The Menendez brothers appeared by phone on TMZ's podcast, "2 Angry Men" with Harvey Levin and Mark Geragos, who reps Erik and Lyle. They talked about how they survived and evolved in the 35 years they've been incarcerated.
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00:00We just dropped a podcast this morning on Two Angry Men,
00:04the podcast I do with Mark Garagos,
00:07and we had a 40-minute conversation
00:11with Eric and Lyle Menendez behind bars.
00:14They've actually never spoken together
00:17in the 35 years they've been incarcerated,
00:20and they said a lot.
00:22Yeah, a lot about what their life has been like in prison,
00:26what they hope their life will be
00:29after they have this hearing,
00:30and there'll be a determination
00:33whether they should be resentenced
00:35and possibly released very shortly after that hearing.
00:39So I think one of the really remarkable things
00:42was to hear them talking about how their life changed
00:47when they went to prison and how violent.
00:50Obviously, people know that prison is a rough place.
00:55It can be violent.
00:56But think about it, you got these two young guys
00:59who committed murder, murdered their parents,
01:02who are really affluent and celebrities.
01:05That's a bad combination.
01:07Yeah, and that played out very shortly after they went in.
01:15And this is Eric describing what happened to him.
01:21And Lyle.
01:22Repeatedly.
01:23I faced a lot of bullying and trauma.
01:25There was, it was a dangerous environment.
01:30What happened to you?
01:32I was picked on, bullied violently,
01:35and it was traumatic, and it was continual.
01:39Prison can be hard,
01:40and there's a lot of suffering in prison.
01:42So, and I wasn't, I wasn't, you know,
01:46I'm not gonna fight back.
01:47I'm not gonna, you know, engage others.
01:51And I had no one to really to turn to for help,
01:54and I was separated from Lyle.
01:56And I remember the day that I was told Lyle
02:00just got assaulted and got his jaw broken,
02:02and it was, I'm thinking, he's over there,
02:06I'm going through this over here,
02:08and at least we could protect each other
02:09maybe if we were together,
02:10but we were not even allowed to be together.
02:12So it was difficult.
02:14So here's the situation right now.
02:17So Eric and Lyle have a hearing next month,
02:21and it's about resentencing them.
02:24Right now they face, they are serving life in prison
02:27without the possibility of parole.
02:29The end game for them is they're gonna ask the judge
02:33to resentence them, to make them eligible for parole,
02:37and the parole board would then decide,
02:39have they been rehabilitated?
02:40Do they pose a threat to society?
02:43They're not gonna go back and look at the murders.
02:46That's not what a resentencing is about.
02:48It's about, have they been reformed to a point
02:52where they can be free men again.
02:54Right, and the resentencing,
02:57obviously this coming about really
02:59because of the new evidence,
03:03the new evidence that their father
03:06had actually been molesting them,
03:08and the part of that is the Minuto case,
03:12which is what really started this,
03:14and then there was the Ryan Murphy show.
03:15Which they liked, by the way.
03:17Yeah, interesting that they actually
03:19did see quite a bit of it.
03:20They said they haven't seen all of it yet,
03:23but they're very aware of all the attention
03:25that it brought.
03:26And they were very happy with it
03:27because it showcased what they say
03:31is the sexual abuse at the hands
03:33of their dad, Jose Menendez.
03:36It is interesting because when we spoke to them,
03:41when Mark and I spoke to them, Mark Aragas,
03:43who, by the way, Mark is their lawyer,
03:46you know, we talked about what they wanted to do
03:51when they got out.
03:52And they are determined to keep going
03:58what they've really started in prison.
04:01They've been working a lot with prisoners,
04:03with prison reform, but also with childhood sexual abuse.
04:08And they wanna carry that forward if they get out,
04:11and Lyle talked a lot about that.
04:13We have a phrase we call speaking shame,
04:16and it's helping people find their voice in their trauma.
04:24I was the first person to testify
04:26in front of a national audience about male sexual abuse.
04:31I received a lot of ridicule in the 90s about it,
04:33but also a lot of support,
04:36and a lot of victims reaching out, appreciating that,
04:39and finding their voice through mine.
04:41So that sort of inspired us to keep doing that.
04:45And we think that there's a hunger for that in the country.
04:49We would love to be part of that and heal in that way.
04:53So if they are resentenced and they do get out of prison,
05:00it doesn't sound like they even wanna turn their backs
05:03on what's happening in prison.
05:04I mean, I feel like-
05:05No, they don't.
05:06They feel connected to this process that they started
05:09at the state prison where they are in San Diego,
05:13and that they wanna continue to improve the lives
05:15of the inmates there.
05:16You're absolutely right.
05:17You're absolutely right.
05:18And they both talked about that.
05:20You know, the other thing is I covered the trials
05:24when I was a local reporter in LA.
05:27And I was very candid with them
05:31that my view of them at the time
05:33is they were just spoiled brats.
05:36And a lot of people who covered that case
05:39shared my opinion about it,
05:40that they were spoiled, privileged brats.
05:44And I think that came across in a big way,
05:48especially to the second jury.
05:50And I asked them about that, but Eric owned it.
05:54I grew up in an affluent home.
05:56I was a spoiled brat.
05:59I had deep insecurity issues and tried to hide those issues.
06:04And I was taught that you do it through the best clothes
06:09or the best car or whatever of those things
06:12that we now know is completely dysfunctional.
06:15And frankly, just a sign of internal pain.
06:20Who I've evolved into, who I've seen Lyle evolve into,
06:27I'm beginning to like myself and be proud of myself
06:30and find it okay to like myself and not hate myself.
06:34You have 60 seconds remaining.
06:36What happened to me as a child.
06:38And I'm striving to be a better person every day.
06:40And I want to be a person that my family can be proud of.
06:44You heard that, the call, you have 60 seconds remaining.
06:47They obviously had called in
06:49on a collect call line from prison.
06:52We accepted.
06:53Yeah, we accepted.
06:54Three times.
06:55Three times, yeah.
06:56They called back.
06:57I gotta tell you, I covered this case.
07:03They are fundamentally different people
07:07than they were back then.
07:09I mean, look, there's a part of me
07:11that their one reaction to that
07:13is that almost everybody is very different
07:16from who they were 35 years later.
07:18For the better, having been in prison for 35 years.
07:20Right, and you hope that everyone improves.
07:22What I was gonna say is it's even more remarkable,
07:25I think, when you make that improvement
07:28while you're in a state prison,
07:30where, let's just face it,
07:32the penal system is not known
07:35for necessarily making people's lives better
07:39while they're in there.
07:40And they found a way to do that.
07:41But also, they had a life without the possibility of parole.
07:44They exhausted all their appeals.
07:46They lost.
07:50I don't know, I was just thinking to myself,
07:52if I were in that position,
07:54would I try and get a college degree?
07:57Would I create a hospice care program?
08:02Would I create a green space program?
08:03Would you still try to live life
08:05when you're on a life sentence?
08:06That's right, and they have.
08:09And I think that's gonna have an impact.
08:12I don't know whether it will have
08:13a successful impact for them,
08:15but it had an impact on me.
08:16I gotta tell you, it really had an impact on me.
08:19I think the bigger picture is,
08:20will it have an impact on the prison system?
08:24And look, even in our office,
08:26we had a huge division.
08:28There are some people who say.
08:29There is still one.
08:30We had the debate every day.
08:31In fact, there were some people who listened
08:32and said, I like them less.
08:34I have a very opposite reaction to that.
08:38I just found them really thoughtful,
08:41contrite, remorseful, hopeful,
08:44and wanting to do good.
08:46And those are the things,
08:47at least in terms of what the judge looks at,
08:50that are relevant.
08:50I don't know if you got into this with them,
08:52but are they outliers?
08:57Are there others in prison who've been in
09:01for as long as they have been,
09:03where they've seen other people improving as well?
09:07Well, they talked about the difficulty of improving,
09:10but you gotta listen to the podcast
09:12to hear the full thing.
09:13It's called Two Angry Men.
09:16I wasn't trying to lob up a promo for you,
09:18but you turned it into a promo.
09:19I decided to do it.
09:21Good for you.
09:23This is Brooklyn from Nashville, Tennessee.
09:24And Eric and Lyle being attacked in prison sounds crazy,
09:28but when you're in prison,
09:29these types of things can possibly happen.
09:32But this podcast gives listeners an inside look
09:36on the two brothers,
09:36and I'm interested to see how they grew
09:39from the prison sentence,
09:40and more so getting a perspective on their case,
09:43and that being that I was a fan of the Netflix series.
09:46Yeah, so were they.
09:47So were they.
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