Rosie O’Donnell is calling for the release of the Menendez brothers, who were sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for killing their parents in 1989.
After watching the Peacock documentary “Menendez + Menudo: Boys Betrayed,” the 61-year-old television personality said she believes both Lyle and Erik Menendez are “innocent” of the murders of their parents José and Mary Louise.
Both Erik and Lyle claimed during their first trial in 1993 that they were sexually molested by their father and their mother enabled the abuse. They were 18 and 21 at the time. The brothers did not deny the murders, but they argued in their defense that the murders were not cold-blooded, but rather an act of self-defense in response to the abuse.
Erik and Lyle were both ultimately convicted on two counts of first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder and were sentenced to life without parole, which they are still serving.
O’Donnell shared a video to TikTok over the weekend saying that she has “known” the Menendez brothers were innocent — and shared that Lyle had first reached out to her in 1996.
“In 1996, Lyle sent me a letter [that] basically said, ‘I know you know. And I hoped we could connect.’ And you know, he was right. I did know that they were innocent. I did know that those were boys who had been incested, and why I knew and how I knew,” she said in the TikTok.
Though the comedian knew they were innocent then, she didn’t respond to Lyle at the time and wasn’t ready to openly support and advocate for them.
“I was afraid and I wasn’t ready to touch the subject and you know, it was 1996. In ’96, you know in the late 80s, people weren’t ready to accept the fact that boys get raped sometimes by their fathers, and as a culture, we ridiculed them,” she said.
In 2019, O’Donnell revealed that she was sexually abused by her own father, Edward Joseph O’Donnell, who died of cancer in August 2015 at age 81.
She continued in the video, “Jokes about them on ‘Saturday Night Live,’ jokes from Jay Leno every night. Everyone thought this was a funny target to kids who had been molested since the age of preschool, fighting back and standing up and people thought they just wanted the money. They had the money. They didn’t need the money. Money was not what it was about.”
O’Donnell is now in contact again with the brothers after Lyle’s wife Rebecca reached out to her following a previous TikTok about the documentary.
“We have been talking and sharing and becoming very close,” she shared.
“Both Lyle and Erik have amazing prison records with what they’ve done with their time and how they’ve spent their 30-plus years in jail. So we believe them now because of Roy from Menudo,” O’Donnell said.
In the documentary, Roy Rossello, a former member of the Puerto Rican group Menudo, alleged that José also sexually assaulted him when he was a teenager.
O’Donnell added that had people believed the abuse allegations by the Menendez brothers, they would have spent just 10 to 25 years in prison rather than the life sentence they were given.
“It’s time I believe them,” O’Donnell admitted. “They were horribly abused by their parents. They did the unthinkable, which had been done to them day after day after day. And they paid the price for that.”
“Free the Menendez brothers. It’s time.”
O’Donnell also talked about the topic on the “On The Recyard” podcast last week, saying her own experience furthered her belief that they are innocent — and that if the younger brother was a girl, things would have been treated differently.
“I think what I’m hoping, and many people who lived through similar childhoods — boys who are sexually abused — and in 1990, we weren’t ready to hear that as a culture,” O’Donnell said on the pod.
“I always said that, Lyle Menendez is the older brother and Erik, the younger brother — if Erik, at 17 or 18, when he told that the father had been doing this to him for many years, if it had been a girl that his sister was being raped by the father, that would’ve been much easier for our culture in the ’90s to understand why the older brother would’ve acted in the way that he did.”
The Menendez brothers are set to be the center of Season 2 of Ryan Murphy’s “Monster” anthology series, which will be titled “Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story.”
“Menendez + Menudo: Boys Betrayed” is currently streaming on Peacock.
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