Los Angeles’ top cop says he has reached a decision to seek a reduced sentence for the Menendez brothers.
“After very careful review of all the arguments…I came to a place where I believe that, under the law, resentencing is appropriate, and I am going to recommend that to a court tomorrow,” District Attorney George Gascon told reporters Thursday afternoon.
He said he will recommend a sentence of 50 years to life for each of the brothers, which would make them immediately eligible for parole under state law because they were under 26 at the time of the murders.
Erik and Joseph “Lyle” Menendez ambushed their parents with shotguns in the living room of their Beverly Hills mansion in 1989.
Their first trial ended in a mistrial. They were both convicted after their second trial and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. However, under a new California law, district attorneys have the authority to request new sentences that were handed down before they took office.
They have been in prison for nearly 35 years,” Gascon said. “I believe that they have paid their debt to society.”
He added that a resentencing must be approved by the court before it becomes official and that a parole board will still need to sign off on their eventual release. He went on to praise the brothers’ good behavior during their decades behind bars.
The brothers and their supporters, including two dozen relatives, among them their mother’s sister Joan Andersen VanderMolen, petitioned Gascon for a resentencing earlier this year, arguing that new evidence shows the brothers were sexually abused and molested by their father.
The new evidence includes allegations made public last year that their father also molested Roy Rossello, a former member of the boy band Menudo, in the 1980s, and a letter that Erik Menendez wrote to his cousin, Andy Cano, which surfaced in 2015, years after the latter’s death.
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The date the letter was written has been challenged by critics of the brothers’ potential release. The defense said he sent it to his cousin eight months before the murders, when the brothers were 21 and 18. The Menendez brothers are now both in their 50s.
Gascon is up for reelection in less than two weeks and faces a strong challenge from independent candidate Nathan Hochman, a former federal prosecutor. Critics have called his involvement in the high-profile case politically motivated. But there is also some public support for the brothers’ release after a series of recent documentaries attracted attention to their case, including one on FOX Nation.
“DA George Gascon received the Menendez habeas corpus petition in May 2023 and request for resentencing in February 2024. Yet, he has waited until days before the Nov. 5 election, 30 points down in the polls with articles coming about how his failed policies have led to additional murders of innocent people, to release his recommendation for resentencing,” his challenger, Nathan Hochman, told Fox News Digital. “By releasing it now, Gascon has cast a cloud over the fairness and impartiality of his decision, allowing Angelenos to question whether the decision was correct and just or just another desperate political move by a DA running a losing campaign scrambling to grab headlines through a made-for-TV decision. Angelenos and everyone involved deserve better.”
The brothers unloaded shotguns at their father, former RCA Records executive Jose Menendez, and their mother, Mary “Kitty” Menendez, while the couple was watching TV at 10:30 p.m.
They ran out of shells and had to go outside to get more in order to finish off their mother, who investigators said had blood on the bottom of her shoes, indicating that she tried to escape after the shooting began.
Not all of the brothers’ family members support their release.
Kitty Menendez’s brother, Milton Andersen, 90, vehemently opposes a reduced sentence and on Wednesday asked the judge overseeing the case to keep his nephews in prison for the rest of their lives – as they were sentenced originally.
