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Where Is the Menendez Brothers' Defense Attorney Leslie Abramson Years After the Trials?
Outspoken trial attorney Leslie Abramson once told reporters that the convicted killers grew up in a "grotesque home environment" before killing their parents in 1989.
Tough-as-nails trial lawyer Leslie Abramson, famous for representing one-half of the Menendez brothers in the mid-1990s, left her mark in one of the most gripping murder cases of recent memory.
The New York City-born attorney represented Erik Menendez in both his trials after he and his brother, Lyle Menendez, murdered their parents inside their Beverly Hills, California home. Ultimately, the young men were found guilty of the 1989 double murder and continue to serve life sentences today.
The stunning events are the focus of Law & Order True Crime: The Menendez Murders, now available to watch on Peacock, with Emmy Award and Golden Globe-winning actress Edie Falco (The Sopranos, Nurse Jackie) starring as Erik Menendez’s staunch defender.
But where is Leslie Abramson now? Keep reading to find out.
RELATED: Law & Order True Crime: The Menendez Murders Is Now Streaming On Peacock — What to Know
Where is Leslie Abramson now?
Leslie Abramson, 81, keeps a relatively low profile these days. According to information posted by The State Bar of California, she was admitted to the Bar in 1970 and practiced law until 2013. She was again listed as active in 2018, but has been listed as inactive as of June 1, 2023.
She last worked at the Law Office of Leslie H. Abramson in Monrovia, California in Los Angeles County.
On October 9, 2024, she appeared in an interview with Entertainment Tonight, denouncing the series Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story by calling it a “piece of sh-t” and stating she didn’t tune in.
When asked about the case, she said, “I will make no comments about my client. None whatsoever.”
Leslie Abramson’s Career Before the Menendez Murders
Leslie Abramson was born in 1943 in Queens, New York City, and raised by her mother and grandmother after her father abandoned the family, according to The Washington Post. She married and had a daughter before moving to Los Angeles in 1964, eventually divorcing the child’s father.
She later married Los Angeles Times reporter Tim Rutten, with whom she adopted a son, according to People. The pair divorced in 2007.
Abramson earned her law degree from UCLA and spent her first six years as a public defender, where she became known for her no-nonsense demeanor and “take-no-prisoners tactics” before going into private practice, per The Washington Post.
She would go on to receive several accolades, including in 1985, when she became the first woman to earn the title of Outstanding Trial Attorney by the Los Angeles Criminal Courts Bar Association, according to a June 23, 1989 article by The Los Angeles Times. The piece was published less than a month before Erik and Lyle Menendez gunned down Kitty and José Menendez and titled “The Defender: Some Say Leslie Abramson Is the Best Female Criminal Defense Lawyer Around. Others Say She’s the Best, Period.”
At the time, Abramson defended Brian Hale, whose murder conviction for killing two elderly men was overturned on the grounds of mental incompetency. She also defended gynecologist Dr. Khalid Parwez, who was accused — and later acquitted — of strangling his 11-year-old son and horrifically chopping his body into hundreds of pieces, according to the Los Angeles Times.
Abramson's mission in life was to see the death penalty abolished and, according to The Washington Post, she “spent her working life building a reputation as a 4-foot-11, fire-eating, mudslinging, nuclear-strength pain in the legal butt.”
In 1990, famed journalist Dominick Dunne wrote in Vanity Fair that Abramson was “considered to be the most brilliant Los Angeles defense lawyer for death-row cases.”
In 1988, one year before Erik and Lyle Menendez shot their parents to death, Abramson successfully defended 17-year-old Arnel Salvatierra, who faced charges of first-degree murder for the 1986 shooting death of his father. With Abramson’s support, the teen was instead convicted of voluntary manslaughter after abuse allegations came to light and sentenced to probation, reported Dunne.
The Menendez brothers hoped for a similar outcome.
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Leslie Abramson’s Work as Erik Menendez’s Attorney
Abramson’s reputation gained national status — and a contemporaneous Saturday Night Live episode — when she began representing Erik Menendez in 1993, during which the brothers shared one trial with two separate juries. Abramson argued — in points that continue to weigh on the conscience of many — that the brothers killed their parents after suffering years of physical and sexual abuse.
Erik Menendez’s jury of six women and six men was hung: The females voted he be charged with manslaughter, while the males voted for murder, according to The Washington Post.
"I've represented people charged with murder for 27 years, and these guys just don't measure up to anybody else I've ever represented," she told the outlet. "These are not murderers. These are troubled kids in a very difficult and grotesque home environment, and they cracked."
After two hung juries in 1993, the Menendez brothers were tried again in 1995, though evidence of their parents’ alleged abuse was severely restricted in the second trial. In 1996, the brothers were found guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison, where they remain today.
"It's a grotesquely disproportionate verdict and punishment for what happened here," she told The Washington Post at the time. "When children kill their parents, something is wrong in that family. It's a different moral mix for a sexual predator, those who kill strangers. They really are a scourge of society… This is a different degree of moral awfulness."
Abramson was later investigated in connection with the Menendez trial for allegedly asking a psychiatrist to alter his notes, though the District Attorney’s Office eventually declined to prosecute because of a lack of evidence, according to The New York Times. The California Bar also declined to pursue misconduct charges.
Fast forward nearly 30 years later, the brothers have gained an avalanche of support in hopes that newly reviewed evidence pointed toward José Menendez’s alleged abuse will set them free.
A hearing has been scheduled for December 11, 2024.
Leslie Abramson’s Life After the Menendez Murders
In 1997, Abramson wrote her memoir, The Defense is Ready: Life in the Trenches of Criminal Law, published by Simon & Schuster.
According to the description, the book “takes you inside today's courtroom for a stunning firsthand account of how the courage and timidity, wisdom and folly, selflessness and venality of real lawyers, judges, victims and defendants are interwoven into the complex fabric of our often frustrating criminal justice system.”
Abramson stepped in the courtroom spotlight again in 2004 when defending notable record producer Phil Spector, replacing O.J. Simpson’s “dream team” lawyer Robert Shapiro after a mistrial for the 2003 murder of Lana Clarkson, according to The Los Angeles Times. Spector, then represented by yet another defense attorney, was eventually found guilty, per NBC News.
In October 2024, the feature-length documentary The Menendez Brothers published an email from Abramson in which she expressed little desire to publicly discuss the case that catapulted her into the national spotlight, according to Entertainment Tonight.
“30 years is a long time,” she wrote of the Menendez brothers' trial. “I’d like to leave the past in the past. No amount of media, nor teenage petitions will alter the fate of these clients. Only the court can do that, and they have ruled.”
Learn more about Abramson’s role in the case by watching all eight episodes of Law & Order True Crime: The Menendez Murders, now available on Peacock.
