Kitty Menendez' Brother Slams DA's Recommendation to Potentially Free Brothers: 'Unconscionable'

Mar. 15, 2025

Kitty Menendez’s brother is not happy over the Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón’sdecision to recommend resentencing for Erik and Lyle Menendez, who are serving life sentences for the 1989 shooting deaths of their parents Jose and Kitty Menendez.

“He is in disbelief,” Kathleen Cady, an attorney for Milton Andersen, Kitty’s 90-year-old brother, tells PEOPLE. “Mr. Andersen firmly believes that the correct verdict was reached, and the correct sentence was imposed.  He is extremely disappointed Mr. Gascón is going to be making this recommendation and hopes that the judge will not go along with it.”

“He considers it a miscarriage of justice,” says Cady.

On Thursday, Oct. 24,Gascón announced his planto ask a Los Angeles Superior Court judge to resentence Erik, 56, and Lyle, 53, to life, but with the possibility of parole.

Lyle, left, and Erik Menendez sit in Beverly Hills Municipal Court where their attorneys delayed making pleas on behalf of the brothers who are suspected in the murders of their millionaire parents, Jose and Mary Louise (Kitty) Menendez, in Beverly Hills, Calif., last Aug., March 12, 1990.AP Photo/Nick Ut

AP Photo/Nick Ut

As “youthful offenders,” who were both under the age of 26 when they killed their parents, they would immediately be eligible for parole.

At a Thursday press conference, Gascón cited the brothers' “journey of redemption and a journey of rehabilitation" while in prison, pointing to prison groups they created that addressed untreated trauma and helped inmates with physical disabilities.

Lyle Menendez, Kitty, Jose, and Erik Menendez.abc

abc

She says his handling of the case is “unconscionable.”

Joan Andersen VanderMolen (C), Kitty Menendez' sister, and Karen VanderMolen, Kitty Menendez' niece (R), sit at a press conference outside the Criminal Courts Building on October 16, 2024 in Los Angeles, California.Mario Tama/Getty Images

Mario Tama/Getty Images

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Now that the district attorney’s office has filed the resentencing petition, the case will go before a judge. If the judge agrees with Gascón’s recommendation to resentence the brothers, the matter will go before a parole board.

Lyle was 21 and Erik was 18 when they fatally shot their parents using 12-gauge shotguns in the den of their Beverly Hills, Calif., home on Aug. 20, 1989.

However, prosecutors at the time said the two brothers’ motive was greed and cited their lavish spending spree after the slayings.

In 1996, three years after their first trial ended in a deadlock, the siblings were convicted of the first-degree murders and subsequently sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

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source: people.com