New DA rejects resentencing Menendez brothers ’based on just reviewing a Netflix documentary’
The hit Netflix series about the brothers who murdered their parents ignores two key events that are poised to keep Lyle and Erik Menendez behind bars for the rest of their lives.
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Like most Hollywood productions “inspired by true events”, the prevailing narrative behind the Menendez brothers’ sudden return to the cultural zeitgeist – and their imminent release – glosses over the real story.
Within weeks of Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story releasing on Netflix, public interest in the iconic case soared, noted legal scholar Kim Kardashian called for their release, and the Los Angeles District Attorney promptly recommended they be “resentenced”.
What a Cinderella story. Out of nowhere, the pen proved mightier than the scales of justice, thanks to “basically a multimillion-dollar infomercial for the case to be re-examined”, as it was described by its creator Ryan Murphy.
“Which is now happening,” he toldThe Hollywood Reporter. “I think that there’s a lot of things that can be put into evidence that’s overwhelming. And you cannot underestimate the advocacy of Kim Kardashian.”
Never mind the family members of the slain victims outraged by the spectre of their release. The boys were so young … ish, if you squint, at the ages of 21 and 18. And they say – as they have always maintained – that their father was a sexual abuser. Who would touch the third rail of questioning whether or not they were, in fact, touched?
Case closed. Netflix’s blockbuster release on September 19 opened the floodgates to a re-examination of the Menendez brothers’ plight, amplified by a celebrity advocate. George Gascón, a district attorney with a heart of gold, was moved and their conviction is all but set to be resentenced, or even downgraded, on December 11. Home by Christmas.
But that made-for-TV dramatisation ignores two key events, precisely 17 months apart, that are poised to keep Messers Menendez and Menendez behind bars for the rest of their lives.
The first was on May 3, 2023, when lawyers for the Menendez brothers first filed a motion asking for their 1996 convictions to be vacated due to new evidence.
The second was on October 3, 2024, the day Mr Gascón suddenly announced their case would be reviewed. Earlier that morning, The Los Angeles Times dropped a seemingly unrelated front page story with the searing headline: Teen killer’s case haunts Gascón.
Shanice Amanda Dyer, a 17-year-old Crips gang member, had killed an expectant father and his close friend. Gascón’s strict policy of trying teens as juveniles rather than adults saw her receive a light sentence. After just four years in prison, she was released on probation only to murder again.
What a stroke of fortune for Mr Gascón, who had narrowly survived two recall attempts and was up for re-election within weeks. His bombshell announcement to review the Menendez case became immediate front-page news around the world – pushing the case of Ms Dyer out of the news cycle.
“That’s a year and a half after the motion was first filed in May 2023,” said former federal prosecutor Nathan Hochman.
“On the same day that comes out in the LA Times, he holds a press conference to announce that he’s thinking about the Menendez case,” Mr Hochman added. “He actually wasted the press’ time to tell you that he was thinking about a case that he had already had in the office for a year and a half.”
The allegation: The Menendez resentencing was less about the public interest and more about self-interest.
When Mr Hochman suggested that politics was behind Mr Gascón’s sudden push to release the Menendez brothers, he was merely an observer commenting from the sidelines. Now he’s the incoming District Attorney, after defeating Mr Gascón on the same backlash to soft-on-crime policies that swept Donald Trump to victory in the presidential election against Kamala Harris.
Mr Hochman will be sworn into office on December 2 and has vowed to overturn many of Mr Gascón’s decisions on day one, potentially including the resentencing of the Menendez brothers “based on just reviewing a Netflix documentary”. That, he said, was a “disservice” to the Menendez brothers, the victims’ family members, and the public.
“I’ve got to actually look at the thousands of pages of confidential prison files that I don’t have access to read, thousands of pages of transcripts from months-long trials,” he told Fox LA. “I’ve got to speak to the prosecutors, law enforcement, the defence victim, family members. And only then will I be in a position to determine if the current resentencing request is just.”
It’s a script-worthy twist few saw coming after two months of breathless media coverage anticipating the Menendez brothers’ all-but-ensured release. It wasn’t a matter of if, but when.
If Judge Michael Jesic agrees that the Menendez brothers’ original sentence of a lifetime without parole was too harsh, he can resentence them to Mr Gascón’s recommendation of 50 years with the possibility of parole.
Having served 35 years since the 1989 killings, they would be eligible for parole immediately but approvals would still have to go before the Board of Parole and be signed off by California Governor Gavin Newsom, a process that can take at least six and as many as 12 months.
That’s the reason for a push to have Mr Jesic instead recommend that their first-degree murder convictions be reduced to voluntary manslaughter due to “new evidence”. In that instance, they would walk immediately.
“We gave them their moment in the court of public opinion. Basically, we did give them a platform,” Mr Murphy added to Variety. “I think they can be out of prison by Christmas. I really believe that.”
Mr Murphy’s grandiose reflection of his work is just another in a series of historical rewrites that have left the Menendez brothers’ uncles, Milton and Brian Anderson, outraged that they may taste freedom.
The so-called “new evidence” isn’t even from Mr Murphy’s Monstersdramatisation, or the subsequent Netflix documentary,The Menendez Brothers, directed by Alejandro Hartmann, that was released just weeks later for maximum impact.
It was cribbed from a lesser-known documentary, Menendez + Menudo: Boys Betrayed, that was released in May 2023 and claimed to have new evidence showing father Jose Menendez was a sexual abuser.
The first was a letter, said to have been written in 1988 but “recently discovered”, from the younger Menendez, Erik, to a cousin that detailed the alleged abuse.
The second piece was a sworn declaration from Roy Rosselló, a former member of the Puerto Rican boy band Menudo, famous for its breakout star Ricky Martin. Mr Rosselló alleged he was also raped by Mr Menendez, who was a high-powered entertainment executive at RCA Records in the 1980s.
Milton Andersen, 90, filed a motion on October 23 seeking to block the resentencing, outlining the motive for the murder of his sister, Kitty Menendez, as decided by the courts in the mid-1990s. The so-called new evidence, the motion said, wasn’t new and the Menendez brothers were “fabricating a fraud” on the court.
The family’s assets were worth $USD10 million (in 1989 dollars), the brothers each received $325,000 in life insurance, and they told a therapist that they hated their father for cutting them out of his will, and they killed their mother out of “mercy”, the motion said.
“The reason that his nephews murdered Kitty and her husband was because of greed,” said Kathy Cady, Mr Andersen’s lawyer
“Without notifying Mr Andersen of his decision, Mr Gascón announced in a press release just days before a crucial election,” she added.
In the end, that election – not Netflix or Ms Kardashian – could be the deciding factor as to whether the Menendez brothers’ sentence is reinforced rather than reduced.
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Originally published as New DA rejects resentencing Menendez brothers ’based on just reviewing a Netflix documentary’