Rosie O’Donnell Says Lyle Menendez Made Her Feel Comfortable ‘Loving’ A Straight Man

Baila Eve ZismanApril 15, 2025, 1:41 pmNews >

Comedian Rosie O’Donnell has revealed details about her surprising friendship with Lyle Menendez.

Menendez and his brother, Erik, made headlines when they were convicted of first-degree murder for the 1989 shooting of their parents. In the trial, both brothers alleged that they had been sexually abused by their father. After a mistrial in 1993, the brothers were convicted in 1996 and sentenced to life in prison without parole. They have continued to fight for their freedom, maintaining that they murdered their parents out of fear for their lives.

O’Donnell recently moved to Ireland to escape Donald Trump’s second term as president.

The Menendez brothers became a hot topic again following Ryan Murphy’s Netflix anthology crime drama Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story, released in September 2024. While Murphy’s show became a smash hit on the streaming platform, Erik condemned the show for its portrayal of him and his brother as having an incestuous relationship.

Following her 1996 appearance on Larry King Live, in which she spoke in support of the Menendez brothers, O’Donnell said in an interview with The New York Times how she received a letter from Menendez thanking her for her support, stating that he felt O’Donnell “knew from a personal place that what he was saying was true.”

Years later, in 2019, O’Donnell revealed that as a child, she was sexually abused by her father. She said that when she received Menendez’s letter, she did not respond, “At that point, I had not ventured anywhere near this in my family or in my therapy.”

However, O’Donnell continued to show support for the Menendez brothers and discussed the case on TikTok following a 2022 documentary. After, Menendez’s wife at the time, Rebecca Sneed, reached out to O’Donnell to see if she wanted to be connected.

O’Donnell said that her first conversation with Menendez lasted for hours. “Then he started calling me on a regular basis from the tablet phone thing they have…he would tell me about his life, what he’s been doing in prison, and, for the first time in my life, I felt safe enough to trust and be vulnerable and love a straight man.”

In a June 2023 TikTok, O’Donnell again voiced her support for the Menendez brothers’ bid for freedom, saying, “It’s time. I believe them…they were horribly abused by their parents…free the Menendez brothers.”