judge Stanley Weisberg Archives - The Menendez Murders

Erik and Lyle Menendez killed their parents 30 years ago today – but it didn’t have to be that way

This is a tragedy that destroyed a family. All four of them had remarkable strengths as well as terrible weaknesses and it did not have to be. If at any time over the course of the lives of the four Menendez family members some effective person could have intervened, everyone would still be alive and well and healing. All four of them needed help. And there never was any help for this family.
— Defense Attorney Leslie Abramson, the day before sentencing

The Menendez Brothers were sentenced 23 years ago this week

On July 2, 1996, Judge Stanley Weisberg sentenced Lyle and Erik Menendez to life without parole.

Here’s how I described the scene in my book….

Erik Menendez wrote a screenplay: Kid kills parents, inherits $157,000,000 (video)

Yes, Erik Menendez was the co-author of a screenplay about a young man who kills his parents and inherits $157,000,000. The script that was completed — and shopped around Hollywood — before the murders.

No, it was never included as evidence in either of the two trials.

Did the media firestorm influence the verdicts?

I’ve been on the road – spreading the truth – for two months

It has been two months since the release of The Menendez Murders.

I am grateful for all the TV shows, podcasts, radio interviews, newspapers, and websites that have helped me share a new version of this story – the truth.

In the 2018 era of #MeToo, #MenToo, and the revelations about the Catholic Church, people are more willing to accept that Erik and Lyle Menendez’s emotional testimony of being abused was the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.