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fullscreenLos Angeles District Attorney George Gascón. Photo: Eric Thayer/AP/TT
Brothers Lyle and Erik Menendez, who were convicted in 1996 of murdering their parents and are serving double life sentences, may be released.
That is the meaning of the public prosecutor’s recommendation that the TV-famous brothers should be tried again.
The case has been widely reported in the United States since the brothers murdered their parents in 1989 in Beverly Hills. The crime gained new relevance with a dramatization and a documentary about the Menendez family, both of which were released on Netflix this year.
Thursday’s announcement from the prosecutor George Gascón in Los Angeles does not mean that a new trial will begin, but that a judge will look at any new evidence and then decide whether the brothers should receive a reduced sentence, get a new trial or be completely released, writes ABC News.
What is new in the case is, among other things, a letter Erik Menendez wrote eight months before the murders, in which he described how his father abused him. In addition, a musician has testified that the father also assaulted him.
Both brothers have confessed to murdering their parents after a childhood filled with sexual abuse by their father, while their mother knew but never intervened.
The two were 18 and 21 years old respectively when the murders were committed.
Around 30 relatives have demanded that the brothers receive a reduced sentence. Their aunt Joan Andersen Vandermolen says according to ABC News that she “had no idea how much abuse they went through”.
– It is time to give them the opportunity to live the rest of their lives free from the shadow of the past, she says.