(Los Angeles) The Menendez brothers, famous in the United States for having killed their wealthy parents in 1989, will have to wait: the hearing set to examine their request for release has been postponed to March 20 and 21, the prosecutor announced on Friday from Los Angeles.
Posted at 10:37 p.m.
“This postponement is due to the impact of the recent fires on the preparations of the parties” involved in the case, explained Nathan Hochman in a press release.
Still underway around the American megacity, these fires have killed at least 27 people and displaced tens of thousands of people.
Erik and Lyle Menendez, currently imprisoned for life, were initially scheduled to appear before a judge on January 30 and 31.
The two brothers made headlines by killing their parents, José and Mary Louise Menendez, in their posh family home in Beverly Hills.
Their trial, one of the first broadcast on television, even before that of American football player OJ Simpson, remained engraved in the collective American memory.
-Prosecutors had accused the two young men, aged 18 and 21 at the time of the events, of having murdered their parents to inherit their fortune of 14 million dollars.
The brothers presented these murders as a desperate attempt at self-defense, claiming to have been raped for years by their father.
The fiction series Monsters : The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story as well as a documentary produced by Netflix have recently revived interest in this case, in a world where the #metoo movement has changed the perception of victims of sexual violence.
The case is causing a real frenzy: the online mobilization in favor of the two brothers is supported by celebrities like Kim Kardashian. During the last months of 2023, the house where the murder took place was attacked by curious people coming to take photos in front of the facade.
Erik and Lyle, now ages 53 and 56, have spent more than thirty years behind bars.
Their lawyers are calling for their release in light of new elements that would render their conviction for murder null and void: a letter from the time when Erik spoke of his father’s sexual assaults to a cousin before the murder, as well as the testimony of a former Latino boy band singer, who says he was drugged and raped by José Menendez in the 1980s.
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