By Lisa Richwine
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) -Erik Menendez, who along with his brother Lyle has served 35 years of a life prison term for fatally shooting their parents as they watched television in their Beverly Hills, California, home in 1989, was denied parole on Thursday.
The decision by California parole commissioners was announced after a 10-hour hearing in which Erik Menendez, appearing via video from a San Diego prison, argued that he had been rehabilitated and that setting him free would help heal his family. Several relatives argued in favor of his release.
Members of the California Board of Parole Hearings, however, found that Erik Menendez still posed “an unreasonable risk to public safety,” Parole Commissioner Robert Barton said, according to a media pool report.
The seriousness of the crime was “not a primary reason for this denial,” Barton said. “It’s still your behavior in prison.”
Barton pointed to violations of prison rules including drug smuggling, cell phone use and episodes of violence in 1997 and 2011.
“Contrary to your supporters’ beliefs, you have not been a model prisoner and frankly we find that a little disturbing,” Barton said.
The board will consider whether to recommend parole for Lyle Menendez on Friday. Erik Menendez can apply for parole again in three years.
The brothers said they shot their parents, Jose and Kitty Menendez, because they feared for their lives after years of sexual abuse by their father and emotional abuse by their mother. Erik Menendez was 18 and Lyle Menendez was 21 at the time.
“My father was the most terrifying human being I’d ever met,” Erik Menendez said on Thursday when asked why he did not leave the home rather than commit murder.
“When I look back at the person I was then and what I believed about the world and my parents, running away was inconceivable,” he said.
Prosecutors argued the killings were coldly calculated and motivated by greed, namely the brothers’ desire to inherit their parents’ multimillion-dollar fortune.
The brothers have been in custody since March 1990 and originally sentenced in 1996 to two consecutive life terms without the possibility of parole.
In May, a judge handed each a new sentence of 50 years to life. Under California law, the pair became immediately eligible for parole because they were under age 26 at the time of the crimes and had already served more than half their prison term.
Family members have supported the brothers’ release, saying the pair have paid their debt to society. Erik Menendez is now 54 and Lyle Menendez is 57. Both are married.
Teresita Menendez-Baralt, the sister of Jose Menendez, cried as she told the parole board she had “fully forgiven” Erik Menendez, whom she called a “sweet gentle soul.”
Menendez-Baralt said she was dying from stage 4 cancer and “more than anything I hope I live long enough to welcome him into my home.”
“To sit at the same table, to wrap my arms around him – that would bring me immeasurable peace and joy,” she said.
(Reporting by Jasper Ward; Editing by Michael Perry)
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