Erik Menendez began a friendship with Betty Burke Oldfield — a current Santa Clarita resident and former Santa Clarita Valley Woman of the Year — after he and his brother were found guilty of killing their parents in 1989.
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Erik, 18 years old at the time, and his brother Lyle, 21 years old at the time, are now serving life sentences without parole in California prisons.
Their motive was sexual and emotional abuse.
Oldfield, now nearly 90 years old, served as an alternate juror on Erik’s case and began communicating after a mistrial.
By being involved in the case, Oldfield says the brothers “had reached a point where they couldn’t live like that anymore and they were truthfully afraid that their dad was going to do something to them if there was a chance that they might tell somebody.” She added “He had threatened them to kill them if they did.”
During an interview with KHTS AM-1220 Radio, Oldfield clarified her relationship is only with Erik, adding “It’s not brothers, it’s brother. It’s Erik.”
The first time Oldfield spoke to Menendez was when she was attending a dinner hosted by defense attorney Leslie Abramson.
Abramson had invited a handful of jurors to her home and had arranged a call from jail with Menendez.
Oldfield recalls at first, he would call a few of them and then only she continued to receive calls.
Oldfield adds that the first time she went to go see him, she went with Abramson.
To this day, Menendez and Oldfield still speak to each other on the phone.
“He doesn’t write as much now, but he calls frequently. Two, three times a week we speak,” says Oldfield.
When asked about the type of conversations they lead, Oldfield says they don’t get personal or talk about his past, but that they feel close to one another.
She added, “He’s very busy. He tells me about the classes he’s taking. He tells me about the group he’s formed, which is a self-help group.”
While they are leading two very different lives, Oldfield says she feels close to Menendez because they have a lot of opinions about topics that are very similar, and their attitudes are similar too.
Oldfield recalls the trial and says she would have never voted for first degree murder, and although “naturally they would have been convicted, on one degree or another, hopefully it would not have been this severe.”
She also adds that she has openly criticized the convicting judge several times for giving them a life sentence, and that “had they been girls, they would have been convicted, but never without the possibility of parole.”
Now the two laugh and say they have adopted one another “just like you would have a member of a family,” Oldfield adds. “We’re important to one another, and for some reason, this is the way it has turned into.”
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