The family is not yet celebrating the possible release of Erik and Lyle Menendez

• Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón plans to schedule a hearing at which prosecutors and the defense will present arguments for and against the Menendez brothers’ release. However, their family is “a little afraid to put the cart before the horse” in terms of waiting for an imminent release.
• “I think it would be amazing,” Annamaria Baralt, whose mother is Jose Menendez’s sister, told PEOPLE. “I think my mother and Joan VanderMolen, Kitty’s sister, couldn’t be happier than to see this happen.”
• “Even though we are together as a family, we never forget that Lyla and Eric are not with us,” Baralt adds. “So we’re all looking forward to the day we can be together again. This will be our dream”
  

The call came just minutes before Anamaria Baralt’s 6:15 pm yoga class on Wednesday, October 23rd. The lawyer representing her cousins. Lyle and Erik Menendez told her that family members needed to be at his office in Los Angeles by 11 the next morning.

After 34 years behind bars, the Menendez brothers, who fatally shot their parents Jose and Kitty Menendez in their Beverly Hills, California, home in 1989, may be returning home soon, against all odds.

“Drop everything. We need you,” Baralt, 53, wrote in an email to other family members who, like her, have called for the brothers to be released from prison.

The next day, she took an early morning flight from Seattle to Los Angeles, where Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón was scheduled to speak on the case at an afternoon news conference.

“We didn’t know what he was going to say until we got there,” Baralt tells PEOPLE, who adds that a dozen family members flew in from all over the country to be there. “We just wanted to make sure the world knew how much support they had.”

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Surrounded by several members of the brothers’ extended family at the Los Angeles Hall of Justice, Gascon announced that he recommend that Eric, 53, and Lyle, 56, who claim they killed their parents because they feared for their lives after years of sexual abuse by their father, will each be sentenced to 50 years to life.

Given their ages at the time of the murders (Eric was 18 and Lyle was 21), the brothers qualified as “juvenile offenders” and were thus eligible for immediate parole. “We are absolutely confident that not only are the brothers rehabilitated and that they can safely reintegrate into our society, but that they have paid their debts,” Gascón said, adding that while in prison they worked to “improve the lives of many other people.”

In making this decision, attorneys in the District Attorney’s Resentencing Unit carefully reviewed the testimony of the siblings, as well as prison officials and family members. They also looked at evidence of psychological trauma and physical abuse that contributed to the crimes.

As part of the petition for resentencing, Gascón said he would argue that keeping Eric and Lyle behind bars for life without parole “is no longer in the interests of justice,” noting that the cultural understanding of sexual assault they claim is they have undergone, changed. changed.

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For Eric and Lyle, Gascón’s motion for resentencing, which must then be approved by a judge, was a stunning victory. Their quest for release began last year when lawyers filed a lawsuit. petition of habeas corpus on their behalf based on new evidence of a letter allegedly sent by Eric to a cousin.
months before the 1989 murders, which alleged ongoing sexual abuse by Jose, as well as testimony from a former member of the boy band Menudo, Roy Rosselloclaiming he was raped by Jose in the 1980s. Those efforts have gained momentum in recent months with the arrival of Netflix. Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story and a standalone Netflix documentary, Menendez brotherswere viewed by a largely sympathetic audience.

Mark Geragos, the brothers’ lawyer after the sentencing, spoke with them shortly after Gascón’s statement and declined to comment on their reaction. “I’ll just say they’re happy,” he tells PEOPLE, “and that’s a huge step.”

Meanwhile, Gascón’s office has begun planning a hearing at which prosecutors and the defense will present written and oral arguments for and against the brothers’ release, necessary to put the issue before the judge who will make a decision.

Geragos believes this could happen before Thanksgiving.

“I think it would be amazing,” shares Baralt, whose mother is José’s sister. “I think my mother and Joan VanderMolen, Kitty’s sister, couldn’t be happier than to see this happen.”

But Baralt notes that the family is holding off on plans for a Thanksgiving reunion.

“I think we’re all a little afraid of putting the cart before the horse,” she admits. “You have to understand that for many, many years the courts have not had such good results, so it doesn’t seem superstitious to plan anything right now, but it is a little scary. It was very difficult. There is a hole in your heart that is never completely filled, and every holiday it feels sweet and bitter. Even though we are together as a family, we never forget that Lyle and Eric are not with us. So we are all looking forward to the day when we will be together again. This will be our dream.”

If you or someone you know has been a victim of sexual assault, text “STRENGTH” to the Crisis text line at 741-741 to be connected to a certified crisis counselor.