Erik Menendez has been denied parole, more than 30 years after he and his brother Lyle killed their parents in the family’s luxury Beverly Hills home.
A California panel ordered the 54-year-old to stay in prison on Thursday, defying a lengthy campaign waged by family, friends and celebrities like Kim Kardashian.
“Erik Menendez was denied parole for three years at his initial suitability hearing today,” said a brief statement from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR).
The result will be a huge blow to a movement that has swelled in recent years, nourished by documentaries and TV dramas, including the smash Netflix hit Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story.
Thursday’s hearing came 36 years and a day after his family learned of his parents’ deaths, Erik Menendez told the parole board.
“My father was the most terrifying human being I’d ever met,” Menendez said during the 10-hour hearing when asked why he did not leave the home rather than commit murder.
“When I look back at the person I was then and what I believed about the world and my parents, running away was inconceivable,” he said.
The parole denial comes the day before Lyle Menendez, 57, will appear before a panel to ask them to release him from prison.
“This is a tragic case,” parole commissioner Robert Barton said after the decision was issued. “I agree that not only two, but four people, were lost in this family.”
More than a dozen relatives testified to say they’ve forgiven the Menendez brothers, as they came to be known, and to call for their release.
Criminals turned celebrities
The men are among the United States’s most celebrated prisoners, and the stars of one of the first-ever televised murder trials.
Jurors in the 1990s were told how the men killed Jose and Kitty Menendez in what prosecutors said was a cynical attempt to get their hands on a large family fortune.
After setting up alibis and trying to cover their tracks, Erik and Lyle shot Jose Menendez five times with shotguns, including in the kneecaps.
Kitty Menendez died from a shotgun blast as she tried desperately to crawl away from her killers.
The brothers initially blamed the deaths on a mafia hit, but changed their story several times in the ensuing months.
Erik, then 18, confessed to the murders in a session with his therapist.
The pair ultimately claimed they had acted in self-defence after years of emotional and sexual abuse at the hands of a tyrannical father.
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