30 years after the murders, the brothers tell their story. Watch The Menendez Brothers on October 7, only on Netflix.
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How the “painful” and “dishonest” series Monsters – along with Kim Kardashian and a disturbing documentary – may free Erik and Lyle Menendez.
On August 20, 1989, Jose and Kitty Menendez were watching TV in their Beverly Hills mansion when their sons, Lyle and Erik, walked into the living room. They were not there to show filial piety. The brothers, then aged 21 and 18, carried 12-gauge shotguns and killed their parents. Jose was shot six times, Kitty 10.
The police initially thought the deaths may have been a targeted assassination by organised criminals, but in March 1990 arrested Lyle and Erik after they embarked on a lavish spending spree – including cars, watches and even a chicken restaurant – in the wake of the killings. They were accused of murdering their parents to inherit their father’s substantial fortune.
The brothers were tried – separately – in 1993, and each claimed that they had acted in self-defence after years of sexual abuse at the hands of Jose, who was head of the RCA record label at the time of his death. The juries were deadlocked and mistrials declared.
At a second trial, hot on the heels of OJ Simpson’s controversial acquittal, the pair were tried together and much of the evidence about the alleged sexual abuse was deemed inadmissible, amid claims that men could not be raped. The brothers were convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Lyle, now 56, and Erik, 53, have spent more than 35 years behind bars in California.
Like many dramas based on real-life events (here’s looking at you, Baby Reindeer), Monsters has provoked fierce debate and threatens to reopen old wounds – especially because of its portrayal of the Menendez brothers and their high-spending in the weeks following the killings.
The Menendez family has disowned the series, with Erik claiming that “Netflix’s dishonest portrayal of the tragedies surrounding our crime have taken the painful truths several steps backward” and two dozen others saying “it is sad that Ryan Murphy, Netflix, and all others involved in this series, do not have an understanding of the impact of years of physical, emotional and sexual abuse”. Among their objections are scenes that show the brothers kissing and showering together. Both denied having a sexual relationship, but Murphy has said that “there are people who say that never happened; there were people who said it did happen”.
Murphy, 58, has found himself dragged into a war of words with Lyle and Erik, neither of whom have actually seen the show in prison, and he claims that “they’re playing the victim card right now - ‘poor, pitiful us’ - which I find reprehensible and disgusting”.
Despite this, the series has seemingly also led to calls for evidence to be re-examined amid widespread fears that the brothers have been victims of a miscarriage of justice. “The Menendez brothers should be sending me flowers. They haven’t had so much attention in 30 years. And it’s gotten the attention of not only this country, but all over the world,” Murphy told The Hollywood Reporter this week.
Nicholas Chavez, Cooper Koch and Javier Bardem in Monsters: The Lyle And Erik Menendez Story. Photo / Netflix
“There’s sort of an outpouring of interest in their lives and in the case. I know for a fact that many people have offered to help them because of the interest of my show and what we did. There is no world that we live in where the Menendez brothers or their wives or lawyers would say, ‘You know what, that was a wonderful, accurate depiction of our clients.’ That was never going to happen, and I wasn’t interested in that happening.”
But Murphy can’t take all the credit. Help has also come in the unlikely form of Kim Kardashian, who has visited the brothers at the Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility (along with Cooper Koch, who plays Erik in the series). The reality star wrote a column for NBC this week in which she called for the pair to be freed because they did not have a fair trial second time around – partly because Los Angeles prosecutors had been embarrassed by Simpson’s acquittal on two counts of murder in 1995.
“The media turned the brothers into monsters and sensationalised eye candy – two arrogant, rich kids from Beverly Hills who killed their parents out of greed. There was no room for empathy, let alone sympathy,” Kardashian wrote.
Kim Kardashian, who has been calling for the brothers to be released. Photo / Getty Images
“Erik and Lyle had no chance of a fair trial against this backdrop. Back then, there were limited resources for victims of sexual abuse, particularly for boys,” she added. “There were virtually no systems in place to support survivors, and public awareness of the trauma of male sexual abuse was minimal, often clouded by preconceived judgments and homophobia.”
(One fact Kardashian fails to mention is that her father, Robert, was the handsome attorney who helped get Simpson acquitted. That Simpson was found not guilty of murdering his ex-wife, Nicole Brown, and her friend, Ronald Goldman, is seen by many to have created much of the “backdrop” to the second Menendez trial.)
More help has come from another unexpected source: an erstwhile member of a Puerto Rican boy band. Roy Rossell0, who was a teenage singer in Menudo, claimed in a documentary last year that Menendez pere had sexually abused him as a child as well – and in so doing lending credence to the claims by the Menendez brothers.
The claims, which surfaced in the Menendez + Menudo: Boys Betrayed documentary, combined with a newly-found letter from 1988 that Erik sent to his cousin and supposedly references his father’s abuse, has led Los Angeles’ most senior prosecutor to review the case. The success of Monsters has further fuelled scrutiny of the case.
George Gascon, LA’s district attorney, said that there is a “moral and an ethical obligation” to examine the evidence afresh, even though “none of this information has been confirmed”. A hearing is set to take place on November 26.
Murphy reckons that the brothers could find themselves free by Christmas, but is ambivalent about the prospect.
“The story has always fascinated people, including myself, because we’ll never really know what happened. It is an unknowable mystery. There were four people involved in that story and two of them were shot in the face,” he said. “So I think that the public’s fascination is limitless, because there’s no answer. We will never know if they told the truth, we will never know if they were sexually abused for sure. We will never know if the parents were the monsters.”
