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 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.

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

Erik and Lyle (seen in updated booking photo) said they were abused by their father Jose, leading them to murder him and their mother Kitty

DA Hochman – Deputy District Attorney Habib 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…

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.

On Friday, with the brothers 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

Pictured: This was the scene outside the Menendez family’s Beverly Hills mansion when police arrived on August 20, 1989. It was months before they arrested the brothers, when Erik’s confession to his therapist changed their investigation entirely

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.

Lyle (Pictured, right) and Erik Menendez (left) never denied killing their parents by shooting them 14 times with 12-gauge shotguns

A chilling crime scene photo shows the blood-soaked couch where Jose Menendez was shot

 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.

On August 20, 1989, armed with two shotguns, the brothers blasted both parents to death as they watched a movie at their Beverly Hills mansion.

Their trial prompted worldwide headlines. Prosecutors said their motive was greed, as they stood to inherit $14 million from their parents.

The brothers insisted they acted against a father who sexually abused them for years and a mother who turned a blind eye to the abuse.

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.

New interest in the case was sparked by the recent Netflix drama, Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story and the true crime documentary The Menendez Brothers which tell how the brothers claimed to police that they returned home from the theater to find their parents had been slaughtered.

At first it was feared that a vicious killer was on the loose in Beverly Hills, one of America’s wealthiest communities.

Leslie Abramson (pictured, centre) was the defense lawyer for Erik Menendez (pictured, left) during both trials. They are seen with Lyle Menendez (right) in March 1994

Jose and Kitty (pictured) were killed in their Beverly Hills mansion in 1989 

 But cops switched their suspicions to Lyle and Erik after they set about spending their $14 million inheritance soon 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, seven months after the murders.

Erik – who said his father abused him from the age of six to 12 – insisted in the new documentary that it’s ‘absurd’ to suggest he was having a good time in the immediate aftermath of the murders.

‘Everything was to cover up this horrible pain of not wanting to be alive,’ he said.

‘One of the things that stopped me from killing myself was that I would be a complete failure to my dad.’

At hearing last October, the court heard emotional testimony from two elderly sisters of Jose and Mary Louise ‘Kitty’ Menendez, the parents the brothers killed with shotguns inside their million-dollar Beverly Hills mansion in 1989.

Citing the new evidence that the siblings were sexually abused by their father from a young age, Jose’s older sister Teri Baralt, 85 and Kitty’s 93-year-old eldest sister, Joan Van Der Molen pleaded with Judge Jesic to release their nephews from prison and send them home.

Erik (left) and Lyle (right) are currently serving life sentences without the possibility of parole (seen during their first trial, which ended with both juries hung)

‘No child should have to endure what Eric and Lyle lived through at the hands of their father and I’m angry that my sister knew what was happening to them and did nothing about it,’ a frail Van Der Molen told the packed courtroom.

‘They never knew whether this was the night they would be raped. It’s time for them to come home.’

Baralt – who suffers from colon cancer – sobbed as she told the court that she still misses her brother Jose and her ‘best friend’ Kitty.

‘But I miss my nephews too. They have done a lot of good things (in prison).

‘Thirty-five years is a long time, especially for an 18 year-and a 21-year-old. I’d like them to come home. I want to see them and hug them.’

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.