For more than three decades, Erik and Lyle Menendez have been locked away for the murder of their parents in Beverly Hills. This week, both brothers returned to the headlines because California’s parole board once again told them they won’t be leaving San Diego’s RJ Donovan Correctional Facility anytime soon.
The denial comes months after renewed interest among Americans in the Menendez trials, thanks to the release of Netflix’s documentary The Menendez Brothers that revisits one of America’s most sensational cases for a generation born after the verdict was delivered in the mid-1990s.
The two brothers — Erik, now 54, and Lyle, 57 — never denied pulling the triggers on August 20, 1989. Their father, Jose, was a Hollywood music executive; their mother, Kitty, a homemaker.
Prosecutors built their case on greed, arguing the killings were motivated by the lure of a $14 million inheritance. The defence insisted otherwise: that years of sexual and emotional abuse left the young men cornered, terrified, and desperate.
The Netflix film begins with Lyle’s frantic call to 911 reporting that his parents had been killed. For months, the brothers played the role of grieving sons. In interviews for the documentary, they admit surprise at not being suspects sooner.
“The gunpowder residue was all over our hands… There were gun shells in my car,” Erik recalls. “If they would have just pressed me, I wouldn’t have been able to withstand any questioning.”
They were arrested seven months later.
“Like so many of the emotions in that time of my life, it doesn’t make a lot of sense,” Lyle says in the film. “But the secret was a huge weight.”
What drew suspicion to the brothers was the spike in their spending. A Porsche, three Rolex watches, a $50,000-a-year tennis coach — prosecutors cited this as proof of motive.
But the brothers call it a diversion to numb grief. “The idea that I was having a good time is absurd,” Erik says on tape. Lyle, too, insists the playboy act hid endless sobbing and sleepless nights.
The most disturbing parts in the documentary are the real-life trial footage. Both brothers break down describing the abuse they endured. Erik explains how spending time alone with his father often led to various sexual acts. Lyle, too, says he was coerced into intimate acts.
The brothers say they remained silent, unwilling to tarnish their father’s reputation.
“Telling sick secrets of the family would be like killing my parents again,” Erik says in the docu, adding that one of the things that kept him from suicide was the fear of failing his father.
The brothers are now housed in the Donovan prison, but live separate lives. Erik paints. Lyle tutors other inmates. Both cling to scraps of evidence they believe vindicate their version of events: a letter Erik wrote to a cousin in 1989 describing his terror of Jose, discovered years later. He also mentions a 2023 affidavit from a former Menudo band member, Roy Rosselló, alleging sexual abuse by Jose Menendez.
But courts have little appetite for reopening the case. As journalist Robert Rand points out in the documentary, “Half the witnesses are dead or they have dementia. And do the taxpayers of LA County really want to spend millions to retry Erik and Lyle Menendez”.
What the Netflix film captures a sense that the public conversation has moved.
“For the first time I feel like it’s a conversation where people now can understand and believe,” Lyle says in the documentary.
The parole board is unmoved. On August 21, Erik Menendez’s plea for release was denied. Commissioners pointed to drug use, contraband phones, and alleged involvement in a prison scam as proof he hadn’t shown rehabilitation. Robert Barton, one of the board members, went further, saying Erik still lacked empathy.
Despite a cleaner record, Lyle’s request for parole was denied too. The panel cited “anti-social traits” as the reason.