This article contains descriptions of sexual abuse and mentions of self-harm. For support, visit https://www.wannatalkaboutit.com/, contact the National Domestic Violence Hotline at (800) 799-7233, or visit thehotline.org.
It’s been 35 years since the Menendez Brothers first came into the public eye for the murder of their parents, yet with the release of new Netflix show Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story, their story has once again come to the forefront of everyone’s minds. Though the show has helped bring their story back to light, it is also riddled with inaccuracies and faulty portrayals that do a great injustice to the actual story. So, let’s discuss this infamous case.
The Basics
On August 20, 1989, Erik and Lyle Menendez, 18 and 21 at the time, respectively, shot and killed their parents, Jose and Kitty Menendez, in their Beverly Hills home. Police responded later to a 911 call made by Lyle from the house, screaming “someone killed my parents.” The scene was so gruesome that the police initially thought it may be a mafia hit, which was theoretically possible since Jose was an incredibly successful and influential businessman. Yet in the wake of the murders, the brothers ran up a huge bill, spending nearly $700,000 in just a few weeks. Erik then saw a therapist because the guilt and grief he was experiencing in the aftermath of the murders had made him suicidal. He ended up admitting the entire crime to his therapist, Dr. Jerome Oziel, who immediately told his mistress, Judalon Smyth, and began recording his sessions with the Menendez brothers. When Dr. Oziel broke up with Judalon, she went to the police with allegations against him and mentioned the tapes in which the Menendez brothers had confessed to killing their parents. This prompted the arrest of Lyle on March 8, 1990, and Erik two days later when he returned from a tennis tournament in Israel. Their first trial began in July 1993, with Erik represented by Leslie Abramson and Lyle by Jill Lansing. Six months of testimony and jury deliberation ensued, in which the defense (Lyle and Erik’s lawyers) argued that the boys were victims of horrific sexual abuse by their father and had killed their parents in self-defense. Despite emotional and detailed testimony from both brothers and a slew of family and friends, the jurors failed to reach a consensus on whether to charge the brothers with manslaughter (10-15 years in jail) or first-degree murder (death penalty or life sentence in prison), leading to a mistrial. Their second trial began in October 1995 and was over much quicker than the previous trial. The judge didn’t allow much evidence in this trial, legally invalidating the brothers’ abuse and eliminating self-defense as a possible motive. The jury found both Erik and Lyle guilty of first-degree murder, giving them both life sentences without parole.
The Show
Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story, a new dramatized Netflix anthology from showrunner Ryan Murphy, known for his work on Dahmer and American Horror Story, has already found immense popularity as one of Netflix’s most-watched shows, but the details of the case and depiction of the brothers in the show has caused backlash for its insensitivity and inaccuracy. While Murphy and those behind this show inevitably had to take some liberties when adapting the case to a television show, the choices they made ultimately portrayed the brothers as selfish, arrogant and angry psychopaths – exactly how the prosecution tried to paint them. Even the cinematography in how the shots were arranged and characters were placed in the frame hinted at the Menendez Brothers being the villains, including how shadows always seemed to fall on their faces, making them look increasingly sinister and evil. This may seem like a small thing, but direction of this kind gradually cues the viewer into who is good and who is bad based on how they show up on our screen. By directing the actors who played Erik and Lyle in this way, Murphy essentially portrayed the Menendez Brothers as an evil force in this series. Meanwhile, the actual monsters of this show, Jose and Kitty, were humanized and mainly painted as loving parents who were afraid of their out-of-control, spoiled children, which based on testimony, doesn’t seem to be the case. Not only this, but Erik and Lyle are hyper-sexualized throughout the series, with several shots of the boys only in speedos, or nearly naked getting out of the shower. Even more so, the show seems to imply a relationship between the boys that borders on being incestuous through several touchy scenes and interactions that significantly undermine the trauma behind why Erik and Lyle were bonded so closely together. Throughout the show, it is obvious that Murphy relied on only one perspective when gathering information for the show, that of the prosecution and heavily biased (pseudo)journalist Dominick Dunne. He never even bothered to visit the Menendez Brothers at the prison in California where they are housed – not while writing and creating the show or after its smash success. This seems absurd because if you were to write a show based on two real people’s lives, wouldn’t you want to talk to them and hear their point of view? Well, that’s if accuracy and doing right by the case was valued – and it certainly wasn’t in this show. In fact, the only person who went to visit the brothers whose story they were telling was the actor who played Erik in the show, Cooper Koch. Visiting the Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility in San Diego, CA with Kim Kardashian to help fight for prison reform, Koch says that getting to talk to Erik in real-life only affirmed his beliefs about the case, saying that he supports Erik and believes him. Members of the Menendez family put out a statement calling the show a “nightmare,” and Erik himself criticized the show, saying it misleadingly portrayed him and his brother. Parts of the show were done expertly, such as the spot-on casting of pretty much everyone involved in the case, the ‘80s outfits worn by Erik and Lyle (just the costumes in general) and the stellar performances by Koch as Erik and Nicholas Alexander Chavez as Lyle. Episode 5, shot entirely in one take, was an absolutely heartbreaking masterclass in acting from Koch, making for the only decent episode in the entire series in terms of truthfulness. Ultimately though, the falsehoods spread by this show and the disparaging portrayals of Erik and Lyle make it an affront to the actual case and the devastating trauma associated with it.
The Case
The case was never about innocence or guilt, since the brothers fully confessed to the murders and never denied they did it. But they claim they acted in self-defense, out of fear for their lives. The only problem is that in this case, there is no legally perfect self-defense to be claimed, only imperfect self-defense, which is trickier in terms of the law. In perfect self-defense, the defendant’s actions must be reasonable and necessary. In imperfect self-defense, though the defendant may truly believe they are in danger and that their actions are reasonable and necessary, a lay person pulled from the street wouldn’t agree. Thus, since they looked like the perfect, successful American family from the outside and there was no legally admissible proof that Kitty and Jose were in the process of planning to kill their sons when Erik and Lyle stormed into the den and shot them repeatedly with shotguns, the best they can claim is imperfect. Why would Erik and Lyle fear for their lives then? Well, because Jose was a cruel, abusive father who sexually abused both of his sons for years while Kitty ignored it, leading to such trauma that made Erik and Lyle truly think their lives were in danger. While we won’t cover the abuse in detail, Lyle’s court testimony can be viewed here, if you’d like to know the specifics.
Ultimately, the question boils down to where it crosses the line between justified defense and murder. Were the brother victims of horrible trauma and unfathomable abuse their entire childhoods? Yes. But does that make it okay to kill people? No. So, was this fear for their lives actually justified, making the killings in the name of self-defense and therefore lessening their sentence? While the answer to this is incredibly complex and nuanced, varying from person to person, it’s important to understand a few things about what Lyle and Erik endured, and what led them to this drastic course of action.
While Jose stopped abusing Lyle when he was 8-years-old, after he begged him to stop, he began abusing Erik when he was only 6-years-old, continuing pretty much up until the murders. Kitty knew as well, and did nothing to stop it, even telling her therapist a few months before her death that she was hiding terrible secrets about the family. Overall, she was an emotional wreck who hated her children and was devastated by her husband’s continuous affairs, usually turning to drugs and alcohol.
The boiling point came when Erik finally told Lyle that their father was still abusing him, and the boys realized their lives were in danger. Jose had repeatedly told Erik that if he were to tell anyone about what was going on, he would kill him. In Erik’s mind, it wasn’t just a threat, but a promise – so when he told his brother, he assumed it would only be a matter of time. Lyle then confronted Jose, resulting in a heated argument that ended with Jose forbidding the boys to leave the house like they planned, and instead ordered Erik to go up to his room, wait there and then shut the doors to the den. In that moment, they truly, wholeheartedly believed their lives were in danger, that when those doors opened, it would be their parents or them that would die. So they acted.
Would this be a reasonable course of action according to most people? No. But, it’s important to realize that when the boys had their psychiatric intake workup done, Dr. Vicary, one of the psychiatrists used by the defense, found that Erik had an emotional maturity of an 8- to 12-year-old, and Lyle of a 12- to 14-year-old. This stunted maturity clearly illustrates how their logical thinking skills could’ve been so flawed, coupled with the lifelong sexual trauma that obviously affected and rewired their brain chemistry. It becomes easier to see how this threat was enough to indicate to the brothers that their lives were in danger, spurring them into action.
The defense also tried to claim premeditation as they bought the guns ahead of time. While this facet is a difficult nuance since they bought the guns on Friday, the actual act of killing was spurred on in light of fear. At the very moment Jose told Erik to wait in his room, the brothers believed that they were about to die, so they did the only thing that came to mind when threatened with such a horrifying possibility and were paralyzed with fear: they shot their parents.
There are also several other pieces of evidence worth looking into to better understand this case, such as the numerous character witnesses who testified on behalf of the boys as opposed to the singular character witness that would testify for Jose – who was also his employee. Erik’s letter to his cousin telling of the abuse, Lyle’s essay “I Will Change Your Verdict,” Diane Van Der Molen’s testimony, Norma Novelli’s book and the screenplay Erik wrote with his friend Craig Cignarelli are all also pieces of this case worth noting, but for the purpose of this article, won’t be heavily discussed.
Popularity and Polarization
The Menendez Case has been prevalent in the media from the very second it began and no shortage of TV specials have been made detailing every aspect of their lives and their crime. This of course comes with the burden of having a great deal of public opinion on every aspect there is.
The political climate when the case was tried must also be addressed, regarding both the attitudes towards sexual abuse and the California criminal justice system. Back in the 90s, very few people believed men could be victims of sexual assault, much less these affluent, seemingly well-off boys from Beverly Hills, and definitely not at the hands of their own father. The male jurors in the first trial refused to believe it, which was one of the main reasons for the hung jury. In 2024, we have a greater understanding of sexual abuse and are more likely to believe victims, even male victims. Doubt still exists, of course, but the attitudes have largely changed and the outcome of this trial could very well be different if they were retried today.
The attitudes towards the legal system were also at an all-time low back when both Menendez trials occurred. The first trial was directly following the acquittal of the police officers responsible for the brutal beating of Rodney King, leading many to lose faith in the justice system. The distrust and anger only heightened for the second trial, which happened right after OJ Simpson was found not guilty of the murder of his ex-wife and her friend. Many believed that OJ (who had been at the Menendez house when the boys were kids after doing a commercial for Jose’s company at the time, and happened to be Erik’s jail-cell neighbor for a while when they were awaiting their trials) was guilty and that the justice system was flawed. This made the prosecutor and judge crack down even more during the second Menendez trial to all but guarantee a much needed victory for the Los Angeles DA office. The judge didn’t allow much evidence this time around, ignoring the abuse and instead carrying out an unfair trial that was decided before it could even begin.
Discussion and Analysis
The creation of Monsters begs the question as to the level of culpability one has in making a show like this concerning real people and their lives and chance at a retrial. This isn’t a story someone made up, it’s the real and devastating life story of Erik and Lyle, whose chances at freedom could very well be affected. By calling it Monsters, viewers have already been told what to believe. Every single aspect of the show painted the brothers to be money-motivated psychopathic killers, rather than the victims of horrific abuse that were backed into a corner from which they only saw one means of escape. From the framing and direction of the brothers on-screen to the dialogue that made them seem like arrogant, rude, spoiled brats who scared their parents, this show immediately told us what to believe rather than actually doing the story justice and letting viewers decide their perceptions. In addition, such a focus on the hyper-sexualization of the brothers and incessant hinting at an incestuous relationship between Erik and Lyle was not only horrendous in a story of such horrific trauma and abuse, but also factually incorrect and damaging to the case as a whole. Just take for example one scene in which significant time is dedicated to showing Lyle going to insane lengths to maintain his appearance in prison. Every second of screen time in a show is of vital importance, and the sheer amount of time spent on this painted Lyle as a superficial rich kid who had no remorse for his crime, completely detracting from any sympathy we could feel regarding the abuse he endured. Episode 7 in particular is a complete mockery, for the entire episode is completely speculative and injurious to the brothers’ story. In addition, why did Dunne have such a big role in this show? There’s no need to glorify the pseudo journalist made famous for butchering perceptions of this case through his incredibly biased coverage. It is not important to understand his motivations for reporting the way he did or the story concerning his daughter – this story isn’t his, it is Erik and Lyle’s. Though, it seems Murphy relied on Dunne’s “facts” more than the actual trial, which could be why he is so glorified in Monsters. Episode 9 is ridiculously egregious too, and wrong on so many levels. This episode goes past the point of the inaccuracies in earlier episodes and crosses the line into blatant and targeted lies meant to weaken the trauma that this case entails. The final scene was the nail in the coffin, for it leaves viewers with a certain perception and image in their minds of the type of people Murphy paints the parents to be (doting parents with aspirations of running for Congress as a united family), which is only furthered in the words put on screen saying that the brothers “maintain their allegation.” In the year 2024, even in the wake of the Me-Too movement, Murphy has shown that victims of sexual assault, especially men, are still not believed.
Many object to the brothers’ claims of abuse and claim they killed their parents for the money, citing the fact that they spent nearly $700,000 in the week following their parents’ death. Yes, they did spend an insane amount of money, but they were finally free from the abuse they’d been victim to all their lives. Nevertheless, they were dealing with the psychological trauma of having just killed their parents and keeping it a secret. No one would cope with that in a normal way, so possibly the exorbitant spending was an attempt to make themselves feel better. They’d never worked, they had no concept of money. They were just spending, spending, spending in hopes of not feeling the way they surely did at that time. It was obviously a warning sign they were spiraling, and should’ve been seen as a cry for help rather than being the evidence for the argument that they killed their parents for money.
In the documentary, Erik says it was the thought that his father would think he was a failure that kept him from taking his own life during the wild spending days where they were supposedly carefree. Even though the man had abused him nearly his entire life, Erik still didn’t want to let his father down – that’s how warped his mind had become. Lyle too states he cried himself to sleep most nights. Normal people don’t consume $700,000 worth of anything in such a short period of time, even if they did come into a huge sum of money. Lyle and Erik were spending to avoid thinking or feeling. Lyle had pretty much the perfect life at Princeton with his girlfriend, and threw it away to come home and save his baby brother. He was never cut off, and it seems Lyle and Erik never were in want of anything money could buy – so why would money ever be a motivating factor? Even if it was, there are so many other ways to have gotten money, ways much less traumatic and drastic than murdering your parents.
People often tend to cite Lyle’s odd behavior upon getting to prison as evidence that he acted as a cold-blooded killer. Sure, Lyle didn’t make the best choices in prison after that book very much incriminated him. However, most people would likely go a bit crazy if they went from bearing decades of abuse while living in luxury to suddenly not only being incarcerated and coping with having taken your parents’ lives, but having the trial in which you may be sentenced to death be publicized and seen as entertainment. Not to mention having to recall all of that likely repressed trauma for the lawyers and then on stand for the world to see? So many victims of sexual assault can’t ever talk about it, much less while the world is watching.
The prosecution’s main question, and one repeated by Pam Bozanich in the recent Netflix documentary The Menendez Brothers (2024) is why didn’t Erik run away? Why didn’t they just leave? Well, long story short is that he tried. Erik wanted to go to Stanford and finally be free of his abuser, but Jose said Erik wouldn’t go to Stanford and that he would go to UCLA and live at home instead. That sounds like an abuser wanting to keep his abusee close, because if Jose really did want the family to be like the Kennedys, wouldn’t he want his son at the much academically superior Stanford?
Victims of abuse often feel hopeless, since the abuser takes away any hope of ever escaping. After his father shot down his one chance of escape, Erik probably couldn’t fathom that he’d ever be free. The argument as a whole is just ridiculous. First of all, how many domestic violence cases exist where women, though horribly beaten, refuse to leave their partners? Many honestly believe when someone they love says they’re going to change, or quite frankly, their brain rewires the abuse to be a form of love, because it is simply easier to cope with that than the fact that their loved one is hurting them. Second of all, Jose was an incredibly wealthy and powerful businessman. Is there anywhere Erik could’ve truly gone to outrun his father? It seems highly unlikely.
Parts of the trial too are incredibly upsetting in how they show the lingering effects of the trauma Erik and Lyle have. One such example is Erik’s struggle with the microphone during the trial. While this was mocked in the show, it was likely an involuntary trauma reaction spurred by having a phallic shaped object pointed towards his mouth, especially since it was during his testimony on the abuse. It should never have been mocked as it was, and was really just such a visible manifestation of how the years and years of abuse had fundamentally broken parts of his mind. Erik’s admission that he would put cinnamon on his father’s food to make the semen he’d have to swallow taste better, and that he would constantly put lemon on his food to numb his taste buds for the same purpose was devastating. Erik even said he felt freer in prison than he ever did at home, something that seems unfathomable to many, but to him, is the full and honest truth.
In a punishment that seems both cruel and unusual, the brothers, who really only had each other to lean on, were separated for over 20 years in different prisons before being reunited again in 2018. Today, both brothers are married and have found purpose in prison, leading groups to support other sexual abuse victims and other initiatives dedicated to helping others.
Future?
Though the brothers have been imprisoned for many years now, there may still be hope of freedom, as new evidence has come to light that could possibly lead to a retrial or resentencing. In early 2023, Roy Rossello, a former member of boy band Menudo (signed to RCA Records), came forward to say he had been sexually assaulted by Jose, who was an executive at RCA Records at the time, while he was a teenager. This could help to support Erik and Lyle’s claims of abuse and help absolve doubt that some still have regarding the validity of their stories – even after everything. The second piece of evidence is a letter that Erik wrote to his cousin Andy Cano a year before the murders, telling him that the abuse was still happening. The only problem? Cano died in 2003, meaning that doubt will surely be cast on the existence and validity of this newfound letter, though if admitted into evidence, it could help clearly demonstrate that the killings were truly in self-defense, and that the abuse was as bad as both brothers testified it was.
Los Angeles County District attorney George Gascon said on October 3, 2024 that the Menendez case was being reviewed again for a potential resentencing or new trial in the wake of the newfound evidence. A recent article from Vanity Fair even reports that an announcement might be made in the coming weeks.
Ultimately, this show is not about the Menendez brothers. It is some warped reality concocted by Murphy to sell more Netflix subscriptions. If he did want to base the show on various opinions on the case, even pseudo journalists with unresolved trauma, fine, but he shouldn’t get to call it the Erik and Lyle Menendez story then. The story Murphy has told is no longer theirs, rather, some extreme distortion that is not only incredibly insensitive, but potentially harmful to the chance of a retrial. Many say that the title Monsters refers to Kitty and Jose, but perhaps, it refers to Murphy for creating this harrowing affront to the case and to Erik and Lyle themselves.