About a year after Erik and Lyle Menendez were denied parole in connection with the murders of their parents, the California Parole Board has moved to grant the brothers a parole suitability hearing earlier than anticipated.
The Menendez brothers — who are convicted of gunning down their father, Jose Menendez, and mother, Mary Louise “Kitty” Menendez, in Beverly Hills in August 1989 — were previously allowed to seek a parole suitability hearing in August 2028, per the Los Angeles Daily News.
This would’ve been three years after Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan J. Hochman denied Erik and Lyle parole in August 2025, when he said both “brothers remain unsuitable for release” from prison.
Now, the California Parole Board has granted the brothers an earlier tentative parole hearing for March 2027, their family has learned, according to the Los Angeles Daily News.
“For almost 40 years, Erik and Lyle have worked to take responsibility for their actions, confront and heal from the unimaginable abuse and trauma they endured, grow as individuals, and dedicate themselves to serving others,” their relatives said in a Monday, September 7 statement, per the newspaper.
Erik and Lyle Menendez had received life sentences without the possibility of parole over the killings of Jose and Kitty. Then in May 2025, the brothers were resentenced to 50 years to life in prison, ABC7 New York reported.
The brothers contend their father repeatedly sexually abused them over the years ahead of the 1989 killings, and that they acted in self-defense when they shot their parents, according to the outlet.
“Erik and Lyle were once sentenced to life without the possibility of parole,” their family’s Monday statement said, per the Los Angeles Daily News. “We will always be profoundly grateful that they have been resentenced and that our family can now imagine a future in which they are once again part of our everyday lives.”
Prosecutors have alleged the brothers’ self-defense claim in connection with their parents’ deaths is a lie, noting the siblings spent an estimated $700,000 on luxury items within six months of the killings. Prosecutors believe Erik and Lyle’s motive was a desire to inherit their father’s multi-million-dollar fortune.
“For more than three decades, both Erik and Lyle Menendez have advanced a false claim of self-defense, alleging they feared their parents were going to kill them, to justify the brutal murders of their parents …,” Hochman said in an August 21, 2025, statement on the denial of Erik’s parole.
In a statement on the denial of Lyle’s parole, Hochman said on August 22, 2025 that parole “may be considered in the future” for Lyle if he “fully accepts responsibility for the brutal killings of his parents.”
