For more than 35 years, Erik and Lyle Menendez have been behind bars in California for the murder of their parents—but now, for the first time, the brothers are allowing themselves to feel optimistic about a possible release. "My brother and I are cautiously hopeful," Lyle Menendez, now 57, says in a new TMZ special, The Menendez Brothers: The Prison Interview, which aired Monday on Fox. "Hope for the future is really kind of a new thing for us," he added, per the BBC, which calls it a "shift in mindset" for the siblings. "I think Erik would probably agree with that. [Hope isn't] something we've spent a lot of time on."
Lyle and Erik, 54, are currently serving life without the possibility of parole for the 1989 killings in Beverly Hills, but they now have a parole hearing set for June 13, after which Gov. Gavin Newsom will review the parole board's risk-assessment report and make his decision on whether to grant them clemency. There's another possible opening for the Menendezes' release that could wrap things up sooner: TMZ notes that, per Newsom, the parole board's report will also be sent to a judge for a potential resentencing later this month, which could result in a lighter sentence that ends up freeing the brothers for time already served.
So what will the brothers do if they are, indeed, granted their freedom? "I want to be an advocate for people that are suffering in silence," Erik said in a phone interview aired in the TMZ special, per the BBC. "Lyle and I aren't talking about leaving prison, should we be able to get out, and not looking back. Our lives will be spent working with the prison and doing the work that we're doing in here, out there." Lyle, meanwhile, wants to help others "find their voice in their trauma," per People. "We think that there's a hunger for that in the country and we would love to be a part of that and heal in that way." (More Menendez brothers stories.)
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