The story of the brothers Lyle and Erik Menendez, who killed their parents, inspired the second season of Monsters, on Netflix.
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| Image Credit: Netflix |
Directed by Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan, Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story is the second season of the well-known anthology series Monsters, which debuted with Dahmer. The screenplay is based on the biography of the Menendez brothers, who killed their parents on August 20, 1989, and are currently serving life sentences. But how did things really go? Assuming that Murphy's work is quite faithful to the facts, let's discover together the true story of Lyle and Erik Menendez. Monsters 2 is on Netflix, from September 19, 2024, with its nine episodes.
Monsters: The Story of Lyle and Erik Menendez: The True Story of the Brothers Who Killed Their Parents
On the evening of August 20, 1989, José Menendez and Mary Louise “Kitty” Menendez – played by Javier Bardem and Chloë Sevigny in the miniseries – were brutally murdered in their Beverly Hills mansion, while they were watching television. They were killed by their sons Lyle Menendez (Nicholas Chavez) and Erik Menendez (Cooper Koch), using hunting rifles that were easily found. Immediately after the two murders, Lyle called the police in tears, claiming that someone had killed his parents.
Once the police arrived on the scene, the brothers said that their parents had been killed while they were at the cinema watching Batman and at the Taste of LA festival at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium. As also shown in the Ryan Murphy series, the police did not even test the boys' hands for gunshot residue. Initially, they tried to figure out who could have killed Jos̩ and Kitty Рperhaps the mafia Рbut, in the following months, Lyle (born in 1968) and Erik (born in 1970) began to spend their inheritance compulsively Рtravel, cars, watches and much more Рattracting attention. In fact, they spent 700 thousand dollars in a short time, before their arrest.
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| Image Credit: Netflix |
As seen in Monsters 2, Erik confessed what had happened to the psychotherapist Jerome Oziel (Dallas Roberts), who told his lover Judalon Smyth (Leslie Grossman). The latter, at the end of the relationship with the doctor, told the police everything. Lyle was then arrested on March 8, 1990, and Erik turned himself in three days later upon returning to Los Angeles from his trip to Israel.
The Trial and Sentence
The two brothers were initially imprisoned and tried separately. It took a long time before it was clear whether the tapes of Dr. Oziel's sessions - which contain the confessions of the two brothers - could be admitted as evidence in court. In the end, the California Supreme Court ruled that two of the three tapes were, and the trial began in 1993, partly broadcast on television. In 1996, the Menendez brothers were sentenced to life in prison for the two murders: the prosecution claimed that the two wanted to gain possession of the inheritance.
Lyle and Erik declared - and still do today, despite not having the possibility of parole - that they had acted in self-defense, after years of physical and psychological abuse suffered by their father with the approval of their mother (a drug addict and alcoholic). The two were said to be afraid of being killed after they had threatened to report their father for sexual, physical, and emotional abuse.
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| Image Credit: Netflix |
In support of this, cousins Andy Cano and Diane Vander Molen testified, who stated that they had known about the abuse since they were children. They were also shown nude photos taken by José of his children when they were young. After spending about twenty-two years in two different prisons, the brothers reunited in 2018 and are serving their sentences in the same penitentiary. Both were married in prison: in 1996, Lyle married his girlfriend Anna Eriksson, from whom he divorced in 2001 and remarried in 2003 to Rebecca Sneed; Erik married, in 1999, to Tammi Ruth Saccoman.
Father José and the Menendez brothers today
José Menendez arrived in the USA in the 1950s, where he met his wife, whom he married in the 1960s. After moving to New York, working as a dishwasher, and graduating, the man managed to make his way in the entertainment world, becoming a successful executive and the rich and despotic man his children later knew.
In May 2023, the Menendez case was reopened after documents – based on unpublished evidence – were filed: these would prove that what Lyle and Erik have always said is true. Roy Rosselló – a member of the Puerto Rican band Menudo – also declared that he was drugged and raped by José Menendez when he was fourteen. The band had, in fact, been signed by the president of RCA Records, namely Menendez. Even today, therefore, the case of Lyle and Erik Menendez is shrouded in mystery and destined to be much discussed.
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| Image Credit: Netflix |
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