Kim Kardashian believes the Menendez brothers should be freed from prison.
The reality star is the latest person to weigh in on the controversial pair of convicted murderers.
Prosecutors in Los Angeles are reviewing new evidence to determine whether the siblings should be serving life sentences for killing their parents in their Beverly Hills mansion more than 35 years ago, the city’s district attorney said on Thursday.
The case is being highlighted in a new Netflix scripted series and an upcoming documentary.
An undated photo of the Menendez family as it appears during a panel at CrimeCon 2024 in Nashville, Tennessee, on Sunday, June 2. The brothers Lyle and Erik were convicted of fatally shooting both of their parents in 1989. (Michael Ruiz/Fox News Digital)
“You think you know the story of Lyle and Erik Menendez,” Kardashian wrote in her opinion essay for NBC News published on Thursday. “I certainly thought I did.”
“In 1989, the brothers, aged 21 and 18, respectively, viciously shot and killed their parents in their Beverly Hills home,” she wrote. “In 1996, after two trials, they were sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. As is often the case, this story is much more complex than it appears on the surface.”
Kardashian is a prison reform advocate who previously worked with the Trump White House to reduce sentences for several convicts found guilty of non-violent offenses. She also spoke at the White House earlier this year about criminal justice.
The mother of four centered the argument in her essay mainly on the brothers’ claims that they were emotionally, physically and sexually abused by their parents and feared for their lives.
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Kim Kardashian believes the Menendez brothers should be freed from prison. (Rodin Eckenroth/WireImage/Getty; Reuters)
“Following years of abuse and a real fear for their lives, Erik and Lyle chose what they thought at the time was their only way out — an unimaginable way to escape their living nightmare,” Kardashian wrote.
She said that after the jury was deadlocked in their first trial, the judge decided many of their abuse claims were inadmissible in the second trial.
“Their only way out of prison now is death,” Kardashian said, writing that their first televised trial became “entertainment for the nation,” and that they were portrayed as “monsters and sensationalized eye candy” by the media, “two arrogant, rich kids from Beverly Hills who killed their parents out of greed.”
“There was no room for empathy, let alone sympathy,” she noted.
“Following years of abuse and a real fear for their lives, Erik and Lyle chose what they thought at the time was their only way out — an unimaginable way to escape their living nightmare.”
Kim Kardashian spoke at the White House in June 2019 on the importance of criminal justice reform. She also spoke at the Biden White House earlier this year. (Sarah Silbiger/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
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“Erik and Lyle had no chance of a fair trial against this backdrop,” the 43-year-old claimed, adding that there was a stigma on male victims of sexual abuse at the time.
“Can anyone honestly deny that the justice system would have treated the Menendez sisters more leniently?” she postulated, adding, “Many people believe the crimes the brothers committed are unforgivable — but what about the decades of alleged abuse they suffered as children?”
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She said she had recently spent time with the brothers, who she said have “exemplary disciplinary records” in prison.
They “are not monsters. They are kind, intelligent, and honest men,” she argued.
Kardashian also said that one of the prison wardens told her he would be comfortable having the brothers as neighbors.
While Kardashian called the murders of their parents “inexcusable,” she said the brothers were treated more like “serial killers” than two men who had “endured years of sexual abuse by the very people they loved and trusted.”
She added, “I don’t believe that spending their entire natural lives incarcerated was the right punishment for this complex case. Had this crime been committed and trialed today, I believe the outcome would have been dramatically different.
“I also strongly believe that they were denied a fair second trial and that the exclusion of crucial abuse evidence denied Erik and Lyle the opportunity to fully present their case, further undermining the fairness of their conviction.”
However, not everyone agrees with Kardashian’s assessment.
The Menendez brothers were sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole in 1996 for the murders of their parents. (Ted Soqui/Sygma/Getty Images)
“If they were brought to trial again today, they would be found guilty,” Clark Fogg, a retired senior forensic specialist with the Beverly Hills Police Department who investigated the murders, told Fox News Digital this week.
Fogg believes the brothers’ motive for the murders had to do with “greed and money.”
“Why did they even have to kill their mom in the first place?” Fogg said. “If you killed Mr. Menendez separately from her, she would end up getting the inheritance, right? So they had to eliminate both of them in order to have the inheritance.”
Fogg investigated the Menendez brothers’ case in 1989. He took photos and preserved evidence at the crime scene, attended the autopsies and took the stand during both trials.
When speaking with Fox News Digital, he painted a horrific picture of the crime scene.
“One of the detectives had to actually hold a golf umbrella over my head as I was taking photos because, every so often, things would be falling from the ceiling,” Fogg said.
“It comes down to one thing. The reason why they’re in jail is that they killed their mother and father brutally, not poison them, but shotgun them to death to a point that they were all over the ceiling. … That’s how brutally they were murdered.”
Fogg said it appeared their mother was trying to escape when she was killed because there was blood on the soles of her shoes.
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“Even at that point, they kept on killing her with… gunshot blasts, one after another,” he told Fox News Digital.
Fox News Digital’s Mollie Markowitz and The Associated Press contributed to this report.