Aunts of the Menendez brothers urge court to release them

Los Angeles: Aunts of Erik and Lyle Menendez have testified in court on their behalf as the brothers seek to have their convictions re-examined in the shotgun murders of their parents in their Beverly Hills home more than 30 years ago.

The brothers were scheduled to be seen for the first time in decades at the hearing in Los Angeles overnight, but technical problems prevented them from appearing virtually from a San Diego prison. They were found guilty of the 1989 murders of Jose and Kitty Menendez and sentenced to life in prison without parole.

The aunts of Lyle and Erik Menendez, Teresita Baralt (centre) and Joan Andersen VanderMolen (right) with lawyer Mark Geragos, after Monday’s court hearing in Los Angeles.Credit: AP

While their defence attorneys argued at trial that they had been sexually abused by their father, prosecutors denied that and accused them of killing their parents for money. In the years that followed, they repeatedly appealed their convictions without success.

Now, at 53 and 56, Erik and Lyle Menendez are making a new bid for freedom. Their lawyers filed a habeas corpus petition – a request for a court to examine whether someone is being lawfully detained – in May 2023, asking a judge to consider new evidence of their father’s sexual abuse. The brothers are being held at the Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility in San Diego.

Joan Andersen VanderMolen, Kitty Menendez’s sister, and Teresita Baralt, Jose’s older sister, on Monday asked for their release, saying 35 years was a long time for the brothers after suffering abuse.

“We miss those who are gone tremendously,” Baralt said in tears after taking the stand. “But we miss the kids too.”

The hearing ended after less than an hour. Superior Court Judge Michael Jesic said he needed time to review the documents and give a new district attorney in Los Angeles County time to weigh in on the case.

The recent releases of the Netflix drama Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story and the documentary The Menendez Brothers brought renewed attention to their plight.

Rose Castillo, a 28-year-old true-crime enthusiast, arrived from Miami five minutes too late to enter the lottery and win one of the few seats offered to the public to attend the hearing but glimpsed the brothers’ family members before they entered the courthouse.

“That was crazy,” Castillo said.

A courthouse bailiff told people to stop taking pictures of the relatives as they waited in the hallway for the hearing to start along with media and spectators.

Cooper Koch as Erik Menendez (left) and Nicholas Chavez as Lyle Menendez in a scene from the Netflix drama.Credit: AP

Prosecutors recommended resentencing for the brothers last month, saying they have worked on redemption and rehabilitation and demonstrated good behaviour inside prison.

Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascón held a news conference in October, asking for new sentences of 50 years to life. This could make the brothers immediately eligible for parole because they were less than 26 years old when they killed their parents.

The brothers’ extended family has said they deserve to be free after decades behind bars. Several family members have said that in today’s world – which is more aware of the impact of sexual abuse – the brothers would not have been convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life.

Not all Menendez family members support resentencing. Attorneys for Milton Andersen, the 90-year-old brother of Kitty Menendez, filed a legal brief asking the court to keep the brothers’ original punishment. “They shot their mother, Kitty, reloading to ensure her death,” Andersen’s attorneys said in a statement on Thursday. “The evidence remains overwhelmingly clear: the jury’s verdict was just, and the punishment fits the heinous crime.”

Jesic is scheduled to consider the resentencing request on January 30.

On Monday, he said he had 17 boxes of documents, including abuse evidence raised in the habeas petition.

The new evidence includes a letter Erik Menendez wrote in 1988 to his uncle, Andy Cano, describing the sexual abuse he had endured from his father.

The brothers asked their lawyers about it after it was mentioned in a 2015 Barbara Walters television special. The lawyers hadn’t known of the letter and realised it hadn’t been introduced at their trials, making it effectively new evidence that they say corroborates allegations that Erik was sexually abused by his father.

More new evidence emerged when Roy Rossello, a former member of the Latin pop group Menudo, recently came forward saying he had been drugged and raped by Jose Menendez, the boys’ father when he was a teen in the 1980s. Menudo was signed under RCA Records, where Jose Menendez was chief operating officer.

Rossello spoke about his abuse in the Peacock docuseries Menendez + Menudo: Boys Betrayed, and provided a signed declaration to the brothers’ lawyers.

Lyle, left, and Erik Menendez sit with defence attorney Leslie Abramson during a hearing, on November 26, 1990.Credit: AP Photo/Nick Ut

Had these two pieces of evidence been available during the trial, prosecutors would not have been able to argue there was no corroboration of sexual abuse or that their father was not the “kind of man that would” abuse children, the petition argues.

AP