Menendez Family Matriarch Gives First Interview in 35 Years Before Hearing: 'They Are Like the Boys I Didn't Have'

• On Friday, April 11, a judge will decide whether to greenlight resentencing hearings for Erik and Lyle Menendez
• Their family spoke out about their unwavering support for the brothers
• In her first interview ever, their 85-year-old aunt said ‘It’s time’ for the brothers to be released from prison after serving 35 years

On the eve of the Mendendez brothers’ resentencing hearing, their 85-year-old aunt spoke out publicly for the first time urging their release from prison.

“It’s time,” Jose Menendez’s only surviving sister, Terry Baralt, said in an interview with ABC News. “Thirty-five years is a long time. It’s a whole branch of my family erased. The ones that are gone and the ones that are still paying for it, which were kids.” 

Baralt was one of 8 family members who sat down with ABC News to show their unanimous support for the release of those “kids,” Erik and Lyle Mendendez, who have spent 35 years in prison for the 1989 murders of their parents, Jose and Kitty Menendez.

Convicted of fatally shooting their parents in their Beverly Hills home when Lyle was 21 and Erik was 18, the brothers were sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

The brothers said they killed their parents in self-defense after being sexually abused for years by their father, which they said their mother ignored.

Asked why she is breaking her silence for the first time, Baralt said, “For everybody, this is a story. For me, it’s very personal. Those kids, they’re like the boys that I didn’t have.” 

She also acknowledged she is concerned she might not live to see the brothers leave prison because she is suffering from colon cancer.

“It is a concern,” Baralt told ABC News’s Chief National Correspondent Matt Gutman. “I have tried to go see them as much as I can, but it’s hard because I live in New Jersey and I’m 85. I don’t have that much time.”

During the interview, she grew emotional when she spoke about her love for her nephews and how helpless their situation has made her.

“When kids are little and they come to you, you fix the problem,” she said.

Since they are in prison, she said, “I can’t help them. There is nothing I can do. Just go visit them and cry when I leave. 

“This is why I don’t give interviews,” she said, laughing through tears. It’s hard.”

On Friday, April 11, a judge is expected to decide whether to proceed with resentencing hearings for the brothers, which Los Angeles’ new district attorney, Nathan Hochman, has been fighting.

Hochman filed a motion in March opposing the resentencing, arguing that they did not “fully recognize, acknowledge, and accept complete responsibility” for their crime, the Associated Press reports.

On Friday, April 11, if the judge allows prosecutors to withdraw their resentencing motion, the judge will then decide whether to proceed with the brothers’ resentencing hearings, which are tentatively scheduled for April 17 and 18, the AP reports.

Hochman has dismissed the brothers’ allegations that their father sexually abused them for years, which they maintain led them to kill them with shotguns at point blank range.

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When Gutman asked if the family members have any doubt that the brothers were sexually abused, they all said no.

During the interview, the brothers’ cousin, Diane VanderMolen, said Erik had asked her to share a message.

“They are truly, deeply sorry for what they did,” she said. “And they are profoundly remorseful. “They are filled with remorse over what they did. And through that, they have become pretty remarkable people.”