Erik and Lyle Menendez contend they were repeatedly sexually assaulted by their father and feared for their lives.
Potentially reopening one of Southern California’s most notorious murder cases, attorneys for Erik and Lyle Menendez filed court papers Wednesday contending thatwarrants the overturning of the brothers’ convictions for killing their parents in 1989.
Prosecutors, however, said the killings were financially motivated, pointing to lavish spending sprees by the brothers after the killings and arguing they were guilty of first-degree murder. But in court papers filed Wednesday — and first obtained by Los Angeles Magazine — attorneys for the brothers point to two new pieces of evidence they contend corroborate the brothers’ allegations of long-term sexual abuse — a letter written by Erik Menendez to one of his cousins in early 1989, eight months before the August 1989 killings, and recent allegations by a former member of the Puerto Rican boy band Menudo that he was also sexually abused by Jose Menendez as a teenager.
In court papers, Menendez brothers attorneys Mark Geragos and Cliff Gardner write that the new evidence “not only shows that Jose Menendez was very much a violent and brutal man who would sexually abuse children, but it strongly suggests that — in fact — he was still abusing Erik Menendez as late as December 1988. Just as the defense had argued all along.”
The Menendez brothers’ attorneys argue that the new evidence warrants a reopening of the case, saying it establishes “a prima facie case for relief.”
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