. It’s tragic they were abused, but it’s more of the same.”
Los Angeles defense attorney Neama Rahmani also thinks the chances of the brothers going free is “highly unlikely.”
“It’s a Hail Mary type argument,” he says. “This isn’t enough, in my opinion. A corroborating note or the fact that a victim abused someone else, this is not the type of evidence that typically results in a habeas petition being granted.”
