This article was originally posted on March 1, 2024.
Lyle and Erik Menendez have been in prison in California for more than three decades for the 1989 murder of their parents, Jose and Kitty Menendez. They were convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison in the infamous case that captured the nation’s attention. Now the brothers are hoping new evidence will reopen their case and set them free.
“48 Hours” contributor Natalie Morales speaks with Lyle Menendez from prison as he awaits the judge’s verdict. This is an encore of “The Menendez Brothers’ Fight for Freedom,” airing Saturday, September 28 at 9 p.m. ET on CBS and streaming on Paramount+.
The Menendez Brothers admitting that they killed their parents. Instead, the focus of the case has long been on why they did it. They claim they killed out of fear and self-defense after a lifetime of physical, emotional, and sexual abuse at the hands of their parents.
One of their attorneys, Cliff Gardner, tells “48 Hours” that new evidence confirms those long-standing claims and diminishes their culpability. Gardner argues that Lyle and Erik Menendez should have been convicted of manslaughter instead of first-degree murder, and that if they had been convicted, they would have received much shorter sentences and been out of prison long ago.
California State Supreme Court, Los Angeles County
The new evidence includes a letter that Gardner says was written by Erik Menendez to Erik’s cousin Andy Cano in December 1988, approximately eight months before the crime. The letter reads, in part: “I’ve been trying to avoid my father. It’s still happening, Andy, but it’s worse for me now. … I stay up every night thinking he might come in. … I’m scared. … He’s crazy. He’s warned me a hundred times not to tell anyone, especially Lyle.”
Andy Cano did testify at the brothers’ trials. He said that Erik Menendez told him at age 13, years before the murders, that his father touched him inappropriately. Prosecutors at the trial suggested that Cano was lying.
The brothers were tried twice. Their first trial ended in a mistrial when two juries, one for each brother, could not reach a unanimous decision on whether Lyle and Erik Menendez were guilty of manslaughter or murder. When they were tried a second time, prosecutors attacked the abuse allegations more aggressively, referring to the allegations as “the excuse for abuse.” That trial resulted in the brothers’ convictions for first-degree murder.
Gardner says this letter proves the abuse allegations were not fabricated. He says the letter was never presented at either trial and was found in a storage unit by Andy Cano’s mother in the last few years. Andy Cano died in 2003.
The letter isn’t the only evidence that has surfaced. Roy Rossello, a former member of Puerto Rican boy band Menudo, has come forward and claims he was also sexually abused by Jose Menendez in the early 1980s, when Rossello was a minor and a member of the band. At the time, Jose Menendez was working as an executive at RCA Records, and RCA signed Menudo to a recording contract.
Sony Music/RCA Records
Rossello is now 54. He says in an affidavit filed in 2023 that he went to Jose Menendez’s home in the fall of 1983 or 1984. Rossello would have been between 14 and 15 at the time. He says he drank “a glass of wine” and felt “like I had no control” over his body. He says Jose Menendez took him into a room and raped him. Rossello also alleges in the affidavit that he was sexually assaulted by Jose Menendez on two other occasions, just before and just after a performance at Radio City Music Hall in New York.
“When I first heard about it … I cried,” Lyle Menendez told Morales. “For me, it was really meaningful to just have things come out that really made people realize, OK … at least this part of what this is about is true.”
The Menendez brothers’ attorney, Cliff Gardner, filed a writ of habeas corpus in May 2023, citing Rossello’s letter and affidavit as new evidence showing his clients’ convictions should be overturned.
“These boys were abused as children. They were abused their entire lives. … And this is a manslaughter case, not a murder case. It’s that simple,” Gardner told “48 Hours” of the Menendez brothers. “My hope in this case is that the judge realizes that this new evidence is indeed credible and compelling, and that he will overturn the convictions.”
If that happens, it will be up to the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office whether to retry the case. In a statement, the DA told “48 Hours” that it is reviewing the claims in the habeas corpus petition. It is unclear when a judge will rule on the case.
