Rosie O’Donnell says she believes her friend Lyle Menendez and his brother Erik may be out of prison in the next 30 days and revealed her plans to take him to Nobu for a celebratory dinner.
On Thursday, Los Angeles County’s top prosecutor George Gascón said his office was reviewing new evidence in the case of Lyle and Erik Menendez, which could lead to a retrial or resentencing for the brothers who were convicted of the 1989 murder of their parents, Kitty and Jose Menendez.
The brothers were sentenced to life behind bars without the possibility of parole in 1996 but Gascón says a letter Erik wrote to his cousin Andy Rano months before the murder of his parents detailing the alleged sex abuse by his father as well as allegations made by former Menudo member Roy Rosselló that Jose Menendez drugged and raped him as a teenager in the 1980s needs to be assessed.
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O’Donnell told Variety that she first received a letter from Lyle Menendez 30 years ago but that her former co-host on The View, Barbara Walters, told her to ignore it. However, two years ago, when a documentary featuring new evidence that Lyle and Erik were molested by their father was released, O’Donnell spoke out to support them. She then got a call from Lyle’s wife, Rebecca Sneed, asking if she would speak with him.
“I told them I would do what I could with whatever dwindling fame I have to bring light to their story,” O’Donnell said.
She said over the past two years she has become like family with Lyle Menendez in particular and was able to meet him in prison in San Diego last year.
“I saw Lyle and gave him a hug,” she recalled to Variety. “Then Erik came over to me, hugged me, and whispered in my ear, ‘Thank you for loving my brother.’ It was very, very moving to me,” she said. “I feel like a big sister in a way. Lyle is one of the most lauded prisoners in the California prison system. You can’t ignore that. If he was sort of the psycho who was screaming at everyone and a maniac, would he have done hospice for the dying prisoners? Would he have done all of the things that he did that allowed him to finally get moved from San Francisco down to his brother because he had ten years straight without one infraction? Nobody can mask their mental illness that much in 35 years. To be the extraordinary inmates that they both are is pretty damning testimony as well.”
She said she believes the Menendez brothers may be released within the next month ahead of a hearing scheduled for Nov. 29.
“I don’t think they’re going to make them wait very much longer,” she said.
O’Donnell said she has already made a plan with Lyle about where he wants to eat first if he is released from prison.
“I’ve always told Lyle that I will take him to Nobu because he thinks that’s the place to go. Sometimes, I would talk to him at night, and I’d say that my friends and I went to Nobu for lunch. I’d say, ‘Buddy, when you get out, I’ll take you to Nobu.’ When I talked to him the other day, he said, ‘When are we going to Nobu?’ I said, ‘Sooner than you think.’”
