If you scroll on TikTok for two minutes, you’re sure to find at least one video related to the Menendez brothers, who were sentenced life in prison for the murder of their parents. Whether it’s an informational video about the brothers themselves or a fan edit of the actors that portrayed them in a recent Netflix series, Erik and Lyle Menendez have taken social media by storm, increasing support for the brothers among Gen Z, celebrities, and much of the Menendez family. Now, their case has become even more prevalent: LA District Attorney George Gascón recently said he recommends the brothers be resentenced on Oct. 24. What does that mean? Before I answer that, we have to go back to the start.
The Murders
On Aug. 20, 1989, Jose and Mary Louise “Kitty” Menendez were shot and killed in their Beverly Hills mansion. Jose was shot six times, and Kitty was shot 10 times, according to Netflix’s podcast You Can’t Make This Up. The killers picked up the shotgun shells and left, officials said.
Lyle, 21, called 911. The call is chaotic; Lyle is hysterical, shouting, “Someone killed my parents!” Erik is shouting unintelligibly in the background, and Lyle can be heard telling Erik “don’t” and “get away from them.”
When police arrived, Erik and Lyle told them that they came home after a night at the movies to find their parents murdered, and their alibi wasn’t much more than that. They bought tickets to see Batman, and that was it; they came back home and called 911.
The police did not treat the brother as suspects that night, said Pamela Bozanich, the prosecutor on the case, in the 2024 Netflix documentary The Menendez Brothers. This documentary features phone interviews with the brothers from their San Diego prison. In one interview, Erik says they should have been arrested that night.
“We had no alibi. The gunpower residue was all over our hands. Under normal circumstances, they give you a gunpowder residue test… There were gun shells in my car. My car was inside the search area,” Erik said. Instead of looking at the brothers, police suspected that the killings were in connection to Jose’s work and businesses.
Money talks
However, in the months following the murders, the brothers didn’t act as the police believed two boys traumatized by discovering their parents’ bodies would. Jose Menendez had a life insurance policy of $650,000, which disappeared rather quickly. In just six months, the brothers spent about $700,000.
They spent $15,000 on three Rolex watches. They bought new cars, and Lyle put a deposit on a restaurant near Princeton University, where he had gone to school. Erik hired a $50,000 tennis coach. So, everyone wondered: Was it really a mob hit, or did the brothers kill their parents for money?
Confession and Arrest
In the midst of the spending spree, Erik started going to therapy. He saw Dr. Jerome Oziel, who he had seen previously after participating in burglaries with Lyle in Calabasas, CA. Erik took the legal fall for both brothers because he was underage. The burglaries resulted in the family’s abrupt move to Beverly Hills and the infamous Elm Drive house in October 1988.
Erik made an appointment with Oziel in October 1989, where he confessed to the murders. He explained “the planning and execution” and the “fabricated alibi,“ according to the LA Times. Oziel then brought Lyle into the office and tape-recorded the brothers’ confession.
The next sequence of events is something out of a movie.
Dr. Oziel was having an affair with a woman named Judalon Smyth. According to a Vanity Fair interview with Smyth, Oziel asked Smyth to listen at the door as Lyle and Erik confessed to him. He told her not to tell anyone what she had heard. After the confessions, their love affair deteriorated as Oziel became more controlling of her life, Smyth says.
According to a lawsuit filed by Smyth against Oziel in May 1990, Smyth claims that Oziel raped her on Feb. 6, 1990. Three weeks after the alleged attack, Smyth went to the police about the tapes.
Lyle was arrested at the Elm Drive house on March 8, 1990, just days after Smyth went to the police. Erik was at a tennis tournament in Israel at the time. He surrendered and was arrested at LAX just after landing back in the U.S.
The Trials
The nationally broadcast Menendez trial began on July 20, 1993. Only two of the four Oziel tapes were admissible in court because they had content that threatened Oziel, overriding the patient confidentiality rule.
Lyle was represented by Jill Lansing and Erik by Leslie Abramson. The brothers were tried together but with separate juries. The defense was not that they were not guilty of murder; it was about why they murdered their parents. It was here that the brothers discussed the many forms of alleged abuse, including sexual abuse, they both faced throughout childhood as the reason for the murders.
The trial resulted in a deadlocked jury; nobody could agree on sentencing. It was declared a mistrial: there had to be a new trial with a new jury. And in this subsequent trial in 1995, the judge did not allow the abuse defense. This trial was not televised.
The brothers were both sentenced to two consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole on July 2, 1996. On Sept. 10, 1996, they were placed in separate vans and driven to separate prisons despite begging to stay together. They wouldn’t see each other again until April 2018, when Erik was moved to Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility in San Diego, CA., where Lyle was already being held.
Resentencing?
Jose Menendez was a senior executive at RCA Records, the record label of the boy band Menudo. One of the former members, Roy Rosselló, spoke out in 2023, saying that Jose had sexually abused him when he was just 14.
Another bit of evidence uncovered was a letter from Erik to his cousin. Written in 1988, months before the murders, the letter says, “So now I’m stuck here alone I’ve been trying to avoid dad. Its still happening Andy but its worse for me now… Every night I stay up thinking he might come in.”
D.A. Gascón will ask the court to lift the brothers’ life sentences on Friday, Oct. 25. He is recommending a sentence of 50 years to life. Because the brothers were younger than 26 when they committed the crime, they would be eligible for parole immediately. They have a hearing scheduled for Nov. 26. The Menendez brothers could be free men by the end of the year.