Erik Menendez was denied parole and will remain behind bars after a nearly 10-hour hearing. Family members expressed shock and anger and posted on social media, with a stepdaughter calling the decision torture and accusing the parole board of being "money hungry media feeding pieces of trash." Lyle Menendez's hearing began the following day, with supporters hoping for a different outcome. Both brothers became eligible for resentencing because they were under 26 at the time of the 1989 murders. A superior court granted their resentencing petition in May, and public interest rose after a Netflix series revisited the case.
State parole officials had not yet publicly announced that Erik Menendez would remain behind bars, but word of the outcome was already spreading among his family members early Thursday evening. Stunned and angry at the decision, some relatives took to social media just as news broke that Menendez, 54, had been denied parole for the 1989 shotgun murders of his parents, a grisly crime committed with his older brother, Lyle.
"How is my dad a threat to society," Talia Menendez, his stepdaughter, wrote on Instagram. "This has been torture to our family. How much longer???" In the all-caps post, Menendez's daughter castigated the parole board, calling them "money hungry media feeding pieces of trash" after the decision. "You will not have peace until my dad is free!!!!" she wrote in a following post. A hearing for Lyle, 57, began Friday morning, leaving family members who support his case clinging to hope his ruling will be different.
Originally sentenced to life without parole, the brothers eventually qualified for resentencing because they were under 26 years old at the time of the killings. Several petitions and legal filings went nowhere for decades, but their case received renewed attention after the popular Netflix series "Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story" sparked a social media interest in their case, and the sexual abuse the two siblings alleged was perpetuated by their father, Jose Menendez. A superior court granted their resentencing petition in May, paving the way for the parole hearings this week.
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