Family Not Celebrating Possible Release of Erik and Lyle Menendez Yet After 'Many Years of Bad Outcomes from Courts’

• Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón is looking to schedule a hearing in which prosecutors and the defense will submit arguments for and against releasing the Menendez brothers. However, their family is ‘a little bit afraid of putting the cart before the horse’ in terms of expecting an imminent release
• “I think that would be amazing,” Annamaria Baralt, whose mother is Jose Menendez’s sister, tells PEOPLE. “I think that my mother and, Joan VanderMolen, Kitty’s sister, could not possibly be happier than to see that happen”
• “Even though we have the family together, we never forget that Lyle and Erik aren’t with us,” Baralt adds. “So we’re all just really looking forward to that day of being together again. It’s going to be our dream come true”
  

The call came in just minutes before Anamaria Baralt’s 6:15 p.m. yoga class on Wednesday, Oct. 23. An attorney representing her cousins Lyle and Erik Menendez told her that family members needed to be in his Los Angeles office the following morning by 11.

After 34 years behind bars, the Menendez brothers, who fatally shot their parents Jose and Kitty Menendez at their Beverly Hills, Calif. home in 1989, might against all odds be coming home soon.

“Drop everything. We need you,” Baralt, 53, wrote in an email to other members of the family, who, like her, have called for the brothers’ release from prison.

The next day she jumped on an early morning flight from Seattle to Los Angeles, where Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón was scheduled to speak about the case at an afternoon press conference.

“We didn’t know what he was going to say until we actually got there,” Baralt, who adds that a dozen family members took flights from around the country to be there, tells PEOPLE. “We just wanted to make sure the world knew just how much support they have.”

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Surrounded by several members of the brothers’ extended family at L.A.’s Hall of Justice, Gascón announced that he would recommend that Erik, 53, and Lyle, 56—who claim they killed their parents because they feared for their lives after years of sexual abuse by their father—each be resentenced to 50 years to life.

Based on their age at the time of the killings — Erik was 18 and Lyle 21 — the brothers would qualify as “youthful offenders” and thus be eligible for parole immediately. “We’re very sure, not only that the brothers have rehabilitated and that they will be safe to be reintegrated in our society, but that they have paid their dues,” Gascón said, adding that in prison they had worked to “improve the lives of so many others.” 

In making that determination, attorneys in the District Attorney’s Resentencing Unit combed through statements from the siblings and from prison officials and family members. They also considered evidence of psychological trauma and physical abuse that contributed to the commission of the crimes.

As part of the motion to request resentencing, Gascón said he would argue that keeping Erik and Lyle behind bars for life without parole is “no longer in the interest of justice,” noting that the cultural understanding of the sexual abuse they claim they suffered has changed.

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For Erik and Lyle, Gascón’s resentencing request — which next must be approved by a judge — was a stunning victory. Their push for release began last year, when attorneys filed a habeas corpus petition on their behalf based on new evidence of a letter purportedly sent by Erik to a cousin
months before the 1989 killings that referred to Jose’s ongoing sexual assaults as well as an affidavit by a former member of the boy band Menudo, Roy Rosselló, alleging that he was raped by Jose in the 1980s. The effort picked up steam in recent months as the Netflix hit Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story and a separate Netflix documentary, The Menendez Brothers, were viewed by largely sympathetic audiences.

Mark Geragos, the post-conviction attorney for the brothers, spoke to them shortly after Gascón’s announcement and declined to comment about their reaction. “I’ll just say that they are gratified,” he tells PEOPLE, “and it’s a huge step.”

Meanwhile, Gascón’s office has begun scheduling a hearing—in which prosecutors and the defense will submit written and oral arguments for and against releasing the brothers—that is required to put the matter before the judge who will issue a ruling.

Geragos believes that could perhaps come before Thanksgiving.

“I think that would be amazing,” shares Baralt, whose mother is Jose’s sister. “I think that my mother and, Joan VanderMolen, Kitty’s sister, could not possibly be happier than to see that happen.”

But Baralt notes the family is refraining from making plans for a reunion on Thanksgiving.

“I think we’re all a little bit afraid of putting the cart before the horse,” she reveals. “You have to understand that this has been many, many years of not such great outcomes from courts, so to be planning anything right now feels not to be superstitious, but it’s a little bit scary. It’s been very hard. There’s just a hole in your heart that never quite gets filled, and every holiday, there’s been a bittersweetness to it. Even though we have the family together, we never forget that Lyle and Erik aren’t with us. So we’re all just really looking forward to that day of being together again. It’s going to be our dream come true.”

If you or someone you know has been a victim of sexual abuse, text “STRENGTH” to the Crisis Text Line at 741-741 to be connected to a certified crisis counselor.