Menendez brothers reunite 30 years after killing parents
SACRAMENTO (AP) — The Menendez brothers, who were convicted of killing their parents in their Beverly Hills mansion nearly three decades ago, have been reunited in a southern California prison.
Erik Menendez, 47, has moved into the same housing unit as his 50-year-old brother, Lyle Menendez, the California corrections department spokeswoman Terry Thornton said.
The brothers are serving life sentences for killing their parents, Jose and Mary Louise “Kitty” Menendez, with a shotgun in 1989.
The brothers had asked two decades ago, after they had been sentenced, to be sent to the same prison.
At the time, prison officials had said they often avoided putting partners in crime together, and the Beverly Hills detective who investigated the killings argued they might conspire to escape if they were together.
Leslie Abramson, then Erik Menendez’s attorney, had called housing the brothers separately “exceedingly cruel and heartless.”
Lyle Menendez, who was then 21, and Erik Menendez, then 18, admitted they had fatally shot their entertainment executive father and their mother, but said they had feared their parents were about to kill them to prevent the disclosure of the father’s long-term sexual abuse of Erik Menendez.