Erik Menendez claims he and his brother Lyle have been ‘bullied’ and ‘assaulted’ in prison
Erik Menendez, who is 54 years old, has said that he and his brother Lyle, 57, have experienced severe “trauma” while serving time in prison for the murder of their parents.
In an interview with TMZ’s podcast 2 Angry Men, Erik said that prison was an “even darker, more dangerous place” 25 years ago than it is now, but that they have experienced a lot of abuse throughout their tenure behind bars.
“Prison was hard for me. I faced a lot of bullying and trauma. It was a dangerous environment.”
“I was picked on, bullied violently, and it was traumatic and it was continual. Those are things that a lot of inmates in prison go through when they’re not part of a gang structure and they come in and they’re basically lone wolves, they just have to be by themselves,” Menendez said.
The two brothers were convicted for the murders of their parents, José and Kitty, in 1996. Both Erik and Lyle said they killed their parents due to experiencing mental, physical, and sexual abuse at their hands, despite the prosecution claiming the motive was financial.
Their story was immortalised on the silver screen in Ryan Murphy’s Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Story which reignited interest in the case, leading to Kim Kardashian visiting the brothers in prison along with actor Cooper Koch, who starred in Monsters.
While true crime and fictionalised adaptations of murderers (like Murphy’s Dahmer) is often criticised, people were particularly offended by the way the programme showed the brothers kissing in multiple scenes, appearing naked together, and putting their fingers in each other’s mouths.
The Menendez brothers are now due in court in March for a hearing to determine if they should be resentenced.
Both Erik and Lyle are now incarcerated in the Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility – Erik had been there since 2013 and Lyle was transferred there in 2018.
Erik said that he “had no one really to turn to for help” when he was experiencing further violence in prison, as he was “separated from Lyle”, and it was difficult for him to hear about his brother’s troubles too.
“I remember the day that I was told ‘Lyle just got assaulted and got his jaw broken.’ I’m thinking ‘He’s over there, I’m going through this over here, and at least we could protect each other maybe if we were together,’ but we were not even allowed to be together. So it was difficult,” Erik continued.
“It took years to work out of it, because you have to find yourself in prison,” he added.
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