LOS ANGELES — The district attorney of Los Angeles says he does not support the resentencing of Lyle and Erik Menendez, brothers who have spent more than 30 years in prison for killing their parents at their Beverly Hills home in 1989.
Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman said Monday that the brothers have repeatedly lied about why they killed their parents and “fell short” of taking full responsibility for their crimes.
The brothers have argued that they committed the crimes in self-defense after years of abuse by their father.
Here are some things to know about the case:
The shotgun killings of Jose and Kitty Menendez took place on Aug. 20, 1989, in their Beverly Hills mansion. Their son Lyle Menendez was the one who called 911, with the brothers initially claiming the killing was Mafia-related or connected to their father’s business dealings.
The brothers went on spending sprees, buying Rolex watches, cars and houses. Two months later, Erik Menendez told his psychologist, Jerome Oziel, that he and his brother killed their parents. They were eventually arrested and charged in their parents’ deaths.
The murder case captured the public’s attention. Coming on the heels of the O.J. Simpson trial, the nation was hungry for true crime TV. The brothers’ first trial was one of the first to be almost entirely televised on Court TV. It spawned documentaries, television specials and dramatizations. The Netflix drama “ Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story ″ and the documentary “The Menendez Brothers,” released in the fall of 2024, have been credited for bringing new attention to the case.
Lyle and Erik Menendez’s first trial took place in 1993 with separate juries. Prosecutors argued they killed their parents for financial gain. The brothers’ attorneys never disputed the pair killed their parents, but argued that they acted out of self-defense after years of emotional and sexual abuse by their father.
Both trials resulted in a hung jury on all three counts for the killing of Jose and Kitty Menendez, and the conspiracy to commit murder. The juries were split over murder and manslaughter convictions.
At the second trial in 1995, the judge excluded a substantial amount of evidence presented in the first trial, including testimony from several family members who witnessed or heard about the abuse. Prosecutors doubled down on their claim that no abuse happened. A single jury convicted both brothers of three counts, including…
Click Here to Read the Full Original Article at ABC News: US…