PARTNERS IN CRIME

O’Donnell Reveals How Often She Chats With Convicted Menendez Bro

The two have been close since 2022, when the Menendezs’ culpability was called into question after a Netflix documentary revealed they were sexually abused.

Rosie O’Donnell spilled the tea Saturday about how often she still chats with good friend and convicted murderer Lyle Menendez.

The comedian told Page Six that they talk “about two or three times a week” as he and his brother Erik Menendez serve out their life sentences for murdering their parents in 1989.

O’Donnell cozied up with the Menendez brothers in 2022 after watching the Netflix-famous documentary about their conviction. The case has come under scrutiny after the film exposed Menendez’s father allegedly sexually abusing both his children for years.

O’Donnell is still holding out hope that the brothers will be released. She said she’s “sure of it in her mind” that the two will find freedom soon.

“I think it’s the only way that you can love and care for someone who’s serving life without parole, is to have endless hope and believe in their ability to get out of this really inhumane sentence,” she said.

O’Donnell revealed her “straight” love affair with Menendez in an April interview with The New York Times. The two began speaking in person after the Menendez documentary came out, but their relationship stretches back much further. In 1996, O’Donnell announced publicly that she believed the brothers had indeed killed their parents in self-defense, and Menendez sent her a letter of thanks for the support. Since 2022, the two have been thick as thieves.

“He started calling me on a regular basis from the tablet phone thing they have,” she said at the time. “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.”

The two have bonded over the years, and Menendez was the one who suggested she get a dog for her child, Clay, who has autism. When she visited the prison where Menendez resides, she noticed prisoners were sitting with golden retrievers. Menendez told O’Donnell that incarcerated men were training the dogs to help disabled children.

Clay eventually got matched with a black Labrador mix named Kuma.

The dog made a massive impact on Clay’s life. O’Donnell shared that her child used to draw eerie depictions of people with “bloody hands and knives,” but that Clay no longer makes such disturbing art.

“The laughter has come back, the brightness in their eyes, the ability to go out to restaurants, the ability to stay present and not disappear into themselves, usually because Kuma is coming over and nudging them,” she shared.

She was so amazed by Clay’s results that she even decided to make a documentary about the program titled Unleashing Hope.

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