After two trials and three decades in prison, freedom appears in reach for Erik and Lyle Menendez as the district attorney weighs resentencing.
Nearly two dozen Menendez family members are holding a press conference Wednesday afternoon outside the Clara Shortridge Foltz Criminal Justice Center in downtown Los Angeles. They will be joined by celebrity advocate Rosie O’Donnell, as well as Erik and Lyle’s defense attorney Mark Geragos. It’s unclear if L.A. County District Attorney George Gascón will be in attendance, who announced on Oct. 3 that his office was reviewing the convictions amid “new evidence” that prompted a review of the case. Geragos told NBC Los Angeles they are “cautiously optimistic” about the outcome.
In 1996, Erik and Lyle were convicted of brutally murdering their parents, Jose and Kitty Menendez. They maintained it was self-defense after years of being sexually, physically and emotionally abused. The brothers did not deny killing their parents.
The Menendez case has long been a pop-culture fixation, but in September, it captivated a wider audience thanks to Ryan Murphy’s Netflix series Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story. Kim Kardashian only fueled public interest by demanding the brothers be freed in an Oct. 3 essay. Netflix’s true-crime documentary The Menendez Brothers, which features interviews with Erik and Lyle, was released on Oct. 7. Both Netflix projects have topped the charts.
“We’re in a perfect storm to revisit the Menendez case,” Scott Huver, author of Beverly Hills Noir: Crime, Sin & Scandal in 90210, told Yahoo Entertainment.
Here’s why: The Menendez case hits a pop-culture trifecta.
Huver, who began his career as a Beverly Hills crime reporter and is now a veteran entertainment journalist, points to ’90s nostalgia, social media and the Murphy-Kardashian one-two punch for renewed interest in the case.
“The trials were a big part of people’s experience growing up in the ’90s,” he says, noting the launch of cable television channels like Court TV (1991) and syndicated tabloid shows (1989’s Inside Edition) for fueling the case’s constant coverage. “In the ’90s, we were a tabloid nation. [The case] was all over the place — on Saturday Night Live being spoofed, Tonight Show monologues.”
Huver said the coverage “set the table for this true-crime culture that we live in today.”
“It was such a juicy case with these two seemingly pampered and privileged brothers committing the most horrible crime that people imagine — killing your parents — and in Beverly Hills, which added rocket fuel to the story. That was in the heyday of Beverly Hills’s rise as a glamour capital,” he explained.
Erik and Lyle’s first trial in 1994 resulted in two deadlocked juries, one for each brother, as jurors couldn’t agree on manslaughter or murder charges. Female jurors believed the self-defense argument and wanted the lesser charge of manslaughter, while male jurors did not. A mistrial was declared. The brothers were retried, convicted on first-degree murder charges and sentenced to life in prison. Certain testimony regarding the alleged abuse was not allowed in the retrial.
“There’s been this big interest in the case on social media and in TikTok culture,” Huver, who covered the second trial, said. “The younger generation is much more socially aware than perhaps previous generations and definitely more forgiving when they see mitigating factors like potential sexual abuse.”
A new generation was introduced to the Menendez case when Court TV re-aired episodes of the first trial during the pandemic. A movement was launched on TikTok and other social media platforms calling for the release of Erik and Lyle. Then came Murphy with a Kardashian assist.
Murphy set “the gold standard” for scripted true-crime shows after 2016’s The People v. O. J. Simpson: American Crime Story, so his projects will always lure an audience, Huver explains. Then you’ve got Kardashian, superstar and daughter of famed Simpson attorney Robert Kardashian, whose passion for prison reform led her to visit the Menendez brothers in prison in September. Kardashian starred in Murphy’s American Horror Story: Delicate and they are reuniting for a new legal drama.
“This is a sensation,” Huver said. “I was just at the [Menendez] house two days ago and the entire time I was there, it was a nonstop stream of people coming to video the house, all people probably under the age of 30 doing their TikToks or just wanting to see it. I think that got boosted by Kim Kardashian’s interest in the case.”
Huver thinks the release of Monsters came at the perfect moment to ignite “things that had been brewing on social media for [years].”
In September, Kardashian visited the correctional facility Erik and Lyle are held, where she talked about prison reform. Nearly two later, she penned an essay for NBC News in which she declared “they are not monsters.”
“They are kind, intelligent and honest men. In prison, they both have exemplary disciplinary records. They have earned multiple college degrees, worked as caregivers for elderly incarcerated individuals in hospice, and been mentors in college programs — committed to giving back to others,” she wrote. “Twenty-four family members, including their parents’ siblings, have released statements fully supporting Lyle and Erik and have respectfully requested that the justice system free them.”
Kardashian asked for their life sentences to be “reconsidered.”
Murphy told the Hollywood Reporter the Menendez brothers “should be sending me flowers” over the “an outpouring of interest” in their lives. The Menendez family slammed some of the content in Murphy’s show, something the series creator scoffed at.
“They haven’t had so much attention in 30 years. And it’s gotten the attention of not only this country, but all over the world,” Murphy said. “There’s sort of an outpouring of interest in their lives and in the case. I know for a fact that many people have offered to help them because of the interest of my show and what we did.”
Of the series, Murphy added, “There is no world that we live in where the Menendez brothers or their wives or lawyers would say, ‘You know what, that was a wonderful, accurate depiction of our clients.’ That was never going to happen, and I wasn’t interested in that happening.”
