Lyle Menendez Says Brother Erik Went on Hunger Strike to Keep Them Together in Prison: Documentary

Erik Menendez thought he and his brother, Lyle, were going to the same prison after their 1996 convictions for killing their parents.

He had no idea how wrong he was.

Convicted in 1996 of murdering their parents, Kitty and Jose Menendez, on Aug. 20, 1989, the brothers were handed life sentences without parole for the 1989 slayings.

In the new Netflix documentary, The Menendez Brothers, streaming Oct. 7, Lyle explains that he and Erik did everything they could to be sent to the same correctional facility — including going on television to plead their case.

Lyle, 56, says in the documentary that the only reason he and Erik sat down for the "very unusual" televised interview with Barbara Walters in June 1996, just after they were convicted, was "to try to plead that they not separate us and show how much we did not want that to happen."

For years, the brothers say in the documentary, they only had each other to lean on after they shot and killed their successful music executive father, Jose, 45, who they claim sexually abused them for years, and their mother, Kitty, 47, who they say ignored the abuse.

The two claim they decided to kill their parents after Erik revealed to Lyle that their father had been allegedly sexually abusing him for years, something Lyle said he understood because he said he endured the same horrors.

When their first trial in 1993 ended with a hung jury, they relied on each other for comfort and support through their 1996 trial, when they were found guilty of killing their parents with 12-gauge shotguns in the TV room of their $5 million Beverly Hills mansion.

During the interview with Walters, which is shown in part, in the documentary, she asked them how important it was for them to stay together. "Very important," Lyle answered. "That is what's gotten us through these six years."

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Becoming increasingly emotional, Erik told Walters, "There's a good probability I will never see him again ... (There are) some things that you cannot take and there's some things that you can endure. With everything taken away it would be the last thing you can take."

But it was.

When it was time to leave the county jail where they'd called home for years for prison, "They put him in one van," Erik says in the documentary. "I didn't understand why they were putting me in another van.

"I started screaming out to Lyle and they shut the door. It was the last time I, I saw him," Erik said.

As a result, Lyle explains, "Our start to prison life was tremendously painful. My brother actually went on a hunger strike to try to keep us together."

In 2018, after years of fighting to be moved to the same prison as his brother, Lyle was transferred to the Donovan Correctional Facility in San Diego, Calif., where Erik is also incarcerated.

Over the years, they appealed their case, to no avail.

In recent years, calls for the brothers' case to be reviewed began surfacing, especially among a TikTok group who led a social media campaign to overturn their convictions.

The brothers have said that they killed their parents to put a stop to the sexual abuse they allege they suffered at the hands of their father – and because they feared for their lives.

On Thursday, Oct. 3, Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascon said he would review new evidence in the case and possibly reevaluate their sentences.

The Menendez Brothers airs on Netflix on Oct. 7.

The Menendez Brothers Official Podcast, a 3-part companion podcast featuring unheard audio interviews with the Menendez brothers not featured in the documentary, debuts Oct. 9 on Netflix's 'You Can't Make This Up.'