Menendez Brothers' Lawyer Uncovers New Evidence in Parents' Murder Case

New evidence is being presented by Erik Menendez and Lyle Menendez's lawyers.

The Menendez brothers are currently serving life sentences for the 1989 murders of their parents José Menendez and Mary Louise "Kitty" Menendez, although the Lyle and Erik—who were 21 and 18 respectively at the time—maintain that the murders were a result of being sexually abused by their father for years. Their lawyer Mark Geragos is hoping that with two new pieces of evidence, the brothers have a chance to be resentenced.

"Judge William Ryan issued what's called an informal request for reply," Geragos explained during an Oct. 16 press conference. "That informal request for reply was to ask the DA to respond to the allegations of new evidence."

The two new pieces of evidence include a letter that Erik wrote to his cousin Andy Canto eight months before the murders, which detailed his allegations of abuse. The other is a declaration by former Menudo band member Roy Rosselló alleging that he was also assaulted by José—who worked with the band while COO of RCA Records—in the Menendez household.

The letter to Andy was found in the home of Lyle and Erik's aunt Marta Cano, José's sister. According to Geragos, Andy had testified in the brothers' first trial that began in 1993; however, by the second trial in 1996 he "was demeaned as making this up, or was not true."

"This letter now shows or corroborates that Andy was telling the truth," Geragos said. "The letter describes the abuse."

As to the claims by Roy, the former Menudo member signed a declaration in 2023 regarding José's alleged assault of the singer. Geragos reiterated that it "took great courage" for Roy to come forward after all these years and that the information was "incredibly important," especially because the assault allegedly happened in the Menendez house.

Geragos noted that the declaration "corroborates the fact that the safe place that José thought he had was in the house."

"It corroborates what the family said was the very uncomfortable rule in that house," he continued, "that you could not go down the hallway if José was with one of the boys. That was the ground upon which he preyed."

According to Geragos, Lyle, 56, and Erik, 53, believed they had exhausted all of their legal remedies as of 2005 and had "resigned themselves to being in prison for the rest of their lives." But he's hopeful that with the new information, the two can be resentenced.

The brothers' names have been making headlines over the past year thanks to the new evidence, as well the Netflix documentary Menendez Brothers and Ryan Murphy's Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez story miniseries.

In the documentary, Lyle and Erik detailed the abuse they faced at the hands of their father, with Lyle explaining that he "deeply did not want to talk about anything that happened in our past."

Defense expert witness Dr. Ann Burgess noted in the doc that after meeting with the men shortly after the murders, she was certain that there had "to be something going on in the family for this to have happened."

"That is not something that they need money, or any other motive, or revenge, or all of the other motives that we could think of," she continued. "I said, 'Something is very wrong in the family.'"

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