Lyle and Erik Menendez will appear before a California parole board this week to make their case for release after more than three decades behind bars for killing their parents.
The hearings on Thursday and Friday represent a crucial moment in the brothers’ yearslong campaign for freedom. If the board decides to grant them parole, the recommendation will go before Gov. Gavin Newsom for approval after a review by the board’s legal division. The brothers could be out within weeks, or months.
The brothers, who had been sentenced to life without the possibility of parole, gained a chance to go before the panel after they were resentenced in May. The decision by Judge Michael V. Jesic of Los Angeles Superior Court to reduce the brothers’ sentences for the 1989 killings made them eligible.
Commissioners from California’s parole board will now decide whether they think the brothers should be paroled. The board, made up of 21 full-time commissioners and a two- or three-person panel, is scheduled to hear arguments regarding Erik’s case on Thursday, and Lyle’s case on Friday.
While the brothers have been inextricably linked throughout their legal odyssey — appearing in court together at their two trials and at their recent resentencing hearing — they will have separate parole hearings, and each is likely to have a different panel of commissioners. It is not at all certain that the outcome will be the same for each man. It is possible that one could be granted parole, and the other denied.
It was more than 35 years ago that Lyle and Erik Menendez, then 21 and 18, walked into the den of their Beverly Hills mansion and fired more than a dozen shotgun rounds at their parents, killing them both.
In recent years, Lyle, now 57, and Erik, now 54, have been thrust back into the media spotlight as new evidence emerged indicating they had been sexually molested by their father. After a recent TV series and documentary examining the crime and the trials were shown on Netflix, an army of young people took to social media to call for the brothers to be released.
Matt Stevens is a Times reporter who writes about arts and culture from Los Angeles.
Tim Arango is a correspondent covering national news. He is based in Los Angeles.
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