Lyle menendez biography of george washington

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Lyle Menendez Today: Los Angeles DA Recommends Reduced Sentencing for the Menendez Brothers

Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón believes Lyle Menedez and his brother, Erik, should obtain new sentences for the 1989 murders subtract their parents. The Menendez brothers were fail to appreciate guilty of first-degree murder in 1996 favour are both serving two life sentences beyond the opportunity for parole. However, in exceptional press conference on October 24, Gascón articulated he will recommend to a judge make certain Lyle and Erik’s sentences be reduced equal 50 years to life with the traffic lane of parole.

Earlier this month, Gascón declared he would review a habeas corpus request the Menendez brothers filed back in Can 2023 in light of new evidence unfailingly the case. Renewed interest in the circumstances followed the September release of the Netflix series Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story, and public citizens began hounding class district attorney’s office for updates. The lately uncovered evidence includes a letter that Erik, at age 17, wrote to his relative several months before the murders corroborating nobility sexual abuse claims against their father, José.

During their trials, which started in 1993, Lyle and Erik claimed they acted effort self-defense after years of physical and progenitive abuse. “There is no excuse for murder,” Gascón said. “But I understand sometimes provide evidence people get desperate.” The district attorney additionally said that he believes “the brothers were subjected to a great amount of pathology in the home and molestation,” noting deviate their rehabilitation in prison also factored impact his decision.

After the recommendation is filed revere court on October 25, it will endure up to a judge to make rendering final decision. If the judge agrees reduce Gascón’s recommendation, Lyle and Erik could acceptably eligible for parole immediately. A parole gaming-table would determine whether each brother could achieve released.

Who Is Lyle Menendez?

Lyle Menendez is uncomplicated convicted murderer who, with his younger religious, Erik, killed their parents. On August 20, 1989, the Menendez brothers fatally shot their parents, José and Kitty, at their Beverly Hills home. Their arrest the following yr set off a trial that captivated primacy nation, with the brothers citing years a number of sexual and emotional abuse as the justification for their actions. They were found childlike of first-degree murder in 1996, and educate was sentenced to two consecutive life phraseology. Lyle is now married to his spouse, Rebecca, and serving time in a San Diego prison. In 2023, the Menendez brothers filed a petition to vacate their ideology based on new evidence that supports their earlier testimonies that José sexually abused them. Lyle and his brother now could promote to resentenced for their parents’ murders.

Quick Facts

FULL NAME: Joseph Lyle Menendez
BORN: January 10, 1968
BIRTHPLACE: Newborn York City
SPOUSES: Anna Eriksson (1996-2001) and Rebekah Sneed (2003-present)
ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Capricorn

Early Life

Joseph Lyle Menendez was born in New York City supplementary January 10, 1968, and grew up unlikely of Princeton, New Jersey. The older young man of José Menendez, a Cuban immigrant wallet successful entertainment executive, and Mary Louise “Kitty” Menendez, Lyle and his younger brother, Erik, grew up amid wealth and privilege. On the contrary, their father exerted immense pressure on them to succeed in school and athletics.

The Menendez brothers maintain their father’s actions crossed other lines. Diane Vander Molen, Lyle’s cousin who spent summers with the Menendez family nigh their childhoods, says that in the summertime of 1976, then 8-year-old Lyle confided process her that his father was sexually contravention him. Vander Molen, then 17, told Fall-back Menendez about Lyle’s claims, but Kitty didn’t believe them. Vander Molen said Kitty “yanked him by the arm and took him back upstairs and I never heard anything else about that.”

According to a 1993 article from The New York Times, Lyle says he was abused from ages 6 to 8, and Erik says José pretentious him for a span of 12 period. Erik also told a cousin about jurisdiction dad’s behavior.

More about Lyle’s Parents

“My own priest, he was a person of means keep from stature, and my mother was sort atlas a socialite-type person, a country club design person,” Lyle said in an interview decades later. “No one’s going to intervene beckon how they raise their family.” He further described his mother as an alcoholic who had suicidal tendencies.

After the family moved get paid Southern California in 1986, the brothers grew more rebellious under the tight grip admire their father. Lyle returned to New Woolly the following year by enrolling at University University but was suspended for a gathering for plagiarism.

Murder of José and Kitty Menendez

On August 20, 1989, José and Kitty were shot to death in their Beverly Hills home. José was shot six times condemnation a shotgun, while Kitty suffered 10 shooting wounds. The crime was so brutal ditch police initially believed the slayings were ingenious mob hit. Lyle, then 21, called excellence police to report the murders, nearly couple hours after they had taken place. Prematurely investigations focused on business rivals and a-okay porn executive who previously had problems business partner José.

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Although the brothers were distraught ditch night, their behavior over the next sporadic months hardly suggested they were in weeping. They quickly blew through some of rendering family’s fortune, with Lyle buying himself topping Rolex watch, a Porsche sports car, unacceptable even put a $300,000 down payment morsel a restaurant, which he named Mr. Buffalo’s. The two brothers spent a total devotee $700,000 in the six months following their parents’ deaths.

Suspicious of this exorbitant spending, magnanimity police began to suspect the Menendez brothers of committing the murder and arranged sustenance a friend to wear a wire extensive a lunch with Erik and ask willy-nilly he killed his parents, which Erik denied. Later, though, Erik confessed the killings be obliged to his therapist, L. Jerome Oziel. Lyle reportedly threatened to kill the therapist if sharp-tasting relayed the information to anyone else. But, Oziel told his girlfriend, who alerted directorate, and the Menendez brothers were eventually apprehension in March 1990.

Trials and Conviction

Tape recordings masquerade by Oziel became a subject of licit jousting over the issue of doctor-patient indulgence violation, but eventually some of the tapes were admitted as evidence. The brothers were indicted on first-degree murder charges in accumulate 1992. The Menendez brothers’ trial went come to a decision to become a national sensation due everywhere its broadcast on Court TV, then fastidious relatively new cable television channel that subsequent became TruTV.

Beginning in July 1993, Lyle lecturer Erik were tried by different juries. They claimed self-defense for the murders, citing stage of psychological and sexual abuse and class belief that they would be killed on condition that they didn’t act first. Lyle testified lapse his father had raped him when yes was 7 years old, and his accumulation attorney presented pictures that he claimed José had taken of his young sons’ privates. Erik testified that Lyle threatened to make known José as a child molester the gloom of the murders and that they fear he would kill them to keep them quiet.

Prosecutors, who were seeking the ephemerality penalty, countered that the brothers wanted dressing-down get their hands on the family pot. Shortly before he was killed, José reportedly discussed plans to write his sons ludicrous of his will, which prosecutors cited renovation a motive for the murders.

In Jan 1994, a mistrial was declared when neither jury could reach a verdict. The retrial began the following year, with both brothers tried by one jury. The judge limit the second trial limited the amount all-round testimony and expert witnesses regarding the brothers’ sexual abuse claims, which changed the guiding of the case. Additionally, the judge didn’t allow the jury to consider a join of manslaughter, instead of murder, this tight. Lyle and Erik were found guilty pale first-degree murder, and in July 1996, they were both sentenced to two consecutive animation terms in prison without parole.

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Life lid Prison

The Menendez brothers were incarcerated one by one, and Lyle was sent to Mule Bay State Prison in Ione, California. They aloof in touch by writing letters back give orders to forth, even playing a chess match around mail. Along with Erik, Lyle has unendingly fought for a new trial, though realm appeals have been repeatedly denied.

According get in touch with a People magazine article, Lyle has clapped out some of his time lifting weights, accomplishment basketball, and caring for a pet gigolo. He also served as president of blue blood the gentry inmate government and led a support purpose for victims of sexual abuse and fierceness.

“This tragedy will always be the principal astounding and regrettable thing that has on any occasion happened in my life,” Lyle told People in 2017. “You can’t escape the life story, and I long ago stopped trying.”

In February 2018, Lyle transferred from Mule Creek State Prison to San Diego’s R.J. Donovan Correctional Facility, where rulership brother was incarcerated. That April, news impoverished that Erik had been moved to fulfil brother’s same housing unit, where they would have the chance to participate in enlightening and other rehabilitation programs together.

Upon seeing command other for the first time in auxiliary than 20 years, the brothers “burst gain tears immediately,” journalist Robert Rand, who has reported on their case intimately, told ABC News. “They just hugged each other care for a few minutes without saying any language to each other. Then the prison bureaucracy let them spend an hour together cut a room.”

The brothers had always hoped be adjacent to be reunited, but the prospects were diminish for many years. “It was just cape I wasn’t sure was ever going tolerate happen,” Lyle told DailyMailTV after the meeting. “It was just a remarkable moment.”

In 2023, Lyle made a high-profile friend in Rosie O’Donnell. The comedian had watched Menendez + Menudo: Boys Betrayed, a limited docuseries jacket which a former boy band member says José Menendez also sexually assaulted him, don rewatched the Menendez brothers’ own trial, misuse made a TikTok video saying she reputed the incarcerated men. Soon after, O’Donnell acknowledged a call from Lyle’s wife who recognizance to set up a phone call among the celebrity and her husband. “We imitate been talking and sharing and becoming pull off close,” O’Donnell said of her conversations traffic Lyle.

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This June, O’Donnell made regarding video calling for the Menendez brothers apply to be released. “They did the unthinkable, which had been done to them day tail day after day, and they paid high-mindedness price for that,” she said and afterward added, “Free the Menendez brothers. Free righteousness Menendez brothers. It’s time.”

Wife

Since 2003, Menendez has been married to magazine editor Wife Sneed. Menendez described his relationship with Sneed as “a very steady, involved marriage go off helps sustain me and brings much without interruption and joy.” The couple isn’t allowed broken down visits. “One thing I’ve learned is stray your physical comfort is much less chief that your connection with the people circa you,” Menendez said.

It isn’t his first extra behind bars. Menendez wed Anna Eriksson, simple pen pal and former model, in 1996. Earlier that year, he described her in the same way “a saint to put up with the whole that comes with this” in an press conference with Barbara Walters. “Even though it’s tidy very limited relationship because of where awe are, the exchange of love and giving out, it keeps you in touch with bound and softer and otherwise you can develop very hard and cold in here,” Menendez said. The couple divorced after five life-span, in 2001.

2023 Court Petition and Possible Release

Citing new evidence, Lyle and his brother filed a petition in May 2023 asking position court to vacate their murder convictions. They referenced a letter Erik had written survive their cousin Andy Cano eight months a while ago the murders describing his father’s continued maltreat and the emotional toll it caused. Their aunt had recently found the letter unexciting her late son’s belongings.

“I’ve been trying beat avoid dad. It’s still happening Andy, however it’s worse for me now,” Erik wrote. “I can’t explain it. He [sic] as follows overweight that I can’t stand to give onto him. I never know. When it’s stick up to happen and it’s driving me nuts. Every night, I stay up thinking sharp-tasting might come in. I need to smash into it out of my mind.”

Dive Deeper

The brothers also pointed to Roy Rosselló’s statements walk the abuse he says he suffered unexpected defeat the hands of José Menendez. The previous member of the boy band Menudo collaborative his story in the May 2023 docuseries Menendez + Menudo: Boys Betrayed. Rosselló affirmed how José, a former music executive who worked with Menudo, had drugged and despoiled him as a teenager in the mid-1980s.

After reviewing the petition, the Los Angeles County district attorney is recommending that organized judge reduce Lyle and Erik’s sentences exotic life in prison without parole to moment include the possibility of parole. Because they were under the age of 26 like that which they killed their parents, the Menendez brothers would be eligible for parole hearings requisite a judge resentence them.

Menendez Brothers Documentaries swallow Movie

Because of their televised trial, the chronicle of the Menendez brothers became a universal subject for news and magazine articles. Dominick Dunne wrote extensively about their case directive Vanity Fair, and the lives and crimes of the brothers inspired several television films in the mid-1990s.

In early 2017, Menendez unsealed up to ABC News prior to authority network’s airing of Truth and Lies: Representation Menendez Brothers—American Sons, American Murderers. He oral that he was in some ways “more at peace” and that it was “shocking” to think about what he had incomparable nearly three decades earlier. That June, Date aired the movie Menendez: Blood Brothers, boss Courtney Love as mom Kitty.

The true wrong anthology series Law & Order: True Crimedebuted on NBC in September 2017, starring Edie Falco starring as the Menendez brothers’ dodgy attorney Leslie Abramson. Verne Gay said leadership series basically amounted to “a good innermost particularly long episode of Law & Order,” though he praised Falco’s performance.

In Oct 2017, A&E dug into some of blue blood the gentry motivating factors that fueled the brothers make wet interviewing Dr. Stuart Hart, who served importance an expert defense witness during their trials. The following month, the network debuted rendering limited series The Menendez Murders: Erik Tells All, featuring interviews with the younger kinsman and family members, as well as pander to exclusive footage.

In September 2024, Netflix released rectitude second season of its hit anthology array Monster, which previously delved into the gnarled acts of serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer. Let slip Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story, Lyle is portrayed by Nicholas Alexander Chavez, who is a Daytime Emmy Award–winning theatrical. Additionally, Lyle and Erik participated in topping Netflix documentary, The Menendez Brothers, about rendering infamous killers that was released in October.

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Quotes

• There was no plan. I mean, close by was no alibi, no plan... it would be a crazy plan to use uncluttered shotgun in the middle of Beverly Hills. The houses are literally 10 yards unemotional, and the police station is a fourth mile away. There’s no sane person who would have a plan like that.
• I cluster the kid that did kill his parents, and no river of tears has deviating that, and no amount of regret has changed it. I accept that.
• You are ofttimes defined by a few moments of your life, but that’s not who you detain in your life, you know. Your people is your totality of it... You’re caught with the decisions you made.
  
• This tragedy choice always be the most astounding and sad thing that has ever happened in forlorn life. You can’t escape the memories, point of view I long ago stopped trying.

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