The question for prosecutors reexamining the murder convictions of Lyle and Erik Menendez is not whether they killed their parents, but how culpable they really are.
“There’s no question that they committed the killing,” Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón told CNN’s Jim Acosta on Saturday. “The question is, to what degree of culpability should they be held accountable to, given the totality of the circumstances?”
The reexamination of the case comes more than 35 years after the fatal shooting of Jose and Kitty Menendez in their Beverly Hills home, leading to a high-profile prosecution of their sons Lyle and Erik, then 21 and 18 years old. The brothers were ultimately convicted of the murders and have admitted to the deed, but they have argued they did so in self-defense after enduring years of their father’s abuse.
The case has taken on new interest in the wake of a docuseries and Netflix drama as well as a growing understanding of and empathy for sexual abuse victims. Prosecutors have said they are reconsidering the brothers’ prison sentence of life without parole.
Here’s a look at the timeline of the case over the decades, from the initial shooting to the recent efforts to alter their sentence.
The killings and trials
August 1989: Jose Menendez, an executive at RCA Records, and his wife Kitty Menendez, are shot and killed by shotgun blasts in their Beverly Hills mansion. Lyle called 911 and said, “Someone killed my parents.”
March 1990: Lyle is arrested by police and Erik turns himself in days later after they confessed to their therapist. They are accused of first-degree murder.
July 1993: The Menendez brothers go on trial in a Los Angeles courtroom, each with a separate jury, in a trial televised on Court TV. Prosecutors argued that they killed their parents for financial gain. The brothers’ defenses admitted they killed their parents but argued that they acted out of self-defense after years of emotional, psychological and sexual abuse by their father.
January 1994: Both juries deadlock and cannot come to a verdict.
October 1995: A retrial of the brothers begins, with one jury. This time around, much of the defense evidence about sexual abuse is excluded, according to defense attorneys.
March 1996: The jury convicts both brothers of first-degree murder.
July 1996: The brothers are sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
The reexamination
May 2023: In the Peacock docuseries “Menendez + Menudo: Boys Betrayed,” a former member of the boy band Menudo said in a sworn affidavit that he was raped by Jose Menendez when he was about 14.
Attorneys for the Menendez brothers file a habeas petition asking the court to reconsider the conviction and sentence in light of new evidence from the Menudo band member and from a letter Erik wrote about the abuse prior to the killings. The attorneys ask the court to either vacate the brothers’ conviction and sentence, or permit discovery and an evidentiary hearing in which they can provide proof, the document says.
The Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office says it is reviewing the petition.
September 2024: Netflix releases the crime drama “Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story,” a nine-episode series co-created by Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan about the killings.
“(The show) is really more interested in talking about how monsters are made as opposed to born,” Murphy says during a panel at an early screening of the show’s first episode,?according to Netflix. “We try to not have too much judgment about that because we’re trying to understand why they did something, as opposed to the act of doing something.”
In a statement shared on social media?by his wife, Erik Menendez criticizes the show’s “horrible and blatant lies” and says the show takes the truth back to “an era when the prosecution built a narrative on a belief system that males were not sexually abused, and that males experienced rape trauma differently than women,” he writes.
“Those awful lies have been disrupted and exposed by countless brave victims over the last two decades who have broken through their personal shame and bravely spoken out. So now Murphy shapes his horrible narrative through vile and appalling character portrayals of Lyle and of me and disheartening slander,” he writes.
October 5, 2024: Gascón, the LA County District Attorney, tells CNN’s Jim Acosta that he “increasingly became concerned that it was critical that we reviewed the new evidence” put forth by the defense.
He noted that times had changed regarding how the public and the courts treat victims of sexual abuse.
“There is no question that our sensitivity to sexual assault is much more significant today,” he said. “(It) has been clearly established that both men and women can be sexually assaulted, or boys and girls. I think 35 years ago cultural norms were a little different. … There is no question that a jury today would look at this case probably very differently than a jury did 35 years ago.”
He also notes that the shows and films about the case have had an impact.
“But for the documentary, quite frankly, we probably would not be talking at this point,” he said. “We may be talking later, but that certainly has increased the attention by the public, and that’s why we’re being public about where we are.”
A hearing on the Menendez brothers’ petition is set for November 29.
CNN’s Taylor Romine and Lisa Respers France contributed to this report.