Three decades on and Lyle and Erik Menéndez’s brutal murder of their parents remains one of America’s most infamous crimes.
With a new Netflix miniseries, Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story, throwing a spotlight on the shocking killings once more, an original trial juror is calling for the brothers to be released.
“A lot of people ask me if I hope they get a new trial,” juror Hazel Thornton exclusively tells New Idea. “But I think they should just be released.”
Listening to both sides of the case from the jury box in 1993, Hazel says she believed the brothers’ account that the killings were in self-defence after confronting their parents over years of sexual abuse.
“Erik was a nervous wreck,” Hazel, 67, says from her home in Albuquerque, New Mexico. “They didn’t want to tell their story – it was embarrassing for them. But it was compelling and so believable.”
Lyle and Erik were 21 and 18 respectively when they shot their parents – music executive José, 45, and Mary Louise ‘Kitty’, 47, – at the family’s Beverly Hills mansion on August 20, 1989.
The brothers eventually confessed to the killings and the prosecution argued their motive was their parents’ $21 million estate.
Evidence against Lyle and Erik included the fact they went on a spending spree after the killings, including buying Rolexes, a Porsche Carrera, a cafe and a Buffalo wings restaurant.
In the end, the jurors were deadlocked on whether it was murder or manslaughter, resulting in a mistrial.
At the second trial in 1995, the judge excluded any expert testimony on the alleged abuse. The brothers were found guilty of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.
“It was a killing out of fear,” Hazel says. “In the trial, there was plenty of people testifying to [José’s] neglect, and physical abuse, and mental and emotional abuse.
“The defence wasn’t allowed to present the case that they wanted to.”
Hazel’s testimony comes as bombshell new evidence was unearthed, raising doubts about Lyle and Erik’s murder convictions.
The evidence brief includes a newly discovered letter, written by Erik to his cousin before the killings, which mentions the abuse.
Another part of the brief includes a claim by a former member of the Puerto Rican boy band Menudo, who said he was raped as a teen by José. At the time, José was an executive at the band’s label, RCA Records.
“That’s the man here that raped me,” the band member says in the 2023 documentary, Menendez + Menudo, as he points to a photo of José.
The brothers’ lawyer Cliff Gardner says: “The boys were abused as children, they were abused their whole life. And this is a manslaughter case, not a murder case. It’s just that simple.”
The brothers’ supporters are hopeful the new evidence, which is being reviewed by a Los Angeles judge, will see them, now aged 56 and 53, walk free.
It comes as a new generation has shown support for the brothers through social media campaigning.
“It’s mostly young people who are learning the facts, and going, ‘How did people not know they had actually been abused?’” Hazel says.
“If they were convicted of manslaughter in 1994 they would have been out by now.
“They were telling the truth. It’s time to let them go.”
