Erik Menendez has revealed he and his brother were “bullied violently” and “assaulted” while serving time in prison for their parents' murders.
The younger Menendez, 54, who was sentenced alongside his brother Lyle, 57, to life in prison for the 1989 murders, recalled the violence they experienced behind bars in a Thursday episode of Harvey Levin’s 2 Angry Men podcast.
“Prison was hard for me. I faced a lot of bullying and trauma. It was a dangerous environment,” Menenedez said.
Menendez continued, saying he was “picked on” and “bullied violently” because he was “not part of a gang structure.” He said he did not fight back when attacked.
Menendez also discussed the difficulty of being “separated from Lyle” while the brothers were in separate prisons for the first 21 years of their now 35-year incarceration.
He revealed that during their stints in separate prisons, Lyle was “assaulted and got his jaw broken”—adding that he wished they had been housed together so they could “protect each other.”
The brothers’ case has faced renewed attention after they were the subject of a “top-rated” Netflix limited series called Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story. With new focus on the case, they will face a resentencing hearing in March.
Erik and his brother were 18 and and 21, respectively, when their parents José and Mary Louis “Kitty” Menendez were found dead in the family’s multimillion-dollar Beverly Hills mansion. José had been shot six times in the back of the head, while Kitty had been shot 10 times.
The brothers were arrested in 1990, after Erik confessed their role in the murders to his therapist.
Their lawyers have argued that the killings were in self defense to protect them from years of sexual abuse at the hands of their father, José.
