How testimony from former Menudo members and a handwritten letter could help the Menéndez brothers

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. – Evidence of a Cuban-American family’s dark secret was hidden in plain sight in a West Palm Beach home. Marta Menendez CanoA retired stockbroker born in Havana, she was open about her belief that the secret she kept was to blame for the deaths of her brother, her sister-in-law, her son and the life sentences of her two nephews.

Marta Cano supposedly welcomed Robert Randallformer Miami Herald reporter and author, to her Palm Beach home and allowed her to examine the things her late son Andrés “Andy” Cano had left behind. the grieving mother told ABC News her son overdosed on sleeping pills in 2003.

Rand reported finding a handwritten letter from a victim of child sexual abuse. Nearly four decades after the three-page letter was written, lawyers and advocates say it is evidence that, combined with the testimony of a Puerto Rican pop singer, could end up freeing two survivors.

“I’ve been trying to avoid dad. It is still happening to Andy, but now it is worse for me,” Erik Menéndez wrote to his cousin Andy Cano, according to the lawyers. “I never know when it’s going to happen and it’s driving me crazy. “Every night I stay awake thinking I might get in.”

Erik Menendez and his brother Lyle Menendez would later kill their parents in 1989. Prosecutors at the time told the jury their motive was greed. Advocates for the brothers now argue that the zeitgeist in which intrafamilial child sexual abuse was considered impossible may have influenced a case that has long been in the public eye.

NOT THE ‘TYPE OF MAN’

Marta Cano’s brother, José Menéndez, was born in Havana, Cuba. After Fidel Castro took power, his parents sent him to the United States. He married Mary Louise “Kitty” Andersen, whom he had met in college, in 1963, and had two sons: Lyle in 1968 and Erik in 1970. He was an RCA Records. executive when he moved the family to Beverly Hills.

Jose Menendez was behind RCA Records signing Menudo, the famous Puerto Rican band that Ricky Martin belonged to as a child from 1984 to 1989. Over the years, dozens of children ages 9 to 13 joined Menudo and sold millions of albums around the world.

Roy Rossellóformer teenage member of Menudo, revealed that José Menéndez had raped him when he was 13 and 14 years old. He said the band’s founder first offered Menendez to seal the deal with RCA Records, and Menendez took him to his Beverly Hills home where he drugged and raped him for the first time.

“He was in excruciating pain for a week,” attorneys Mark Geragos and Cliff Gardner, who represent the Menendez brothers, wrote in their 21-page petition signed on May 3, 2023. They added: “José Menéndez orally copulated with Roy in a bath before a Menudo concert in New York. Later that same night, José Menéndez anally raped Roy in a hotel room.”

Before he died, Andy Cano testified in court that he had known for years about the horrors occurring at the Beverly Hills home. He said his cousin Erik Menendez was 12 when he asked him if his father was doing the same things and then swore him to secrecy.

“If the jurors had seen the letter that Erik Menéndez wrote to (his first cousin) Andy Cano, and learned that (his father) José Menéndez anally raped and orally copulated a 13 or 14 year old boy (a member of Menudo) in 1984, the prosecutor would not have been able to argue that “the abuse never occurred,” “there is no corroboration of sexual abuse,” José Menéndez was not the “type of man who would” abuse children, and “he was not a violent and brutal”. man,'”

Andy Cano was not the only cousin who declared. Diane Vandermolen She testified that she was a teenager when she stayed at the Beverly Hills house over the summer, and 8-year-old Lyle came into her room and asked her if he could sleep there to avoid sexual abuse from his father. She said she was so outraged that she told Lyle’s mother, Mary “Kitty.” Andersen, who then “furiously dragged Lyle up the stairs by his arm.”

Defense attorneys wrote that the brothers remember being sexually abused when they were 6 years old and that “along with the sexual abuse, there were death threats if the abuse was ever revealed.” They also wrote that one witness testified, “a chilling rule in the Menéndez house: when José Menéndez was in the bedroom with one of the children, no one was allowed to walk down the hallway past the bedroom.”

The physical and psychological abuse of children was no secret. The defense listed family members, close friends and a variety of coaches and teachers who witnessed “physical and mental abuse…ranging from physical assaults on children to public humiliation and taunting.”

FOCUS ON THE CASE

José Menéndez was shot in the head and María “Kitty” Andersen was shot 15 times on August 20, 1989, in his Beverly Hills home. Detectives arrested Lyle Menendez on March 8, 1990. Erik Menendez turned himself in two days later.

His first trials were mistrials. The second trial was different: the judge excluded evidence of child sexual abuse, the prosecution described the motive as greed, and both were convicted on March 21, 1996, of two counts of first-degree murder. They were sentenced to two consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole.

Court TV still has videos of the online witness testimony. Rand, who allegedly gave the handwritten cousin-to-cousin letter to a defense attorney, published his book “The Menendez Murders: The Shocking Untold Story of the Menendez Family and the Murders That Shocked the Nation” in 2018. Last year, Peacock released the documentary series “Menéndez + Menudo: Children betrayed.” Rand co-produced it.

“We believe there may be other victims out there and we hope they contact us.” Rand told CNN.

This year the brothers were the focus of attention of ABC News Studios”IMPACT x Nightline: The Menéndez brothers: monsters or victims?” on Hulu; and the seriesMonsters: The Story of Erik and Lyle Menéndez” on Netflix. There was a TikTok “Free the Menendi” campaign, and Kim Kardashian, who has been pursuing a career in law since 2018, has been raising awareness about her case. Earlier this month, he posted an opinion asking for mercy.

“My hope is that the life sentences of Erik and Lyle Menéndez will be reconsidered,” kardashian wrote. “We owe it to those little children who lost their childhood, who never had the chance to be heard, helped or saved.”

With renewed interest and as he campaigns for re-election, Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascó, who is running against a former federal prosecutor On November 5, he responded to the 2023 petition. He announced that he would ask a judge to consider granting the brothers parole.

The brothers’ family is divided.

His maternal aunt Joan Andersen asked for his release, but his maternal uncle Milton Andersen criticized Gascó’s decision as political. His paternal cousin Ana María Baralt has been campaigning for his release on TikTok. She recently described how she, Andy Cano and the brothers were like a “quartet of little cousins,” so she and Cano “fought” after the murders and sentencing.

“Andy and I were… we fought very, very hard.” baralt said on TikTok and added: “We both made some really bad decisions. We both use substances. Andy more than me. He really struggled with addiction in his life and I was certainly on the same path. Somehow I was able to get out of that abyss. God knows I tried to help Andy too… He had struggled for years and years to get clean and rehab, so he couldn’t.”

Baralt said Andy Cano was 29 when he died and that his mother, Marta Cano, was still alive but was in memory care.

For more information about dealing with child sexual abuse in the family, call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233, the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656. 4673 or the Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline at 1-800-656-4673. 1-800-422-4453.

THE LETTER

THE PETITION FOR HABEAS CORPUS