LA DA will announce decision on potential resentencing of the Menendez brothers Thursday
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(LOS ANGELES) — Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón said he will announce his decision on Thursday regarding the potential resentencing of Lyle and Erik Menendez, who are each serving two consecutive life prison terms without parole.
Gascón is holding a news conference at 1:30 p.m. local time.
If Gascón recommends resentencing — in the wake of pressure from the brothers’ relatives, attorneys and supporters in the public — his decision will then go to a judge to decide whether Lyle and Erik Menendez will be released from prison, receive a lesser sentence or get a new trial.
Gascón told ABC News this month that any recommendation for resentencing would take into account the decades that the brothers already served and their behavior in prison. The brothers’ attorney, Mark Geragos, called them model prisoners who worked tirelessly to reform themselves with no expectation they’d be released.
The decades-old case began on Aug. 20, 1989, when Lyle and Erik Menendez fatally shot their parents, Jose and Kitty Menendez, in the family’s Beverly Hills home. Lyle Menendez, then 21, and Erik Menendez, then 18, used shotguns they bought days earlier.
Prosecutors alleged the brothers killed their wealthy parents for financial gain.
The defense argued the brothers acted in self-defense after enduring years of sexual abuse by their father.
Their first trials — which captured the nation’s attention with cameras in the courtroom — ended in mistrials.
In 1996, at the end of a second trial — in which the judge barred much of the sex abuse evidence — the brothers were convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to two consecutive life prison terms without the possibility of parole.
The sensational case gained new attention this fall with the release of the Netflix drama “Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story” and the Netflix documentary “The Menendez Brothers.”
Gascón said this month that his office was evaluating new evidence: allegations from a member of the boy band Menudo who said he was molested by Jose Menendez, and a letter Erik Menendez wrote to a cousin eight months before the murders detailing his alleged abuse.
Erik Menendez’s cousin testified about the alleged abuse at trial, but Erik Menendez’s letter — which would have corroborated the cousin’s testimony — wasn’t unearthed until several years ago, according to Geragos.
“Their actions, while tragic, were the desperate response of two boys trying to survive the unspeakable cruelty of their father,” Kitty Menendez’s sister, Joan Andersen VanderMolen, said. “As their aunt, I had no idea of the extent of the abuse they suffered.”
“It’s time to give them the opportunity to live the rest of their lives free from the shadow of their past,” she said.
Behind bars, the siblings “sought to better themselves and serve as a support and inspiration for survivors all over the world,” added Jose Menendez’s niece, Anamaria Baralt. “Their continued incarceration serves no rehabilitative purpose.”
The brothers “deserve a chance to heal, and our family deserves a chance to heal with them,” Baralt said.
Despite the massive show of support, one relative — the brothers’ uncle, Milton Andersen — is adamant about keeping them behind bars. He said in a statement he firmly believes his nephews were not sexually assaulted and were motivated by greed.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
(ATHENS, Ga.) — The suspect accused of murdering Laken Riley on the University of Georgia’s campus was found guilty by a judge on all charges Wednesday, including malice murder and felony murder.
He was sentenced by the judge to life in prison without the possibility of parole, the maximum possible.
Prosecutors called the evidence against the suspect “overwhelming,” while the defense raised the theory that the defendant could be an accomplice but not the killer during closing arguments in his trial.
Jose Ibarra, 26, was accused of killing the 22-year-old nursing student while she was out for a run after prosecutors said she “refused to be his rape victim.” Jose Ibarra, an undocumented migrant, was charged with malice murder and felony murder in connection with her death, which became a rallying cry for immigration reform from many conservatives, including President-elect Donald Trump.
Jose Ibarra waived his right to a jury trial and the case was presented over four days in the Athens-Clarke County courtroom to Judge H. Patrick Haggard, who rendered the verdict on Wednesday shortly after closing arguments in the trial.
Sobbing could be heard in the courtroom as he read the guilty verdicts on each charge.
Before announcing his verdict, Haggard told the courtroom that he wrote down two statements from the attorneys during closing arguments.
One was a statement by the prosecutor, who said the “evidence was overwhelming and powerful.”
The other was one by the defense attorney, who said that the judge is “required to set aside my emotions.”
“That’s the same thing we tell jurors,” he said. “That’s the way I have to approach this, and I did. Both of those statements are correct.”
In subsequently issuing his sentence on Wednesday, Haggard acknowledged there can be “no such thing as closure” in an event like this.
“As many times as you reflect on the loss, at some point you start smiling about the memories, and I’m hopeful that at some point that takes over to a certain extent, but there’s very little, including the sentence of Mr. Ibarra, that’s going to help much, and I acknowledge that,” he said.
Riley’s family addresses court: ‘There is no end to the pain’
Riley’s family addressed the court ahead of sentencing with often tearful victim impact statements while calling for a life sentence without parole.
“There is no end to the pain, suffering and loss that we have experienced or will continue to endure,” her mother, Allyson Phillips, said.
She remembered Riley as “smart, hard-working, kind, thoughtful, and most importantly she was a child of God.”
She called Jose Ibarra a “monster” who “took my best friend.”
“This horrific individual robbed us all of our hopes and dreams for Laken,” she said.
Lauren Phillips, Riley’s sister, said her big sister was her “biggest role model.”
“I looked up to her in every way,” she said. “She brought the joy that I needed into my life and never failed to make me laugh.”
She said seeing her parents’ heartbreak is “excruciating” and she will never get closure over her sister’s murder.
“We’re a broken family of three struggling to find out how to live this life through the silence and emptiness that her absence has left behind,” she said.
Riley’s father, Jason Riley, said he is “haunted by the fear” his daughter must have felt in her final moments.
“I have to live with the fact that I could not protect her when she needed me the most,” he said.
Riley’s stepfather, John Phillips, said she was the “best daughter, sister, granddaughter, friend and overall person that you could ever hope to meet.”
“I plead with this court to protect the world from this truly evil person by sentencing him to prison for life without the possibility of parole for any reason, so that he could never have the opportunity to do this to anyone else ever again,” he said.
Several of Riley’s good friends also addressed the court, including Riley’s three roommates, who had testified during the trial about trying to find and get in touch with her the day of her murder.
Connolly Huth said she used to run with Riley, but has since “lost the joy of what running was before Laken was taken from us.”
“I live with excruciating guilt every day that I was not accompanying Laken on this run and that it was her and not me,” she said, crying. “I hope and pray that it will never happen again to anyone.”
Lilly Steiner said life has been “dull” without Riley.
“Laken left a colossal legacy to everyone she touched and I have zero doubt that she is still not finished building it,” she said. “And that is something Jose Ibarra will never be able to take away.”
Sofia Magana called Riley her “chosen family” and “fearless other half,” and said her heart is “full of grief, sadness and an overwhelming sense of lost.”
“The loss of my best friend has shattered my world in ways I never thought possible,” she said through tears.
State shows moment parents learned Riley was dead
As part of the victim impact statements ahead of sentencing, the state showed body worn camera of officers breaking the news to Laken’s family that she was dead.
Her mother could be seen collapsing on the ground, weeping.
“That’s what they endured,” special prosecutor Sheila Ross told the judge. “That’s how it was on that day when they came here to look for their daughter.”
Ross also showed the court videos of Riley, including ones of her running in a race.
“These are just little snippets that we saw in the investigation that we thought would be important to share with the court that shows not only the type of person that she was — that you just heard from her friends and family — but the true impact that her murder had on her parents,” Ross said.
Jose Ibarra faced a minimum sentence of life in prison with the possibility of parole and maximum of life without the possibility of parole for the top charge of malice murder.
Ross urged the judge to offer a sentence that “brings comfort to this community” and one that “appropriately reflects the harm that was done in this case” while asking for the maximum sentence.
The defense asked the judge to impose life with the possibility of parole.
“Getting a life sentence is automatic,” defense attorney John Donnelly said. “There’s certainly no guarantee of parole.”
He added that given the defendant’s immigration status, if he were to be released in the future, “it would only to be deported.”
State says evidence ‘loud and clear’
Prosecutors called 28 witnesses while laying out what they said was evidence beyond a reasonable doubt that Jose Ibarra killed Riley, who died by blunt force head trauma and asphyxia.
Ross told the court Jose Ibarra encountered Riley while she was on her morning jog on Feb. 22 while he was out “hunting” for women on the Athens campus.
Ross said Riley “fought for her life” in a struggle that caused Jose Ibarra to leave forensic evidence behind. Digital and video evidence also pointed to him as the only killer, she said.
“The evidence in this case has been overwhelming, and the evidence in this case has spoken loud and clear — that he is Laken Riley’s killer, and that he killed her because she would not let him rape her,” Ross said during her closing argument on Wednesday.
A forensics expert testified that Jose Ibarra’s DNA was found under Riley’s right fingernails, and that his two brothers, who lived with him in an apartment near the campus, were excluded as matches.
When Jose Ibarra was questioned by police a day after the murder, he had visible scratches on his arms, officers said. He also had scratches on his neck and back, which Ross said could have only been left by Riley.
“In order to not find him guilty, you would have to disbelieve your own eyes,” Ross said.
“She marked him. She marked him for everyone to see. She marked him for you to see,” Ross told the judge.
Prosecutors argued Jose Ibarra hindered Riley from making a 911 call, and said his thumbprint was left on her phone. Data from his Samsung phone and the Garmin watch Riley was wearing on her run showed the devices overlapped and were in close proximity in the forest where she was found dead, an FBI analyst testified.
Jose Ibarra was captured on Ring footage discarding a bloody jacket and three disposable gloves near his apartment about 15 minutes after Riley died, prosecutors said. The individual’s face can’t be seen in the video, but Jose Ibarra’s roommate testified that it was him. The defendant’s brother, Diego Ibarra, also identified him as the person in the video while being questioned by police a day after the murder.
Riley’s DNA was found on the jacket and gloves, the forensics expert said. Jose Ibarra’s DNA was also found on the jacket, while his two brothers were excluded as matches, the expert said.
“That is what we call consciousness of guilt in our business — he threw away those items because he knew he had killed her, and he threw them away because he didn’t want anyone to find him,” Ross said.
Her DNA was also found on an Adidas cap he was seen wearing in the video, the expert said. That cap was not discarded, Ross surmised, because Jose Ibarra could not see that there was actually blood on it.
Hours after the killing, Jose Ibarra was also captured wearing different clothes from the dumpster Ring footage while discarding unidentifiable items in a bag in another dumpster at his apartment complex, Ross said. That bag was never recovered by police, she said. Ross surmised that the bag contained the clothes he was wearing earlier that day, which were also similar to ones he was wearing in a selfie posted on Snapchat earlier that morning.
“His digital evidence of posting selfies of himself wearing what is basically his rapist gear an hour before he leaves his house — that condemns him, he has condemned himself,” Ross said.
Defense presents alternative theory
The defense called three witnesses, including a neighbor who said Diego Ibarra had threatened her the night of Riley’s murder.
The defense said they had planned to call two additional witnesses — including Diego Ibarra, who is in federal custody awaiting sentencing after pleading guilty to possessing a fraudulent green card, however, his attorney did not wish for him to testify.
“While the evidence in this case is voluminous, it is circumstantial,” defense attorney Kaitlyn Beck told the judge.
Beck told the judge they advised Jose Ibarra to have a bench trial “trusting that your honor could and believing that your honor would set aside the emotions in this case and simply consider the evidence.”
She argued there is doubt about what was tested and said the judge should be “skeptical” of the DNA evidence.
She presented an “alternative theory” that Diego Ibarra was actually Riley’s murderer, and that Jose Ibarra was an accomplice in covering up the evidence.
“Maybe it was him throwing away the jacket, as Diego said, maybe he was covering up for his brother,” Beck said.
“Under that theory, of course, Jose would be guilty of tampering, but that theory does not prove that he was present or involved in the murder of Laken Riley,” she said.
She said since three gloves were discarded, it “suggests that there are multiple pairs of hands wearing those gloves.”
On rebuttal, Ross called the defense’s theory “desperate” and a “mischaracterization of the evidence.”
“There is no reasonable explanation for all of this evidence other than he is guilty of every single count in this indictment,” Ross said of Jose Ibarra.
Diego Ibarra told officers during questioning that he was asleep at the time the killing occurred. A Georgia Bureau of Investigation agent who was on the case testified earlier Wednesday that there was no evidence to contradict that statement.
Jose Ibarra, a migrant from Venezuela who officials said illegally entered the U.S. in 2022, waived his right to testify during the trial. He had pleaded not guilty to the charges, including malice murder and three counts of felony murder.
Additional charges in the 10-count indictment included aggravated battery, kidnapping with bodily injury, aggravated assault with intent to rape, obstructing or hindering a person making an emergency telephone call and tampering with evidence. The latter charge was that he “knowingly concealed” evidence — the jacket and gloves — in the murder.
Jose Ibarra was also convicted of a peeping tom offense. Prosecutors said that in the hours before Riley’s murder, he spied through the window of a UGA graduate student, and said the incident “shows his state of mind” that day.
The student testified that she called police after hearing someone trying to open her door.
Ross said the person at the student’s apartment was wearing clothes similar to the ones Jose Ibarra had on in the Snapchat selfie posted earlier that morning, including the Adidas cap.
Trump released a statement following the verdict in the high-profile trial, saying that “our hearts will always be with” Riley. He also said it’s “time to secure our border, and remove these criminals and thugs from our Country, so nothing like this can happen again!”
(NEW YORK) — A Georgia sheriff whose office in 2023 investigated an online school shooting threat that led to Colt Gray, the teen now accused of a deadly rampage inside his high school last week, said they “probably” dropped the ball on notifying the suspect’s school district about monitoring him.
Colt Gray, 14, is accused of killing two students and two teachers in Wednesday’s shooting at Apalachee High School in Barrow County, about 45 miles north of Atlanta. Nine others were also injured. Colt Gray had transferred from another school in neighboring Jackson County to Apalachee only two weeks prior, the sheriff’s department in Barrow County told ABC News.
In May of last year, the sheriff’s office in Jackson County investigated an online school shooting threat that the FBI said was traced to Colt Gray. The FBI reached out to the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office after Discord users alerted the Bureau about a post threatening a shooting at a middle school in Jefferson, Georgia.
An investigator interviewed Colt Gray and his father about the post at their home on May 21, 2023. The then-13-year-old told the investigator he had a Discord account but had deleted it months earlier and denied making the threats online, according to a transcript of the interview. There was no probable cause for arrest, the FBI said in a statement.
Following the investigation, a former captain in the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office sent a note to the FBI saying that “we have made area schools aware and will monitor this subject,” according to the sheriff’s office. The FBI also said in a statement that Jackson County “alerted local schools for continued monitoring of the subject.”
Jackson County Sheriff Janis Mangum said following the school shooting in Barrow County, the FBI alerted her that the suspect was the same teenager her office had investigated last year. Mangum said in a news release on Sept. 6 that after “speaking with Dr. Donna McMullan with the Jefferson City Schools On September 5, 2024, it came to my attention they had no record of being notified of a threat by Colt Gray who was enrolled there.”
The incident raises questions about whether the previous district could have forwarded that information to Barrow County Schools officials once Colt Gray transferred to their district two weeks ago.
Asked by ABC News on Monday whether her office dropped the ball, Mangum said not on the investigation.
“But on notifying the school, probably,” she said, noting that some personnel who worked on the case left the office before the shooting incident last week. “Because I don’t know. If you say area schools are notified, who did you talk to and what school did you talk to? I don’t know.”
Mangum maintained that the 2023 investigation was “done thoroughly” but said she is unable to provide an answer about what happened with the school notification.
“I’m the sheriff. The bottom line is, it falls on me because I am the sheriff,” she continued.
Mangum said Monday her office was looking into emails to see if they could find any records, but at this time they only have the note the former captain sent to the FBI stating that the office did notify schools. She said she has yet to speak to the former captain who sent the note to the FBI and the former investigator who interviewed Colt Gray. She indicated that she didn’t know whether the former captain made phone calls to any area schools instead of leaving a paper trail.
ABC News has reached out to the former captain and investigator for comment.
As for the investigation into the online school shooting threat, Mangum said there wasn’t probable cause for an arrest or to charge the teen with making a terroristic threat.
“As far as the investigation, no, I don’t see anything else that could have been done back then in May of 2023 that he could have done. He did everything he could do at that time with what he had,” Mangum said of the investigator.
She said she believes the 2023 investigation will likely be important for the prosecution regarding the school shooting last week.
Mangum said she is “heartbroken” over the deadly incident.
“My prayers go out to those families that lost their loved ones,” she said. “It hurts me to even think that that could have happened anywhere.”
Colt Gray has been charged as an adult with four counts of felony murder. More charges will be filed, prosecutors said.
His father, Colin Gray, has been charged with four counts of involuntary manslaughter, two counts of second-degree murder and eight counts of cruelty to children in the second degree, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation said. He is accused of “knowingly allowing his son, Colt, to possess a weapon,” GBI Director Chris Hosey said last week.
The father and son both made their first court appearances on Friday. Neither has entered a plea and both are set to return to court on Dec. 4.
Text messages sent between parents and students at Apalachee High School during the Sept. 4, deadly shooting are shown here. — ABCNews Photo Illustration/ Sonya Turner/ ABC via Erin Clark/ Becky Van Der Walt
(WINDER, Ga.) — As students hid behind desks and doors during the latest deadly school shooting in the United States, they pulled out their cell phones.
It was just before 10:30 a.m. Wednesday, that Becky Van Der Walt received a text message from her son that no parent wants to receive.
“I think there’s a school shooting,” Van Der Walt’s son, Henry, a junior at Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia, wrote, according to text messages shared with ABC News. “We heard gunshots and the police shouting … We’re all in hard lockdown.”
Around eight minutes later, Henry sent another text to his mom with three simple words, “I love you.”
Around the same time Wednesday, Erin Clark, also a parent of an Apalachee High School student, saw a concerning text message pop up on her phone from her son, Ethan.
“School shooting rn .. i’m scared,” Ethan, the high school student, wrote to his mom. “pls i’m not joking.”
When Clark responded that she was leaving work, Ethan, too, responded with just three words: ” I love you.”
Sonya Turner was home for less than an hour Wednesday after dropping off her 15-year-old daughter at Apalachee High School when she too got a worrisome text.
“There’s a real lockdown,” Turner’s daughter Abby, a sophomore, wrote to her mom from biology class. “idk how to explain it … i heard shots but i don’t anymore.”
While Abby and her fellow classmates were texting their parents Wednesday morning, not knowing what would happen, a 14-year-old student had allegedly opened fire at Apalachee High, killing four people and injuring nine.
The 14-year-old student accused of opening fire at the school has been charged with four counts of felony murder, with additional charges expected, Georgia Bureau of Investigation officials said Thursday. A motive is not known.
Two teachers and two students were killed in the shooting: math teacher and football coach Richard Aspinwall, 39; math teacher Cristina Irimie, 53; and students Mason Schermerhorn, 14, and Christian Angulo, 14, according to officials.
Eight students and one teacher were injured, officials said, but all are expected to survive.
Becky Van Der Walt told ABC News it was “terrifying” to receive a text message about a school shooting from her son, with whom she reunited later in the day.
Ethan Clark also survived the shooting, as did Turner’s two daughters, Abby and Isabella, a 14-year-old freshman at Apalachee High.
Turner told ABC News that as soon as texts from her daughters about gunshots came in just before 10:30 a.m., she called her husband to go to the school, telling him, “It’s real. Go. Go. Go.'”
For the next hour, Turner, also the mom of a 9-year-old son, said she stayed glued to her phone, keeping her daughters calm, making sure they had safe places to hide and praying with them.
“Where are you hiding,” Turner asks in one text message, with Abby responding, “I’m behind a long desk.”
“Is there an additional closet or anything you can get in,” Turner asks Abby in a later message.
“No I can’t move … I’m not aloud to mo[v]e,” Abby replies, leading Turner to tell her, “Ok. Pray …,” while also texting prayers.
In another message, Turner asks her daughters to simply keep communicating with her so she knows they’re alive, writing to them, “Keep talking to me.”
Isabella, just a few weeks into her first year of high school, texted her mom, “I love you. Mommy im scared.” Grief counselors from Columbine, Parkland, Sandy Hook describe what happens after a school shooting
Turner said over the course of the morning, she received text messages not only from her daughters inside the school, but from fellow parents who were also communicating with their kids and helping each other as they intermittently lost communication.
“[A friend] has two kids [at Apalachee High School], and she couldn’t get one of them on the phone, and he turned out to be in the classroom of the first teacher that was pronounced dead,” Turner said. “She’s texting and texting and couldn’t get him and couldn’t get him, and that’s because he was trying to save his teacher.”
In another instance, Turner said she temporarily lost communication with Isabella.
“That was a total freak-out moment but her phone had gotten taken, the whole class, they took their phones,” Turner said, adding. “But when they ushered them all out onto the football field, she got to a friend who was able to text me … so I knew she was safe.”
Turner, who is recovering from abdominal surgery, said she ended up walking over one mile from her home to the high school, where, after several hours, she was able to reunite with her daughters.
“Abby just keeps hearing the gunshots, and their question now is, how do we go back to school,” Turner said. “Izzy’s stuff is all in her classroom right where she left it, and she’s like, ‘Mommy, I don’t want to go get it. I don’t want to go back into that room.’’
ABC News’ Caroline Guthrie contributed to this report.
