Menendez Brothers Can Get Parole After Judge Lowers Life Sentences in Notorious Murder Case

Erik and Lyle Menendez may be freed after 34 years if they are re-sentenced and spend decades in jail getting better.

Erik and Lyle Menendez can now get parole after serving less time in prison. This comes more than 30 years after they killed their parents in a Beverly Hills home.

Lawyers and prison staff told Judge Michael Jesic about the brothers’ efforts to make peace while they were in jail, which led to the new sentences.

The district attorney had said they weren’t changed, but now the state parole board will think about letting the brothers go as early as next month.

The brothers have long said that they killed Kitty and Jose Menendez in self-defense after being sexually abused for years. The case became famous, and a Netflix show brought it back to people’s attention.

The brothers spoke to the court in tears after hearing that they had been given a new sentence of 50 years to life in prison with the chance of parole.

They talked about how they killed their parents so badly and why they chose to reload their shotguns and keep shooting them at point-blank range in the living room of their house. The kids were 18 and 21 years old at the time.

Erik Menendez, 54, told the judge, “I had to stop being selfish and younger to really understand what my parents went through in those last moments.”

He talked about how “shocked, confused, and betrayed” they must have felt when they saw their kids with guns and firing.

Both of them said they were sorry for what they did and said they wanted to work with sex abuse victims and prisoners if they were given a second chance.

When 57-year-old Lyle Menendez talked about how his “unfathomable” acts had hurt their family, his voice cracked.

To his family, he said, “I lied to you and put you in the public eye to be shamed.”

Nathan Hochman, the district attorney for Los Angeles County, said that the decision to resentence the two was “monumental” and had “significant implications for the families involved.”

The twins will have a separate meeting with the state’s parole board on June 13.

It’s not clear what will happen at the hearing or if there will be more than one meeting to look over their possible release.