By New York Post (U.S.) | Created at 2025-03-21 00:18:15 | Updated at 2025-04-05 15:52:02
2 weeks ago
LOS ANGELES — Lyle and Erik Menendez’s family members blasted Los Angeles prosecutors Thursday, accusing the new district attorney of choosing politics over justice when deciding the killer siblings’ fate — the day after he revealed what it would take for them to be resentenced.
At a rally outside the LA County County Superior Court, two of Lyle and Erik’s cousins claimed the brothers have been rehabilitated and deserve to be set free more than 30 years after the execution-style killings of their wealthy parents in 1989.
Speaking to a crowd of cheering protesters, the family and other advocates — including a former inmate who spent time with Lyle in prison — said District Attorney Nathan Hochman was using the brothers as pawns for his tough-on-crime political agenda when he urged the court to deny their resentencing motion and keep them behind bars.
“I can’t imagine getting into his mind, but … it does feel performative. It feels like he’s serving an agenda,” cousin Anamaria Baralt told The Post.
“When you look at what is required for rehabilitation, they have met that. Exceeded that,” added Tamara Goodell, another cousin of Lyle, now 57, and Erik, 54.
They made the comments one day after Hochman said he would consider resentencing the Menendez brothers — if they owned up to “all the lies” they’ve told since the heinous murders 36 years ago.
“If they sincerely and unequivocally admit for the first time in over 30 years, the full range of their criminal activity and all the lies that they have told about it,” Hochman told ABC News Wednesday, adding that his office has a “checklist” of 20 fabrications from the brothers.
Hochman also doubts the veracity of new evidence that the brothers were molested by their father — particularly, a note written by Erik in 1988 detailing the alleged abuse — and pointed out the brothers’ version of events, which they changed four times, was full of inconsistencies.
Baralt, who spent time with her cousins when they were kids, accused Hochman of being “hypocritical” by focusing on the physical evidence of the crime while ignoring other evidence that the brothers were abused, rehabilitated while in prison and showed remorse for their actions.
“Abuse informs sentencing. And so does age, and they were only 19 and 21 when they did the crime. I don’t understand why [those factors] aren’t being applied here,” she lamented.
Goodell agreed, adding that Hochman seemed to brush off the family’s arguments and concerns during a private meeting earlier this year.
“It felt like he wasn’t listening to us. It was less talking with him, and more him saying, ‘This is what I really want to say.”
The district attorney vehemently denied the family’s allegations Friday.
“While I sympathize with their feelings, my duty is to follow the facts and the law in this case and in every case. … I have shown how the District Attorney’s Office is willing to reconsider its resentencing position if the Menendez brothers come clean for the first time in over 30 years in admitting the lies concerning their central defense,” Hochman told The Post via email.
“The Menendez brothers and their family members can always go directly to Gov. (Gavin) Newsom, who is not bound by the same legal standards, and make their arguments to him to grant clemency,” he added.
Michael Mendoza got to know Lyle Menendez while serving a prison sentence in the 1990s when he was 17 years old.
“I ran into Lyle on the handball court. He was like, ‘What’s a young kid like you doing here? He was trying to help me, trying to be a mentor,” said Mendoza, who now works for the advocacy group LatinoJustice.
He doesn’t believe the brothers should be given a “get-out-of-jail-free card,” but that they should be judged in good faith by the court and the state parole board.
Baralt — who said she speaks with the brothers regularly via smart tablets they were given in prison — pointed out they have behaved like model prisoners, describing a hospice program Erik created to help care for terminally ill inmates.
“What gets lost when we talk about rehabilitation is all of the good they have spent their lives doing over the past 35 years, and they did it without the possibility of release, not knowing they would ever be free,” she said.
She said the brothers never mentioned abuse when they were younger, but that even as a child she sensed a strange “energy” at their house that was unlike her own happy home.
Both brothers received life sentences without the possibility of parole after two high-profile trials in the 1990s in which prosecutors claimed Lyle and Erik killed their parents — wealthy music producer Jose Menendez and his wife Kitty — for the inheritance money.
A hit Netflix documentary brought their case back into the spotlight last year, and in October, more than 20 family members gathered in LA to advocate for their release.
Next month, LA County Superior Court will decide whether to downgrade their sentence from murder to manslaughter, for which they have already served the maximum sentence.
In June, the state parole board will hold its final hearing and submit a recommendation to Newsom on whether to grant the brothers clemency.
Thursday’s rally drew a large crowd, with many advocates waving signs, chanting and delivering speeches into bullhorns as they gathered in front of the courthouse.
“[I’m] here to support victims of sexual abuse who don’t have a voice,” said Jules Simms, who traveled from Florida to back the brothers.
