While supporters and relatives of Eric and Lyle Menendez have voiced their outrage and the possibility of their release, current and former prosecutors who tried the brothers in the 1990s told NBC News: He said he believes they are cold-blooded killers and should stay put. — behind the bar.
In an exclusive interview, one of the prosecutors questioned new potential evidence the brothers presented in court to challenge the conviction.
“They killed their parents. They brutally murdered their mother,” Pamela Bozanich, the former Los Angeles County deputy district attorney who prosecuted the brothers in their first trial, told “Dateline.” “Why do they have to live among us?”
For more on this case, watch “The Menendez Brothers: Chance at Freedom,” airing tonight on “Dateline” at 9 pm ET/8 pm CT.
The brothers have spent more than 30 years in prison, sentenced to life in prison without parole for the 1989 shotgun murders of their parents, Jose and Kitty Menendez. But last month, Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón (who was voted out of office this week) told the judge he supported sentencing the men to 50 years to life, which would make them immediately eligible for parole. He said it is possible.
Gascón told reporters that Eric and Lyle Menendez no longer pose a threat to public safety and have repaid their debt to society.
The announcement was praised by those who pointed to the horrific abuse the brothers endured for years at the hands of their father, a wealthy entertainment executive. Their supporters argued that it was time for them to be free.
For Bozanic and another prosecutor involved in the second trial, things are not so simple. Bozanic, who does not believe Jose Menendez abused his brothers, said even if their testimony was accepted as true, they would still be convicted of shooting their parents in cold blood. Ta.
She said Lyle reloaded the gun and shot her mother in the face at close range.
The Menendez brothers, Eric, left, and Lyle at their home in Beverly Hills, November 1989 (Ronald L. Soble/Los Angeles Times, with files from Getty Images)
Juan Mejia, now a chief deputy in the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office, raised other concerns. He has questions about possible new evidence in the case — a letter Eric said he wrote decades ago to his cousin about the alleged abuse — which one of his lawyers said will challenge the conviction. It is said that this is the “main point” of recent efforts to advocate the . .
Mejia has not previously spoken on the matter, saying his views are his own and do not represent the district attorney’s office.
Mr. Mejia served as a young deputy district attorney during the brothers’ second murder trial, then led the unit that reviewed potential evidence, including a letter to a cousin submitted in May 2023. He said the brothers have a history of fabrications, including Lyle’s alleged attempts to get people to lie for the defense at trial, as Gascón explained. He was concerned that his brothers had not changed.
“Are they trying to shoot faster on the court?” Mejia said.
The brothers’ lawyers declined interview requests and did not respond to emailed requests for comment.
The prosecutors plan to submit the petition later this month and will consider the contents of the petition.
Gascón told Dateline that he was aware of the opposition within his office over the decision to uphold re-sentencing and would allow other prosecutors to argue their positions against continued incarceration in court. That’s what he said. There is no doubt that the murder was brutal and premeditated, and he said he struggled with his decision.
But Gascón said he believed the brothers’ accounts of abuse. He said they had been in prison for about 35 years and were “always exceptional prisoners.”
The brothers’ counterclaim hearing is scheduled for Dec. 11, one week after the county’s new top prosecutor is sworn in. A judge will decide whether Gascón’s recommendation is appropriate.
Incoming Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman said he will consider the facts, evidence and law before making a decision on the case. People close to Mr. Hochman said Friday there is “a good chance” that Mr. Hochman will seek a postponement of the retrial to review the facts and evidence in the case.
extravagant spending, finger pointing
On the night of August 20, 1989, Lyle, then 21 years old, called 911 and frantically reported that someone had murdered his parents. The couple were shot to death in the study of their Beverly Hills home.
Les Zoller, a former Beverly Hills detective who investigated the case, said the brothers initially told authorities that their father’s “shady” business contacts may have been involved in the killings. They named one of the founders of their father’s company, which used to be a porn distributor, Zueller told Dateline. But authorities investigated the information and found nothing.
After the death of her parents, Ms. Zoeller became increasingly suspicious of her brother’s extravagant spending. They bought a Rolex watch, a house, a Jeep and a Porsche, according to the appeals decision in the case. Detectives also learned that the brothers had been looking for their father’s will after their father had threatened to disinherit them after their parents’ deaths.
Investigators eventually learned that Eric had told a therapist that he and his brother had killed their parents, Zeller said. The brothers were arrested the following March and charged with first-degree murder.
allegations of abuse
When the televised trial began in 1993, the brothers testified and admitted to killing their parents, but said they did so after Lyle confronted their father about sexual abuse allegations and threatened to expose them. insisted.
Lyle testified that she was sexually abused until she was 8 years old, and Eric said the abuse continued at the time of her murder.
Ted Soqui/Sygma via Getty Images From left to right. Eric Menendez with attorneys Leslie Abramson and Lyle Menendez on March 9, 1994 in Los Angeles, California.
After the confrontation, Lyle testified, the father appeared to threaten them. A few days later, believing they were in immediate danger, the brothers burst through the door with a shotgun they had bought in San Diego and opened fire, Lyle testified.
Bozanic believed the abuse allegations were false. In therapy sessions, the brothers revealed that they had killed their parents, but never said it was because of abuse, Zueller said. And while some of the brothers’ relatives testified years ago that Eric and Lyle suggested their father was abusive, Bozanic said another relative told prosecutors the brothers’ claims were fabricated. He said he testified that he believed that.
“She confronted Lyle about it,” Bozanich said of the relative. “He told her, ‘That’s what’s going to happen.'”
AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill Deputy District Attorney Pamela Bozanich discusses evidence with mental health expert Ann Wolbert Burgess during the Menendez murder trial at Van Nuys Superior Court in Los Angeles, October 20, 1993. . Eric and Lyle Menendez were charged with murdering their parents in 1989.
Bozanic claimed that the motive for the killings was money, and that the brothers may have been disinherited from their family’s multimillion-dollar fortune. While interrogating Lyle, she also pointed out the cold-blooded nature of Kitty’s murder.
Lyle testified that after the brothers opened fire, they ran out of ammunition. So he went to his car, reloaded his things, and when he returned to the den, he saw his mother moving toward his brother, he said. Bozanich said Lyle put the shotgun to his cheek and pulled the trigger.
Miscarriage of justice, then conviction
After a six-month trial, jurors unanimously decided whether the brothers killed their parents in self-defense, whether they should be found guilty of misdemeanor manslaughter, or premeditated murder. I couldn’t put it down. The judge declared a mistrial.
In 1995, the brothers faced a second trial. According to the appellate court’s decision, they argued at their first trial that the killing was an act of “incomplete self-defense,” but a recent state high court ruling disallowed that doctrine. . And Lyle did not testify.
Mejia said the situation arose after authorities intercepted a letter from Lyle that appeared to encourage people to lie in their defense. It is said that In one instance, he asked a girlfriend to falsely claim that Jose had sexually assaulted him, and in another he asked a friend to claim that he had provided the brothers with a gun to protect themselves, according to the appellate ruling. .
Eric and Lyle were convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison without parole.
Their legal story has returned to the public eye in recent months after the debut of a Netflix miniseries and documentary about their lives.
file a lawsuit for release
Gascón said in an interview with “Dateline” that the brothers were model inmates who helped severely disabled inmates and even took college classes. He said the men had set up a green space “beautification” project in the prison where they were housed, and there was no evidence they had been violent towards other prisoners.
Irrfan Khan/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images District Attorney George Gascon in Los Angeles on Tuesday, January 30, 2024.
Gascón said they were under 26 years old when they committed the crime. State and federal high court decisions have found that the parts of the brain responsible for controlling behavior don’t fully mature until a person’s mid-to-late 20s, and California’s law echoes this. The law states that, with a few exceptions, anyone who commits a crime before the age of 26 “must be afforded a meaningful opportunity for parole during their lifetime.”
Because the men are now over 50 and married, they are less likely to reoffend and are more likely to be able to safely re-enter society, Gascón said.
Gascón acknowledged that the brothers’ crimes were brutal and premeditated, but they were the subject of a review his office established three years ago to determine whether the inmates’ sentences were no longer appropriate. He said it was a “poster incident” for the department.
Gascon said more than 300 people have been sentenced under the program, but the recidivism rate is less than 1%. The decision to recommend revenge against the Menendez brothers was “a no-brainer,” he said.
letters emerge
Mejia agreed that the brothers likely met the criteria for recidivism. But he still opposes their release, he said.
Mejia said one of the issues was a letter included in the petition challenging the brothers’ convictions. The document is an undated copy of a handwritten letter that the brothers’ attorney, Mark Geragos, claimed supports allegations of abuse by their father.
According to statements in the filing, Eric Menendez said he sent a letter to his cousin Andy Cano in December 1988, several months before the murders.
Lyle and Eric and their parents, Kitty and Jose Menendez. (NBC)
“I have been trying to avoid my father,” the letter says. “Andy, it’s still going on, but it’s worse for me now.”
The document does not provide any details of the alleged abuse, but the author said she was terrified because her father had warned her 100 times not to tell anyone.
Mejia said that after the plea was filed, prosecutors with the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office repeatedly requested the original letter from the brothers’ attorneys. But the lawyers never produced the documents, and the cousin to whom they were addressed died in 2003, Mejia said. In his view, the reliability of this document is questionable.
“I don’t know if it was written before the murder or after the conviction,” Mejia said.
Like Bozanic, Mejia said he remains troubled by the “horror” of the murder and the way it was calculated. He added that perhaps the mother knew about the alleged abuse and did nothing, “but there is no justification for shooting her eight times with a shotgun and reloading it.”
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