The Menéndez brothers could soon be released from prison after more than 30 years behind bars.
A press conference will be held in Los Angeles on Wednesday where the state is expected to announce a significant development in the case against Erik and Lyle.
Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón personally invited some of the brothers’ relatives to attend the news conference. vanity fair reported.
The family is reportedly hopeful that the district attorney is considering requesting a revised sentence that would allow the brothers, now ages 53 and 56, to be released from custody.
The Menéndez brothers could soon be released from prison after more than 30 years behind bars
The Menéndez brothers spent seven months on the streets after murdering their parents
Gascón recently said his office was examining evidence that was not allowed in his trial, but insisted he was not compromised in any way.
Specifically, Gascón said he was reviewing shocking allegations made last year by Roy Rosselló, a former member of the band Menudo, who claimed that José Menéndez sexually abused him as a teenager while working as a music executive in the 1980s.
The accusations opened the door to appeals by the Menendez brothers over allegations that critical evidence of their father’s alleged abuse was not admitted at their 1996 trial.
If granted a new trial, the Menendez brothers could be freed if a jury finds them guilty of voluntary manslaughter instead of murder, which would trigger their release since they have served more than the maximum sentence.
It comes amid renewed interest in the case of Erik and Lyle Menendez thanks to two separate Netflix shows focusing on their crimes.
The duo, then only 18 and 21 years old, killed their parents José and Mary Louise ‘Kitty’ Menéndez inside their million-dollar home in Beverly Hills in August 1989.
They made a frantic call to police claiming they returned home from the movies to discover their parents had been murdered, sparking fears within one of America’s wealthiest communities that a killer was on the run.
Police announced they would arrest Lyle Menendez in March 1990, seven months after the crime.
They said he was motivated by greed. The brothers would inherit $14 million from their parents and set out to spend it shortly after their parents died.
Lyle bought a Porsche Carrera, a Rolex watch and two restaurants, while his brother hired a full-time tennis coach to start competing in tournaments.
Erik, 51, has revealed that he found it absurd that the police working on the case did not arrest him and his brother at the crime scene.
Lyle bought a Porsche Carrera, a Rolex watch, and two restaurants immediately afterward.
In total, they spent $700,000 between the time of their parents’ deaths and their arrests in March 1990.
But Erik insisted in the new Netflix documentary that it is “absurd” to suggest he was having a good time immediately after the murders.
“It was all to cover up this horrible pain of not wanting to be alive,” he said.
“One of the things that kept me from committing suicide was that I would be a complete failure to my father.”
The duo, then only 18 and 21 years old, killed their parents, José and Mary Louise ‘Kitty’ Menéndez, inside their million-dollar home in Beverly Hills in August 1989.
The Netflix documentary repeats some of the most emotional details of the murder trial, in which both brothers revealed that they were being sexually abused by their father and that their mother turned a blind eye to the abuse.
Lyle told the jury on the stand that he, in turn, took his younger brother into the woods and sexually abused him, doing to Erik what his father had done to him.
Erik said: ‘I remember when he apologized to me on the stand for sexually abusing me. That was a devastating moment for me. He had never told me he was sorry before.
According to Erik, his father began abusing him when he was six years old and that abuse continued for 12 years.