The Menendez brothers — who were convicted of killing their parents in their Beverly Hills mansion — claim that new evidence leaves no doubt their father sexually abused them before his gruesome slaying.
Erik, 52, and Lyle Menendez, 55, requested the court vacate their 1996 convictions after an NBC docuseries revealed allegations that their father molested a former underage member of the 1980s Puerto Rican boy band “Menudo,” according to the Los Angeles Times.
The filing also includes a recently found letter that Erik sent to a cousin eight months before the killings that suggested he was being allegedly abused by his father.
“The new evidence not only shows that Jose Menendez was very much a violent and brutal man who would sexually abuse children, but it strongly suggests that – in fact – he was still abusing Erik Menendez as late as 1988,” the filing states obtained by the Los Angeles Times.
The brothers were convicted of shooting and killing their parents, Jose and Kitty, in 1989.
They claimed their mother and father abused them physically and sexually for years, and during their first trials, jurors could not reach a verdict.
But the pair were convicted during their second trials in 1996 and hit with life sentences.
The legal filing obtained by the LA Times includes a handwritten note from Erik to cousin Andy Cano who reportedly died in 2003.
“I’ve been trying to avoid dad. It’s still happening Andy but it’s worse for me now. I can’t explain it,” part of the note reads. “He so overweight that I can’t stand to see him. I never know when it’s going to happen and it’s driving me crazy.
“Every night, I stay up thinking he might come in. I need to put it out of my mind,” the note also states with Erik concluding his father told him “telling anyone.”
Boy band member Roy Rossello claimed he was drugged and raped when he was 13 or 14 by Jose Menendez, who was a high-level executive at RCA in the 1980s, according to the legal documents.
Peacock’s docuseries “Menendez + Menudo: Boys Betrayed” first brought up the allegations by Rossello that looked into accusations that Latin band members were abused by the group’s creator, Edgardo Diaz, the LA Times reported.
During a trip to New York in 1983 or 1984, Diaz asked Rossello to join Jose Menendez in a limo that took the two to a New Jersey home, the legal filing alleged. Inside the home, Rossello was given wine by Menendez and then anally raped, the brothers’ legal team contends.
Rossello signed a declaration detailing those accusations, the legal filing says.
“Had jurors seen the letter Erik Menendez wrote to Andy Cano, and learned that Jose Menendez anally raped and orally copulated a 13 or 14 year-old in 1984, the prosecutor would not have been able to argue that ‘the abuse never happened,’” the legal filing argues.
Previous appeals by the brothers have been rejected in the courts, the LA Times reported.
The brothers’ legal team is pushing for an evidentiary hearing or for the convictions to be tossed.
The defense in the first trial portrayed numerous allegations of abuse leveled against the slain parents, but the second trial limited what abuse accusations could be put forward, the filing states.
Prosecutors rejected the notion the Menendez brothers were abused by their parents before the slayings, according to the legal filing.