George Gascon lost the Los Angeles District Attorney race to former U.S. Assistant Attorney General Nathan Hochman on Tuesday.
Erik and Lyle were convicted of shooting their parents, Hollywood music executive José Menendez and homemaker Mary Louise “Kitty” Menendez, at their Beverly Hills mansion in 1989.
José was shot six times while he and Kitty watched TV on a sofa in their den on August 20, 1989. Kitty was shot ten times as she was on the floor crawling away.
Last month, Gascon recommended resentencing the Menendez brothers. They could walk out of prison this month.
— Law Officer (@LawOfficer) November 6, 2024
“We are going to recommend to the court that the life without the possibility of parole be removed and they would be sentenced for murder,” Gascon told reporters on October 24. “I believe that they have paid their debt to society.”
As the newly-elected District Attorney, Hochman could withdraw Gascon’s recommendation for resentencing.
Erik, then 18, and Lyle, then 21, shot their parents with 2 Mossberg 12-gauge shotguns. They purchased the shotguns because they didn’t want to wait for the 2-week cooling off period mandated by California law.
Following the murders, Erik and Lyle left the house to dispose of their bloody clothes and bury the shotguns.
They went to a movie theater to buy tickets for a Batman movie to use as an alibi. But they abandoned their plan when they noticed the timestamps on the movie tickets was after the time of the murders.
They then headed to the “Taste of L.A.” festival at Santa Monica Civic Auditorium, according to police.
When Erik and Lyle returned home hours later, they were surprised to see a lack of police presence around the mansion. Their neighbors had not reported the sounds of screams and gunshots to police.
In an emotional call to 911, Lyle told the operator, “someone killed my parents!” Lyle said he and his brother returned home and discovered their parents’ bodies in the den.
Detectives grew suspicious when a computer specialist contacted them and said Lyle and Erik hired him to delete their father’s updated will from José’s computer hard drive.
With the money from the fraudulent will and their parents’ life insurance policies, Lyle and Erik went on a lavish $700,000 spending spree.
The brothers threw wild parties in the murder house, traveled extensively, and gifted clothes and jewelry to their girlfriends.
But their lavish lifestyle came to an end when a remorseful Erik tearfully confessed to the murders during a recorded session with his psychologist.
Erik was especially distraught when he described his mother’s murder.
Erik said that after shooting their parents multiple times, they ran out to the car where Erik handed Lyle ammunition to reload his shotgun. They went back into the house and Lyle coldly approached their mother who was on the floor screaming and crawling away. Lyle then fired the kill shot to Kitty’s face, lacerating her brain.
The psychologist later told police about Erik’s confession, which led to Lyle and Erik’s arrests.
Erik, now 53, and Lyle, now 56, have remained behind bars since their arrests in 1990.
After their first trial ended in a mistrial in 1994, they were found guilty of first-degree murder in 1996 and sentenced to life without the possibility of parole.
But a Netflix movie, titled “Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story,” cast doubts on their guilt and Gascon announced he would consider resentencing them.
