The L.A. District Attorney’s pushing back hard against giving the Menendez brothers another shot in court, saying their story’s full of holes.
At a Friday (Feb. 21) press conference, D.A. Nathan Hochman shot down claims that new abuse evidence should change Lyle and Erik Menendez’s guilty verdict for killing their parents, Jose and Kitty, back in 1989, Variety reports.
Hochman’s not buying this key letter their lawyers are hyping up – supposedly proving Erik’s claims his dad molested him. He says it’s just an undated photocopy from December 1988, nine months before the killings. “We’ve asked for the original copy,” Hochman said. “We’ve not been presented with an original or an envelope with a postmark.”
He also thinks it’s “inconceivable” and “defies common sense” that Erik and his cousin testified about abuse but say they hadn’t talked about it since six years before the murders.
“If they had evidence that sex abuse had been communicated not just six years before the events, but nine months before the 1989 killings, it would absolutely have come out during one or both of the testimonies,” Hochman said.
He’s also skeptical about claims Jose molested someone from Menudo. After checking it out, he says the evidence is too weak for a new trial – plus he points out this self-defense story was the brothers’ fourth version of what went down.
“What I believe is that they testified to that sexual abuse. They absolutely testified to it in great detail. I also understand that when it came to any corroborating information about that sexual abuse, it was extremely lacking,” Hochman told reporters at the courthouse.
“And the fact that it was their fourth version – in other words, they didn’t come out initially and say, ‘We killed our parents because our father sexually abused us. They didn’t go ahead and when they got arrested, tell anyone that,'” he added.
The brothers’ January sentencing got pushed back because of L.A. wildfires. Hochman says it’s now set for March 20-21, moved from the original Jan. 20-31 dates.
Last October, LA County DA George Gascón told everyone he’d ask the court to resentence the brothers. He thought they’d be home by Thanksgiving, but that didn’t happen.
