Introducing a new podcast for the true crime-obsessed, "The Crime Scene Weekly," hosted by Brad Mielke. Each week, "The Crime Scene" focuses on what everybody's talking about in true crime: what all your favorite podcasts are covering, and what's taking over your TikTok feed. Follow the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you listen. In this week's episode, hear how more than three decades after the murder of their parents, the Menendez brothers are back in the spotlight and fighting for their freedom. New developments could change the course of their future. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: What is 'The Crime Scene Weekly' about?
This is Deborah Roberts. We've got a new show for you that I think you're really going to want to check out. It's called The Crime Scene Weekly from ABC News. Each week, host Brad Milkey, who you know from Start Here, sits down with the journalists covering the latest true crime stories.
From the discovery of grisly new crimes to breakthroughs in cases that are far from closed, you can stay up to speed on the latest true crime headlines. It's true crime in real time. And for the next few weeks, we're going to bring the Crime Scene Weekly to you here in the 2020 feed. If you like it, make sure to follow the show and keep listening. Again, it's the Crime Scene Weekly.
Now, here's Brad.
Chapter 2: Who were the Menendez brothers and what did they do?
35 years after the gruesome double murder that gripped the nation, the Menendez brothers are back in the spotlight and fighting for their freedom. But it's not just what you know, it's who you know and who you can get on your side. Over the last couple weeks, that's all changing. Welcome to the crime scene. I'm Brad Milkey. I host ABC's daily news podcast, Start Here.
And every week, we're bringing you the latest on what's big and what's new in the true crime scene. This week, we're talking to ABC chief national correspondent Matt Gutman, who's based in L.A. and has been following this case for years. He's with us now. Hey, Matt. Hey, Brad.
Before we get into the recent news, I just want to revisit some important details here, because I grew up in Southern California, Matt. Like, I grew up on the OJ trial, the Tupac killing, and yet this still remains one of the most infamous double murders of its day. So Lyle and Eric Menendez, 18 and 21, gunned down and killed their parents, Jose Menendez and Kitty Menendez in Beverly Hills.
That's not in dispute, right? They were convicted of murdering their parents. Can you take us back to that time? What was life like for this family?
We're talking about Kitty and Jose Menendez. And Jose Menendez was really a star in the entertainment world, right? He's involved in music producing. He has become a millionaire. He has single-handedly raised his family and all of his extended family up. This is an American success story, right? Basically came from Cuba. They were virtually penniless.
And now he is living in a multimillion dollar Beverly Hills mansion. He's got these two kids, Eric and Lyle, chiseled faces, forearms, muscled and veined from tennis and sports. And they're just like poster children of Beverly Hills kids, you know, with these mops of thick, dark hair. You know, they look the part. But obviously something went very, very wrong.
And on this hot August 20th night, 1989, Kitty and Jose are gunned down. And not just gunned down. This is like brutal, nasty, visceral, up-close murder. Shotgun blasts to the kneecaps, to the back of the head on Jose. The mother is crawling at some point. She's shotgunned. They actually had to reload the shotguns, whoever the assailants were.
And it was so gruesome that police didn't quite know what to make of it initially, especially because Eric and Lyle Menendez, as you mentioned, 18 and 21 at the time, were like, hey, it's not us. They were intruders. And then the different stories started to come out and they never quite made sense. And then in March of 1990, police pretty much started to piece together what was going on.
They arrested Eric and Lyle, and they understood that these two young men had premeditated this murder. They had planned to murder their parents. They had purchased shotguns. They had driven down to near San Diego to buy them. They had shotgunned their parents. They had reloaded at some point. It was face-to-face and intimate. This was a killing that involved a tremendous amount of personal hatred.
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Chapter 3: What was the original trial and defense of the Menendez brothers?
And so in 1993, their trials began. I think they were tried separately at the time, right? They both pleaded not guilty. What was the claim they were making?
Right. They are now saying that they murdered their parents because they had to, because of self-defense, because they were afraid of their father. And this unspools something else that was also completely novel and really sort of earth shattering. There was now open talk in court and in the public about about these two now young men being sexually abused by their father, Brad.
Well, and speaking of this moment, this was also the beginning of cameras in courtrooms, as we now know them. And there was footage from this trial that ABC has. And in fact, here's a clip of Lyle Menendez on the stand talking about what, again, at this moment was sort of earth shattering for us to hear. So let's listen to that.
Were you scared?
Very.
Did you ask him not to?
Yes.
How did you ask him not to?
I just told him, I don't, I don't. I just told him that I didn't want to do this and that it hurt me. And he said that he didn't mean to hurt me. He loved me.
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Chapter 4: What new evidence has emerged in the Menendez case?
So this is called a habeas corpus petition. This habeas corpus petition was filed with the court. And basically it says that years after the brothers were convicted, a cousin of theirs, Andy Cano, found a letter or somebody found it in his box of letters. It's from Eric to his cousin, Andy Cano, about the alleged abuse before the murders happened. Let me read some of it.
It says, I've been trying to avoid dad. It's still happening. Andy, but it's even worse for me now. Every night I stay up thinking he might come in. I'm afraid. He's crazy. And it took a while to have this materialized, partly because Andy Cano died in the early 2000s. And nobody brought this forward. The second piece was produced during a documentary.
So Roy Rosello was a former member of this boy band named Menudo. It was big in the 80s and 90s. And he appears in this docuseries called Menendez and Menudo, Boys Betrayed. And he says on camera that he was also raped by the brother's father, Jose Menendez, indicating that this was not just happening to the boys, but that other people were allegedly sexually abused by Jose Menendez.
Which is also important because the family had denied that abuse was happening, but here if you've got evidence that it might have been happening not just with the boys but other people as well, that all of a sudden becomes more plausible, I presume.
Right. Some of the family members denied that this was happening, but other family members said, no, in fact, we knew about it. And one of the most prominent is Joan, the 93-year-old aunt of Eric and Lyle Menendez and Kitty Menendez's sister. And she very publicly said that the brothers never knew on any given night whether they would be raped. And so there was an evolution in the family.
Very quickly, they supported the brothers, but also quite quickly, they began not only to support them, but to try to demand or ask that they be released. And so there's this confluence of events. There is this documentary that comes out that shows the letter from Andy Cano and Roy Rosellas. on camera talking about being raped by Jose Menendez.
There's the dramatized version from Ryan Murphy called Monsters, which is a scripted series about the brothers, but also talks about their alleged abuse by their father. It creates this groundswell of interest that propels this story back into the limelight. It's thrust in front of LASDA George Cascone in the form of this habeas corpus petition.
Well, and that's the thing that is like this groundswell also seems to involve, it's a whole new generation of people who are like, yes, childhood sexual trauma is real, is more common than we might've thought and has a greater effect than, than we might've thought on people. So I guess I'm wondering how all that sort of plays into the DA's decision.
Well, the question is which DA, right? So the first DA, George Casco was after a while swayed by this. And there may be a couple of reasons. First, We're so quick to forget the zeitgeist and the cultural moment, but really at the end of 2023 and 2024, lots of people started talking about the case, and it started picking up momentum on TikTok.
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Chapter 5: How has public perception influenced the Menendez brothers' case?
And remember... Two big, very long trials, a tremendous amount of paperwork having to do with their 35 years in prison. All the ancillary stuff, the letters and the habeas petitions and the various motions that have been filed over the years. So we're talking about Hockman and his team going through something like 50,000 pages of documents.
There was visual and audio tapes that they were going through. That takes time. And then all of a sudden, January 7th, the massive fires in Pacific Palisades and Altadena. And that basically pressed pause on everything that happened in this city for at least a month. And so Hockman and his team asked to continue the hearing, which was supposed to happen in January. It got delayed.
Then it got delayed again. It was supposed to be in March. And now it's going to be in April where they were going to decide on the resentencing for the brothers. But before that happened, Brad, Hockman decided that he would have a press conference.
And his first press conference about the Menendez brothers was in February, in which he announced that, no, he's not going to go with that habeas corpus petition, that he does not believe that the new evidence that was purportedly brought to the attention of the previous DA and him, the letter to Andy Cano and the testimony by Ro Rossello, He said it's been too much time.
This stuff should have come out before. It doesn't hold water. The evidence seems to indicate, according to Hockman, that the brothers were not sexually abused and that their serial lies leading up to their first trial. indicate that they should not be given a new trial based on this evidence. And he shot it down. But he did something that really upset the family and victims of sexual abuse.
The way he put down the brothers' allegations of sexual abuse at the hands of their father seemed to many people to be And the family very quickly, like within an hour of that press conference, put out this livid statement. And I just want to read to you part of the statement the family put out, like, quote, District Attorney Nathan Hockman took us right back to 1996. That's the second trial.
He opened the wounds we have spent decades trying to heal. He didn't listen to us. To suggest that the years of abuse couldn't have led to the tragedy in 1989 is not only outrageous but also dangerous. Abuse does not exist in a vacuum. They also called his press conference hostile and basically said that they'll continue to fight for the Brothers' release.
They say, quote, and all we are asking for is to right this decade's long injustice, they wrote, Brad.
So then Hockman is kind of signaling how he feels about this case. He's kept his cards close to his vest, but like now he's saying, I don't buy it. The family says, please, please reconsider. Hockman declined to comment on the letter. We're going to take a quick break right here. And when we come back, we're going to hear more about the DA's ruling.
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Chapter 6: What are the recent legal developments in the Menendez case?
Put the good in your morning.
GMA 7A on ABC. On April 8th, the final season of The Handmaid's Tale arrives. This is the beginning of the end. And the revolution.
What's happening?
Rebellion. Begins. How many bodies are you going to throw in the fire? When is enough enough? When there's no one left to fight.
Where is June Osborn? Rise up and fight for your freedom.
The Hulu original series, The Handmaid's Tale. Final season premieres April 8th, streaming on Hulu.
All right, we're back with ABC's chief national correspondent, Matt Gutman, who's been following the Menendez case for years. Matt, the family has asked the DA to reconsider his ruling on the resentencing. What happens next?
He reconsiders, and then he comes out with his ruling on whether he would support resentencing of the brothers in this upcoming hearing. And remember, the ship has already sailed. Trains left the station. The judge has already approved the previous DA's motion to start the resentencing process, right?
And there are a couple of California laws that essentially give a tremendous amount of discretion to a judge to allow this to happen, including one called AB600. And There's some precedent indicating that the new DA can't roll back this ruling that a resentencing hearing is going to happen.
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