Looking to understand the Menendez brothers’ case? Here are the key points Lyle and Erik were sentenced to life in prison 30 years ago for committing parricide in their Beverly Hills home, but a statement from a former member of Menudo and a letter written months before the crime could help lead to their freedom On a warm summer evening on August 20, 1989 in their Beverly Hills home , Lyle and Erik Menendez fatally shot their parents, Jose and Kitty Menendez. The sons were 21 and 18 years old. During their two high-profile trials, in 1993, they testified that their father had sexually abused them, beginning when they were just six years old.
Lyle, the eldest, said that he had told his mother what was happening, but that she replied that he was exaggerating, and that his father Jose loved them. At the end of the second trial in 1996, they were sentenced to life in prison. On Thursday, October 24, three decades after that ruling, Los Angeles County Attorney General George Gascón announced that he was recommending that the brothers receive a new sentence based on recently discovered evidence.
This means that the Menendez brothers could be going free, and soon. Lyle and Erik’s father Jose Menendez was an important music industry executive who immigrated to the United States from Cuba when he was 16 years old. He was the son of a sporting family: his mother was a swimming champion and his father, a soccer star, according to journalist Robert Rand in his new book on the case,.
