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Leslie Abramson: Everything to Know About Erik Menendez’s Defense Lawyer

The Menendez Brothers’ 1993 trial was one of the most closely followed cases of its time. Learn more about the lawyer who defended Erik and fought to save him from the death penalty.

Image Credit: REX/Shutterstock Lyle and Erik Menendez continue to serve life sentences in prison for the brutal murders of their parents on August 20, 1989, when the brothers—then 21 and 18—shot and killed them in their family’s Beverly Hills mansion. The 10-episode season aims to explore whether the siblings were cold-blooded killers seeking to inherit their family’s fortune, as the prosecution argued, or victims of a lifetime of physical, emotional, and sexual abuse at the hands of their parents, as high-profile defense attorney Leslie Abramson claimed and the brothers continue to maintain. The Washington Post didn’t hold back when writing about the tenacious lawyer in 1996, describing her as a “fire-eating, mud-slinging, nuclear-strength pain in the legal butt,” and noting her “frizzy yellow mess” of hair.

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