Erik and Lyle Menendez, two brothers behind bars for more than three decades for the 1989 killings of their parents, hope that new evidence of their alleged abuse may set them free. 

The two brothers, now 56 and 53, admit that they gunned down Kitty and Jose Menendez in their Beverly Hills home – what is in question is why they did it. 

While prosecutors argue the brothers carried out the killings for access to their family’s sizable fortune, the brothers claim that they did so out of fear after a lifetime of physical, sexual and emotional abuse. 

“48 Hours” contributor Natalie Morales spoke to elder brother Lyle Menendez about the new evidence currently under consideration in “The Menendez Brothers’ Fight for Freedom,” which is now streaming on Paramount+.

Pictured is a letter allegedly written by Erik Menendez and sent to his cousin Andy Cano eight months before the killings of Jose and Kitty Menendez. ( SUPERIOR COURT OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA, LOS ANGELES COUNTY)

In their second trial, Judge Stanley Weisberg limited testimony about the sexual abuse claims and did not allow jurors to vote on manslaughter charges instead of murder charges, according to ABC News. 

But a letter that Gardner said was written by Erik Menendez to his cousin, Cano, about eight months before the crime in 1988, which was recently unearthed from a storage unit by Cano’s mother, supports the men’s abuse claims. 

“I’ve been trying to avoid dad. It’s still happening, Andy, but it’s worse for me now,” reads the letter, in part. “Every night I stay up thinking he might come in. … I’m afraid… He’s crazy. He’s warned me a hundred times about telling anyone, especially Lyle.”

Roy Rossello, a former member of the Puerto Rican boy band Menudo, has made claims that also support the brothers’ story. Rossello, now 54, said Jose Menendez, an executive at RCA records at the time, abused him when he was between 14 and 15 years old.

Roy Rossello, member of pop group Menudo, is pictured in New York City in 1985. This year, at 54 years old, he said in a sworn affidavit that Jose Menendez sexually abused him. ( Michael Ochs archives/Getty Images)

In a sworn affidavit filed in 2023, he said that he went to the Menendez home in the fall of 1983 or 1984. He felt like he had “no control” over his body after drinking a “glass of wine.” Then, Rossello claims, the elder Menendez took him to a room and raped him. The former performer said that the elder Menendez abused him two other times, before and after a performance at Radio City Music Hall. 

Gardner cited the letter and the affidavit in a habeas petition filed in May 2023, asserting that the brothers’ convictions should be vacated. 

If the brothers’ convictions are vacated, the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office will need to decide whether to retry their cases. In a statement, the office told “48 Hours” it is investigating the new claims. It is unclear when a judge will make a ruling.