[THEME MUSIC]
You have a prepaid call from--
Lyle Menendez.
My name is Lyle Menendez.
I'm at RJ Donovan State Prison in San Diego, California.
And I am here for killing my parents.
My brother and I were convicted together.
First-degree murder verdicts for both Erik and Lyle Menendez.
Excuse us.
This is a special report from the Van Nuys Courthouse.
Both Menendez brothers have been found guilty.
How big a deal was the Menendez case?
Well, when you think back, it was huge.
The Menendez family was very wealthy.
This was Beverly Hills.
Murders just don't typically happen.
Kitty was my baby sister.
There was a brutal murder.
Everyone from the gardener to the president
had a view of what happened.
I'm Jackie Lacey.
I'm the former elected district attorney of Los Angeles County.
A couple was sitting around watching TV
when their adult sons came in with shotguns
and slaughtered them.
What did these parents do to deserve that?
There must be a reason.
There's just never been a case of guilt or innocence.
It was always about why it happened.
Jose Menendez was a self-made millionaire.
He was very driven, very demanding.
The prosecution's theory was they got tired
of their lives being micromanaged.
They wanted to spend the money the way
they wanted to spend the money.
They were buying Rolex watches.
They were buying real estate.
The way that they acted was not like, oh my goodness,
my parents are dead.
It was soulless.
It was strictly greed from day one.
You believe they wanted a portion of the money.
They wanted it all.
[TENSE MUSIC]
My name is Cliff Gardner.
I represent Erik and Lyle Menendez.
It's not a complex case.
It's a simple case.
They were abused their whole life.
My dad had been molesting me.
He raped me.
Did you ask him not to?
[SNIFFS] Yes.
The brothers were claiming that we were molested by our father.
When we threatened to go public, they threatened to kill us.
And so we had to go in and kill them before they killed us.
I thought he was going to kill me that night.
I never saw anything in the home, never.
I have got to think that it was their attorney's ideas
that the only way you're going to save your ass
is to say that you were molested,
and that's what they did.
It's divided the family immensely.
I love my cousins.
They shouldn't have gone through what they went through.
They're not lying.
They were being abused.
As you sit there in prison, there
is some news now that could really impact you
and your brother's case, right?
Yes.
That's pretty just sort of shocking.
Former Menudo singer Roy Rosselló claims he was drugged
and raped by Jose Menendez in the mid-'80s.
Menudo had just signed with RCA Records, where
Menendez was a top executive.
We now have evidence that makes absolutely clear
that those boys were molested.
And if those boys were molested, it
would have been manslaughter, and they would be out.
The judge in this case, if he finds
that the new evidence is credible
and the conviction should be vacated,
do you think the DA's office would seek a new trial?
I think they would spend a lot of time thinking about it.
34 years of incarceration-- you're
wondering, when will there be a fair review of this?
So maybe now.
My hope in the case is that they'll finally
walk out of prison.
[THEME MUSIC]
Lyle and Erik Menendez have been behind bars in California
for more than three decades for the 1989
killing of their parents Jose and Kitty Menendez.
Convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life
in prison--
I really can't comment.
Did they say anything at all?
--in a case that captured the nation's attention--
Make some room, guys.
--they had no hope of ever walking free.
But new evidence may change that.
Erik chose not to speak with us for this broadcast,
but Lyle did.
You have a prepaid call from--
Lyle Menendez.
This call and your telephone number
will be monitored and recorded.
Hi, Lyle.
Can you hear me?
Hi.
Yeah, I can hear you.
What did you think when you heard about these new claims
and evidence?
I mean, for me, I just was happy.
It's a burden to be telling what happened to you
and just have so much doubt in the public air.
The question is not whether the Menendez brothers
killed their parents.
They admit that they did.
Instead, the focus of the case has long been why they did it.
They insist that they killed out of fear and in self-defense
after a lifetime of physical, emotional,
and sexual abuse, suffered at the hands of their parents.
One of their lawyers, Cliff Gardner,
says the new evidence corroborates those claims
and lessens their culpability.
If the judge finds this evidence credible,
I think it is sufficient to give them a new trial.
But to understand how we got here,
we have to go back to the beginning, the evening
of August 20, 1989, when Lyle Menendez made this call to 911
from the family's Beverly Hills mansion.
Beverly Hills Emergency.
Yes, please.
What's the problem?
Someone killed my parents.
Pardon me?
Someone killed my parents.
After officers responded to the scene, then
21-year-old Lyle and 18-year-old Erik
reported that they had arrived home
to find their parents shot to death in the family room.
Jackie Lacey was a deputy district attorney
in Los Angeles at the time.
I think one of the Beverly Hills detectives
described it as one of the most brutal crime scenes
he had ever seen in his life.
I've been in this business for over 33 years,
and I've heard of very few murders that were
more savage than this one was.
Jose Menendez, a former top executive at RCA Records,
and his wife Kitty had been shot multiple times
at close range with a shotgun.
It was an expression of hatred for these two people.
And that was the last time I saw her alive.
Milton Andersen, Kitty's older brother,
still remembers receiving the news.
My brother called me, and he said
that Kitty and Jose were dead.
I loved her.
My sister Kitty was a very ambitious gal.
She was a very beautiful woman.
Kitty and Jose met when they were in college in Illinois.
Jose had come to the US from Cuba.
They went on to marry and start a family.
Lyle and Erik were their only children.
Over the years, with Kitty by his side,
Jose excelled in his career, working for RCA Records,
among other major companies.
He was going right up the ladder without any hesitation.
At the time of his death, Jose was working for a film studio,
running their home video division.
Investigators initially suspected
that the killings may have been tied to his business dealings.
Lyle sort of indicated, you know, my dad
dealt with shady characters.
And once you say something like that,
detectives are going to start to look at, OK,
what were his business contacts?
Family members and investigators wondered whether it
may have been mafia related.
At the time, the home video industry
was known for having ties to the mob.
Everybody said it was a mob hit.
Because it was so brutal.
It really was like a scene out of The Godfather movies.
Initially, Lyle and Erik Menendez
were not even on investigators radar.
They didn't do any gunshot residue test on their hands.
They let them go back and get evidence
without even thinking, hey, could it have been the kids?
But they didn't stay off investigators radar for long.
Their behavior in the wake of the crime
eventually drew scrutiny.
The brothers appeared to be spending their parents'
money and lots of it.
They were investing in businesses.
They acted like they had won the lottery.
And their behavior at their parents memorial services
raised some eyebrows.
At the podium, Lyle read a letter
from Jose That was filled with love and pride for his sons.
Did you see Lyle get emotional as he was reading that letter?
No.
Lyle also made a statement that his father always said
you can never fill my shoes.
And he jokingly said, guess what?
I'm wearing my father's shoes today.
It struck you as odd that he would say something like that?
It was very odd.
While all that may have seemed unusual,
it wasn't hard evidence.
But then, about six months later, police
got a tip from an unlikely source, the girlfriend
of a psychologist who Lyle and Erik
Menendez had been talking to.
She told police that the brothers had confessed
to the killings in therapy, and there was an audio taped
recording of it.
But for that confession, who knows whether they've ever
been caught?
On March 8, 1990, after police got their hands on that tape,
Lyle Menendez was taken into custody.
Erik Menendez, who was out of the country at the time,
surrendered to police days later.
Not many Hollywood murder mysteries
ever took a more dramatic turn than police
are describing in a couple of savage Beverly Hills killings.
Police say the motive was apparently money, a $14 million
inheritance to be shared by the brothers.
But years later, when the case made its way to trial,
the brothers would make it clear that it might not be so simple.
In August 20, 1989, did you and your brother
kill your mother and father?
Yes.
Why did you kill your parents?
Because we were afraid.
In the summer of 1993, nearly four years after Jose and Kitty
Menendez were gunned down in their home,
their sons Lyle and Erik Menendez went on trial.
They faced the death penalty.
Good afternoon.
The only question in this case is,
why did these killings occur?
Why they were killed is what the focus of all of our evidence
will be on.
What the defense was arguing was that since this
was a self-defense case, the brothers
were deserving of a lesser charge and punishment.
The defense attorneys who tried the case
didn't respond to our requests for an interview.
Cliff Gardner represents Lyle and Erik Menendez today.
I had the defense of imperfect self-defense.
Imperfect self-defense, meaning the brothers honestly
believe that they had to take action to save their lives,
even though it might not seem rational.
And if it's honest but unreasonable,
you are culpable of manslaughter, not of murder.
Both brothers took the stand.
Lyle Menendez spoke of sexual abuse
at the hands of his mother and father.
He said his father began sexually abusing him
when he was only six years old.
He would fondle me, and he would ask me to do the same with him.
Over time, he said, it became worse.
He raped me.
But while Lyle said his father stopped sexually abusing him
when he was eight, Erik said it never ended for him
and that he finally confided in his older brother days
before the crime at age 18.
I didn't know what to do at the time.
So I figured I'd tell Lyle, and maybe he could help me.
He started telling me that one of the reasons he had never
told me before was because my dad had always
threatened his life.
The brothers testified that Lyle soon confronted their parents
and that their mother indicated she
knew about the abuse all along.
In anger, Lyle said he directed a threat at his father.
I told him that I would tell everybody.
Then he said, we all make choices in life, son.
Erik made his.
You've made yours.
What did you think was going to happen?
I thought we were in danger.
I thought he had no-- he felt he had no choice.
But to what?
That he would kill us.
The brothers testified that they got
into another argument with their parents
on the night of the crime and that they believed
their parents were about to kill them to keep the family
secret from coming out.
So they said they grabbed shotguns
that they had bought two days earlier for protection,
went into the family room, and started shooting their parents,
at one point even stopping to reload.
And what did you do after you reloaded?
[BREATHES DEEPLY]
I ran around and shot my mom.
The defense may call its next witness.
To bolster their claims of abuse,
the defense called to the stand numerous relatives, friends,
and acquaintances of the family who
described incidents of physical and emotional abuse
that they said they observed.
Alan Andersen, Lyle and Erik's cousin,
was one of those witnesses.
Growing up, Alan would spend summers at the Menendez home.
He had a lot to say about Jose--
Hitting the kids with a belt, never had a problem with that.
--and Kitty.
She wouldn't get up to console the children, nothing.
While none of the witnesses, including Alan,
ever saw Lyle or Erik Menendez being sexually abused,
Alan did recall something that struck him as odd.
Jose would tell the boys, in the bedroom.
And then he would close the door,
and then he'd take showers with them.
He says, during that time, Kitty wouldn't
let him go near the room.
So I was not allowed while the boys were alone with Jose,
with the door closed in the master bedroom
to go down the hall to probably not hear whatever I may hear.
Another cousin Diane Vandermolen gave similar testimony,
and she also recounted a conversation
she says she had with Lyle when he was eight.
He proceeded to indicate to me by touching himself
down and saying that his dad and him had been
touching each other down there.
And what did you do?
I went and got Kitty and told her what was going on.
And what happened when Kitty came down?
She didn't believe me.
Andy Cano, yet another cousin, also took the stand
and testified about a conversation
he says he had with Erik when Erik was about 13.
He told me his father was massaging his [BLEEP]..
He told me never to reveal it to anybody.
Still, prosecutors argued that even if Lyle and Erik
Menendez were abused, it doesn't give them the right to kill.
And they pointed out that when the brothers confessed
to that psychologist, they never mentioned abuse or self-defense
then.
The timing of this closure was convenient.
The prosecutors who tried the case
didn't respond to our request for an interview.
Former Los Angeles County DA Jackie Lacey
reviewed portions of the trial at our request.
And people do make things up when their life is on the line.
But all these years later, Lyle Menendez maintains
they are telling the truth.
And the reason they didn't come forward then was complicated.
What was holding you back?
Just shame, just not wanting it to be public.
The pure nature of the crime, however,
says Lacey, doesn't support the brothers claim that they
acted in self-defense.
Prosecutors pointed out that Jose and Kitty were watching TV
at the time they were killed, and they weren't armed.
In order to get close enough to blow somebody away,
you would have been able to see that they didn't have weapons.
Lyle Menendez is adamant that he and his brother
were in fear for their lives.
For me, it was just dark and confusing and total belief
that there was danger.
You know, it's fight or flight to a degree.
It was panic.
The prosecution argued the evidence proves
the killings were premeditated.
When the brothers purchased those shotguns,
prosecutors said that they took steps to cover their tracks,
like driving to a gun store all the way in San Diego.
San Diego is not around-the-corner drive.
Last time I checked, it was two hours sometimes.
After they killed their parents, they
went around and picked up the expended shotgun shell casings
so that their fingerprints wouldn't
be discovered on those shells.
There was a lot of thought and a lot of deliberation
that went into it.
They also got rid of the shotguns, made that 911 call--
Who was the person that was shot?
My mom and my dad.
--and misled the initial investigators.
Prosecutors pointed to money as the motive.
They said Jose Menendez told his sons he had removed them
from his will.
And based on their investigation,
they suggested that after the crime,
Lyle Menendez attempted to destroy a will on the family
computer.
Lyle denies doing that and insists money had nothing
to do with what happened.
If there was a new will, it was never found.
We never had any financial problems with my parents.
Although the brothers were tried together,
there were two separate juries deciding their fate.
When deliberations began, they stretched on for weeks,
before both juries determined they were divided over
whether Lyle and Erik Menendez should be convicted
of murder or manslaughter.
Therefore, I find that the jury is hopelessly deadlocked.
A mistrial was declared.
It was just a devastating result.
I needed it to be over, one way or the other.
But it was far from over.
Prosecutors would try the case again.
They needed a win.
The heat was on.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Nearly two years passed as Lyle and Erik Menendez sat in jail,
awaiting a second trial.
Some of their family members, like Alan Andersen,
believed that they were justified in the killings--
I know they did what they did because they
were in fear of their life.
--while others, like Kitty's brother Milton Andersen,
considered them cold-blooded killers.
I don't believe that Jose or Kitty
would do any of the things that they were accused of.
Jose was changing his will, and that's
when they went out and bought the shotguns.
At the retrial, which began in October 1995,
one jury, instead of two, would hear the case.
No video cameras were allowed in court,
and a new team of prosecutors would
employ a different strategy.
The first trial was, OK, there may have been abuse,
but we don't allow vigilantes in our society.
The second trial, the prosecution's case,
there was no abuse at all.
And what made it easier for prosecutors to argue that,
says attorney Cliff Gardner, is the fact
that the prosecution raised new and successful objections
to the admission of a large amount of defense evidence.
Now the jury would hear from only some,
not all, of the witnesses who knew the Menendez family
and helped corroborate the brothers claims of abuse.
The DA was not going to take another loss.
They could not take another loss.
The judge, who had also presided over the first trial,
excluded the testimony on the grounds
that it was irrelevant, repetitive,
and, in some instances, lacking in foundation.
Because this time, Lyle Menendez would not take the stand.
Erik did testify.
Why did you decide not to speak?
For two reasons.
I was just done after the first trial.
And I didn't have the attorney that I
trusted so much to ask me these deep, personal questions.
But Carol Najera, the only surviving lead prosecutor
from the second trial, who declined to speak with us,
suggested in a 1996 interview there
might have been another reason why Lyle didn't take the stand.
There were things that had been developed
since the first trial that would have damaged
his credibility a great deal.
Prosecutors said they had new evidence
that Lyle had asked a friend and a former girlfriend
to fabricate testimony.
Lyle admits to 48 Hours that he did do that
but says he later withdrew those requests.
Because Lyle didn't take the stand,
his cousin Diane Vandermolen was prohibited
from testifying about that conversation she
says she had with Lyle when he was
eight in which she says Lyle told her that his father was
touching him.
The jury did still hear from cousin
Andy Cano about that similar conversation he claimed to have
had with a 13-year-old Erik.
But the prosecution attacked his credibility.
The state's position was that Andy was a liar.
And when cousin Alan Andersen took the stand,
prosecutors attacked his credibility too,
bringing up the fact that Lyle Menendez gave him
money after the crime.
Andersen says it was to help pay for a medical procedure.
He didn't say anything like, well, if I go to court or--
no.
It was just straight up between him and I,
him being a nice cousin, knowing I was in financial bind.
He knew he had the resources to help me.
At the second trial, prosecutors placed more of a focus
on the brutality of the crime.
And they painted Jose as a restrained, loving father,
someone incapable of molesting his children.
Prosecutors referred to the brothers defense
as the abuse excuse.
In the first trial, the defense called more than 50 witnesses.
This time, they called about half.
It wasn't that they didn't want to present them.
They were not allowed.
The jury deliberated for days.
And then--
The verdicts are in the retrial of Erik and Lyle Menendez.
--guilty of first-degree murder.
I hugged my brother.
We cried.
And I said, look, we're going to be OK.
I was not happy at all.
At the jury's recommendation, the brothers
were sentenced to life in prison without the possibility
of parole.
And you believe they deserved that?
What they did to my sister, they should
have gotten the death penalty.
Lyle and Erik Menendez were sent to separate prisons.
More than two decades passed.
And then, around 2020, the case made a surprising resurgence
on social media.
Following a documentary that aired
on the case in which Erik Menendez repeated
his claims of abuse, droves of people
took to TikTok and Instagram to express support
for him and his brother.
Dr. Judy Ho is a neuropsychologist
who specializes in childhood sex abuse trauma.
Dr. Ho is also a 48 Hours consultant.
We asked her to review the case.
I definitely think that our society has just
become more knowledgeable about trauma and the impact
of sexual trauma.
Dr. Ho says research shows that just because the brothers
delayed reporting abuse, it doesn't mean they made it up.
That's all very consistent with people
who have been through trauma and maybe
feel like it was even their own fault in some ways,
or they're ashamed of the trauma.
And there's a lot more self stigma and shame
associated with male victims.
She also says that the abuse the brothers describe
could even help explain why the crime was so brutal.
It makes sense that in that moment,
it's almost like a breakdown.
And that's not to make an excuse for anything that they've done,
but it's just to describe the state of mind of this
is years and years of abuse, where they couldn't
act to protect themselves.
And once they pulled the trigger,
it was like there was no turning back.
But could Lyle and Erik Menendez have truly
been in fear for their lives that night?
They're 18 and 21.
Why couldn't they leave?
Right.
Well, certainly there was a path that they
could have taken as to try to get away from the family.
But it sounds like, even at that age,
they were very much under the control of their father still.
I think that oftentimes what people are not aware of
is that trauma completely rewires the brain.
They probably did think at one point it was either them
or their parents, that it was a fight-or-flight conditioning
that had come up.
Attorney Cliff Gardner believes the case would
be tried differently today.
The idea back then was A, dads don't molest their children.
And if by chance it happened, these
were 18- and 21-year-old kids.
They're strapping young men.
They just leave.
And both those, I think, are undercut in what we know today.
Still, a better understanding of the effects
of sexual abuse and some social media support
would do little on their own to make a difference
in the brother's case legally.
Instead, what their defense needed was new evidence.
And eventually, that's what it got.
Did you or Erik think that another person
would accuse your father of child molestation?
I did not.
I could not believe it.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Over the years, Lyle and Erik Menendez
appealed their convictions but were unsuccessful.
It seemed unlikely that they would ever
see beyond prison walls.
But then new evidence began to surface, the first piece
in the form of a letter.
Just kind out of the blue, one of my father's sister
found a letter in storage.
Appellate attorney Cliff Gardner says
the letter was written by Erik Menendez
to his cousin Andy Cano in December 1988,
about eight months before the crime.
It's not dated, but you were able to get
a frame of reference of the timing of it
based on the contents of the letter.
Exactly.
He talks about the Christmas party.
We know the Christmas party that they put on
was in Christmas of '88.
He talks about hiring a new tennis coach.
There's a number of things in the letter that
allow us to authenticate when it was written.
And it's a particular section of the letter
that Gardner says is key.
He says, "I've been trying to avoid dad.
It's still happening, Andy, but it's worse for me now.
Every night, I stay up thinking he might come in.
I'm afraid.
He's crazy.
He's warned me 100 times about telling anyone, especially
Lyle."
No one knew about it at trial.
It was never presented.
Remember, Andy Cano did testify at both trials.
He said that Erik Menendez, at age 13,
confided in him that his dad had been touching him.
Prosecutors suggested that Cano was lying.
He explained to me that these massages
that his father was giving him were beginning to hurt.
The letter is significant why?
Well, the state's position was that Andy was a liar,
and he was making it up.
This shows that Andy wasn't making it up.
It's contemporaneous evidence from Erik
to his cousin Andy about what was happening.
But the letter was just the beginning.
More evidence has surfaced that Gardner
says further supports Lyle and Erik Menendez's
long-standing claims that they were sexually abused.
A man named Roy Rosselló has come forward,
claiming that he was sexually abused by Jose Menendez too.
Roy was a member of the boy band Menudo,
which was big in the late '70s, mid-'80s.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
[SINGING IN SPANISH]
They're a sensation in the Spanish-speaking world.
And throughout Latin America, their appeal has caught on big.
Menudo!
Menudo originated in Puerto Rico.
The band is best known for producing big name talent
like singer Ricky Martin.
(SINGING) I'll feel your hands erase all my sorrows.
The idea behind the band was to keep it perpetually young.
Few of the performers remained in the group
beyond the age of 16, instead being rotated out
for younger talent.
It turns out Jose Menendez had ties to the group.
Jose Menendez was working at RCA at the time,
and RCA signed Menudo to a recording contract.
Former Menudo member Roy Rosselló, now 54,
was not available for an interview with 48 Hours.
But in a sworn affidavit filed just last year,
he claims he went to Jose Menendez's home
in the early '80s at the direction of the band's
then manager Edgardo Diaz.
Rosselló would have been between 14 and 15 years old
at the time.
He says he drank a glass of wine and then felt like he
had no control over his body.
He says Jose Menendez took him to a room and raped him.
Rosselló first spoke publicly about the allegations
in a documentary.
[SPEAKING SPANISH]
Rosselló also alleges that he was sexually
abused by Jose Menendez on two other occasions,
right before and right after a performance at Radio City Music
Hall in New York.
I met Roy, and he talked to me about it.
It was a difficult conversation for him.
It was difficult for me to hear.
But I thought Roy was credible.
It can take years for people to recognize
what happened, to have the courage to come forward.
When I first heard about it, I cried.
For me, it was very meaningful to just
have things come out that caused people to really realize, OK,
at least this part of what it's about is true.
Lyle Menendez says he remembers Menudo band members coming over
to the family home.
when they lived in New Jersey, before moving to Beverly Hills.
He does not recall Rosselló specifically.
What do you remember about the Menudo band members
going to your home?
Only that my father had sort of intimate involvement
with that particular group.
They usually would not have too much involvement
with groups other than negotiations.
But with Menudo and Edgardo Diaz, he traveled with them.
He went to their concerts.
He stayed in hotels they stayed at.
Lyle Menendez says he didn't think much of it
until rumors began surfacing towards the end of he
and his brother's first trial.
People in the industry were talking about
that maybe something had happened because there
was a sex scandal in the group.
Rosselló, along with other former Menudo members,
have long accused Edgardo Diaz, the band's one-time manager,
of sexual abuse.
Diaz has always denied the allegations,
and no charges have been filed against him.
The Los Angeles Police Department
is currently investigating a specific incident
in which Rosselló alleges Diaz raped him at this hotel
in the 1980s.
But what does this new evidence mean
in terms of Lyle and Erik Menendez's case?
The importance of the new evidence,
you have to look back and understand
what the state's position was at the second trial.
The state's position was that the sexual abuse never
happened.
And the state's position as to Jose Menendez
was he wasn't the type of person who would molest a young boy.
This new evidence takes both those arguments
and undercuts them entirely.
Gardner has filed a habeas petition,
asking that his client's convictions be vacated.
The boys were abused as children.
They were abused their whole life.
And this is a manslaughter case, not a murder case.
It's just that simple.
And if they were convicted of manslaughter,
they would have received a much shorter sentence
and been out a long time ago.
But will a judge buy Gardner's argument?
It is very, very possible that Jose Menendez
was a child molester.
But you don't get to murder him and his wife in cold blood.
What do you make of the new evidence?
To see a timeline of how the case unfolded,
go to 48hours.com.
After attorney Cliff Gardner filed the habeas petition
in May 2023, asking that Lyle and Erik Menendez
convictions be vacated, it turned into a waiting game
for a judge to rule.
We asked former DA Jackie Lacey what
she makes of the new evidence, starting
with that letter, the one that appears
to have been written by Erik Menendez to his cousin Andy
Cano months before the crime.
The interesting thing about the letter
is that there are only two people who can authenticate it,
Andy Cano and Erik Menendez.
Andy Cano died in 2003.
And Lacey points out that he never mentioned the letter
when he testified.
You would think, when Andy was on the stand twice,
he'd have brought that up.
And oh, yeah, he told me about it recently,
and here's the letter.
The timing of that letter, though, you
are able to pin down because it was the holidays, because he
writes about his Christmas plans.
But now look at it another way.
And you could include those details
and get that letter together after they were caught.
This letter, for all we know, could
have been written by Erik Menendez
shortly after the murder, given to Cano,
and Cano may have gotten cold feet about it
and not submitted it.
But Gardner argues the new evidence is sound.
He says the reason the letter was not brought up at trial
is likely because Erik Menendez and Andy Cano forgot about it.
If you look at the letter, it's not just
about what Jose's been doing.
It's about all sorts of other things.
It was just one of many letters that they wrote to each other.
There really shouldn't be any doubt about the authenticity
of the letter.
And as for Roy Rosselló, the former Menudo band member--
Can you discount his claims altogether?
No.
I think what the judge has to weigh and consider
is, is this newly discovered evidence that
would have changed the verdict?
And Lacey says she does not believe it would have.
They're still stuck with the planning,
the cover-up, the money that they spent afterwards.
I think that could argue the sexual abuse occurred.
On the other hand, at the moment these men are driving down
to San Diego, paying for the murder weapons,
coming back, and waiting for an opportune time
to go in and kill their parents, the molestation
is not occurring right then.
I do not believe that at the time
they murdered them, that they were
in danger at that particular minute of being murdered
by those people.
I think they hated them.
They might have had a good reason to hate them.
But we can't condone vigilantism.
When you calmly and logically look at the facts
surrounding the killing, it's a murder.
But Gardner believes the new evidence would have made
a difference to the jurors.
He says evidence of abuse can mitigate a crime,
and that's why prosecutors fought so hard to keep it out
of the second trial.
Sexual abuse, physical abuse is relevant to your state of mind.
And state of mind is the key in determining
whether something is murder or whether something
is manslaughter.
What this evidence does is it puts you back in the situation
that they were in with the first trial,
that there was corroboration for the abuse.
And in the first trial, remember,
two juries were divided over whether the brothers should
have been convicted of murder or manslaughter.
The court declares a mistrial.
Gardner thinks this new evidence, combined
with that of the first trial, rules out murder entirely.
My hope in the case is that the judge will realize
that this new evidence is indeed credible and persuasive,
and he'll vacate the convictions.
If that happens, it would be up to the Los Angeles County
District Attorney's Office whether to retry the case.
In a statement, the district attorney's office
said it is investigating the claims made
in the habeas petition.
Alan Andersen wants to see his cousins released.
What I would say to the prosecutors, to a judge
would be, please, look at all of the evidence.
They are speaking the truth.
They shouldn't be in there as long as they've been.
But still, Kitty Menendez's brother Milton Andersen
feels just the opposite.
He says he doesn't believe the new evidence is credible.
I don't think it's evidence.
And he wants his nephews to stay put.
I think they should die of old age in prison.
I loved my sister, and I protected her in life.
And I will love my sister and protect her in her death.
Lyle Menendez says he understands his uncle's pain.
Part of my remorse is for the pain I caused people like him.
As they await a judge's decision,
Lyle and Erik Menendez, who reside
in the same prison since 2018, are
focused on rehabilitation and continuing their education.
I connect with other prisoners that have sex abuse histories
and work with them.
Both brothers are married to women outside prison.
I think it has made a huge difference to have
love and support like that.
I try not to be defined by that one night.
It's sort of a lifelong journey not to be
defined by that one night.
[THEME MUSIC]
Need more time with 48 Hours?
Go deep behind every true crime episode with firsthand accounts
from 48 Hours investigations.
Were you at all prepared for what happened in this case?
Shock is the word that comes to mind.
Get inside the twists and turns and get in on the case.
Listen to Post Mortem from 48 Hours, now available
wherever you get your podcasts.