Rosie O'Donnell says 'it's time' to 'free the Menendez brothers' and admits she's 'very close' to Lyle

• Rosie O'Donnell said she believes the Menendez brothers are "innocent" on TikTok.
• She added that she's been talking to Lyle Menendez on the phone and they've become "very close."

Rosie O'Donnell says "it's time" to free the Menendez brothers nearly three decades after their murder conviction.

In a TikTok video posted over the weekend, the 61-year old actor and comedian said Lyle and Erik Menendez were "boys who had been incested" and were therefore acting in self-defense and were "innocent" in the 1989 murders of their parents Jose and Kitty Menendez. The brothers were convicted in 1996.

O'Donnell said that Lyle, 55, wrote her a letter upon his conviction saying that he knew that she knew he and his brother Erik, 52, were "innocent."

O'Donnell alluded in the video to the fact that she was sexually abused by her father in her childhood, a claim she didn't make publicly until 2019 in the book "Ladies Who Punch," an exposé of "The View."

She said she was "afraid" to talk about her alleged abuse at the time, so she didn't write Lyle back in 1996.

Cut to May 2023, when O'Donnell saw the Peacock documentary series "Menendez + Menudo: Boys Betrayed." After she spoke on social media about how she believes Jose was abusive to his sons and Menudo singer Roy Rosselló, who made new allegations of sexual assault against Jose in the show, O'Donnell received a call.

It was Lyle's wife Rebecca, and this time, she responded. She has since been "talking and sharing and becoming very close" with Lyle via phone calls.

"So, we believe them now, because of Roy from Menudo? Do we believe them now because of the letter that Erik sent his cousin eight months before the murder?" O'Donnell asked rhetorically in her TikTok video.

She added that she believed that the brothers had been "horribly abused" and "did the unthinkable" in response. "They've paid the price for that," O'Donnell said, referring to the length of their prison sentences and allegedly clean prison records as reasons why they should be released.

"Free the Menendez brothers, it's time," the former talk show host concluded her video.

Erik and Lyle killed their parents on August 20, 1989 in the family's Beverly Hills home. They quickly confessed to the murders, but pled innocent and said they were acting in self-defense after a lifetime of abuse. Their defense attorneys provided details of alleged sexual assault committed by their parents at their murder trial.

After the first trial ended in a mistrial with a deadlocked jury in 1994, the brothers were convicted of two counts of first-degree murder in 1996 and each and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.