Menendezes to Serve Terms at Separate Prisons

State corrections officials have done what two contentious murder trials never could. They’ve separated the Menendez brothers.

Although Lyle and Erik Menendez long hoped to be imprisoned together, the Beverly Hills brothers, convicted in March of murdering their wealthy parents, will serve life sentences at prisons hundreds of miles apart, state corrections officials said Tuesday.

Early Tuesday, the brothers were bused from the North Kern State Prison at Delano to their permanent institutions--Lyle, 28, to the California Correctional Institution near Tehachapi, and Erik, 25, to the California State Prison near Sacramento.

Christine May, a corrections spokeswoman, said that although family members are often imprisoned together, the department was following its policy to keep crime partners apart.

Both brothers are currently segregated from other prisoners and will be classified as maximum security inmates, May said.

Defense attorneys criticized the move as unduly cruel and punitive, while the Beverly Hills police detective who investigated the Menendez murders said he was pleased the brothers finally are apart.

“I’m outraged. This is torture!” said defense attorney Leslie H. Abramson, who represented Erik. She said corrections officials had led her to believe both brothers both would be sent to the state prison in Mule Creek.

“I’m going to war against the Department of Corrections,” Abramson said.

“This will make their life sentences even more miserable,” said Deputy Public Defender Terri Towery, one of Lyle’s lawyers. “I think it’s really, really sad and I’m sorry that our society has become so vindictive.”

But Beverly Hills Police Det. Les Zoeller holds an opposing view that is shared by many in law enforcement:

“I don’t think they should be together,” Zoeller said. “They conspired to commit the murders together. They conspired to get out of the crimes together. I think that by putting them together, everybody’s at risk.”

Within months of their arrests for the August 1989 shotgun slayings of their wealthy parents, Lyle struck on the theme of togetherness in a 17-page letter to Erik. During their six-year legal saga, the brothers defied legal pundits who had predicted they would turn on one another once in the courtroom.

“My greatest fear is that we would not end up in the same prison down the road,” Lyle wrote in 1990. “I think if Dad could give us one piece of advice that night in August, it would be never to abandon each other, no matter what the circumstance.”

The brothers’ first murder trials made them household names and ended in hung juries in early 1994, as jurors divided over the issue of whether the sons had been physically and sexually tortured by their parents. But after a 20-week retrial, a jury in March found them guilty of first-degree murder and conspiracy in the slayings of their father, entertainment executive Jose Menendez, 45, and mother, Kitty, 47.

A month later, the retrial jury voted to spare the brothers’ lives, instead recommending a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole.

At the brothers’ formal sentencing July 2, the defense presented Superior Court Judge Stanley M. Weisberg with a thick packet of letters from relatives, friends and other supporters who urged that the brothers remain together.

Ironically, Lyle may eventually benefit from his prison assignment. He is the only high-profile inmate at Tehachapi, and the prison’s marriage policy should permit him to finally carry out his plan to marry frequent court watcher Anna Eriksson.

“We do have a marriage proceeding,” said Lt. Jack Pitko, the prison spokesman. “There’s a waiting list. . . . But I don’t see why he shouldn’t be able to get married if he follows all the rules.”