Rosie O’Donnell reveals murderous brother Lyle Menendez was the first straight man she could love and trust

Rosie O’Donnell has claimed that her friendship with killer Lyle Menendez enabled her to trust and love a ‘straight man’ for the first time in her life. 

Erik and Lyle, then just 18 and 21, killed their parents Jose and Mary Louise ‘Kitty’ Menendez inside their million-dollar Beverly Hills home in August 1989. 

During their criminal trial, the duo claimed their father had molested them since they were children – allegations that were supported by relatives at the time.

Calls for their release have increased since a popular Netflix documentary was put out last year and the brothers now face a resentencing hearing next week.  

O’Donnell, who has said she believes they acted in self-defense, is now detailing how meaningful their friendship has become to her. 

The comedian confessed to The New York Times on Saturday: ‘For the first time in my life, I felt safe enough to trust and be vulnerable and love a straight man.’

While she first started corresponding with Lyle in 1996 after defending the pair on Larry King Live, they had gone a long time without conversing, with O’Donnell blaming her own troubled history with her parents. They then reconnected via Lyle’s wife Rebecca Snead in 2022 and have been pen pals ever since. 

‘[Lyle] started calling me on a regular basis from the tablet phone thing they have,’ O’Donnell said. ‘He would tell me about his life, what he’s been doing in prison.’  

O’Donnell’s friends were concerned, calling Menendez ‘a murderer,’ but the actress and comedian has since visited him in prison. 

Lyle even helped inspire a documentary O’Donnell is working on about children with autism, as a program where prisoners train dogs to work with veterans and those on the spectrum connected her with a program that got her son Clay – who has autism – a pup. 

She started filming a documentary that is set to come out about the effect dogs have with children on the spectrum. 

Lyle first wrote O’Donnell in 1996, after she defended he and his brother on a segment of Larry King Live.

‘It basically said I don’t know you and I hope we can connect,’ she said, admitting she felt too afraid to reply to the initial letter. 

‘They were horribly abused by their parents,’ the chat show host and actress said.

‘They did the unthinkable, which had been done to them day after day after day. And they paid the price for that.’

Speaking to Variety, O’Donnell said she visited the duo at the Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility in San Diego last year.

‘I saw Lyle and gave him a hug,’ she said.

‘Then Erik came over to me, hugged me, and whispered in my ear, ”Thank you for loving my brother.” It was very, very moving to me.’

O’Donnell said she reconnected with Lyle via his wife, Rebecca Sneed, and that they now ‘talk a lot.’

‘I told them I would do what I could with whatever dwindling fame I have to bring light to their story.’ 

The brothers have now spent 34 years behind bars for the chilling double murder of their parents.

They made a frantic call to police claiming they returned home from the theatre to find their parents had been slaughtered, prompting fears within one of America’s wealthiest communities that a murderer was on the run.

Police announced they were arresting Lyle Menendez in March 1990 – seven months after the crime.

They said he was motivated by greed. The brothers stood to inherit $14million from their parents, and set about spending it shortly after their parents’ deaths.

Lyle bought a Porsche Carrera, Rolex watch and two restaurants, while his brother hired a full-time tennis coach to begin competing in tournaments.

In all, they spent $700,000 between the time of their parents’ deaths and their arrests in March 1990.

But Erik insisted in the a Netflix documentary it is ‘absurd’ to suggest he was having a good time in the immediate aftermath of the murders.

‘If they were the Menendez sisters they would not be in custody,’ defense lawyer Mark Geragos said of the treatment the brothers received in their trial for the murders of their parents Jose and Kitty Menendez. 

The family argued that at the time of the brothers’ trial, the public did not understand sexual abuse of boys.

Kitty’s sister Joan Andersen VanderMolen said: ‘Their actions, while tragic, were the desperate response of two boys trying to survive the unspeakable cruelty of their father.’

‘The truth is, Lyle and Erik were failed by the very people who should have protected them—their parents, the system, and society at large.’

The family introduced a coalition called ‘Justice for Eric and Lyle’ and spoke of how the brothers have lived a life of purpose in their 35 years in prison – even though they did not expect to ever be freed.

If a jury at any potential re-trial finds them guilty of voluntary manslaughter instead of murder, it would trigger their immediate release as they have already served more than the maximum sentence.

The notorious Menendez brothers’ quest for freedom took a big leap forward Friday when a Los Angeles judge ruled that a resentencing hearing will go ahead next week.

If that hearing ends in their favor and their original sentence of life without the possibility of parole – for the brutal 1989 murder of their parents – is reduced, Erik, now 54, and Lyle, 57, could be granted parole and walk free after spending 35 years behind bars. 

The first trial ended with a hung jury. But at a second trial in 1996 – where the judge refused to allow any evidence about the brothers being molested by their father – they were convicted and sentenced to life in prison with no possibility of parole.

The brothers’ bid for a resentencing was supported last year by then-LA District Attorney George Gascon who filed a petition asking Judge Jesic to rescind the original sentence and impose a lighter one, citing the boys’ ages – 18 and 21- at the time of the killings, and allegations that they were victims of sexual abuse by their father.

But when Gascon lost his re-election attempt last November, he was replaced by new DA Nathan Hochman who – encouraged my many of his deputy DAs – reversed course and declared that the brothers are ‘liars’ who haven’t shown that they are rehabilitated and haven’t ‘acknowledged the severity and depravity of their crimes.’

Last month Hochman filed a motion withdrawing his predecessor’s request for a reduced sentence.

And on Friday, with the brothers – dressed in blue jail overalls – watching via video hookup from their San Diego prison, DDA Balian told the court in Van Nuys that the previous DA, Gascon ‘didn’t get it,’ focusing more on the brothers’ accomplishments in prison – advance degrees, community outreach, self-help endeavors – than on the horrific killings they committed.

Gruesome, bloody photos shown in court Friday of the parents the notorious Menendez brothers ruthlessly shot to death, prompted an angry outburst from the brothers’ attorney at a Los Angeles proceeding,

‘It’s outrageous that (prosecutors) showed these pictures in court in front of the victims’ family members who are being re-traumatized for political purposes,’ blasted their attorney, Mark Garagos.

He accused Deputy District Attorney Habib Balian of presenting a ‘dog and pony show’ and trying to ‘relitigate’ the original Menendez trial from more than 30 years ago when the shocking photos of the slaughtered bodies of parents Jose and Kitty Mendendez were shown to the jury.

Balian defended using the photos in court, telling Judge Michael Jesic, ‘These two caused the carnage – they shot their parents to death.’

DA Hochman – Balian’s boss – was also in court Friday. He has argued that ‘the prior DA’s motion did not examine or consider whether the Menendez brothers have exhibited full insight and taken complete responsibility for their crimes by continuing over 30 years to lie about their claims of self-defense…

‘That is, their fear that their mother and father were going to kill them the night of August 20, 1980, justifying the brutal murders of their parents with shotgun blasts through the back of their father’s head, a point-blank blast through their mother’s face, and shots to their kneecaps to stage it as a mafia killing.

‘The Menendez Brothers have never come clean over the past three decades and admitted that they lied about their self-defense as well as suborned perjury and attempted to suborn perjury by their friends for the lies, among others, of their father violently raping Lyle’s girlfriend, their mother poisoning the family and their attempt to get a handgun the day before the murders.’

Balian added in court Friday, ‘I’m sure the brothers regret what they did. I’m sure Lyle regrets re-loading the shotgun and pressing it into his mother’s cheek, releasing a hail of buckshot into her face.

‘But does he recognize the depravity of what he did? The brothers fabricated their defense. Have they changed? They’re not there yet.’

Balian re-ran much of what came out at the brothers’ trial about the ‘murders which he said were motivated by their fear that their father was contemplating cutting them out of his multi-million dollar will.

But he also introduced new evidence – uncovered by new DA Hochman’s team – that Erik’s attorney at his trial persuaded his psychiatrist to delete session notes in which Erik admitted he ‘hated’ his parents and ‘wanted to kill them.’

‘It was proof of premeditated murder. But it was hidden from the jury. It was hidden from the prosecutor. It was hidden from the world,’ said Balian.

Noting that five different appellate courts have upheld the original sentence of life without the possibility of parole, Hochman said earlier. ’Though this pathway to resentencing has been offered to the Menendez brothers, they have chosen to stubbornly remain hunkered down in their over 30-year-old bunker of lies, deceit and denials.’

The brothers – Lyle bald and Erik with receding, graying hair – showed little reaction to the accusations against them, sometimes talking to each other and both occasionally putting on glasses.

Garagos, accused DA Hochman of having ‘political’ motivations.

‘The motion to withdraw contains serious and factual legal errors,’ he and his legal team wrote. ‘It ignores Erik and Lyle’s consistent taking of responsibility and expressions of remorse over decades in prison.’

Hochman has focused on lies they admittedly told, said the lawyers, but in the last 30 years the brothers have owned up to their crimes.

Geragos – with the backing of around 30 Menendez family members and celebrities like Rosie O’Donnell and Kim Kardashian – is also lobbying for a new trial based on two new pieces of evidence of sexual abuse Jose Menendez inflicted on his sons.

First was a shocking allegation made in 2023 by Roy Rossello, a former member of the band Menudo, who claimed Jose Menendez – then a top executive with RCA Records – drugged and raped him in the 1980s when he was a teenager.

Second, a letter – that showed up in 2023 – Erik Menendez wrote to his cousin Andy Cano in which he said he was still being raped by his father eight months before the murders.

The Menendez brothers have two other possible avenues to freedom.

First, they have a routine parole hearing scheduled in June.

And second, California Governor Gavin Newsom could grant them clemency. He has ordered the state parole board to conduct a risk assessment study as to whether the brothers would pose an ‘unreasonable risk’ to the public if they were freed from prison.