NY Magazine, August 2025
On Thursday, Erik Menendez will be escorted from his cell inside the Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility outside San Diego to meet with a commissioner and deputy commissioner from the California parole board. The next day, his older brother, Lyle, will do the same. During what the board euphemistically refers to as a “conversation,” the Menendezes will be questioned under oath in the most deeply personal way possible about why, exactly, they shot their parents to death 36 years ago nearly to the day. “No court has ever heard the full story in this case, the depth and depravity of the abuse suffered by Lyle and Erik, and their remarkable journal of personal transformation,” their lawyers wrote in a recent court filing. The parole board will.
Originally condemned to life without parole, the brothers took a major step toward freedom in the spring when, over the furious objection of prosecutors, a Los Angeles judge resentenced them, clearing the way for this week’s hearings. Advocates for the brothers view them as the sort of trial that they never had, happening in an era when credible claims of sexual assault are taken more seriously than in the 1990s, when popular culture mocked the pair as a couple of spoiled narcissists who concocted fake abuse claims to get away with murder.
