Erik Menendez is opening up about some of the “trauma” he and his brother Lyle have faced while behind bars for the last 35 years.
In a phone interview with TMZ’s podcast 2 Angry Men, Erik, 54, admitted prison 25 years ago “was [an] even darker, more dangerous place” as he detailed some of the alleged abuse he and his brother Lyle, 57, had dealt with in jail... Continue reading here ▶
The siblings are both incarcerated at Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility in California after killing their parents, José and Kitty, on Aug. 20, 1989 while they were sitting on the couch in the TV room of their $5 million Beverly Hills mansion. The brothers have maintained that they murdered them due to mental, physical and sexual abuse.
Speaking on the podcast about some of the tougher times in jail, Erik insisted, “Prison was hard for me. I faced a lot of bullying and trauma. It was a dangerous environment.”
The brothers’ lawyer, Mark Geragos, co-hosts the podcast alongside TMZ’s Harvey Levin.
Erik continued, “I was picked on, bullied violently, and it was traumatic and it was continual. Those are things that a lot of inmates in prison go through when they’re not part of a gang structure and they come in and they’re basically lone wolves, they just have to be by themselves.”
“Prison can be hard, and there’s a lot of suffering in prison,” Erik noted. “I’m not gonna fight back, I’m not going to engage, and I had no one really to turn to for help, and I was separated from Lyle,” he added.
The brothers were reunited in April 2018, after Lyle was transferred from Mule Creek State Prison in Northern California — where he was sent after they were convicted of the killings in 1996 — to the Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility, where his brother had been since 2013. Before that, Erik had served time in various institutions.
“I remember the day that I was told ‘Lyle just got assaulted and got his jaw broken.’ I’m thinking ‘He’s over there, I’m going through this over here, and at least we could protect each other maybe if we were together,’ but we were not even allowed to be together. So it was difficult,” Erik continued.
“It took years to work out of it, because you have to find yourself in prison,” he added.
After 35 years of being incarcerated, there’s a chance the brothers could now be freed. The brothers will be back in court on March 20 for a hearing to determine if they should be resentenced.
The siblings’ fate took an unexpected twist last year when a new generation of supporters joined the call for their release from prison, owing to a cultural shift in understanding of the devastating toll that sexual abuse survivors face, along with the impact of Netflix’s hit drama Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story and a documentary on the streaming service, The Menendez Brothers.
In October 2024, the Menendez brothers appeared to be on the verge of release when then-L.A. District Attorney George Gascón filed a resentencing request that could have ultimately freed them. However, Gascón lost his bid for reelection to Nathan Hochman, who has since met with the brothers but hasn’t made public his thoughts on their sentences.
If efforts to re-sentence the siblings to 50 years to life were to succeed, they’d immediately be eligible for parole as “youthful offenders,” since Lyle was 21 and Erik was 18 at the time of the killings.
