The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Menendez brothers reunited in prison
They were convicted of brutally killing their parents in 1989.
Not long after the two brothers had been arrested for gunning down their parents in their multimillion dollar mansion in Beverly Hills, Calif., 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 behind bars.
The two were sent to the same California processing center in 1996, then split up, according to the Times. 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 newspaper that authorities were complying with protocol to keep crime partners apart.
“This will make their life sentences even more miserable,” Deputy Public Defender Terri Towery told the newspaper at the time. “I think it’s really, really sad and I’m sorry that our society has become so vindictive.”
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. Donovan 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 Menendezes’ lives unraveled 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 the library in their Beverly Hills home.
Erik Menendez initially said he and his brother had been out that night and, when they returned home and discovered their slain parents, “I was going through convulsions. I had never seen my dad helpless before. When we first walked into the room, I said, ‘No!’ ” according to a family profile published in the Times.
Lyle said that when he saw the scene, “I just entered into my dad’s mode” and took control of the family’s affairs.
Prosecutors said their father, a 45-year-old Hollywood executive, was struck six times, with one bullet piercing the back of his head; their mother took 10 shots, including some to the face, according to the Times.
“I’ve been in this business 33 years and I’ve heard of few killings as savage as this one,” Marvin Iannone, then the Los Angeles police chief, told the Associated Press in 1990.
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.
But prosecutors said the brothers, who were described by those who knew them as confident and somewhat cocky, killed their wealthy parents to inherit their large fortune.