Erik and Lyle Menendez appeared by video at a resentencing hearing in Los Angeles on Tuesday as relatives pleaded with a judge to release them on time served. Three cousins said they believe the brothers have paid their debt to society, and that their release would help end the “generational trauma” that has plagued their family.
“On both sides of the family, we believe that 35 years is enough,” cousin Anamaria Baralt testified. “They are universally forgiven by everybody in our family, and we are very hopeful that they can get a second chance at life.”
Erik, 54, and Lyle, 57, have spent the last 35 years behind bars for the grisly shotgun slayings of their parents, José and Kitty Menendez, inside the family’s Beverly Hills mansion in 1989. After an initial televised trial ended with two hung juries — one for each brother — Lyle and Erik were convicted of murder at a follow-up trial and sentenced to life without the possibility of parole in 1996.
At trial, the brothers said they suffered years of sexual abuse at the hands of their father and believed their parents had plans to kill them to keep a lid on the family’s dark secret. Prosecutors argued the brothers acted out of greed, resorting to murder to get their multimillion-dollar inheritances before being cut out of their parents’ will.
In her own testimony Tuesday, cousin Diane VanderMolen recounted some of what she told jurors during the brothers’ trial. She recalled how Lyle had shared with her when he was a child that his father had been molesting him. She also described the “hallway rule” inside the Menendez family’s home.
“When José was with one of the boys, you weren’t allowed to go down the hall,” she testified Tuesday. She said no one dared challenge José because he was incredibly “intimidating.” She explained that while Kitty once had been like a second mother and mentor to her, Kitty’s personality “greatly changed” after she allegedly discovered José “was having an affair.”
“José was so powerful. And Kitty became the enforcer,” VanderMolen testified in a soft voice. She said Erik and Lyle were scared of their parents when they carried out the grisly slayings. “They were afraid, plain and simple.”
“They did not see a way out,” she testified. “Afterward, after getting older, they realize now that they would have had other opportunities.”
Los Angeles County Judge Michael Jesic set the crucial hearing last week after L.A. District Attorney Nathan Hochman tried to derail it. The process was initiated by Hochman’s more liberal predecessor, George Gascón, last October. Gascón said he considered the brothers’ young ages at the time of the killings — Erik was 18 and Lyle was 21 — and the brothers’ exemplary behavior behind bars. He said they had paid their “debt” to society and should be eligible for parole, immediately.
Another cousin, Tamara Lucera Goodell, testified Tuesday that the brothers have been rehabilitated. She pointed to the green space, hospice and meditation programs for other inmates that they’ve started behind bars and asked the judge to strike down their life sentence so her bedridden 93-year-old grandmother, Joan VanderMolen, Diane’s mom, would have a chance to see them in person before she dies.
“For 35 years, I have watched my entire family spiral during different conversations about what happened,” she testified. “I watched my grandmother and my aunts [be] traumatized. It would help them, in their healing.”
She said her grandmother’s family had “a long of history of abuse in multiple forms.”
“My grandmother moved out at 17 so she would not continue the cycle of abuse. And [it was hard] for her to learn that that cycle of abuse was continued by her sister, in the very forms that she and her sisters survived,” she said. “[Release] would bring a lot of closure for all of us.”
Another cousin, whose mother is José’s older sister, said her mom also is very ill and hoping that the brothers will be released while she’s still alive. “We are on borrowed time at this point,” she said.
Baralt said her entire adult life has been consumed by the “relentless” scrutiny of the high-profile homicides. And she’s hopeful the brothers’ release can bring healing.
“It has been torture, for decades, to have to live out that kind of trauma in the public eye,” she said. As relatives of both the victims in the case and the perpetrators, “the trauma is 360 degrees.”
Baralt said she has “no hesitation” supporting release. Asked by a prosecutor if would have guessed back in early 1989 whether the brothers were capable of killing their parents, she said no. But she added that everyone is older and wiser now.
The judge hearing the resentencing bid is expected to rule at the end of what’s scheduled to be a two-day hearing.
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