“Hearst Magazines and Yahoo may earn commissions or revenue from some articles through these links.”

A new Netflix show, Monster: The Story of Lyle and Erik Menendez investigates the murders and the trial that gripped the country. Here’s what you should know about the woman at the center of it.

She began her career as a public defender.

Leslie Hope Abramson was born on October 6, 1943, in Queens, New York. After attending Queens College and UCLA Law School, she was admitted to the California State Bar in 1970. She worked for six years as a public defender for the County of Los Angeles.

In her private practice she earned a reputation as an uncompromising personality.

After her time in public defense, she opened her own private practice and was known for her “Take no prisoners tactics“and “spent her professional life building a reputation as a 5-foot-tall, fire-breathing, sleazy, nuclear-powered legal pain in the ass,” the Los Angeles TimesAbramson has twice been named Trial Lawyer of the Year by the LA Criminal Courts Bar Association.

She had high-profile clients before the Menendez brothers.

Dominick Dunne wrote in October 1990 that Abramson was considered “the most brilliant defense attorney in Los Angeles for death penalty cases.” In January of that year, Abramson secured an acquittal for Dr. Khalid Parwez, a Pakistani-born gynecologist accused of strangling and dismembering his 11-year-old son. In 1988, a 17-year-old client, Arnel Salvatierra, “was found guilty of manslaughter, a degree short of premeditated murder, in connection with the death of his father,” according to the Los Angeles Times. He was sentenced to probation after Abramson accused the deceased father of child abuse during the trial. Abramson’s co-counsel Marcia Morrissey called the sentence “appropriate.”

She gained national recognition through her representation of Erik Menendez.

Abramson took on Erik’s case about six months after his and his older brother Lyle’s parents, Jose and Kitty, were murdered in their Beverly Hills mansion on August 20, 1989. The brothers were arrested for the crime in March 1990. “I’ve been representing murder defendants for 27 years, and these guys just don’t measure up to anybody I’ve ever represented,” she told the Washington Post“These are not murderers. These are problem children in a very difficult and grotesque home environment, and they have gone mad.”

She was outraged when the brothers were sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole in 1996.

The brothers’ first trials ended in two juror deadlocks. After the retrial on April 17, 1996, “the third and final jury recommended a life sentence for the Menendez brothers without the possibility of parole.” Abramson had argued that Jose and Kitty Menendez had subjected their sons to years of emotional and sexual abuse and “practically bullied their sons into killing them,” according to the Los Angeles Times “I think it’s extremely cruel and heartless,” Abramson said at a press conference about the verdict.

The California State Bar investigated Abramson for possible ethics violations, but she was acquitted.

Abramson reportedly asked psychiatrist and defense witness Dr. William Vicary to delete material from his notes during Erik’s trial that she said was confidential. In February 1999, the California State Bar closed its investigation into Abramson due to insufficient evidence.

She was featured on Saturday Night Live.

This sketch from October 23, 1993 features John Malkovich as Lyle Menendez, Rob Schneider as Erik Menendez, Phil Hartman as Judge Stanley Weisberg, and Julia Sweeney as Leslie Abramson.

She published a book, The defense is ready: Life in the trenches of criminal lawin 1997.

It is available on Amazon and the New York Times called it “a fascinating and stirring chronicle of her most notorious murder trials.”

She lives in Los Angeles.

In 2001, she founded together with her husband Los Angeles Times Reporter Tim Rutten, moved into a Craftsman-style home outside of Los Angeles. The “3,200-square-foot house has a yard big enough for vegetable and flower gardens, but it also has a pool, which was a requirement for their 7-year-old son,” the Just reported. (Abramson adopted her son “toward the end of the first Menendez trial.”) She has an older daughter, Laine, from her first marriage to a pharmacist, whom she divorced in 1969.

Rutten died in 2022 after a fall in his home. Rutten and Abramson were divorced at the time of his death but were reportedly still close.

In 2004, she was hired by music producer Phil Spector as his representative.

Spector was charged with shooting actress Lana Clarkson in the foyer of his hilltop home on February 3, 2003. Abramson replaced one of OJ Simpson’s defense attorneys, Robert Shapiro, and was later replaced in 2004 by John Gotti’s attorney Bruce Cutler. The altercation between Abramson and Spector was apparently not preordained; Dunne recounted a public argument between the two during an impromptu press conference on May 7, 2004, when Abramson reportedly said, “Philip, please, darling, I really wish you wouldn’t say things like that,” after Spector interrupted her. “We were put in an untenable position and had to resign,” Abramson later said. (Spector was eventually convicted of murder in 2009.)

Edie Falco portrayed her in Law & Order – True Crime.

Falco was nominated for an Emmy for her portrayal of Abramson.

Abramson is now retired.

From time to time, however, she makes public appearances, such as in March 2015, when she delivered the Ruth Bader Ginsburg Lecture at Thomas Jefferson Law School in San Diego. “I think being a good criminal defense attorney requires something that women already have: a desire to understand people and interpersonal relationships,” she said at the school’s 15th annual Women and the Law Conference.

You might also like