A (30:47)
And while the world mocked them, it largely ignored their claims of abuse. Few headlines grappled with the testimony itself, the stomach turning descriptions of control, humiliation and fear. And even fewer asked what it meant that these young men said they were abused and that their defense was we were scared we were going to die. Instead, it was easier to turn them into characters, because characters don't cry real tears. Characters don't walk around in fear. Characters don't make you feel complicit when you laugh. Some members of the Menendez family spoke out about it. They criticized the media coverage, begged reporters to stop reducing the trial to a punchline. But the critique barely made a ripple. By then, the story had taken on a life of its own. And what was lost in that transformation was the emotional center of the case, the reality that for all the contradictions, for all the money, the privilege, there was something darker lurking beneath the reality that abuse doesn't always look like we think it should. The courtroom was asking the public to sit with the unthinkable, to imagine that these boys had grown up in a house filled with secrets, that they had spent their lives swallowing their pain and pretending to be okay. But the culture didn't want to do that. It wanted something to laugh at. The Menendez brothers became a meme before memes even existed, a joke that told itself. And in doing so, the world missed the bigger question. Not did they do it? That part wasn't in dispute. But why? And what if they were telling the truth while the world mocked them? Back in the courtroom, things had reached a standstill. Two juries, two brothers, and five months of brutal emotional testimony. But when it came time to decide Eric and Lyle's fate, the courtroom didn't erupt. It stalled. Because despite the headlines, this wasn't a simple case of guilt or innocence. The judge had given the jury options from first degree murder all the way down to involuntary manslaughter. And the question wasn't just did they do it, it was why? What did fear mean in the context of murder? Could trauma explain the unthinkable? Were the murders an elaborate ploy for money or a desperate act of self defense? According to the Los Angeles Times, deliberations were tense. Some jurors even described them as nearly religious. The room was split. Some believed the brothers and others didn't. And then there were those who believed them but still couldn't accept fear as a justification. And notably, gender seemed to matter. Former jurors said that every vote for first degree murder came from a man. After 19 days, Eric's case ended in a hung jury. Eventually, Lyles did too. No verdict, no closure. Just two mistrials and the looming promise of a retrial. But the second trial, it would be an entirely different story. For starters, the cameras were gone, and so was the context. The judge ruled that allegations of Jose Menendez's abuse were inadmissible. As Eric told Netflix, the judge argued that because the brothers weren't women, battered women's syndrome didn't apply. And without that, the trauma Eric and Lyle described was deemed irrelevant. This time, there'd be no testimony from relatives, no stories from childhood coaches, no supporting voices at all. And to make matters worse, Lyle decided not to testify. Which meant that Eric took the stand alone. And as he later told Netflix the it felt like walking in cold. No background, no buildup. Just him. And if that wasn't enough, the rules had changed. Manslaughter was off the table. The jury had two Murder in the first degree or a full acquittal. The jury didn't take long. In less than a week, both brothers were convicted. Life in prison without the possibility of parole. For a long time, that seemed like the end of the story. But then came Roy Rosello. In 2023, the former Menudo singer came forward with a harrowing accusation that Jose Menendez had drugged and raped him when he was just 14 years old. Roy said it happened at the Menendez family home, that he'd been taken there by Menudo's manager, handed wine, and woke up disoriented and alone. This time, the world didn't laugh. No sketches, no tabloid jokes. Roy was believed. And suddenly, a door cracked open. Because if Roy's account was credible, what did that mean for the brothers? Eric issued a statement from prison. It's sad to know there was another victim of my father. And quietly, the public started asking questions they'd been too uncomfortable to ask before. Why was Roy believed but not Eric and Lyle? Was it timing? Class? Culture? All of the above? For most of American legal history, rape wasn't even legally considered something that could happen to men. According to the R Street Institute, the definition was once limited to carnal knowledge of a woman and abuse between fathers and sons that was buried even deeper. It's still one of the most under reported crimes in the country. That same R Street report notes that victims often don't speak up because they fear disrupting the family dynamic, because they feel shame, or because they believe that no one will take them seriously. And in the early 90s, that's exactly what happened to Eric and Lyle. But today, the cultural landscape is shifting. Netflix released a documentary about the brothers. TikTok creators reexamined hours of trial footage with fresh eyes and the old 1993 SNL sketch. The YouTube comments section is filled with viewers asking for it to be taken down. One person wrote, I was willing to laugh if this was funny, but this was brutally bad. Even Kim Kardashian voiced her support for Lyle and Eric. But not all the attention helped. Ryan Murphy's monster series reimagined the case with creative liberties that Eric publicly called dishonest and damaging. In a statement released through his wife, Eric said, this portrayal of the tragedies surrounding our crime have taken the painful truths several steps backward, back through time to an era when the prosecution built a narrative on a belief system that males were not sexually abused and that males experienced rape trauma differently than women. Murphy dismissed the backlash as faux outrage. He said the show sparked millions of conversations about abuse. But it leaves us with a hard question. Does visibility inherently equal justice, or is it just more pain packaged as content? In this case, though, visibility did lead somewhere. In 2024, Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascon recommended resentencing, citing new evidence, including a letter Eric wrote to his cousin Andy Kano a year before the murders, in which he mentioned his father's abuse as well as Roy Rosello's testimony. According to abc, nearly two dozen family members spoke in support of the brothers resentencing. Anamaria Baralt, a niece of Jose Menendez, said, if their case was heard today with the understanding we now have about abuse and ptsd, their sentencing would have been very different. And In May of 2025, it was. Eric and Lyle were re sentenced to 50 years to life, making them eligible for parole. Belief doesn't undo the past, but it can change what comes next. That same culture that once mocked Eric and Lyle now floods Internet comment sections with messages of support. So what changed? Was it us? Was it the brothers? Or was it just the way the story was told? Some say if Eric and Lyle had been sisters, they'd be free by now. And maybe that's speculation, but it's also a mirror showing us how much belief depends on packaging, on performance and whether someone looks like a victim or a villain. The Menendez case helped usher in this new era. Televised trials, true crime fandom. As the founder of Court TV once said, even without a celebrity, if the story is sensational enough, people Will watch. And this story was sensational. Two wealthy brothers, a mansion in Beverly Hills. Shotguns, secrets, blood on the floor. It was easy to get caught up in the spectacle, to treat it like a season of television instead of a real family unraveling. But when you strip away the spectacle, the sweaters, the sound bites, the media frenzy, what you find is pain. And here's the thing. If the brothers were abused, and I believe they were, then you can't separate that from why they killed. That doesn't mean that what they did was right, but it does mean that their pain wasn't a subplot. It was central. And it means we have to reckon with the question they raised that nobody wanted to ask in 1993. What if the monster was real? And if you sit with that, really sit with doesn't erase the violence, but it reshapes how we see it. Because trauma doesn't follow rules. It doesn't conform to the logic of the courtroom or to some tidy arc of a TV trial. It's jagged, complicated, really inconvenient. So we're left with this. Two parents, two sons, a story the world wasn't ready to hear, and a question that still echoes 35 years later. What does justice look like when no one fits the part they're supposed to play foreign? Now that we've reached the end of our coverage of the Menendez brothers story, I wanted to leave you with one final way to take action, especially if you've been thinking about what accountability and healing could really look like in cases like this. There's this organization that I came across that I'm super moved by, and it's called no More Tears. It was founded back in 2002 by a group of incarcerated men at San Quentin Rehabilitation center alongside community advocates in the Bay Area. And its mission is really powerful. It's to reduce violence by empowering the very people who once contributed to it to become part of the Solution. For over 20 years, they've led violence prevention workshops and restorative justice healing circles inside prisons, reaching more than 10,000 men. And the impact is real. Of the more than 1500 no more tears graduates who've come home, 85% remain free citizens, and none have reoffended with violent crimes. Since founder Lonnie Morris was released in 2021, no More Tears has expanded their work beyond the prison walls. Now they offer healing circles, youth mentorship and re entry support throughout the Bay Area, all led by people who've lived it. By supporting no More Tears, you're helping to invest in community led solutions to violence and incarceration rooted in accountability, compassion and transformation. To learn more or to donate, you can visit nomoretearsq.com and as always, you can keep up with True Crime on Instagram, X Threads and bluesky truercrimepod. And if you haven't already, make sure to subscribe to our Official newsletter@truercrime.substack.com to stay in the loop. And if you want to follow along with me personally, I'm on Instagram and TikTok. Alicia Stanton and I also write a weekly newsletter called Sincerely Celicia where I share my favorite recommendations and unfiltered thoughts on politics, culture and life. You can read past issues and sign up to get it straight to your inbox@sincerely celicia.substack.com A full list of sources and action items related to today's episode is available on our website@trurocrimepodcast.com True Crime is created, hosted and written by me, Celisia Stanton, and is a production of Tenderfoot TV in association with Odyssey. Additional writing, research and production by Olivia Hussingfeld. Executive producers are myself, Donald Albright and Payne Lindsay. Editing by Liam Luxon, artwork by Station 16, original music by Jay Ragsdale, and makeup and vanity set mix by Dayton Cole. Thank you to Oren Rosenbaum and the team at uta, the Nord Group and the team at Odyssey. For more podcasts like True or Crime, search Tenderfoot TV on your favorite podcast app or visit us@Tenderfoot TV. Thanks for listening. Thanks so much for listening to this episode of True or Crime. 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