#robert rand

Before the trial, Lyle served as a jail trustee, delivering meals and distributing mail to fellow prisoners. He preferred it to being locked in a cell all day. At one point, Lyle Menendez became a tourist attraction, a popular diversion when visitors would tour the jail.

“They used to bring me out as a spokesperson,” he says. “They would bring me around the corner and sort of parade me like the Elephant Man or something. People were shocked. I don’t think they actually expected to meet me. The kids would all be excited, and I actually didn’t mind it.”

“They would recognize me immediately and I wouldn’t be handcuffed or anything,” he said. “I would just stand there with a few deputies and we would joke around. They allowed them to ask me questions and then they would say, ‘What’s it like? It must be a big switch for you, being in jail. How do they treat you in here?’ Obviously, I couldn’t say that they beat me down every day or something.”

RESENTENCING STATEMENT

I appreciate the opportunity to make this statement.

On August 20th, 1989, I killed my mom and my dad. I make no excuses and I offer no justification.

I take full responsibility for my choices and for the person I was when I made those choices:

The choice to confront my dad about the abuse.

The choice to keep the family secrets instead of asking for help.

The choice to stay instead of leave.

The choice to buy guns and ammunition.

The choice to point guns at my parents and shoot them in their own home.

The choice to reload and return to the den and run up to my mother on the floor and shoot her again.

The choice to run and lie and hide and do anything I could to get away with these terrible crimes.

The choice to make a mockery of the criminal legal system by suborning perjury.

I have spent many years facing what I did and trying to understand who I was and why I made this horrific choice.

Again, I offer no excuse or justification. I do not blame my parents.

But I now understand that I was a twenty-one year old who believed I could fix what could not be fixed. I was immature, impulsive, distrusting, emotionally isolated, and in a codependent relationship with my little brother with whom I shared a traumatic bond. I bottled up my emotions and anger. I carried a deep shame that I hid from everyone. That shame kept me emotionally isolated and I distrusted everyone and everything.

I had always relied on my father to solve the big problems in my life. I was suddenly on my own and reeling. My choice to buy guns that Friday did not come from logic or reason. I was scared, but I was also filled with rage.

I am so sorry that I did not ask for help. I should have trusted someone: a relative, the police or even Father Ken, a parish priest, who had been a source of comfort for me in the past.

Had I sought help earlier in the week when the crisis began, I would not have bought a gun. Had I had the coping skills to process my emotions, had I taken more time to consider options, had I trusted others to help; had I made different choices, I would not have committed these crimes.

Even after I killed my father, his voice was still in my head.

More than I ever, I believed I owed it to him to protect the family image and keep the family secrets. I carried a deep shame. I clung to the belief that no one would believe my brother and I about the sexual abuse. I had no respect for institutions and societal norms. Without my father to solve this crisis, I was floundering and desperate. I could not accept the consequences of my actions. I felt responsible for the situation we were in, and I acted out in inexcusable ways. I am sorry for it, and for putting people in that position simply because I didn’t want to face my own reality.

Today, 35 years later, I am deeply ashamed of who I was sitting in that jail. I am thankful for Fr. Ken Deasy who worked with me for almost two years to find the courage to speak publicly about the family secrets. He taught me to let go of expectations, the need to control results, and helped me begin to release the burden of shame. I am grateful to him.

In 1996, I was faced with a daunting and seemingly hopeless journey. Life without the possibility of parole. I knew I deserved the suffering to come. I also knew I needed to grow up, to heal, to mature and to change. I struggled, especially in the beginning, and I am sorry for the mistakes that I made, but eventually I chose to live a life of personal growth, education, and service to others. I wanted to be part of the solution instead of the problem. I did it because it felt right for who I was and who I wanted to be. I did it because it gave the remorse that consumed me purpose. With growth and service came understanding and change. I made a promise early on that I would never again use violence to solve the problem, even to defend myself. I suffered through physical attacks. However, I do not regret that promise to myself. I am stronger because of it.

I have worked hard to be a better person.

I have taken on roles in inmate government, learning to help others solve problems, and in doing so, I began to develop greater self-worth and compassion. I have participated in self-help groups and engaged with facilitators who help me understand my character defects.

I have come to trust others, including authority figures. I have built strong, healthy relationships with correctional staff, therapists and fellow inmates. I have learned to access professionals for support, and I have experienced how transformative that trust can be. I have learned how to process anger instead of burying it.

I have learned to ask for help when I need it. I am grateful for the opportunity to be considered for resentencing and all that that means for my brother, my family, and myself. The impact of my violent actions on my family, whom I have the deepest love for, is unfathomable. They have cried with me and expressed their suffering.

I am so sorry to each and every one of you, and I am grateful for your love and forgiveness. I caused you shock and grief and unspeakable loss. I lied to you and forced you into a spotlight of public humiliation that you never asked for. And yet you are here showing me mercy despite all that I have taken from you.

I try to live a life now that I hope offers some amends for the harm I have caused. I am grateful also for the support of so many in the community who have shared their own painful stories with me and who have sent their prayers. Some of the strength to get through these years has come from that deep well.

If afforded an opportunity for another chapter of life beyond the prison walls, I plan to continue working with the sex abuse survivor community to spread awareness.

I also plan to continue to serve the incarcerated population through community building to change the culture of corrections.

I look forward to being able to reunite with my extended family and continuing the journey of healing that has sustained me through my incarceration.

My appreciation again to the court for its consideration and the opportunity to make a statement.

Hi guys! Just wanted to come on here and let you all know that this event is starting soon!

I will leave the link down below to go watch the live stream!!!

If anyone wants to talk about this please message me.

“We alone know the truth. We alone know the secrets of our family’s past. I do not look forward to broadcasting them around the country. —from a seventeen-page letter written by Lyle to Erik, June 1990”

RESENTENCING STATEMENT

I want to express my gratitude for the opportunity to address the court and my family. It is an incredible privilege to be able to speak before the court today. I do so with deep recognition of the gravity of these proceedings and with profound sorrow for everyone in my family, all of whom are still deeply impacted by the tragedy I created.

Thirty-five years ago, on August 20, 1989, I committed an atrocious act of brutality against two people who had every right to live. I took the lives of Mary Louise Menendez and Jose Enrique Menendez, my mother and father.

My actions were criminal; they were also selfish, cruel, and cowardly. I stole from my parents the right to a full life. I took from my relatives the right to share a life with my parents. I stole from the neighbors the right to a peaceful and safe community. I have no excuse, no justification for what I did, there is nothing that can make it any less wrong.

I take full responsibility for my crime and blame no one else.

I was the one who reached out to my 21-year old brother that Tuesday for help.

I was the one who convinced him that we couldn’t escape.

I was the one who was too ashamed to turn to my family or anyone else for help,

I was the one who didn’t trust in the police when I should have;

Instead, I bought guns, I bought ammunition, and I barged into the den where my parents were watching television. I fired all five rounds at my parents. Then I ran back out to the car to get more ammunition. Neither my brother nor I stopped until my parents were dead. Afterwards, I tried to create an alibi at the movie theater, I discarded the guns, and I did everything I could to get away with my crimes. I lied to police about what I had done. I lied to my family.

I am truly sorry. This crime should never have happened. My parents should be alive. They’re not, and I know that’s because of me.

I often find myself reflecting on what the week of August 20 must have been like for my relatives, and my heart breaks as I try to imagine it. What was that phone call like for them? I replay it over and over in my mind. I try to imagine the shock and grief they must have felt the moment they learned of their daughter’s death, their sister’s death, their aunt’s death. What crushing torment they must have felt. I can only imagine the fear, the pain, and the trauma it caused them.

I had to stop being selfish and immature to really try to feel what my parents must have gone through on August 20, 1989. I remember trying to put myself in their shoes, to see my crime through their eyes. I imagined the terror they must have felt when their own son pointed a gun at them. I tried to understand the fear, the confusion, the overwhelming sense of betrayal. I thought about my mother witnessing her husband’s death and the physical and emotional anguish she must have felt, unable to stop it. I imagined their last moments, over and over again, with my eyes closed, until the true weight of my actions began to sink in.

And then, only then, could I finally face just how horrific what I did really was.

My crime was not just criminal and wrong and immoral, it was cruel and vicious; it was more than the murder of two people, it was the infliction of unimaginable and horrible suffering on them and everyone who loved them. I am directly responsible for it all.

My choices that night robbed my parents of their full lives, My choices stole their love and companionship from everyone who loved them.

My choices drained their joy from Christmas gatherings, holidays, and family gatherings. Rather than celebration and togetherness, a heaviness hung in the air-crushing sadness that became a numbness and emptiness in the hearts of my Aunt Terry, my Aunt Joan, my Uncle Carlos, my Aunt Marta, my Uncle Brian and Uncle Milton, and every niece and nephew who loved them.

I don’t have to imagine this painful truth. My family has shared this deep sorrow with me. As if this was not enough, my family has had to endure a public spotlight that they did not ask for or deserve, even until today.

After the killings, I denied all responsibility.

I lied to the police investigators at the scene, and I lied to the Beverly Hills detectives investigating the murder of my parents.

I lied to my relatives even as they grieved and I lied to everyone else about my involvement in the crime. I even blamed others.

I am sorry for these lies and for failing in my responsibility to my family and community. There is no excuse for my behavior.

My arrest and trials compounded the tragedy and grieving of my family. I could not find enough ways to apologize. But no apology could ever reduce their suffering by even a degree. Continually apologizing, I realized, was a selfish act. As much as I wanted release from my guilt and shame, there was no release from it. I had done the crime, and now I must live with it.

As I have matured, I have been able to face my devastating 18-year old decisions.

The killing of my parents isn’t something I could fold away inside me. I live with it every day, it is a part of my being, always present.

One of the truths that is not well known, but I have shared with my relatives, is that I talk to my mom. I cannot make peace with what I have done, but sharing my life with her, sharing my fears and hopes and asking for her guidance has become a daily practice for me. I miss my mom, but I also know I have no right to miss her, so I talk to her instead. And in the past year, I have started talking to my father.

During the past 35 years, I have worked hard to better understand how I became a person capable of killing my parents; I sought, selfishly, to loathe myself less; I sought to lessen the anguish that made me so self-destructive; I have sought to find a path to healing.

I have come a long way on this path, but I also believe it has no end. There can never be full healing from this crime. For me or for my family.

For most of my life, I believed I would die in prison. The weight of a life sentence without the possibility of parole broke me. I fell into a life on the maximum-security yard, where violence and misery were routine, the only constants.

For a long time, I lost all hope.

I lost myself.

I wasn’t the husband I should have been, and I became self-destructive.

My LWOP sentence felt like being trapped in a prison within a prison. I felt isolated from the opportunities for growth and redemption that others have, and I believed that I was beyond saving, not worthy.

Maybe that’s the point of the sentence, but for me, that hopelessness devastated me. It stifled my ability to heal and experience love within the prison community.

Depression spreads like wildfire here, and when hope is gone, pain takes its place. That pain hangs over so many of us and makes it hard to grow and heal.

In 2013, something shifted in me.

It became a turning point — I was given the opportunity to serve others. I began caring for the elderly, the disabled, and the terminally ill.

It may seem small, but that act of service changed everything for me. I mattered to others. I had purpose. I created the Life Care & Hospice program, and through that work, I discovered a new way of seeing life. I started focusing on living with purpose.

I began to understand what it means to form real connections—even in here. To be part of a community. To show up as a husband and a father, even from behind these walls.

I began getting involved in self-help programs.

I started educating myself, and then I began leading and encouraging others.

Thank you to my family for supporting me to have this opportunity today.

I know this has been a painful process.

You do not deserve what I did to you, but you inspire me to be better.