Despite their rehabilitation efforts, the Menendez brothers will stay in prison. Their conditional release request was refused by the California Correctional and Reintegration Service Commission. Friday, the latter, as for Erik the day before, refused, Friday, the request for parole of Lyle. They will be able to request a review of their case in three years.
“I am deeply sorry for what I was, for the evil that everyone has suffered,” regretted Lyle Menendez, 57, during a audience where he tried to show his evolution. “I can never repair the evil and the pain that I have caused to all the members of my family.”
Sexually abused by their father
Initially sentenced to life for having killed their parents with shotgun in their luxurious family villa of Beverly Hills, the Menendez brothers are among the most publicized detainees in America. Their trial in the early 1990s was one of the first broadcasts on television and their history returned to the light thanks to a series as well as a Netflix documentary last year.
The sexual violence they accuse their father have been seen in a new light in recent years, after the emergence of the #MeToo movement. More than 35 years after the murders, a movement demanding their release took shape online, supported by their family and certain celebrities like Kim Kardashian.
A risk for the company
In May, a judge reduced their sentence, which made them eligible for an exit from prison. But the commission showed off these hopes and judged that the two brothers still pose a risk to society. Behind bars, the Menendez brothers have set up anger management workshops or aid for prisoners in palliative care. But, Friday, the members of the commission worried about the duplicity of Lyle Menendez, who regularly violated the rules using mobile phones. A grievance already made the day before to his brother Erik, 54 years old.
The panel also mentioned a psychological assessment of a prison doctor, describing Lyle as a misleading, manipulator and refusing to accept the consequences of his actions. “You seem to adopt different faces at different times,” said Patrick Reardon, one of the members of the committee.
Confessions on a recording of psychotherapy session
The ambivalence of the two brothers was already at the center of their two trials in the 1990s. At the time, the prosecution had accused the two young men, aged 18 and 21 at the time of the murders, of having murdered their parents to inherit their fortune of $ 14 million. Armed with shotguns, they fired five times on their father José Menendez, especially in the ball joints. Their mother, Kitty Menendez, died while crawling to try to escape them.
The brothers first attributed the murders to a stroke of the mafia, before changing their version several times. The investigators finally got their hands on the recording of a psychotherapy session, during which Erik admitted the murder. Before the court, their lawyers had invoked a desperate attempt at self -defense, saying that the two brothers had been sexually assaulted for years by their father and that their mother was aware.
A commission “which did not give in to pressure or paid into the public show”
Thursday evening, the prosecutor of Los Angeles, Nathan Hochman, had welcomed the maintenance in Erik prison, a decision which “does justice to Jose and Kitty Menendez”. “For more than three decades, Erik and Lyle Menendez have advanced a false argument of self-defense,” he said, applauding the commission “which did not give in to pressure or paid into the public show”, despite the media coverage. A favorable opinion from the Commission was considered the best chance of the Menendez brothers to get out of prison. But this rejection does not exhaust all their appeals.
New trial?
California Governor Gavin Newsom can still commute their sentence. Their defense is also trying to obtain a new trial, by invoking the discovery of new elements in recent years: an old letter where Erik evokes his father’s sexual assault to a cousin before murder, and the testimony of a former Latino Band-Band singer, who explains that he was drugged and violated by Jose Menendez in the 1980s.
