In 1989, Erik and Lyle Menendez murdered their parents, Kitty and Jose Menendez, in their Beverly Hills home. A year later, they were arrested for the murders.
In 1996, the Menendez brothers alleged in court that they killed their parents due to their father’s physical and sexual abuse towards them. That same year, a jury convicted them of first-degree murder and sentenced them to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Nearly 30 years later, in 2024, a judge resentenced the brothers to 50 years to life in prison, making them eligible for parole for the first time since their sentencing. And just a few weeks ago, both brothers had parole hearings that were later denied.
To understand why they were denied parole — and how they were even given the chance in the first place — we need to jump back to September 2024, when the second season of Monsters was released. This season of the popular Netflix anthology series, created by Ryan Murphy, focused on the Menendez brothers both before and after they murdered their parents. With the use of classic ‘80s and ‘90s songs, the talent Nicholas Alexander Chavez (who played Lyle) and Cooper Koch (who played Erik) brought to viewers’ screens, and problematic storytelling (many debated how truthful Murphy was when writing the show as some details were pure fiction created for TV drama), the show quickly blew up. In just its first week, the show amassed 19.5 million viewers globally.
Due to its immense popularity, Monsters helped revitalize efforts to get the brothers considered for parole. On popular social media apps such as TikTok and Instagram, users made hundreds of accounts to help push for the release of the brothers, as well as thousands of videos urging others to look over the facts of the case and why the brothers deserve freedom. The majority of people who defend the brothers say that, just as they alleged in court, Erik and Lyle acted out in self-defense after years of sexual abuse from their father.
It’s not just strangers online pleading with the justice system to reconsider their original sentencing — it’s the brothers’ own family. Relatives such as Terry Baralt, Erik and Lyle’s aunt, and Anamaria Baralt, their cousin, said that the brothers have made positive changes while in prison, adding that if a trial was done today, there would’ve been a different outcome.
This also highlights how society has evolved over the years: belief in male victims’ cases has increased. When Erik and Lyle’s first trial occurred in 1993, there were six female and six male jurors. Jurors said that there was a very competitive nature between the genders, with deliberations becoming a “battle of the sexes.”
One of those female jurors, Hazel Thornton, said, “I thought that the women were far more logical than the men were. They just weren’t buying it that a man could be sexually abusing his teenage sons.” Thornton went on to say that child abuse was a subject that was scarcely discussed, let alone something society was able to fully comprehend and understand. This can show how difficult it was for the Menendez brothers, even through their tearful recollections of describing their father’s abuse while on the witness stand, to been seen as nothing more than an act to the jurors.
Despite the efforts of people online, the brothers’ family, and even past jurors, both Erik and Lyle were still denied parole in separate hearings. Parole commissioner Robert Barton said that Erik Menendez was not denied parole because of his actual crime, but rather his actions in prison. While behind bars, Erik has allegedly been involved in fights, drug use, and a tax-fraud scam linked to a gang. Moreover, Erik was found to have banned objects inside his cell, such as art materials and ingredients to make wine.
As for Lyle, the parole commissioner who oversaw his case said that, despite the remorse Lyle displayed for his actions and the positive changes he made while in prison, he allegedly still struggles with “anti-social personality traits like deception, minimization, and rule breaking that lie beneath that positive surface.”
While the debate over releasing Erik from prison may be more controversial, it seems that there has been some internal bias against Lyle by his parole board. How is it fair to acknowledge that he has shown growth while in jail, but that he expresses too many anti-social personality traits to be allowed freedom?
When I first heard about the brothers being denied parole, I quickly thought of Gypsy Rose Blanchard. Gypsy Rose, if you’re unfamiliar, was charged with second-degree murder of her mother after her mother had mentally, physically, and medically abused her for most of her life.
While not exactly the same, the two cases are comparable. They both involved children killing their parents who had abused them for a long duration of their lives. Unlike the two brothers, Gypsy Rose was allowed parole in 2023 after serving eight years of her 10-year sentence.
The fact that Gypsy Rose was allowed parole makes me think that, no matter how much change or progress the brothers might show, it might be all for nothing. If the brothers had been born women, would that be all it would’ve taken for the original jury to believe them? For the abuse they faced not to have gone unnoticed or ignored by family members if they were young girls? If, perhaps, their father would’ve never had the sick desire to lay a hand on them if they had been born with an extra X chromosome instead of an XY one?
I’m not the only one asking this question. Thirty years ago, the brothers’ lawyer Leslie Abramson stood before a jury, judge, and courtroom, and said, “Would you feel any differently about what happened to my client if my client’s name was Erika Menendez? Would it make any difference to you? If he was a girl who was statistically sexually molested by her father? Because if it would, it shouldn’t. Because men are human and boys are human, and men and women suffer and boys and girls suffer, and it is no different.”
Unfortunately, her words did nothing to change the jury’s minds. Even now, with all that we have learned about child abuse and the effect it leaves on young, impressionable adolescents, these new findings did not help a parole board believe both Erik and Lyle Menendez were worthy of a second chance at life.
