What 24 Menendez Family Members Did at the Los Angeles Courthouse

**SPEAKER_1** (0:01)
This is History's Hidden Killers. Here now, Tony Brueski.

**Tony Brueski** (0:08)
In October of 2024, more than two dozen members of the Menendez family stood together at the Los Angeles Courthouse and held a press conference. They were not there to apologize. They were there to grieve quietly. They were there to advocate publicly and forcefully for the release of Erik and Lyle Menendez, the two men who shotgunned their parents to death in the family's Beverly Hills living room in 1989 The person standing at that podium was Joan VanderMolen, Kitty Menendez sister. Or Joan, rather. VanderMolen. Kitty Menendez sister.
The murdered woman's own sibling. And what she said was this. They were failed by the very people who should have protected them.
A lot of people got a lot of opinions on this story I'd love to hear yours in the comment section. On Substack and YouTube, the links are in the description. This is the fourth episode in our series about families that stand behind the accused. The Menendez case is unlike anything else in this series because the family is not denying the crime. Erik and Lyle killed their parents. That has never been in dispute. The family's argument is about context. The brothers endured severe, sustained harm at the hands of their father before they became killers, and the system that convicted them in 1996 was not equipped to process what had been done to them as children. For nearly 30 years after the conviction, the extended Menendez family said almost nothing publicly. The brothers sat in prison serving life without parole. The case faded into the background of true crime history. The family processed in private, and then two things converged. New evidence surfaced, and Netflix put the case back in front of millions of people.
There's a letter at the center of it. Erik Menendez wrote it in 1988, a year before the murders, to his cousin Andy Cano. In the letter, he described what his father was doing to him. The defense team did not know it even existed during either of the brothers' trials. It sat unseen for decades until Erik spotted a reference to it during a 2015 Barbara Walters television special and asked his attorneys about it. That letter, written before the killings to a family member in a private communication never intended for a courtroom, became the foundation of a habeas corpus petition filed in May of 23 The petition asked the court to grant the brothers a new trial in light of new evidence. A piece of paper that no one in the legal system had seen changed the trajectory of a case most people assumed was permanently closed. The Netflix documentary and the Monsters docudrama arrived in fall of 24 and brought massive renewed attention. Erik publicly criticized the dramatization's portrayal, but the spotlight served the family's purposes. Weeks after the show premiered, the extended family gathered for a press conference and Joan VanderMolen at that press conference told reporters she had not known the full scope of what happened inside the Menendez home. I had no idea the extent of what they suffered at the hands of my brother-in-law. None of us did.
She added that trauma has long effects. And those who've been harmed sometimes act in ways that are very difficult to understand. And then she said the sentence captures the entire family's position. The whole world was not ready to hear the truth about what was happening to those boys. Now we know better.
If what was happening to those boys was true.
They should have taken a few more shots. That's my opinion.
If those monsters were doing what they were doing, their father was doing what he was doing, and Kitty was sitting there allowing it, putting her head in the sand.
Really, there should be a system that does this for them so they don't have to do the dirty work themselves.
I'm cool with that. Can you imagine all the problems we would, can you imagine the generation of people whose lives would be saved and be better if they weren't subjected to monstrous parents doing horrendous things to them? If our system just stepped in and went, you did what to your kids? Okay, we have a lovely thing, a chloroform here we're gonna put over your mouth, and then there's these sharks that are really hungry.
What makes the Menendez family unique in this series is the moral complexity of their position. They're not choosing sides between the dead and the living. Joan VanderMolen loved his sister Kitty. She also stands in front of cameras and says her nephew should be free. The family's argument is that the full truth includes both realities. José Menendez allegedly subjected his sons to years of horrific harm, and his sons killed him and their mother for good reason. The family says holding both of those facts simultaneously is really the only honest position. The 1996 jury was never given the opportunity to hold both because manslaughter was not an option during the second trial that produced the conviction. The family believes it should have been.