How testimonies from ex-Menudo members and a handwritten letter could help the Menendez 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, was open about her belief that the secret it contained was to blame for the deaths of her brother, sister-in-law, her son and the life sentences of her two nephews.

Marta Cano would have been welcome Robert Randa former reporter and author for the Miami Herald, to her Palm Beach home and had him search through the things her late son Andres “Andy” Cano had left behind. The grieving mother told ABC News her son had overdosed on sleeping pills in 2003.

Rand reported finding a letter handwritten by a child sex abuse victim. 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, two survivors could finally be freed.

‘I tried to avoid Dad. It still happens Andy, but it’s worse for me now,” Erik Menendez wrote to his cousin Andy Cano, the lawyers said. “I never know when it’s going to happen and it drives me crazy. Every night I stay awake thinking he might come in.

Erik Menendez and his brother Lyle Menendez would later murder their parents in 1989. Prosecutors told the jury at the time that their motive was greed. Advocates for the brothers now argue that the zeitgeist of the time, which saw child sexual abuse within the family as an impossibility, may have influenced a case that has long been in the public eye.

NOT THE ‘KIND OF MAN’

Marta Cano’s brother José Menendez was born in Havana, Cuba. After Fidel Castro came to power, his parents sent him to the US. 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 and signed Menudo, the famous Puerto Rican boy band that Ricky Martin was a part of as a boy from 1984 to 1989. Over the years, dozens of boys between the ages of 9 and 13 joined Menudo and sold millions of albums worldwide.

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

“He suffered excruciating pain for a week,” attorneys Mark Geragos and Cliff Gardner, who represented the Menendez brothers, wrote in their 21-page petition, signed May 3, 2023. They added: “Jose Menendez orally copulated Roy in a bathroom before a Menudo concert in New York. Later that same evening, Jose Menendez anally raped Roy in a hotel room.

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

“Had jurors seen the letter Erik Menendez wrote to (his cousin) Andy Cano, and learned that (their father) Jose Menendez anally raped and orally copulated a 13- or 14-year-old boy (Menudo member) in 1984, said the prosecutor would not have been able to argue that “the abuse never occurred,” “there is no confirmation of sexual abuse,” Jose Menendez was not the “kind of man who” would abuse children and “was not a violent and brutal man.” man,'”

Andy Cano wasn’t the only cousin to testify. Diane Vandermolen testified that she was a teenager when she stayed at the Beverly Hills home this summer, and 8-year-old Lyle came into her room and asked if he could sleep there to prevent his father’s sexual abuse. She said she was so outraged that she told Lyle’s mother, Mary, “Kitty.” Andersen, who then “angrily dragged Lyle upstairs by his arm.”

Defense attorneys wrote that the brothers remember being sexually abused when they were six years old and “along with the sexual abuse were death threats if the abuse was ever made public.” They also wrote that a witness testified: “a chilling rule in the Menendez home: When Jose Menendez was in the bedroom with one of the boys, no one was allowed to walk down the hallway past the bedroom.”

The physical and psychological abuse of the boys was no secret. The defense cited family members, close friends and a variety of coaches and teachers who witnessed “physical and mental abuse … ranging from physical attacks on the boys to public humiliation and ridicule.”

SPOTLIGHT ON THE CASE

José Menendez was shot in the head and Mary “Kitty” Andersen was shot fifteen times in their Beverly Hills home on August 20, 1989. Detectives arrested Lyle Menendez on March 8, 1990. Erik Menendez surrendered two days later.

Their first trials were mistrials. The second trial was different: the judge rejected evidence of child abuse, the prosecutor described the motive as greed, and they were both 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 witness statements online. Rand – who reportedly handed over the handwritten cousin-to-cousin letter to a lawyer – published his book “The Menendez Murders: The Shocking, Untold Story of the Menendez Family and the Murders That Stunned the Nation” in 2018. Last year, Peacock released the documentary series “Menendez + Menudo: Boys betrayed.” Rand co-produced it.

“We believe there may be more victims and we hope they will contact us,” he said. Rand told CNN.

This year, the brothers took center stage in ABC News Studios’ “IMPACT x Nightline: The Menendez Brothers: monsters or victims?” on Hulu; and the series “Monsters: The Story of Erik and Lyle Menendez‘ on Netflix. There was one TikTok “Free the Menendi” campaign, and Kim Kardashian, who has been pursuing a career in law since 2018, has raised awareness about their case. She published earlier this month an opinion ask for leniency.

“My hope is that Erik and Lyle Menendez’s life sentences will be reconsidered.” Kardashian wrote. “We owe it to those little boys who lost their childhood, who never had the chance to be heard, helped or saved.”

With the renewed interest and while campaigning for re-election, Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón, who opposes a former federal prosecutor responded to the 2023 petition on November 5. According to Gascón, state law would make them eligible for juvenile parole since the murders occurred when the brothers were under 26 years old. The brothers’ family reacted differently.

Their maternal aunt Joan Andersen asked for their release, but their maternal uncle Milton Andersen criticized Gascó’s decision as politically motivated. Their paternal cousin Anamaria Baralt has campaigned for its release on TikTok. She recently described it how she, Andy Cano and the brothers were like a “little cousin quartet,” so she and Cano “struggled” after the murders and conviction.

“Andy and I were…we wrestled hard, really hard,” Baralt said on TikTok, adding, “We both made some really bad choices. We were both using substances. Andy more than me. He really struggled with addiction in his life and I was definitely on the same path. Somehow I was able to pull myself out of that abyss. God knows I tried to help Andy too… He had struggled for years and years to get clean and rehabilitate, but he couldn’t.’

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

For more information about how to deal with childhood sexual abuse, 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 1-800-422-4453.

THE LETTER

THE HABEAS CORPUS PETITION