20/20 - The Crime Scene: The Menendez Brothers' Fight For Freedom

Episode Date: April 4, 2025

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

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 Milky, 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. With the Fizz loyalty program, you get rewarded just for having a mobile plan.

You know, for texting and stuff. And if you're not getting rewards like extra data and dollars off with your mobile plan, you're not with Fizz. Switch today. Conditions apply. Details at fizz.ca. 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 LA 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. 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 multi-million 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. tremendous amount of personal hatred. 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 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 moment, this was also the beginning of cameras in courtrooms as we now know them and there's 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? Yes. How did you ask him not to?

I just told him. 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. What was the reaction to that, Matt? Well, the reaction in court was multifaceted. I mean, at one point, the prosecutor said that men can't be raped or can't be sexually abused, something to that effect, by other men. In the public, it was shock and disgust and sadness.

And I think a lot of people believe that. But the jurors weren't quite convinced, Brad. It was a hung jury for both brothers, and that set up the second trial. This time the brothers actually tried together, and it's a trial presided over by a judge named Stanley Weisberg. And again, we're talking about the mid-90s, right? Mores and cultural attitudes towards male sexual abuse were different.

And this time, Judge Weisberg limited the inclusion of sexual assault and the testimony, allegedly corroborating the sexual assault, calling that testimony, quote, the abuse excuse. Today, obviously, that would never happen. So a large amount of testimony and evidence that was included in the first trial was excluded from the second trial.

And so it was a very different type of imperfect self-defense that was set up for the brothers in their second trial in 1996. You said imperfect self-defense. What does that mean? Because this isn't a question of whether or not they killed their parents, right? Like at this point they have admitted, yes, we committed this very grotesque act, but they're saying it's not murder because it was self-defense. What is the argument they're making here?

They're saying that, okay, maybe they didn't believe that on that specific night at that specific time their father Jose Menendez had a gun by his side and was going to murder them and their lives were immediately in danger. But they felt that at some point in the near or uncertain future that they would be significantly harmed to the point of being killed by their father and that their mother would be a bystander. And that they felt that they had to defend themselves and this was the way to do it. It's sort of preemptively acting in self-defense. Now because of how this was presented in court and because of what the prosecution alleged

and because of the facts of the case, the jury didn't buy it. The jury convicted them of first degree murder and not just a first degree murder, but first degree murder with special circumstances that the brothers were trying to enrich themselves as a result of the murder. And that's why eventually they were sentenced to two consecutive life prison terms without the possibility of parole. That means that no matter what they do, they will have to spend the entirety of their natural lives in prison until they die. Well, and then Matt, like that's about as final of an end as you can have in this legal system.

But then after spending decades behind bars, there were these incredible new developments starting in 2023. The brothers filed a petition for review of new evidence that they say wasn't presented at their original trial. This is now a petition to get a new trial. How did that work and what was the new evidence? 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 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 docu-series 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 the 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 so there's this confluence of events there is this documentary that comes out that shows the letter from Andy Cano and Roy Rosellis on camera talking about being raped by Jose Menendez

Roy Rosell is 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 LA's DA, George Kesko, in the form of this habeas corpus petition. Well, and that's the thing, Matt, 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 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 Cascon 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. And then one of the country's very biggest influencers got on this bandwagon and that's Kim Kardashian. And she really created this social media phenomenon of trying to get the brothers released.

And there was a groundswell of this. And in late 2024, this had been reviewed by LA's DA, George Gascon, at the time, and his deputy district attorneys. And they came to the conclusion, which they announced in October just before the elections, by the way, I don't know if that was incidental or not, that they would punt on whether or not to recommend a new trial based on the habeas case, but right now they would recommend resentencing for the brothers based on their rehabilitation in prison, their good deeds, and the fact that it seems that they would not be a threat to society

if they were out in public again. Wait, okay, so you said it depends on which DA, because that DA that you're talking about, he then loses that election, right? A new DA comes in. What's his opinion on it then? So there was literally a new sheriff in town, Brad, with a completely different set of ideas. And initially, DA Nathan Hockman who took office on December 2nd kept his cards close-ish to his vest. He very appropriately said I

know this is a big case I know that there's tremendous public interest in this case so what I want to do is spend some time with my team to review all the documents. And remember two big 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 Alta Dina 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 Roe Rossello Hold water. 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 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 overboard.

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 write this decades 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 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. Okay, Martin, let's try one. Remember, big. You got it.

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Maybe PG-13. Maybe inappropriate for children under 13. Only in theaters on IMAX April 11th. Get tickets now. 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 AB 600. And there's some precedent indicating that the new DA can't roll back this ruling that a resentencing hearing is going to happen. Because it's like what the previous DA has already set the wheels in motion and so then like you don't just want to have DA's political

appointees like going back and forth on whether somebody can get out of prison or not. Right. And what a lot of people thought was gonna happen, rather than there's a whole group of people in Los Angeles who are Menendez Brothers watchers and experts, right? Like massive legal teams and who are very close observers of the case. They felt that, okay, what Ackman's doing is probably smart. He's going to try to turn down the Brothers effort to try to get a new trial based on this new evidence. And then he's going to actually relent on the resentencing right because there's like different paths

There's the habeas thing and then there's the other thing right there There are two paths and so the first path which was the habeas petition Which is hey, let's have a new trial for these brothers given the new evidence that is out there He shut the door on that in February and so a lot of people who? Watch the proceedings about the Menendez brothers thought that, okay, well, Hockman will relent on the second path, which is the resentencing, because we've all seen the data and the documents that have come out of the California prison system, which show that these guys are exemplary prisoners.

They have created hospice programs and substance abuse programs. They have created a mindfulness and yoga program. They have beautified the campus of the Donovan Correctional Facility where they live in a green space project. They have the lowest security profile. So yes, maybe Hockman will see that it might be better to give them a second chance and have them, their sentence reduced or give them even the option of being Resent and so that one day they could walk free maybe one day soon

And so he stands up in front of the podium on March 10th, and what does he pronounce? He pronounces that these men remain the same men that they were in the 90s. They are congenital liars They are murderers who purposely and with intent and premeditatedly poised those shotguns, pointed them right at the faces and heads of their parents and pulled the trigger. And when they ran out of those shotgun shells because they've plugged so many holes in the bodies of their parents, they reloaded and shot again. He said, those are the same men. They are not rehabilitated right now.

They continue to issue at least 20 lies that Hockman said that they continue to say. And I will not support their resentencing in this upcoming hearing. Still up to the judge, like you said, but he's basically pulling any support that the DA's office had for this whole thing. Exactly. So it's still up to the judge. The judge has a lot of discretion, but it makes it a bit of a thornier decision for the judge because now he's going to be going directly against the authority of, you know, the highest elected legal official in the largest

county in the United States. And that does complicate things. And so after that decision, I actually interviewed D.A. Hockman one-on-one, and he said, well, you know, there is actually a pathway through which the brothers can get my support for resentencing, and he laid it out for me. If they sincerely and unequivocally admit for the first time in over 30 years

the full range of their criminal activity and all the lies that they have told about it. Like, do you want them to enumerate each individual lie? Do you have a checklist? I actually do. And so basically what he's saying is that the brothers admitted to the murders and they've apologized to the family members, by the way,

and made peace with the family members about the murders. But what they haven't done, according to Hockman, is admit to a long list of lies which he says that they made in the years after the murder. And so if they admit to those lies publicly, then he would change his stance on resentencing. And you know, you can hear, I ask him, do you have a list? He's like, in fact, I do have a list. By the way, the brothers' lawyers tell me that is very unlikely to happen for a series of reasons, including that it might expose the brothers to other charges.

Well, so the, okay, so then there's the DA who has a lot of power in this case. There's the judge who theoretically has even more power, right? He could even deny the DA's request here. Then there's the governor of California, right? In any case, I know we talk about death row, but can't the governor like commute their sentences if he felt like it? A hundred percent. I mean, it would just take a scribble of the pen

and their sentences would be completely commuted. Governor Newsom has said that he's not quite interested in doing that, but he has taken a very big step in starting the process towards seeing them granted some sort of clemency. And that happened right after that press conference with DA Hockman. He basically initiated a risk analysis process by which parole board members would assess whether the brothers would pose a risk to society if they were

released from prison. And that assessment is going on as we speak. The brothers have their first meeting from the parole board in June, and it is very possible that it's that parole board in a process initiated by the governor, who has the most power in the state of California, that is going to see the brothers pathway towards resentencing an eventual release opened. But Brad, it could be

sometime and it's very possible that Eric and Lyle are not released at the same time because Lyle has a couple of very minor but infractions nonetheless on his record in prison. Okay so next steps Matt? I mean because this is all happening all of us after 35 years it's all happening very quickly. What happens next? So we have this hearing coming up in a little over a week in which the judge will meet with the defense attorneys and the DA's prosecutors and He'll basically make an assessment of whether that

resentencing hearing can continue can go on as planned on April 17th and 18th. And it seems likely, given previous indications, that he will at least allow that hearing to go on. And that's a big deal. So we don't know what will happen from that hearing. We do know that the brothers have been, you know, by and large, exemplary prisoners. And just, you know know an example comes up you know they've been in the system in California for 35 years. Neither of them have ever been in a physical altercation,

not a single one. So you know it's those kinds of things it's the fact that the their families now unanimously because the one holdout who was against the brothers, Uncle Milton, passed away recently. So now every single surviving family member of Kitty and Jose Menendez unanimously and strongly supports the brothers' release and their resentencing. And that actually makes a big difference because we're talking about the victims, right? The victims matter in the US justice system. And in this case, the victims are advocating strongly for the resentencing and release of the perpetrators. What's the big takeaway from all this, Matt, at the end of the day? Like you've been sitting with this case now for years and all this is changing right now. I mean, what is so resonant about this at this moment?

It's a really good question, Brad. and I think about it all the time. Why are people, including my 16-year-old daughter, so obsessed with this case, right? Like, I have never seen her be more interested in anything involved in the news in her entire life, and her dad is in the news. She has never taken interest. But this is such a big thing. You know, part of it is because

of the massive social media traction, because of the Netflix drama series which she watched, Monsters. And part of it is because I think for people like us as well, it harkens back to our past, but also has us reassessing our present. What is a crime? What is unforgivable? What makes a crime forgivable? Right? Like, how much do we

take into account the fact that the Menendez brothers were so apparently abused, so heinously and mercilessly abused by a man who was allegedly a monster that none of us knew about? And I think it makes all of us reassess the intricacies of the criminal justice system and what we view is justice. These are questions I think a lot of us think about when it comes to the criminal justice system. Right, and can our definitions of justice shift over time, even when we write laws that we treat as permanent, like life without the possibility of parole?

Matt Gutman, our Chief National Correspondent, thank you so much for being here. Thanks, Brad. Now, let's check in on some of the other biggest true crime headlines that are making waves this week. First up, the rapper Sean Kingston and his mother, Janis Turner, were found guilty of committing more than a million dollars in wire fraud in their federal trial last week. Authorities presented evidence showing the pair used fake wire transfer receipts to obtain jewelry, a Cadillac Escalade, and furniture. A key piece of evidence here was a text message from Kingston to his mother that read,

I told you to make a fake receipt, followed by, So it looks like the transfer will be there in a couple of days. The mother and son are scheduled to be sentenced on July 11. Next up, Jodie Hildebrandt, who was a co-defendant in the case of mommy vlogger turned convicted child abuser Ruby Franke, is now challenging her own conviction. Hildebrandt pleaded guilty to abusing Ruby Franke's two youngest children, but in a new filing, Hildebrandt alleges she did not understand her rights when she entered that guilty plea,

saying she had ineffective counsel and was denied due process. She's also claiming prosecutorial misconduct. In related news, the divorce of Ruby and Kevin Franke is now final, and Kevin Franke was given full custody of the four children who are still minors. Lastly, an anesthesiologist named Gerhard Koenig has been charged with trying to kill his wife on a Hawaii hiking trail. The wife wrote in a petition for a temporary restraining order that her husband pushed her toward the edge of a cliff before attempting to inject her with a syringe.

A judge signed an order saying Koenig must stay away from his wife and their children. No plea has been entered. All right, and that will do it for this week's episode of The Crime Scene. Thank you so much for being with us. The Crime Scene Weekly is a production of ABC Audio produced by Nora Richie. Our supervising producer is Susie Liu. Mixing by Shane McKeon, special thanks to Liz Alessi, Tara Gimble and Emily Schutz. Josh Cohan is our Director of Podcast Programming, Laura Mayer is our Executive Producer.

I'm Brad Milkey and I'll see you next week at the Crime Scene. When Gareth was 14, he was in a relationship with an attractive young teacher at his school and he thought he was the luckiest boy in the world. But when she walked out of his life, everything started to unravel. 35 years later, everyone's acting like it never happened and Gareth wants to understand why. How about the truth? How about we do that first and then we work out where we're going to go from there? How about the truth? This new four-part series is about who gets to be a perpetrator and a victim.

To listen, just search for Lucky Boy wherever you get your podcasts.