Los Angeles County’s top prosecutor announced on Thursday that his office was reviewing new evidence in the case of Lyle and Erik Menendez, a development in the notorious true-crime case that could lead to a retrial or resentencing for the brothers who were convicted of the 1989 murder of their parents.
George Gascón, the county district attorney, said in a news conference that his office had received evidence that the brothers were sexually molested by their father, a former top executive at RCA Records.
The evidence consists of a newly discovered letter one of the brothers sent to a relative months before the murders, describing his father’s alleged sexual abuse, as well as allegations by a former boy band member, who alleged in a docuseries last year that Jose Menendez drugged and raped him as a teenager in the 1980s.
“We are not ready at this point to say we believe or do not believe this information,” Gascón said. “We are here to say we have a moral and ethical obligation to review what has been presented to us.”
The district attorney was careful to reiterate that authorities still believe the Menendez brothers were “clearly the murderers” in the case.
But the question at hand, he said, was whether the jury who sentenced the brothers to life behind bars in 1996 would have emerged with a different verdict had they heard the new evidence.
A hearing on the matter has been scheduled for Nov. 29.
The announcement comes just days after Talia Menendez, Erik’s daughter, said on her Instagram Story that the family was expecting the district attorney’s office to make a decision on the brothers’ latest petition for freedom, filed last May.
Both the letter and former Menudo member Roy Rosselló’s allegations were included in the brothers’ writ of habeas corpus.
The Menendezes have been behind bars for nearly 35 years. Initially separated and sent to different correctional facilities—against their wishes—they were reunited at Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility outside San Diego in 2018, where they have remained ever since.
Erik and Lyle were 18 and and 21, respectively, when Jose and Kitty Menendez were found slaughtered in the family’s multimillion-dollar Beverly Hills mansion. The brothers, who summoned police to the scene, initially claimed the double murder had been a gangland killing.
Investigators later arrested the pair, saying that they’d bought two 12-gauge shotguns and gunned their parents down in the living room as they watched TV.
The bloody case generated lurid headlines and captured international scrutiny. A fresh wave of attention, generated primarily by a splashy new series created by Ryan Murphy, has yanked the spotlight back onto the brothers in recent weeks.
Gascón said Thursday that his office had received “lot of calls” since the series, Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story, hit Netflix last month.
This is a breaking story and will be updated.
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