More than 35 years after the brutal murder of their parents, the Menendez brothers are back in the spotlight, and a former Mafia boss who spent time in prison with the pair recently shared some insight into their story.
“Now, let me give the reason I can give you a personal perspective… I spent 11 months in lockdown, in solitary, actually on death row – the tier I was on in the L.A. County Jail was death row, where everybody on that tier was facing either life without parole or the death penalty – so Lyle and Erik Menendez were in that tier,” explained Michael Franzese, who is a former caporegime in the Colombo crime family, per Vanity Fair.
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Franzese has a YouTube channel with 1.36 million followers. That quote came from a review of Ryan Murphy’s “Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story”, a series now streaming on Netflix.
“Erik and Lyle shot and killed their parents, Jose and Kitty Menendez, in the family’s Beverly Hills home on August 20, 1989,” according to court documents. “The theory of the prosecution supporting charges of murder was that these killings were motivated by greed and the brothers’ desire to acquire by early inheritance their parents’ considerable wealth. However, after abandoning a story cooked-up for police investigators that the Mafia had killed their parents, Erik and Lyle claimed at trial that the killings were the result of years of physical, sexual, and psychological abuse, and thus not murder, but only manslaughter.”
According to USA Today, Roy Rosselló, a member of the 1980s Puerto Rican boy band Menudo, said in Peacock’s docuseries, “Menendez + Menudo: Boys Betrayed”, from 2023 that Jose Menendez drugged and raped him when he was a teenager. The elder Menendez was a music industry executive.
At first, the brothers were not suspects in their parents’ murder. Then, some months later, Erik confessed to a therapist. Eventually, both were sentenced to life in prison. Erik was 19 and Lyle was 21.
This year, Murphy’s “Monsters” dramatization of the Menendez story and the documentary “The Menendez Brothers” were released on Netflix, leading to a surge in interest in the case. Even before the documentary came out, there was also renewed interest in the story due to the TikTok social media app, according to its trailer. That documentary “features snippets of more than 20 hours of interviews, conducted via phone while they were incarcerated at Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility outside of San Diego,” according to TODAY.
“What happened that night, it is very well known. Over 30 years, I’ve processed so much of it,” said Erik in one of the snippets. “Still have my heart beating talking about it. Still have nightmares.”
“A part of Erik and I died on that night,” Lyle said.
“I became fairly close with Lyle and Erik, because we were there, 24/7, right?” said Franzese in his review. He also said the brothers “shared a lot of information with him.”
At one point, Erik was moved because of an alleged escape attempt (Franzese considers that allegation bogus and said one would have to be “the second coming of Houdini to even think about trying to escape,” the L.A. County jail) and he would often talk to Lyle. During that time, Franzese said he would sometimes get mistaken for Erik Menendez as they walked the prisoners from solitary confinement to the area where they could take meetings. Other prisoners would yell and throw things at them.
“It was a zoo, an absolute zoo,” he said.
Now for what made his family especially nervous about the brothers.
One day, while Lyle was waiting for his visitor, Franzese was speaking to his wife. They were at a bank of glass protected booths where prisoners could see visitors and speak to them on a phone. Franzese’s son started getting impatient, picked up the phone at Lyle’s booth and began talking to Lyle, said Franzese. The young boy saw Lyle a few times while his father was incarcerated at L.A. County Jail.
“My wife got nervous,” he added.
Franzese told her to let it go. However, the visit would have reverberations. One day, when his wife was in the grocery store, their son picked up a tabloid with Lyle on the cover and loudly said that the man on the cover was his “friend” and his father’s “friend.”
“People start to look at him, my wife panicked,” he said. She threw the magazine down and rushed out of the store.
Franzese also revealed that Lyle talked a lot about his mother and how she allowed abuse in their home, and how he felt the older brother was a bit manipulative of his younger brother.
Last week, L.A. County District Attorney George Gascón told KNX News in an exclusive interview that the Menendez brothers were “rehabilitating” in prison.
“To be honest with you, it appears that they have been rehabilitating, they have been going to college, they have been mentoring people, they have done volunteer work,” he said.
Gascón is reviewing the brother’s case following the renewed media attention on the case. In addition to the two Netflix releases, media personality Kim Kardashian – daughter of the late defense attorney Robert Kardashian – published an op-ed advocating for the brothers to be released.
“It’s time for the Menendez brothers to be freed,” she said in an Instagram post. “We are all products of our experiences. They shape who we were, who we are, and who we will be. Physiologically and psychologically, time changes us, and I doubt anyone would claim to be the same person they were at 18. I know I’m not! You think you know the story of Lyle and Erik Menendez. I certainly thought I did.”
In his interview with KNX News, Gascón would not outright say he was leaning toward reducing or changing their sentence.
“I’m just simply telling you that based on the information that we’re getting, it seems like they’re rehabilitating very well, but we still have work to do,” he said. Gascón hopes to make a decision shortly.
As for Franzese? He believes the murder was too brutal to have been about money alone, as prosecutors have alleged.