One day after a state parole board panel rejected his younger brother’s bid to be freed from prison, a separate panel denied parole for Lyle Menendez, who has served nearly 35 years behind bars for the 1989 shotgun slayings of their parents in their Beverly Hills mansion.
After a daylong hearing Friday that stretched into the evening hours and included Lyle Menendez saying that he “will be forever sorry,” Parole Commissioner Julie Garland said the panel found that there are still signs that he poses a risk to the public.
“We find your remorse is genuine. In many ways, you look like you’ve been a model inmate. You have been a model inmate in many ways who has demonstrated the potential for change,” Garland told 57-year-old Lyle Menendez.
“But despite all those outward positives, we see … you still struggle with anti-social personality traits like deception, minimization and rule breaking that lie beneath that positive surface.”
She urged Lyle Menendez not to give up hope, saying that the denial of parole for three years is “not the end” and is “a way for you to spend some time to demonstrate, to practice what you preach about who you are, who you want to be.”
“Don’t be somebody different behind closed doors,” Garland told him, noting that he ultimately needs to be the person he shows he is in running programs for fellow inmates.
Garland added that he would be considered for an administrative review within a year, and that a hearing could be moved up to as soon as 18 months.
Another parole board panel had also denied parole for Erik Menendez, 54, for three years after a nearly 10-hour hearing Thursday, with Parole Commissioner Robert Barton telling him that the panel found that he continued “to pose an unreasonable risk to public safety.”
The two brothers were initially sentenced to life without the possibility of parole for the Aug. 20, 1989, shotgun killings of Jose and Mary Louise “Kitty” Menendez. The Menendez brothers claim the killings were committed after years of abuse, including alleged sexual abuse by their father.
In May, the two were re-sentenced to 50 years to life, automatically making them eligible for parole consideration because they were younger than 26 when the crime occurred. Both are imprisoned at Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility in San Diego — the same prison where his brother is housed.
In his closing statement to the parole board panel, an openly emotional Lyle Menendez said he takes “responsibility for all this pain.”
“My mom and dad did not have to die that day,” he said, adding that his decision to use violence that day was solely his and not his “baby brother’s” responsibility.
“I am profoundly sorry for who I was … for the harm that everyone has endured,” he said. “I will never be able to make up for the harm and grief I caused everyone in my family.”:
“I am so sorry to everyone, and I will be forever sorry,” Lyle Menendez added in his final remarks to the parole board panel.
He noted that family members were still “showing up for me, disrupting their lives, dealing with public scrutiny … and I will never deserve it.”
He had earlier told the parole board panel that he was sexually abused as a child by both of his parents, but said there was “zero planning” for the murders.
“I no longer believe that they were going to kill us, in that moment, today. At the time, I had that honest belief,” Lyle Menendez told the panel.
Ethan Milius from the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office questioned whether Lyle Menendez has “genuinely” taken accountability for what he did, and cited his alleged inability to “follow basic rules while in a structured setting.”
“… When you look at him, Lyle has a long documented history of lies made to avoid the consequences of his own actions,” Milius told the parole board panel. “When he commits a violation, he lies about it and tries to avoid responsibility.”
Lyle Menendez’s parole attorney, Heidi Rummel, countered that the District Attorney’s Office is clinging to its “1990s theory of the case,” and said she hopes “that we’re in a place today that we have a deeper understanding of childhood sexual abuse.”
“This crime arose from trauma, from unresolved trauma, from fear, from sadistic abuse, and from cruelty. Mr. Milius wants this to be some sort of pre-planned crime,” Rummel argued, expressing frustration at one point that testimony during the hearing largely ignored the work he has done behind bars.
The brothers’ relatives expressed support for Lyle Menendez, with his cousin, Anamaria Baralt, telling the parole board panel, “Lyle has not been a violent person in his entire life. He is not a violent person today. In 54 years, I have not heard Lyle raise his voice, not once.”
Baralt — who has been an outspoken advocate for the brothers — told the parole board commissioners that she was “begging” them to “make this torture end — this 36-year nightmare. Let us put it behind us.”
The hearing hit a road block when Lyle Menendez’s attorney complained that audio from his brother’s parole hearing Thursday was released to ABC, with Garland saying that the plan was to release it as a result of Public Records Act requests.
His attorney called it “highly unusual” and said it was “another attempt to make this a public spectacle,” and asked for the hearing to be adjourned, complaining that “we now have family members who are not going to speak.”
When the hearing resumed, Garland noted that audio from Lyle Menendez’s hearing won’t be released until his attorney has the opportunity to file an objection or motion in court to contest the release of the audio.
Lyle Menendez’s elderly aunt, Teresita Baralt, said through tears that she wanted her nephew “to hear how much I love him and believe in him,” but added that she was not comfortable reading her pre-written statement in light of the dispute over the audio of the hearing being released.
In a statement released shortly after the parole board’s decision on Lyle Menendez’s parole bid, the brothers’ family said, “”While we are of course disappointed by today’s decision as well, we are not discouraged. The process for parole is exceptionally rigorous, but we are incredibly proud of how Erik and Lyle showed up — with honesty, accountability and integrity.”
“This is not the end of the road. Both will go before the board again and their habeas petition remains under review,” family members said in the statement.
“In the meantime, we know they will take time to reflect on the board’s recommendations and will continue to lead, mentor and build programs that support rehabilitation and hope for others. We know they are good men who have done the work to rehabilitate and are remorseful. We love them unconditionally and will continue to stand by them on the journey ahead,” the family added in the statement.
The District Attorney’s Office recently filed paperwork opposing the request by the brothers that they be granted a new trial. The request was made in a 2023 writ of habeas corpus filed by their attorneys.
In that 2023 petition, attorneys for the brothers pointed to two new pieces of evidence they contend corroborate the brothers’ allegations of long-term sexual abuse at the hands of their father — a letter allegedly written by Erik Menendez to his cousin Andy Cano in early 1989 or late 1988, and recent allegations by Roy Rosselló, a former member of the boy band Menudo, that he too was sexually abused by Jose Menendez as a teenager.
Attorneys Mark Geragos and Cliff Gardner, representing the brothers, wrote that the new evidence “not only shows that Jose Menendez was very much a violent and brutal man who would sexually abuse children, but it strongly suggests that — in fact — he was still abusing Erik Menendez as late as December 1988 — just as the defense had argued all along.”
The attorneys added that “newly discovered evidence directly supports the defense presented at trial and just as directly undercuts the state’s case.”
In the prosecution’s response, Deputy District Attorney Seth Carmack wrote, “There are few murder cases in which the evidence of planning and premeditation is as stark as that presented in this case. Petitioners confessed on tape to murdering their parents, revealing the extent of their forethought and deliberation.”
Carmack cited a “pattern of deliberate deceit,” in which the two “conspired and planned to kill their parents by, among other things, driving over 120 miles to San Diego to purchase shotguns and ammunition using false identification and a false address” and setting up a “pre-planned alibi” hours before they killed their parents.
The prosecutor added, “While sexual abuse is abhorrent and may be a motive for murder, it does not justify murder and does not negate overwhelming evidence of planning, deliberation and premeditation.”
The brothers’ first trial ended with jurors unable to reach verdicts, deadlocking between first-degree murder and lesser charges including manslaughter. The second trial, which began in October 1995 and lacked much of the testimony centered on allegations of sexual abuse by Jose Menendez, ended with both brothers being convicted of first-degree murder and conspiracy.
Attorneys for the brothers have also asked Gov. Gavin Newsom to grant them clemency.