A day after his younger brother Erik was denied release on parole, Lyle Menendez was handed the same fate on Friday evening, with California prison officials ruling he remains a risk to public safety. It was a minimal denial of three years.
“We find your remorse is genuine. In many ways, you look like you’ve been a model inmate. … But despite all those outward positives, we see [that] you still struggle with anti-social personality traits like deception, minimization, and rule-breaking that lie beneath that positive surface,” Parole Commissioner Julie Garland said, wrapping up the marathon hearing that lasted more than 11 hours.
Friday’s decision means both brothers will remain in custody pending follow-up parole hearings in the coming years, or movement on their separate habeas petition seeking a new trial. (The brothers also have a clemency bid waiting on Gov. Gavin Newsom’s desk, but with the parole board finding they’re not yet fully rehabilitated, that avenue appears unlikely to succeed, at least for now.)
The brothers, whose Nineties notoriety reignited last year thanks to the popular Ryan Murphy-created Netflix series, Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story, are currently serving revised sentences of 50 years to life for the grisly shotgun murders of their parents, José and Kitty Menendez, inside the family’s Beverly Hills mansion on Aug. 20, 1989. On Friday, Lyle was openly emotional as he appeared by video from his San Diego prison. He apologized for the brutal killings and took responsibility for the “pain” he caused his surviving relatives, who now vocally support his release. He said the decision to turn violent was his, not his “baby brother’s.”
“My Mom and Dad did not have to die that day,” he said through tears. “I’m profoundly sorry for who I was … for the harm that everyone has endured.”
Lyle said he had an “honest belief” at the time of the double murder that his parents “were going to kill” him. He now understands they were unarmed, not posing an immediate threat. “Really, the only thought in my head was, it was happening now. I needed to get to the door first. Fear overwhelmed reason,” he said. “I don’t have a great explanation for why I felt such terror in those moments.”
At one point during the lengthy hearing, Lyle doubled over, crying and shaking, recalling a confrontation with Kitty shortly before the homicides. “I couldn’t wrap my mind around the fact that she knew,” he said, referring to the alleged sexual abuse Lyle and Erik suffered at the hands of their father.
The back-to-back hearings for Lyle, 57, and Erik, 54, gave the first detailed look at the brothers’ disciplinary records behind bars. Both had numerous violations for using contraband cell phones, with Lyle having pleaded guilty to two such violations in November 2024 and March 2025, Deputy Parole Commissioner Patrick Reardon said. While both brothers told officials that they rationalized the use as not harming anyone, the commissioners pointed out that demand for and use of the devices corrupted and endangered prison staff, fellow inmates, and others. Lyle conceded he couldn’t be sure his cellmates weren’t using his phone for criminal activity.
The hearings also rehashed details of the gruesome murders, though their goal was to evaluate the brothers’ probability of committing future crimes, not relitigate the criminal case. Erik and Lyle’s first trial, televised on CourtTV in 1993 and 1994, ended with two hung juries — one for each brother. The second trial, which wasn’t broadcast, ended with first-degree murder convictions. The brothers were sentenced to life without parole in 1996. Their resentencing in May made them immediately eligible for parole under California’s youthful offender law.
The shotgun slayings
During the criminal court trials, jurors heard that the brothers used fake identification to purchase two Mossberg shotguns from a sporting goods store in San Diego two days before the murders. Prosecutors said the brothers then opened fire with more than a dozen rounds of buckshot while their parents were watching TV on a couch in the family’s den.
Jurors saw horrific photos of the bloody crime scene. José was shot in the back of his head. Kitty was shot in the face at point-blank range as she was already wounded, bleeding, and trying to crawl away, prosecutors said. The brothers picked up all the shotgun shells, dumped the evidence, and then screamed “dramatically” during a 911 call claiming someone else murdered their parents, officials said. Prosecutors claimed the brothers carried out a cold-blooded, premeditated scheme to inherit their parents’ money.
During their hearings this week, Lyle and Erik said they lived in fear of their abusive parents. They claimed José sexually abused them both, while Kitty did nothing to stop it. Their relatives have rallied around them, corroborating claims José was inappropriate with his sons. At the brothers’ first trial, as well as at a May 2025 hearing for resentencing, cousin Diane VanderMolen testified that she was a teenager visiting the Menendez home when an eight-year-old Lyle told her his father was touching his genitals. VanderMolen said she tried to warn Kitty, but she was rebuffed.
At his separate hearing Thursday, Erik testified that José sexually assaulted him repeatedly. He said that on the night of the murders, his dad ordered him to his room, saying he would be upstairs soon. Erik said he believed José was about to rape him, so he ran to get his shotgun, believing it was his only option to stop the abuse. “If he was alive, that was going to happen,” he said, referring to the alleged abuse. He recalled thinking that if he tried to run or expose the family’s dark secret, his life would be in danger. “In my mind, leaving meant death,” he said.
“I was the special son”
At Lyle’s hearing Friday, Commissioner Garland started by asking how the alleged sexual abuse affected Lyle’s decision-making skills. “It was confusing, caused a lot of shame in me. That pretty much characterized my relationship with my father,” he said. The abuse started when he was about six years old, he said, and lasted about two years. He recalled existing in a state of “hyper vigilance,” waiting and “not knowing when something would happen.” He might be molested in his bed, in a bathroom, or in a car, on any given day, he said.
Lyle said the abuse stopped abruptly when he was eight, around the time his cousin Diane says she reported it to Kitty. “I think it’s related to [José] being concerned that I would talk to people,” he said of the reprieve.
Lyle said the abuse left him feeling a “total disconnection from everybody in my life growing up.” But in a twisted way, it also made him feel special. “I was the special son in my family. My brother was the castaway,” he explained to the board.
Lyle said he got “more attention” from his father, particularly on the tennis court, than Erik did. But his father’s fixation was intimidating. José “expected greatness,” lecturing him that he was from “a lion bloodline” while other people were “sheep,” he testified.
“We were different. I wasn’t weak like [José’s] father. Or Erik. Or my mother. It was him and I in this bubble,” Lyle said, quoting his dad. When he eventually realized José had stopped molesting him, he was “a little bit amazed,” he said. “I worried a little bit that I was going to be less loved,” he told the board, saying he felt unsure at the time that he wanted it to stop.
“I felt contaminated … but I felt love,” he said. “I wanted to believe my father loved me, so in my mind I felt like he was a great man, and my main way of dealing with it was that it was just a sickness that some great men have.”
Lyle said his father could be physically violent in the home as well, lashing out in terrifying attacks separate from the sexual abuse. José was “very brutal with physical abuse: choking, punching, closed fists, using a belt,” he said.
“There was no love in it. It was just surviving that moment,” he recalled. Lyle’s solidarity with his younger brother infuriated their dad, he said. Erik, meanwhile, bore the brunt of physical abuse in the home, he explained. The younger sibling was “openly punished, spanked, viciously. Thrown against things. My mother would drag him down the hall. I think I realized it was the two of us,” he said.
More details of abuse
In a notable departure from the well-known story of the Menendez murders, the commissioner then asked Lyle about his own abuse of Erik. The sensitive topic was raised at Erik’s Thursday hearing as well, when Erik admitted he concealed from corrections staff that Lyle was “molesting [me] as a kid.”
“I don’t know why I did it. I think I was just trying to release it from me,” Lyle said. He described “pain training” sessions that were forced by his father, where he hurt Erik in a non-sexual way, as a possible form of pain endurance. The commissioner, who has access to confidential written records in the case, then moved on without clarifying the line of questioning.
In another striking statement, Lyle said his mother sexually abused him as well. Garland replied that the accusation wasn’t part of the comprehensive risk assessment the board received. Lyle let out a long sigh. “I didn’t see it as abuse really. I just saw it as something special between my mother and I. So I don’t like to talk about it that way,” he said. “Today, I see it as sexual abuse. When I was 13, I felt like I was consenting, and my mother was dealing with a lot, and I just felt like maybe it wasn’t … it’s abusive, but I never saw it that way, in the same way.” At that point, Lyle asked for a break, and the hearing moved to another topic.
“My life has been defined by extreme violence”
Garland asked Lyle about his suspension from Princeton for plagiarism, as well as his participation in a burglary with his brother more than a year before the murders. Lyle said he joined the burglary to keep an eye on his brother. He said afterward, José called him a “moron” for getting caught.
When Garland asked why Lyle didn’t talk about being disinherited by his parents in his submission to the board, Lyle said he believed “there was a will that disinherited us somewhere,” but it wasn’t a motive for the murders. It only became “a problem afterwards,” he said, when they needed money once their parents were dead.
Prosecutors claim the brothers murdered their parents out of greed. In a March filing opposing the brothers’ resentencing, they focused on the brothers’ “spending spree” in the months after the slayings. They said Lyle bought three Rolex watches, a Porsche, a condominium, a restaurant and “expensive clothes.” Erik bought a Rolex, a Jeep and hired “an expensive tennis coach for private lessons,” they said.
Lyle told the board that the flashy purchases made him feel good in the moment, lifting him out his anguish. “My life had just collapsed without my parents,” he said.
Lyle flatly denied that the murders were planned. He said buying the guns made the fatal shooting “more likely,” but he thought it was “de-escalating” at the time, meaning something that gave him a “measure of safety” and “emotional protection.”
“There was zero planning. There was no way to know it was going to happen Sunday,” he said. The two brothers discussed their belief José had threatened to harm them if the family’s secret “ever got out,” but they had no plan to kill their parents when they bought the guns, Lyle said.
He said after the murders, he dropped his gun and walked out of the room feeling “numb.” Lyle said his attempts to cover up the crime and recruit others to lie for his benefit were evidence of him “flailing,” not carrying out a sophisticated plan.
Lyle said his mother’s murder caused him the most sorrow because, after her death, he learned more about her life and difficult childhood, and “how much fear maybe she felt.” He learned from her therapist “that she felt shame,” he said.
Asked about his own psychology, Lyle pushed back on assessments that found he posed a “moderate risk” of violence if released and suffered from “anti-social, narcissistic traits.” He said his dad was a narcissist, but he pursues self-reflection and tries to “understand” his personality. He considers himself empathetic, he said, pointing to his work with inmates convicted of sex abuse. “My life has been defined by extreme violence. I wanted to be defined by something else,” Lyle said, in tears.
When Garland asked Lyle about his recent romantic correspondence with three different women, Lyle said he remains closest to his wife, though they’re no longer romantically involved.
L.A. County Deputy District Attorney Ethan Millius argued Lyle’s cell phone violations while leading the Men’s Advisory Council at his prison proves he “struggles with honesty.” He said Lyle had eight violations in custody for which he was found guilty, though he conceded they were non-violent. “There is no growth. It is just who Lyle appears to be,” Milius told the board in his closing argument Friday.
District Attorney Nathan Hochman, Millius’ boss, has made opposition to the Menendez brothers‘ release on parole a mainstay of his administration. “For more than three decades, both Erik and Lyle Menendez have advanced a false claim of self-defense, alleging they feared their parents were going to kill them, to justify the brutal murders of their parents,” he said in statement Thursday.
But members of the Menendez family, including elderly sisters of both José and Kitty, have testified on the brothers’ behalf, saying they forgive Erik and Lyle and want them home. Anamaria Baralt, the niece of José Menendez, delivered a victim statement Friday, “begging” the commissioners to release Lyle in time for his ailing aunts to see him outside the prison walls. “Make this torture end. This 36-year nightmare. Let us put it behind us,” she said.
Baralt said she once witnessed José tie Erik’s legs together to correct an error with his swimming form. She claims Erik almost drowned as she and Lyle watched in horror.
“I believe, that they believe, that nobody was going to protect them,” she told the board. “I’ve heard so many times over the last 35 years, ‘Why didn’t they just leave?’ And thankfully, the criminal justice system has started to catch up with the brain science that trauma and childhood abuse create the illusion that there would have been no escape for Erik and Lyle.”
Hearing audio released
Friday’s hearing was thrown into disarray around 5 p.m. when Lyle and Erik’s lawyer, Heidi Rummel, interrupted the proceeding to say audio from Erik’s parole board examination on Thursday had been published by ABC News. In a series of clips posted online, Erik was heard describing the decision to buy the guns and open fire on his parents.
Rummel suggested the audio was somehow leaked in violation of the family’s legal rights. She questioned the fairness of both hearings and asked that Lyle’s proceeding be adjourned. Commissioner Garland said an interpretation of the public records act allowed the release, but she wasn’t sure how long that policy had been in place. It appeared ABC was the only outlet that received the recordings.
After a lengthy break, Garland confirmed that no audio from Lyle’s hearing would be released until Rummel had an opportunity to file something to contest its release. The hearing then resumed with a curtailed statement from José’s sister, Teresita Baralt. The brothers’ 85-year-old aunt kept it short, saying she wasn’t comfortable reading her pre-written statement into the public record given the audio situation.
“I want my nephew to hear how much I love him, and believe in him,” she said in tears. “I’m very proud of him, and I want him to come home.”
