Menendez brothers may very well be free inside weeks
The Menendez brothers could soon walk free from prison after more than 30 years behind bars.
A press conference will be held in Los Angeles on Wednesday where the state is expected to announce a signficant development in the case against Erik and Lyle.
LA County district attorney George Gascón has personally invited some of the brothers’ relatives to attend the press conference, Vanity Fair reported.
The family are reportedly hopeful the DA is considering asking for a revised sentence which could see the brothers, now aged 53 and 56, walk free from custody.
The Menendez brothers could soon walk free from prison after more than 30 years behind bars
The Menendez brothers spent seven months on the streets after they murdered their parents
Gascón recently said his office was scrutinizing evidence that was not permitted in their trial, but insisted he was not committed either way.
Specifically, Gascon said he was reviewing shocking allegations made last year by Roy Rossello, a former member of the band Menudo, who claimed Jose Menendez molested him as a teenager while he was working as a music executive in the 1980s.
The allegations opened the door for the Menendez brothers’ appeals over claims that critical evidence of their father’s alleged abuse was not admitted in their 1996 trial.
If they are granted a retrial, the Menendez brothers could be freed if a jury finds them guilty of voluntary manslaughter instead of murder, which would trigger their release as they have served more than the maximum sentence.
It comes amid renewed interest in the Erik and Lyle Menendez case thanks to two separate Netflix shows focused on their crimes.
The duo, then just 18 and 21, killed their parents Jose and Mary Louise ‘Kitty’ Menendez inside their million-dollar Beverly Hills home in August 1989.
They made a frantic call to police claiming they returned home from the theatre to find their parents had been slaughtered, prompting fears within one of America’s wealthiest communities that a murderer was on the run.
Police announced they were arresting Lyle Menendez in March 1990 – seven months after the crime.
They said he was motivated by greed. The brothers stood to inherit $14million from their parents, and set about spending it shortly after their parents’ deaths.
Lyle bought a Porsche Carrera, Rolex watch and two restaurants, while his brother hired a full-time tennis coach to begin competing in tournaments.
51-year-old Erik has revealed he found it absurd that police working the case didn’t arrest he and his brother at the scene of the crime
Lyle bought a Porsche Carrera, Rolex watch and two restaurants in the immediate aftermath
In all, they spent $700,000 between the time of their parents’ deaths and their arrests in March 1990.
But Erik insisted in the new Netflix documentary it is ‘absurd’ to suggest he was having a good time in the immediate aftermath of the murders.
‘Everything was to cover up this horrible pain of not wanting to be alive,’ he said.
‘One of the things that stopped me from killing myself was that I would be a complete failure to my dad.’
The duo, then just 18 and 21, killed their parents Jose and Mary Louise ‘Kitty’ Menendez inside their million-dollar Beverly Hills home in August 1989
The Netflix documentary re-hashes some of the most emotional details of the murder trial, in which both brothers disclosed they were being molested by their father, and that their mother turned a blind eye to the abuse.
Lyle told the jury on the stand that he then, in turn, took his younger brother to the woods and molested him, doing to Erik what his father had done to him.
Erik said: ‘I remember when he apologized to me on the stand for molesting me. That was a devastating moment for me. He had never said he was sorry to me before.’
According to Erik, his father began molesting him when he was six years old and that abuse continued for 12 years.
