Kim Kardashian Calls for the Menendez Brothers’ Release
Kim Kardashian has called for Lyle and Erik Menendez to be released from prison in a new essay published by NBC News, writing that the brothers, whom she has met, “are not monsters.”
The case has drawn renewed attention following the release of Netflix’s Ryan Murphy–directed true-crime series Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story. “We gave them their moment in the court of public opinion. Basically, we did give them a platform,” Murphy said on Thursday. “I think they can be out of prison by Christmas. I really believe that.” (The brothers, who are also the subject of a forthcoming Netflix documentary, have pushed back against Monsters, calling Murphy’s characterization of the case “naive and inaccurate.”)
Los Angeles County district attorney George Gascón recently announced that the brothers’ legal team asked a court to vacate their convictions. He added that his office will be reviewing new evidence — a 1988 letter in which Erik described the abuse to a cousin — to determine whether the brothers should be resentenced. Gascón said that while there is no doubt that they committed the murders, the allegations of sexual abuse would be taken into account today in a very different manner than when the trials took place in the 1990s.
The case was the subject of nationwide outrage three decades ago. Erik was 18 and Lyle was 21 when they fatally shot their parents, Jose and Kitty Menendez, at their Beverly Hills home in 1989. The brothers alleged that Jose physically and sexually abused both of them for years and that they acted in self-defense, while prosecutors argued that they committed the murder out of greed since they were set to receive a large inheritance. The brothers were first tried separately, and both cases ended in hung juries. When they were re-tried together in 1995, the court ruled that most of the evidence of abuse was inadmissible with key witnesses being barred from testifying. A jury found them guilty, and both brothers were sentenced to life without the possibility of parole. Erik and Lyle are now 53 and 56 and have spent nearly 35 years incarcerated.
“The trial and punishment these brothers received were more befitting a serial killer than two individuals who endured years of sexual abuse by the very people they loved and trusted. I don’t believe that spending their entire natural lives incarcerated was the right punishment for this complex case,” Kardashian wrote in her essay. “Had this crime been committed and trialed today, I believe the outcome would have been dramatically different.”
Kardashian also called out the media obsession with the case at the time — including how the brothers were largely ridiculed for their abuse allegations — and what she sees as the failures of the justice system. “Erik and Lyle had no chance of a fair trial against this backdrop. Back then, there were limited resources for victims of sexual abuse, particularly for boys,” she wrote. “There were virtually no systems in place to support survivors, and public awareness of the trauma of male sexual abuse was minimal, often clouded by preconceived judgments and homophobia.”
The reality TV star’s interest in the case follows her yearslong advocacy for criminal-justice reform. Kardashian has lobbied Republican and Democratic administrations on the issue as well as advocated for the release of incarcerated people such as Alice Marie Johnson, a grandmother who received a life sentence for a first-time nonviolent drug offense, and Cyntoia Brown, a sex-trafficking survivor who at 16 was convicted of murder and sentenced to life.
In the essay, Kardashiain went on to say she hopes Erik and Lyle’s life sentences are “reconsidered.” “We owe it to those little boys who lost their childhoods,” she concluded, “who never had a chance to be heard, helped or saved.”