The Menendez brothers have been reunited
Pair who killed wealthy parents together in jail
Not long after the two brothers had been arrested for gunning down their parents in their multimillion dollar mansion in Beverly Hills, 21-year-old Lyle Menendez put pen to paper to tell his brother what was on his mind.
In a 17-page letter in 1990, Menendez told his teen brother, Erik, that he wanted to stay together.
“My greatest fear is that we would not end up in the same prison down the road,” he wrote, according to a 1996 article in the Los Angeles Times. “I think if Dad could give us one piece of advice that night in August, it would be never to abandon each other, no matter what the circumstance.”
After years in criminal court, the Menendez brothers were convicted of murdering their parents and sentenced to life in prison. Lyle was taken to a prison near Tehachapi, and Erik was taken to a prison near Sacramento, one hundred miles away. At the time, a spokeswoman for California’s Department of Corrections told the Los Angeles Times that authorities were complying with protocol to keep crime partners apart.
Now, for the first time in more than two decades, the Menendez brothers are back in the same place — a housing unit at Richard J. Don- ovan Correctional Facility outside San Diego, where the inmates are “able to interact with one another as they pursue rehabilitation opportunities,” Department of Corrections spokeswoman Terry Thornton told The Washington Post.
Lyle, now 50, was transferred in February to the prison, where his brother had been for years, Thornton said. Then on Wednesday, she said, Eric, 47, was moved into the same housing unit at the prison where his brother is held.
It has been nearly 30 years since the Menendez’s lives unravelled on a Sunday night in August 1989.
Authorities said the two brothers had bought two 12-gauge shotguns and two movie tickets for Licence to Kill — their alibi, according to the Los Angeles Times. Then, police said, the brothers opened fire on their parents, Jose and Kitty Menendez, as the couple watched TV in their Beverly Hills home.
The double-murder case captured international attention as two wealthy young men, who had lived privileged lives filled with private school education and amateur tennis tours, faced a future in prison, or no future at all. The trial started in 1993 and ended in two deadlocked juries in 1994. The case was retried in 1995.
Throughout the yearslong legal saga, attorneys for Lyle and Erik Menendez alleged that the two brothers had been neglected by their mother and emotionally and sexually abused by their father. Erik Menendez’s attorney, Leslie Abramson, argued that her client “could not take the worst of it anymore” and “went to his frankly equally screwed-up brother for help,” according to the AP.
“This is what happened,” Abramson told jurors, pointing to gruesome photos from the crime scene.
But prosecutors said the brothers, were described by those who knew them as confident and somewhat cocky, killed their wealthy parents to inherit their large fortune.
“Erik feared, all right,” then-prosecutor Lester Kuriyama, told the jurors at the time. “He feared he’d have to get off his butt and work like the rest of us.”
(ERIK AND LYLE MENENDEZ ARE) ABLE TO INTERACT WITH ONE ANOTHER.