Erik Menendez, the younger of the two Beverly Hills brothers who infamously gunned down their parents in 1989 after years of alleged sexual abuse, was denied parole at a highly anticipated hearing Thursday.
The decision dashed many supporters’ hopes that Erik, 54, might be home with his family in time for the holidays. It also dampened expectations ahead of the separate parole board hearing for Erik’s older brother and co-defendant, Lyle Menendez, 57, set for Friday.
Testifying remotely from his prison in San Diego, Erik said he deeply regretted murdering his parents, José and Kitty Menendez, in the den of their $4 million Mediterranean-style mansion 36 years ago. He recalled believing his own life was in danger, but he admitted the shooting was not in self-defense.
“Dad was going to come to my room and rape me that night. That was going to happen. One way or another. If he was alive, that was going to happen,” Erik told the parole board Thursday. Asked why he fatally shot his mother as well, Erik said he was blinded by the belief she supported José unconditionally. “On that night, I saw them as one person. Had she not been in the room, maybe it would have been different,” he said.
“I wish to God I did not do that,” he told the board. “I cannot express sorrow and remorse enough. Doing it for the rest of my life will not be enough.”
Turning emotional at times, he noted that yesterday was another anniversary of the Aug. 20, 1989, murders. “Today is Aug. 21st. Today is the day that all of my [relatives] learned my parents were dead. So today is the anniversary of their trauma journey,” he told the panel. “I just want my family to understand that I am so unimaginably sorry for what I have put them through.”
Deputy District Attorney Habib Balian told the parole board that while it’s true Erik has earned a degree from UCLA while incarcerated and started programs to help other inmates, it’s not clear he understands “the full severity and depravity of his conduct.” He questioned whether Erik’s behavior is “calculated.”
“When what you’ve done is shotgun your parents to death, deleted any competing wills, taken their money, spent their money, you’re a violent person,” Balian argued. “When one continues to diminish their responsibility for a crime and continues to make the same false excuses that they’ve made for 30-plus years, one is still that same dangerous person that they were when they shotgunned their parents.”
Thursday’s denial is not the end of the road for Erik’s bid to be released. He will get another shot in the coming years, with the exact timing dependent on several factors. Both brothers also have a motion for a new trial still pending in the courts. A separate clemency bid is also on the desk of California Gov. Gavin Newsom. Even so, the parole board process is widely considered the brothers’ most likely path to freedom.
In a July episode of his podcast, This is Gavin Newsom, the governor said he planned to make any decision in front of him regarding the brothers’ fate by Labor Day. He told his guest, Ryan Murphy, creator of the Netflix series Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story, that he refrained from watching the show because he didn’t want to be “persuaded” by anything “not in the files.” He did not hint which way he might rule.
The brothers won the right to parole last May when a Los Angeles County judge resentenced them to 50 years to life for their first-degree murder convictions. (They previously were sentenced to life without parole.) Because both brothers were younger than 26 at the time of the murders, the reduced sentences made them immediately eligible for parole under California’s youthful offender law.
No ‘moral foundation’
At Thursday’s hearing, Parole Commissioner Robert Barton started by asking Erik about the two residential burglaries he committed before the murders. Erik said he was trying to impress older kids. He also claimed his parents failed to instill in him a strong “moral foundation.”
“I was raised to lie, to cheat, to steal,” he said. “When I was playing tennis, my father would make sure that I cheated at certain times if he told me to.” Erik admitted he was impulsive and “entitled” as a teenager.
“I would violate the rules if I believed that it would benefit me. I did not trust authority. I didn’t trust my relatives. I lived in an isolated household. We were trained not to go outside the household. I had deep character failings,” he told the board. Erik said the second burglary was a way of “sticking it” to his dad because it could hurt José’s reputation.
“But you murdered him because you thought there was something he was going to do to you?” Barton asked. Erik replied yes. He said the murders were a little over a year after the second burglary.
Recounting the 1989 Sunday-night slayings, Erik said that on the Tuesday before, he confided in Lyle that the “sexual violence was still going on.” Two days later, they first discussed buying guns after Lyle had a “very bad” confrontation with their dad, he said.
“When we talked about getting the guns, I had made the decision that I was never going to let Dad come in my room and do that again,” Erik said. “In my mind, leaving meant death. There was no consideration. I was totally convinced there was no place I could go.”
Erik admitted he “fantasized” about his father “not being alive.” But he said “pulling the trigger” was not premeditated, adding that his dad “was the most terrifying human being” he knew.
“Is there any part of this which you believe was self-defense?” Barton asked. Erik said no.
“My purpose in getting the guns was to protect myself in case my father or my mother came at me to kill me. Or my father came in the room to rape me. That is why I bought the guns,” he said. He recalled feeling his life was in “extreme danger immediately” after he and Lyle confronted their parents over the alleged sexual abuse.
Asked who acted first “in terms of the violence,” Erik said Lyle came to the top of the stairs once their father ordered Erik to his room. “It’s happening now,” Lyle purportedly told him, he said. “All I knew as I had to get to that den. Fear was driving me to that den,” he said.
Erik recalled grabbing his gun and taking it out to his car to load it. Barton asked if he recognizes now that he had “other choices at that point.”
“When I look back at the person I was then, and what I believed about the world and my parents, running away was inconceivable. Running away meant death,” Erik said. He claimed his father “had trained me to believe that running away meant death.”
“Why kill Mom?” Barton asked. Erik said that when his mother told him she knew about the alleged abuse, he was stunned. “It was the most devastating moment in my entire life. It changed everything for me. I had been protecting her by not telling her,” he said. Erik said his mom told him she considered José a “great man” and would never leave him.
“I saw my mother and my father as one person after I learned that she knew, so when I was running into the den, I was in a state of terror, of panic, of rage,” he said. “I didn’t parse out in my mind my mother or my father. I ran in because fear was compelling me to run to the den.”
Erik said he did his best to testify truthfully after he confessed. “I testified about the reloading, which I did not have to,” he said, referring to the fact that his brother reloaded his weapon during the shooting. “There was no evidence.”
Conduct in custody
Asked about his rule violations behind bars, Erik identified his risk areas as “criminal thinking, substance abuse, violence, anger, impulsivity, cell phone use.” Barton said the conduct in custody was important because it was an important indicator of his risk to public safety.
Barton said Erik got in trouble for writing letters on a work device in 1997, physical fights with other inmates, and for having contraband, including cell phones, art supplies, tobacco and alcohol. He also engaged in excessive physical contact with visitors, according to his prison files. One incident involved a visit from his current wife in 2006. The woman’s 9-year-old daughter was in the room. He said the girl was across the room reading a book while he and his wife were “snuggling.”
“I was pushing the line occasionally in the visiting room with my wife because I was attracted to her and we had sexual feelings for one another,” he said. “It’s difficult to be next to a woman that I love and am attracted to and want to be with and I can only hold her hand. It was a lapse in judgment. This was not something I did every day.”
Erik said he tried heroin in custody but didn’t like it. The hearing then touched on a sensitive topic with his brother.
Barton accused Erik of covering up an aspect of his relationship with his brother when he requested a transfer to Lyle’s prison. Erik told staff he and Lyle never had any problems. Barton said that was a “lie.”
At that point, Erik said the allegation Lyle was “molesting [me] as a kid” was something he withheld from corrections department staff. He said he simply wanted to be closer to family. Erik’s lawyer for the hearing, Heidi Rummel, said her client wasn’t required to tell CDCR about every detail of his relationship with his brother.
Erik admitted he participated in a tax fraud scheme in 2013 but said he did it for self-preservation after his closest prison friends had been stabbed and raped. While details of the scheme were not explained, Erik said a violent prison gang recruited him to fill out the forms, and he jumped at the chance to “align myself with them” and “survive.”
He said the risk of getting caught with phones was outweighed by the “connection with the outside world” they afforded. He claimed his thinking changed last year when, for the first time, he was given a shot at possible resentencing and parole. “Now the consequences mattered. Now the consequences meant I was destroying my life,” he said. Erik said he was using the phones for “connection with my wife, watching YouTube, listening to music, watching movies, porn. Anything you could do on a phone, I did.”
But Erik said that after a turning point in 2013, he decided his purpose was to be a “good person” and leave a legacy. “I did not like who I was in 2013. I did not like using drugs. I did not like helping the [gang],” he said. “It just made me feel ugly and dirty.”
Unfortunately, he said, he became “addicted” to the phones and convinced himself they weren’t harming anyone. He now understands they’re destructive to the prison environment because they involve the corruption of prison staff and involve “taxing” the benefit prison gangs, he said.
“I justified it by saying if I don’t buy it, someone else is going to buy it,” he said. “The phones were going to be sold, and I longed for that connection.” Asked if Lyle was the one who introduced him to cell phone use, he said no. He claimed Lyle has been a good influence, saying they’re “serious accountability partners.”
Resentencing in May
At their resentencing hearing, both brothers expressed regret for the double slaying of their parents. Appearing by video, Erik called his actions “selfish, cruel, and cowardly.” He admitted he concocted an alibi about having been at a movie theater and did everything he could “to get away with my crimes.” He apologized to his family members for having “stolen” José and Kitty and said he planned to spend the rest of his life helping others.
“I make no excuses and offer no justification,” Lyle said in his separate statement. “I take full responsibility for my choices. The choice to confront my dad about the abuse. The choice to keep the family secret instead of asking for help. The choice to stay instead of leave. The choice to buy guns and ammunition. The choice to point a gun at my mom and dad and shoot them. The choice to reload … and run up to my mom on the floor and shoot her again.”
Lyle said he regretted his choice, after his arrest, “to make a mockery of the criminal justice system by soliciting perjury.” It was a notable admission considering prosecutors stated over and over during the resentencing hearing that the brothers never admitted they asked people to lie for them to cover their tracks. Deputy District Attorney Habib Balian specifically accused Lyle of having attempted to recruit a former girlfriend, Jamie Pisarcik, to falsely testify that José had drugged and violently raped her.
Lyle said he was “immature, impulsive, emotionally isolated” and “in a co-dependent relationship” with Erik. He said his father molested him as well, when he was younger, so the brothers shared the “traumatic bond” of suffering that sexual abuse.
“My choice to buy guns did not come from logic or reason. I was scared but also filled with rage. I’m so sorry I didn’t ask for help. I should have trusted someone: a relative, the police, a priest,” he said.
‘José was so powerful’
The brothers have spent the last 35 years behind bars for the grisly killings that became a media sensation. After their initial televised trial ended with two hung juries — one for each brother — Lyle and Erik were convicted of first-degree murder at a follow-up trial and sentenced in 1996.
At trial, the brothers told jurors they suffered years of sexual abuse and believed their parents had plans to kill them to keep a lid on the family’s dark secret. Prosecutors argued the brothers acted out of greed, resorting to murder to get their multimillion-dollar inheritances before being cut out of their parents’ will.
In testimony to the court last May, cousin Diane VanderMolen recounted some of what she told jurors during the brothers’ first trial. She said Lyle shared with her when he was a child that his father had been molesting him. She also described the “hallway rule” inside the Menendez family’s home. (Her testimony about the alleged sexual abuse was not allowed at the second trial.)
“When José was with one of the boys, you weren’t allowed to go down the hall,” she testified Tuesday. She said no one dared challenge José because he was incredibly “intimidating.” She explained that while Kitty once had been like a second mother and mentor to her, Kitty’s personality “greatly changed” after she allegedly discovered José “was having an affair.”
“José was so powerful. And Kitty became the enforcer,” VanderMolen testified in a soft voice. She testified that Erik and Lyle were understandably terrified of their parents when they carried out the murders. “They did not see a way out,” she testified. “Afterward, after getting older, they realize now that they would have had other opportunities.”
The judge granted the resentencing after L.A. County District Attorney Nathan Hochman tried to derail it. The process was initiated by Hochman’s more liberal predecessor, George Gascón, last October. Gascón said he considered the brothers’ young ages at the time of the killings — Erik was 18 and Lyle was 21 — and the brothers’ exemplary behavior behind bars. He said they had paid their “debt” to society and should be eligible for parole immediately.
Another cousin, Tamara Lucera Goodell, testified in May that the brothers were rehabilitated. She pointed to the green space, hospice, and meditation programs for other inmates that they’ve started behind bars and asked the judge to strike down their life sentence so her bedridden 93-year-old grandmother, Joan VanderMolen, Kitty’s sister, would have a chance to see them in person before she dies.
“For 35 years, I have watched my entire family spiral during different conversations about what happened,” she testified. “I watched my grandmother and my aunts traumatized.” She said her grandmother’s family had “a long history of abuse in multiple forms,” and having a chance to reunite with the brothers would help the family heal from the tragedy.
José’s older sister, Teresita Menendez-Baralt, 85, and Joan, Kitty’s sister, both testified at a different hearing last November, saying they supported release. “No child should have to endure what Erik and Lyle lived through at the hands of their father,” Joan said on the witness stand. “It breaks my heart that my sister Kitty knew what was happening and did nothing about it, that we knew of,” she said under questioning by Mark Geragos, the lawyer representing the brothers.
Testifying again Thursday, Teresita broke down in tears. “I want to make clear that although I love my brother, I have fully forgiven Erik,” she said, calling her nephew a “sweet, gentle soul.” She told the panel she’s dying from Stage 4 cancer. “The truth is, I do not know how much time I have left. If Erik is granted parole, it would be a blessing to help him in any way I can,” she said. “More than anything, I hope I live long enough to welcome him into my home. To sit at the same table. To wrap my arms around him. That would bring me immeasurable peace and joy.”
Kitty’s grandniece, Natascha Leonardo, told the board she was willing to house Erik in Colorado with her family. She said Erik is close with her kids. “We’re not asking you to release Erik into uncertainty. We’re asking you to release him into a network of love and support,” she said.
A true-crime staple
Lyle and Erik’s story drew outsized national attention in 1989 due to the family’s wealth and the brothers’ claim that their parents were murdered in a Mafia-style hit. Police initially treated them as grieving orphans, but they were eventually arrested and charged with first-degree murder in 1990.
The story remained a staple for true crime aficionados, but during the Covid-19 pandemic, CourtTV, the channel that originally broadcast their trial, released the entire recording of the proceeding online. This caused a major resurgence of interest in the Menendez case, especially for younger viewers who weren’t even alive during the original televised trial.
Later, in the 2023 Peacock docuseries, Menendez + Menudo: Boys Betrayed, Roy Rossello, a former member of the Puerto Rican boy band Menudo, stepped forward with new allegations. Rossello claimed that José Menendez, a prominent music industry executive, had sexually abused him, too. In October 2024, Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story debuted on Netflix, with Murphy’s dramatic retelling of the murders placing the brothers in a sympathetic light. The show ignited a new round of public and celebrity support for the brothers’ release.
“For more than 35 years, they have shown sustained growth. They’ve taken full accountability. They express sincere remorse to our family to this day and have built a meaningful life defined by purpose and service,” the Menendez family said in a statement leading up to the parole board hearings. “We know that Erik and Lyle will come home, that is no longer a doubt. We just hope that they are granted this second chance in time to hug their Aunt Joan and Aunt Terry.”
