Menendez Brother Will Viva in Las Vegas if Freed — Report

Posted on: October 24, 2024, 03:14h. 

Last updated on: October 25, 2024, 09:45h.

Corey Levitan Read More
Expertise: Commercial Gaming, Entertainment, Expert Insight, Las Vegas, Restaurants, Las Vegas Myths.

Erik Menendez has had time to think long and hard about this decision, and he’s chosen Las Vegas as his new home, TMZ reports.

Erik and Lyle Menendez appear in 2023 mug shots. (Image: Wikipedia)

On Thursday, LA County District Attorney George Gascón recommended that Erik, 53, and his older brother Lyle, 56, be resentenced to life with the possibility of parole, which could be granted momentarily due to the nearly 35 years in prison both have already served.

I believe they have paid their debt to society,” the DA said.

A judge needs to sign off on the recommendation before the brothers can be set free. In 1996, they were sentenced to life without parole for two counts of first-degree murder.

Las Vegas is where Erik’s wife, Tammi, lives. The couple married in 1999 after corresponding by mail for six years, when she was married to someone else.

Lyle also took a wife, Anna Eriksson, in 1996, but they divorced five years later. In 2003, he married his current wife, Rebecca Sneed. Where Lyle wants to live is unknown, according to TMZ.

Murder Was the Case

There isn’t any doubt who shot the brothers’ parents, José and Kitty, to death on Aug. 20, 1989, in their Beverly Hills mansion. Erik, who was 18 at the time, and Lyle, 21, confessed to the horrific crime.

However, what was a clear case of murder in 1989 is murkier in 2024.

That’s because the brothers were both sexually molested by their father, a claim backed up by several witnesses at the time. It was also bolstered last year by the Peacock series, “Menendez + Menudo: Boys Betrayed,” in which Roy Rosselló, a member of the Spanish-speaking pop group from 1983 to 1986, claimed that he was raped by Jose Menendez, who worked for Menudo’s record label at the time.

When murder charges were first brought against the brothers, their only possible defense was self-defense, which their attorney failed to prove in two trials. But changing societal views toward sexual abuse now insist that it should have been considered a mitigating factor in their sentencing.

The abuse wasn’t even admissible in their second trial, which resulted in their 1996 conviction.

“I understand how sometimes people get desperate,” Gascón said Thursday. “We often see women, for instance, that have been battered for years, and sometimes they murder their abuser out of desperation.

“I do believe that the brother was subjected to a tremendous amount of dysfunction in the home.”

The case attracted fresh attention thanks to a recent Netflix documentary and the network’s series, “Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menéndez Story.” It has also drawn protests on TikTok from Gen Z, which generally believes that justice was wildly unserved. For instance, most of the male jurors on the convicting jury didn’t believe that a father could molest his own son and thought the brothers murdered their parents for financial gain.

The brothers are currently incarcerated at the Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility in San Diego.

Prisons in California permit conjugal visits, but not for prisoners serving life sentences without the possibility of parole. Though that law was changed in 2016, neither Erik nor Lyle can receive visits from family members because their crime was a violent offense against a family member.