The Los Angeles district attorney’s move to grant two convicted murderers, the Menendez brothers, a chance to get out of prison despite sentences of life without parole has floored a Florida counterpart who noted the premeditated brutality Erik and Lyle Menendez inflicted on their mother.
On Aug. 20, 1989, the brothers walked into their parents’ Beverly Hills mansion with shotguns and opened fire as Jose Menendez and Mary “Kitty” Menendez were snacking in front of their living room TV at 10:30 p.m.
“I think not enough is being discussed about the murder of Kitty, the Menendez brothers’ mother,” Palm Beach State’s Attorney Dave Aronberg told Fox News Digital. “There is no credible allegation she was engaged in sexual abuse, and according to what we know…both parents were sitting on the couch, backs turned, watching TV [and] eating ice cream while the two bothers came up behind them and murdered them.”
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Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascon, right, shakes hands with members of the Menendez family after addressing the case of brothers Erik and Lyle Menendez at a news conference at the Hall of Justice in Los Angeles on Oct. 24, 2024 in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)
Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascon, who is facing a tough re-election in less than two weeks, invited the media and some of the Menendez brothers’ relatives to his announcement Thursday afternoon, when he declared “resentencing is appropriate” and vowed to ask a court to make the brothers immediately eligible for parole.
They have been locked up for more than 30 years on life sentences without the possibility of parole for the 1989 double murder. The brothers claim they killed their father in self-defense, because they were afraid he’d kill them after they warned him they planned to expose him as a child sex abuser.Â
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Lyle and Erik Menendez, center, sit with defense attorney Leslie Abramson in Beverly Hills Municipal Court during a hearing, Nov. 26, 1990. (AP Photo/Nick Ut)
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After killing their father, whom they accused of child molestation and abuse, and wounding their mother, they had to go outside for more shells. They reloaded and came back inside to finish her off, in a scene so bloody one forensic investigator later told Fox News Digital a detective held up an umbrella to block blood dripping from the ceiling.
“I understand why the district attorney did what he did when it comes to the murder of the father,” Aronberg told Fox News Digital. “The father has been alleged to have committed sexual abuse against the boys, and there’s some new evidence that that may be true.”
However, there is nothing to mitigate the murder of their mother, he said.
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Dr. Robert Lawrence of Stockton, California, holds a mannequin illustrating the shotgun wounds to Kitty Menendez during the Menendez brothers’ second murder trial on Nov. 6, 1995. Sitting on the right is another mannequin illustrating wounds to Jose Menendez. (Boris Yaro/Los Angeles Times)
“There was so much blood that it looked like a mob hit, and Kitty did not die right away,” he continued. “In fact, she was crawling away, trying to save her life, trying to escape. And Lyle Menendez went back to his car, went outside, and reloaded.”
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While Kitty Menendez’s sister, Joan Andersen VanderMolen, 92, and many other members of the family have publicly supported a reduced sentence for her killers, her brother, Milton Andersen, 90, is vehemently opposed to any leniency.
Joan Andersen VanderMolen, sister of Kitty Menendez, speaks as family members of Erik and Lyle Menendez, the Beverly Hills brothers convicted of killing their parents, hold a press conference at the Clara Shortridge Foltz Criminal Justice Center in Los Angeles on Oct. 16, 2024. Â (REUTERS/Mike Blake)
“It’s Milton Andersen’s continued belief that the claims of molestation were made up, and they were false, and he believes that the correct verdict was issued by the jury and the correct sentence was also committed,” his attorney, Kathleen Cady, told Fox News Digital.
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Making matters worse, while Gascon met repeatedly with VanderMolen’s side, he ignored her brother, Cady said.
“In Florida, you have Marsy’s Law, which is on the books in California and other states where you have to listen to the families,” Aronberg said. “You don’t have to necessarily do what the families recommend, but you have to hear them out.”
Snow covers the grave site of Jose and Kitty Menendez on Jan. 10, 1994 in Princeton, New Jersey. (Yvonne Hemsey/Getty Images)
Andersen, through his attorney, has said he rejects the defense claims about child abuse and agrees with trial prosecutors, who showed the brothers went on a $700,000 spending spree in the wake of their parents’ deaths.Â
“Milton Andersen’s continued belief that the claims of molestation were made up, and they were false, and he believes that the correct verdict was issued by the jury and the correct sentence was also committed,” Cady told Fox News Digital. “One of the concerns for him, and should be for everyone really, was at the trial, the Menendez brothers tried to get two specific witnesses to come in and lie for them.”
An undated photo of the Menendez family as it appears on-screen during a panel at CrimeCon 2024 in Nashville, Tennessee, on June 2. The brothers Lyle and Erik were convicted of fatally shooting their parents in 1989. (Michael Ruiz/Fox News Digital)
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A court would need to approve the resentencing for it to become official, and the parole board would then need to OK their release before they could go free.
Andersen’s team is asking the court to reject the resentencing, and, in court filings, noted that the brothers tried to convince two friends to lie for them at trial.
Erik Menendez, left, and his brother Lyle listen during a pre-trial hearing on Dec. 29, 1992 in Los Angeles after the two pleaded innocent in the August 1989 shotgun deaths of their wealthy parents, Jose and Mary Louise Menendez of Beverly Hills, California. (Vince Bucci/AFP via Getty Images)
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Because they were under 26 years old at the time of the murders, under current California law, new sentences of 50 years to life would immediately make them eligible for a parole hearing.Â
During his briefing on Thursday, Gascon also rejected an argument that the father’s abuse suggested that the brothers could’ve committed manslaughter, rather than murder. He said the premeditation was too much to overcome for that defense.
“They have been in prison for nearly 35 years,” he said. “I believe that they have paid their debt to society.”
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Gascon is up for re-election in less than two weeks and faces a strong challenge from independent candidate Nathan Hochman, a former federal prosecutor.
Critics have called his involvement in the high-profile case a move of political desperation.
However, there is also some public support for the brothers’ release after a series of recent documentaries attracted new attention to their case, including one on FOX Nation, and the defense produced two new pieces of evidence that could corroborate the brothers’ claim that their father was a child molester.
Fox News’ Mollie Markowitz contributed to this report.
