3 days ago
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U.S.|The Menendez Brothers Became Model Prisoners. Will That Free Them?
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/11/us/lyle-erik-menendez-parole-prison-good-behavior.html
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One day more than 20 years ago, Anerae Brown sat down in the day room of a California prison across from Lyle Menendez, who was in front of a chessboard, playing both sides. It was Lyle’s regular table, where he could be found most days checking the stock tables in The Wall Street Journal.
Mr. Brown had exchanged a few words here and there with Lyle in the yard, but life in prison can be highly segregated, and until Lyle waved him over to his table that day, race and class had largely kept them apart.
A rap artist and member of the Crips gang, Mr. Brown was in the first years of a long prison sentence for a gang-related murder. Lyle said he had noticed that Mr. Brown was still keeping company with gang members. “I think that you can do so much more with your influence,” he recalled Lyle saying to him.
Mr. Brown was skeptical, but slowly the message began to sink in. He began participating in anger management classes and a program to assist fellow inmates who used wheelchairs.
And when Mr. Brown was transferred to a different prison several years later, Lyle’s brother, Erik, was there to meet him at the gate. Lyle had written a letter to Erik about Mr. Brown that said, “Treat him as if I showed up.”
Mr. Brown eventually earned early release, in part because of his work with the brothers. Now, their efforts with Mr. Brown and other men may prove instrumental in the brothers’ own bid to walk free.
