Info Pulse Now

Menendez brothers updates: A timeline of the infamous case


Menendez brothers updates: A timeline of the infamous case

The Menendez brothers, Erik and Kyle, who were convicted of murdering their parents in 1989, have been back in the legal limelight recently as calls escalated for a resentencing hearing and landed on the doorstep of the Los Angeles district attorney.

While it seemed like progress was materializing toward an actual court date, the latest news -- under a new DA -- paints a different picture.

Here's the rundown...

The two brothers, both of whom lived in Beverly Hills, murdered their parents with a shotgun.

A coverup was unraveled as the investigation progressed, a spiraling maze of fabrications that included possible gang ties and even a Mafia hit on Jose and Kitty Menendez.

Eventually, the brothers' responsibility for the act came after Erik confessed to his therapist, and that tape was given to the police.

Both brothers were arrested in March of 1990. Lyle Menendez was 21, and Erik, who turned himself in after his brother's arrest, was 18.

They are accused of first-degree murder, and the trial began in July 1993.

Once the trials began -- they were tried separately in the original case -- the brothers claimed self-defense, turning the attention to a history of sexual abuse from their father and believing their parents were going to kill them.

Both juries were deadlocked on the first-degree murder charge.

In October 1995, the brothers were retried for the murder of their parents. This time, the case was presented in front of a single jury.

A significant part of the defense's evidence about the sexual abuse was excluded during the trial.

In March 1996, six years after the brothers were first arrested, the jury found them guilty of first-degree murder.

Erick and Klye Menendez were sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

After the convictions were upheld and a slew of habeas corpus petitions were denied, the case returned to the public eye in March of 2023.

The Attorneys presented new evidence for the Menendez brothers, which included a former member of the boy band Menudo, who alleged that Jose Menendez sexually abused him.

"Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story" first aired on Netflix in September 2024.

In early October 2024, then-Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascón and his office began reviewing the new evidence.

Family members of the Menendez brothers also held a press conference, pleading for their release from prison.

Hochman defeated Gascón and was named the new Los Angeles DA in December 2024. His views on the case are vastly different from Gascón:

The "brothers have never come clean and admitted that they lied about their self-defense as well as suborned perjury and attempted to suborn perjury by their friends for the lies, among others, of their father violently raping Lyle's girlfriend, their mother poisoning the family, and their attempt to get a handgun the day before the murders," the DA said in a statement via ABC.

Although he has not intervened in the past, California Gov. Gavin Newsom has gone to the state parole board and asked for a "risk assessment" test. The purpose will be to determine whether the others have been rehabilitated and would no longer pose a danger to the public if released.

The Los Angeles wildfires pushed the resentencing case back to. March 20 and 21, 2025. The district attorney's office has stated it will not support the resentencing of the Menendez brothers.

POPULAR CATEGORY