The Menendez Brothers Got a Parole Date. It Moved Up 17 Months.

The California board had first scheduled the brothers' next hearing for August 2028, after a resentencing made parole possible.

Erik and Lyle Menendez will appear before California's parole board in March 2027, 17 months sooner than the date the board had already set. Their family disclosed the change in a statement Monday, first reported by Los Angeles magazine, which said the brothers had been due before the California Board of Parole Hearings in August 2028.

Those 17 months land hardest on the relatives who've organized their lives around visiting hours. Three of the brothers' aunts — Joan, Terry and Marta — are aging and facing serious health problems, the family said, and the statement put that ahead of everything else. “Time together is something none of us can take for granted,” it said.

The hearing exists at all because the sentences changed. Erik and Lyle Menendez had been serving life without the possibility of parole for the 1989 killings of their parents, José and Kitty Menendez, at the family's home in Beverly Hills; the resentencing replaced that with 50 years to life, a term that could allow release after 36 years in custody, Los Angeles magazine reported.

The family's statement gave a month, March 2027, and not a day.

It's also the family, not the state, that put the new schedule out. The account of what the board decided, and when it decided it, is theirs.

By that same account, the brothers helped start a hospice program behind bars and a project they call Green Space, built for people serving life sentences. “We are incredibly proud of the men they have become,” the family said, thanking the parole board for advancing the hearing.

An earlier hearing isn't a release. It's a hearing, and it's now on the calendar for March 2027.

Source: lamag.com, retrieved September 7, 2026.