Menendez brothers won't be home for the holidays as judge delays hearing

LOS ANGELES - Erik and Lyle Menendez won't be home for the holidays.

After hearing statements on Monday from two of the brothers' aunts who pleaded for their release, a Los Angeles Superior Court judge postponed the Menendez brothers' originally scheduled Dec. 11 hearing date to Jan. 30-31, 2025. 

Superior Court Judge Michael Jesic said he needed time to review 17 boxes of documents and give the newly-elected DA, Nathan Hochman, time to review the case. Hochman will be sworn in on Dec. 2.

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The Menendez brothers attended the status hearing from San Diego, where they are serving their sentences. Due to technical issues, the brothers joined via audio only and did not speak.

Just 16 seats in the courtroom were made available to the public via a lottery which was held before the hearing to determine who would be granted access.

Attorneys for the Menendez brothers requested the judge to reconsider the convictions of the brothers, who are serving life sentences without parole for the 1989 murders of their parents in Beverly Hills.

Defense attorney Mark Geragos also implored the judge to re-sentence the Menendez brothers on the lesser charge of voluntary manslaughter, a crime for which they have already served three times the maximum sentence.

Joan Andersen VanderMolen, Kitty Menendez’s sister, and Teresita Baralt, Jose’s older sister, asked for their release, saying 35 years was a long time for the brothers after suffering abuse.

"No child should have to endure what Lyle and Eric have lived through," VanderMolen said. "No child should have to live ... knowing that at night, their father was going to rape them. It's time for them to come home."

"We miss those who are gone tremendously," Baralt said in tears after taking the stand. "But we miss the kids too."

"It's time for them to come home," Baralt said, adding that the brothers "have done a lot of good things" while incarcerated.

After the hearing, Geragos said it was "quite the moving experience" to hear two of the brothers' aunts make "impassioned pleas with the judge to send the brothers home."

Last week, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced he would not make a decision on whether to grant the brothers clemency until Hochman can review the case. 

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"Judge Jesic's decision to continue the hearing on the resentencing motion to January 30-31 will provide me with sufficient time to review the extensive prison records, transcripts of two lengthy trials and voluminous exhibits, as well as consult with prosecutors, law enforcement, defense counsel and victim family members," Hochman said in a statement Monday. "I look forward to thoroughly reviewing all the facts and the law to reach a fair and just decision, and then defend it in court."

The status hearing was the latest in the saga of the Menendez brothers' case, which was thrust back into the spotlight after the release of the Netflix drama "Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story" and the documentary "The Menendez Brothers."

Lyle, then 21, and Erik, then 18, were originally sentenced in 1996 to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

They were tried twice for their parents’ murders, with the first trial ending in a hung jury. The brothers said they feared their parents were about to kill them to prevent the disclosure of the father’s longtime sexual molestation of Erik Menendez. Prosecutors argued that they killed their parents for financial gain and contended that no such abuse occurred.

Gascón announced in October his recommendation that the brothers be resentenced after an investigation into new evidence presented to the DA's office - allegations that their father also molested Roy Rossello, a former member of the boy band Menudo, in the 1980s, and a letter Erik Menendez wrote to his cousin, Andy Cano, which surfaced in 2015, years after Cano's death - was presented.

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Relatives of the brothers have publicly advocated for their release and voiced their support for the two to be freed.

Several family members have said that in today’s world — which is more aware of the impact of sexual abuse — the brothers would not have been convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life without parole.

But not all Menendez family members support resentencing. 

Attorneys for Milton Andersen, the 90-year-old brother of Kitty Menendez, filed a legal brief asking the court to keep the brothers’ original punishment. "They shot their mother, Kitty, reloading to ensure her death," Andersen’s attorneys said in a statement last month. "The evidence remains overwhelmingly clear: the jury’s verdict was just, and the punishment fits the heinous crime."

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Their attorney first filed a petition for their case to be reexamined in May 2023.