Pamela Bozanich was a lead prosecutor in the Menendez brothers’ first trials in 1993, and now she’s facing backlash for her appearance in a new Netflix documentary.
The Menendez Brothers landed on the streaming service this week (October 7), giving Erik and Lyle Menendez the chance to share their side of the story following the contentious reaction to Ryan Murphy’s Monsters.
Right now, they are fighting their case from prison after being arrested in 1990 for the murders of their parents, Kitty and Jose Menendez, citing years of abuse. These claims are explored in the new documentary with fresh insights from family members, reporters, and jurors.
The Menendez Brothers also features extensive interviews with Bozanich, whose strong opinions on the true crime case all these years later haven’t gone down well with many viewers at home. Warning: some may find this content distressing.
Pamela Bozanich faces backlash for gun threat
Pamela Bozanich is facing backlash for her criticism of the online community who share support for Lyle and Erik Menendez, and for warning “TikTok people” that she’s “armed” and there are “guns all over the house.”
For context, during the original trials, Lyle, Erik, numerous family members, and experts testified about the alleged physical, psychological, and sexual the brothers suffered at the hands of their parents.
They ended with hung juries, and for the second trial, testimony about the abuse was largely barred and prosecutors accused them of lying once more. However, new evidence of Jose’s alleged abuse surfaced last year.
In the 2023 Peacock docu-series Menendez + Menudo: Boys Betrayed, Roy Rossello, a former member of the popular Puerto Rican boy band group Menudo, claims he was raped by then-head of RCA Records, Jose, in the ‘80s.
Since then, videos of the brothers’ original testimonies have gone viral, with a rallying of support in a bid to free them from prison.
As stated by New York Times technology reporter Taylor Lorenz in the Netflix documentary, “Millions of young people are looking back online and they’re reexamining old news stories from the 90s and 2000s particularly, and looking at them with a fresh set of eyes.”
In response to the social media movement, Lyle says, “I feel more hope when society seems to be understanding sex abuse even better.”
Long before this, Lyle and Erik had a large group of supporters who were left convinced by their detailed accounts during the televised 1993 trials.
Bozanich played a significant role in these court cases. As a Deputy District Attorney in Los Angeles County at the time, she was tasked with prosecuting the case, painting the Menendez brothers as spoiled rich kids who killed their parents for money.
In the new documentary, she maintains her opinion, stating, “That whole defense was fabricated, and it was done artfully, but it was fabricated.”
But Bozanich’s facing the heaviest backlash to her statements on TikTok supporters. “The only reason we’re doing this special is because of the TikTok movement to free the ‘Menendi’,” she says.
“If that’s how we’re gonna try cases now, why don’t we just, like, have a poll? You present the faces, everybody gets to vote on TikTok, and then we decide who gets to go home.
“Your beliefs are not facts. They’re just beliefs. And by the way, all you TikTok people, I’m armed. We got guns all over the house. So don’t mess with me.”
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This has caught the attention of viewers at home, not least because, prior to this, she admits, “I couldn’t find anyone to say anything nice about Jose Menendez except for his secretary.
“And everybody else had just these awful stories about him and what a monster he was. The loss of Jose Menendez, in my mind, was an actual plus for mankind.”
Her words weren’t much kinder for the brothers themselves. “I had no reaction to the Menendez brothers. There was no visceral reaction,” she adds.
“I didn’t feel like I was in the presence of pure evil. They were like potted plants to me. They were like poisonous potted plants, but there was nothing about them that I found fascinating. They were just these dumb, jock killers.”
Since landing on Netflix, Bozanich has attracted a loud backlash, with one Redditor accusing her of being a “self-obsessed bully.” Another said, “Still don’t get why they gave her so much time when she only deserves a footnote.”
A third added, “So it’s okay to shoot someone you believe is going to harm you, hmm? Interesting…” And a fourth wrote, “So she’s gonna shoot someone for saying that they believe in Erik and Lyle? What an example to follow.”
Similarly, another Redditor said, “So it is okay for her to arm herself for protection against random people that she doesn’t know, but it’s not ok for two victims of abuse to buy a gun for protection against their abusers? The hypocrisy of this woman is just staggering.”
BTW, that prosecutor who said she knew it was "plain old greed" is Pamela Bozanich, who said that men can not be raped… she is such a disgusting woman, and I can not believe she is a part of this documentary https://t.co/DvDAyVtZ2H pic.twitter.com/vNPfW1n26V
— 💌BETTER LEFT UNSENT WEEK💌 (@danosgerwig) September 23, 2024
Over on X/Twitter, the chat is much the same. “Pamela Bozanich is a horrible person. She got her 15 minutes of fame on this documentary,” said one. “She didn’t have to do that interview and then to tell TikTokers to not come after her and she had guns! DISGUSTING BEHAVIOR!”
Another said, “This woman made a mockery of their abuse throughout the entire trial and still chooses to dehumanize them to this day.”
Others shared a clip from the original trial in which Bozanich controversially argued “men could not be raped because they lack the necessary equipment to be raped.”
“BTW, that prosecutor who said she knew it was ‘plain old greed’ is Pamela Bozanich, who said that men can not be raped,” wrote one. “She is such a disgusting woman, and I cannot believe she is a part of this documentary.”
Where is she now?
Now 70 years old, Bozanich is retired and enjoying her life with her husband Peter Bozanich in California. According to the State Bar of California, as of 2005, her license is expired.
This lines up with what appears to be her Classmates profile, which says, “I am a retired trial lawyer for the LA District Attorney’s office. Retired in 2004 to stay home and raise my late-in-life daughter.”
It goes on to say she’s “living in Long Beach and trying to decide what to do next before my brain totally dries up.”
Prior to Netflix’s The Menendez Brothers, Bozanich has appeared in a number of documentaries on the case over the years, from Dominick Dunne’s Power, Privilege & Justice in 2002 to the 2024 docu-series Menendez Brothers: Victims or Villains.
For more on the case, read about how the Menendez brothers were caught, Lyle’s shocking claim about Dr. Jerome Oziel, and where Oziel is now.