DA Hochman meets with Menendez family, says he has not decided whether to recommend brothers' release from prison

Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman announced Friday that he met with family of the Menendez brothers but has not yet decided whether he will recommend they be released from prison.

Hochman described the meeting with the family as "productive" but noted there is more work to be done to go through thousands of pages of information related to the high-profile murder case.

Lyle and Erik Menendez were both convicted of murder in the 1989 shooting deaths of their parents. They long maintained that they had suffered years of sexual abuse by their father.

Since then, the high-profile case has come back into the national spotlight, with some of their relatives calling for the pair to be resentenced and released.

Friday was the first time Hochman had officially weighed in on the case after his predecessor, George Gascón, recommended resentencing late last year.

A judge has to make the final decision, and a hearing date is set for late January.

At a news conference in downtown L.A., Hochman said he and his staff
were reviewing transcripts from two trials, appellate court decisions and confidential prison records. They are also speaking with prosecutors and defense lawyers who were involved with the Menendez case.

As part of that effort, Hochman said, he agreed to meet with the Menendez family.

"A number of the victims' family members came in; it was a very productive session where they gave me all their thoughts about what should happen in this case, their experiences that they wanted to share, the ultimate direction that they wanted this case to go," he said.

Hochman told reporters that the information the family members provided would be part of the "data set" he would use to determine what the right result should be.

How we got here

Lyle Menendez, 56, and Erik Menendez, 54, have been incarcerated for nearly 35 years after they were arrested and later convicted of murder in the deaths of Jose and Kitty Menendez. They were tried twice in connection with the killings. The first trial ended with a hung jury.

After they were arrested, the brothers never denied killing their parents, who were shot multiple times with shotguns while they watched TV in their home on Aug. 20, 1989. The brothers said they feared for their lives after years of abuse.

Their claims were met with skepticism. Prosecutors argued they were motivated by greed.

Late last year, Gascón filed a petition in the Superior Court in which he recommended resentencing the brothers to 50 years to life in prison, making them eligible for parole. At an October news conference, he cited new evidence he said supported the brothers’ claims of abuse, and that he believed they had “paid their debt to society.”

Superior Court Judge Michael Jesic is handling the case. He said he postponed the hearing, originally set for December, so he could review 17 boxes of information about the case and "out of respect for the new administration.”

Hochman was elected district attorney in November, beating Gascón in a contentious race to run the largest prosecutors' office in the country.

The Menendez brothers dominated headlines during both highly publicized trials in the early 1990s. They drew new attention recently based on social media, TV shows, and documentaries that focused on the case.

One of those documentaries, released last year by Netflix, mentions new evidence — a letter written by Erik Menendez to a cousin months before the killings in which he writes about the abuse by his father.

Defense attorney Mark Geragos, who represents the brothers, has said he obtained a declaration from Roy Rossello, a former member of the band Menudo, stating that Jose Menendez also molested Rossello in the 1980s.

Jose Menendez was an RCA executive who signed the band to the label.

Menendez family members speak out

With new attention on the case, more than a dozen Menendez family members have called for the brothers’ release, including their aunt Joan Andersen VanderMolen. She has said she struggled for years with what happened to her younger sister’s family.

“[As] details of Lyle and Erik's abuse came to light, it became clear," she said, "that their actions, while tragic, were the desperate response of two boys trying to survive the unspeakable [cruelty] of their father."

Not all members of the family agree.

Milton Anderson, brother of Kitty Menendez, has said through his attorney that the new evidence in question doesn’t justify the actions of the two brothers, who “meticulously planned and executed the cold-blooded murders of both their parents.”

The court hearing is scheduled for Jan. 30-31.

LAist Civics and Democracy Correspondent Frank Stoltze contributed to this report.