Menendez brothers await a call they hope will free them

Lyle and Erik Menendez have been behind bars in California for greater than three a long time for the 1989 killing of their mother and father, Jose and Kitty Menendez. They had been convicted of first-degree homicide and sentenced to life in jail within the infamous case that captured the nation’s consideration. Now, the brothers are hoping that new proof will reopen their case and set them free.

“48 Hours” contributor Natalie Morales speaks to Lyle Menendez from jail as he awaits a decide’s determination in “The Menendez Brothers’ Battle for Freedom,” an all-new “48 Hours” airing Saturday, March 2 at 10/9c on CBS and streaming on Paramount +.

The Menendez brothers admit that they killed their mother and father. As an alternative, the main target of the case has lengthy been on why they did it. They insist that they killed out of worry and in self-defense after a lifetime of bodily, emotional and sexual abuse suffered by the hands of their mother and father. 

One in every of their legal professionals, Cliff Gardner, tells “48 Hours” that new proof corroborates these longstanding claims and lessens their culpability. Gardner argues that Lyle and Erik Menendez ought to have been convicted of manslaughter as a substitute of first-degree homicide, and that if that they had been, they’d have obtained a a lot shorter sentence and been out of jail a very long time in the past.

The brand new proof features a letter that Gardner says was written by Erik Menendez to Erik’s cousin, Andy Cano, in December 1988, about eight months earlier than the crime. The letter reads, partly, “I have been making an attempt to keep away from dad. It is nonetheless occurring, Andy, however it’s worse for me now. … Each night time I keep up pondering he would possibly are available in. … I am afraid. … He is loopy. He is warned me 100 instances about telling anybody, particularly Lyle.”

Andy Cano did testify on the brothers’ trials. He mentioned that Erik Menendez at age 13, years earlier than the killings, instructed him that his father was touching him inappropriately. Prosecutors at trial instructed that Cano was mendacity.

The brothers had been tried twice. Their first trial resulted in a mistrial when two juries, one for every brother, could not attain a unanimous determination as as to whether Lyle and Erik Menendez had been responsible of manslaughter or homicide. After they had been tried a second time, prosecutors attacked the abuse allegations extra aggressively. They referred to the allegations as “the abuse excuse.” That trial resulted within the brothers’ convictions for first-degree homicide.

Gardner says this letter is proof that the abuse allegations weren’t made up. He says the letter was by no means introduced at both trial, and that it was found in storage inside the previous couple of years by Andy Cano’s mom. Andy Cano died in 2003.

The letter is not the one piece of proof that has surfaced. Roy Rossello, a former member of the Puerto Rican boy band Menudo, has come ahead claiming that he was additionally sexually abused by Jose Menendez, again within the early 80s, when Rossello was a minor and a member of the band. On the time, Jose Menendez was working as an government at RCA Information, and RCA signed Menudo to a recording contract.

Rossello is now 54 years outdated. He says in a sworn affidavit filed in 2023 that he went to Jose Menendez’s residence within the fall of 1983 or 1984. Rossello would have been between 14 and 15 years outdated on the time. He says he drank “a glass of wine,” then felt like he had “no management” over his physique. He says Jose Menendez took him to a room and raped him. Rossello additionally states within the affidavit that he was sexually abused by Jose Menendez on two different events, proper earlier than and proper after a efficiency at Radio Metropolis Music Corridor in New York.

“Once I first heard about it … I cried,” Lyle Menendez instructed Morales. “For me, it was very significant to only have issues come out that prompted individuals to essentially understand, OK … at the very least this a part of what it is about is true.”

The Menendez brothers’ lawyer, Cliff Gardner, filed a habeas petition in Might 2023 citing the letter and Rossello’s affidavit as new proof that proves his purchasers’ convictions ought to be vacated.

“The boys had been abused as kids. They had been abused their entire life. … And this can be a manslaughter case, not a homicide case. It is simply that straightforward,” Gardner mentioned to “48 Hours” in regards to the Menendez brothers. “My hope within the case is that the decide will understand that this new proof is certainly credible and persuasive, and he’ll vacate the convictions.”

If that occurs, it might be as much as the Los Angeles County District Legal professional’s Workplace whether or not to retry the case. In a press release, the district lawyer’s workplace instructed “48 Hours” it’s investigating the claims made within the habeas petition. It’s unclear when a decide will rule within the case.