Silence Broken: A Menendez Brother Speaks

'No river of tears has changed that': Lyle Menendez on killing parents with younger brother Erik in 1989
By Jenn Gidman,  Newser Staff
Posted Jan 6, 2017 12:00 PM CST
Updated Jan 8, 2017 6:33 AM CST
Silence Broken: A Menendez Brother Speaks
In this Oct. 20, 1995, file photo, Lyle Menendez looks up during testimony in his and brother Erik's retrial for the shotgun slayings of their parents in Los Angeles.   (Steve Grayson/UPI via AP, Pool, File)

In 1989, two young brothers from Beverly Hills shocked the nation by shooting their parents to death. Now, 27 years later, Lyle and Erik Menendez remain incarcerated in different prisons—each received two consecutive life sentences with no parole—and Lyle, now 48, recently spoke to ABC News for a two-hour special that aired Thursday. (Erik, now 46, declined to be interviewed.) "I am the kid that did kill his parents, and no river of tears has changed that," Lyle said. He has "accepted" his sentence and says that his home life, which he and Erik said was filled with sexual abuse at the hands of their dad and silence from their mom, "prepared me surprisingly well for the chaos of prison life." Both brothers have married while in prison (Lyle is actually on his second wife), and he says he enjoys a "really strong" bond with Erik that they keep going with letters. "It's so painful and complicated and confusing," he says of the shared experience and "secrets" that have kept them close. "The bond [becomes] very great and intense."

E! Online got ABC News correspondent Terry Moran, who had covered the brothers' trial, to spill on how the network got Lyle to finally break his silence, with Moran revealing Lyle was always "a little more forward ... with the press" and "a little more manipulative." "I'm glad he did [call ABC] because you get a sense [of] an older … more mature … person with still profound regret every day," Moran says. Meanwhile, the brothers' cousin, Diane Vander Molen, tells ABC she believes the brothers had been sexually abused. Us Weekly compiles the seven biggest reveals from the ABC special, including that the brothers robbed houses together in Calabasas before the murders because they were "bored," per a family friend. (Two other California brothers were arrested in connection with murdering their parents this year.)

Get the news faster.
Tap to install our app.
X
Install the Newser News app
in two easy steps:
1. Tap in your navigation bar.
2. Tap to Add to Home Screen.

X