For you millennials or Gen-Z’ers who were either too young or not born yet when the parental murders by Lyle and Erik Menendez were hot news, you’re probably wondering who the Menendez Brothers are and why they deserve their own Netflix series. Well, this one’s for you.
The first episode of Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story released today, Sept. 19, as part of the second installment of the Monster anthology series by directors Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan, and is streaming now on Netflix.
Murphy and Brennan tackle another high-profile murder case that captivated the nation in the ’90s. The new season tells the story of the lives and crimes of the two brothers who killed their parents.
Spoiler alert: Both of the Menendez brothers were convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Nicholas Chavez and Cooper Koch are starring as Lyle and Erik Menendez. And, the installment has a pretty star-studded cast including Javier Bardem as José Menendez, Chloë Sevigny as Mary Louise “Kitty” Menendez, Nathan Lane as investigative journalist Dominick Dunne, Ari Graynor as Los Angeles defense attorney Leslie Abramson, Dallas Roberts as Erik Menendez’s post-murder therapist Dr. Jerome Oziel, and Leslie Grossman as Judalon Smyth — former patient and mistress of Oziel (who ends up entangled in the case and ultimately plays a key role in Lyle and Erik’s arrests).
Here Are the Trailers for Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story
Who Are the Menendez Brothers?
Lyle and Erik Menendez are two brothers who shot and killed both of their parents in their Beverly Hills home in 1989. During their trials, the brothers cited years of abuse as the reason for murdering their parents. However, prosecutors argued that their motive was to get their hands on the family fortune.
“On the evening of Aug. 20, 1989, Lyle and Erik, then 21 and 18, walked into the den of their family’s Beverly Hills mansion armed with 12-gauge shotguns and fatally shot their parents a total of 14 times. The murders were so violent that the police initially suspected the mob had been involved,” as reported by TIME.
“However, about six months after the crime, authorities received a tip from an unlikely source: Judalon Smyth, the mistress of Erik’s psychologist, Jerome Oziel. Smyth told the cops that Erik had confessed to the killings in therapy and that there were audiotape recordings of it. The brothers were subsequently arrested in March 1990 and a multi-year legal battle over the admissibility of Oziel’s recordings ensued.”
The Trials and Verdict
In August 1992, the Supreme Court of California ruled that most of Oziel’s tapes were admissible, with the exception of the tape on which Erik had described the murders.
By the time the trial began on July 20, 1993, there was no doubt that the Menendez brothers had killed their parents. The trial was highly publicized and was the real-life scenario that true-crime junkies yearn for.
“The prosecution, led by Deputy District Attorneys Pamela Bozanich and Lester Kuriyama, argued that the murders were premeditated and motivated by greed,” TIME reported. “Prosecutors alleged that the brothers had planned and carried out the grisly shootings in order to gain control of their parents’ $14.5-million estate. Their case was bolstered by the fact that, in the months between the murders and their arrests, Lyle and Erik had reportedly burned through as much as $700,000 of their inheritance on luxury items, business ventures, and travel.”
The defense, led by attorney Leslie Abramson, countered that Lyle and Erik had acted in self-defense after years of abuse at the hands of both their parents, with specific emphasis placed on Jose’s alleged molestation of both of his sons. These allegations were supported by testimony from two of the brothers’ cousins, Andy Cano and Diane Vander Molen, who said that the brothers had told them about the sexual abuse as children, TIME wrote.
The six-month-long proceedings became a national sensation — similar to the O.J. Simpson trial — as they were broadcast on Court TV (now TruTV), a cable network that had launched two years earlier and provided viewers with live coverage of trials and commentary from crime experts.
“The first trial of Erik and Lyle Menendez was a soap opera wrapped within a psychodrama,” the Los Angeles Times reported of the media frenzy surrounding the case.
Where Are Lyle and Erik Menendez Now?
After more than a decade filled with countless appeals that were all rejected by California’s courts, the brothers finally accepted the fact that they will be spending the entirety of their adult lives incarcerated. In January 2017, Lyle told ABC News that he had come to terms with his crime, as reported by TIME.
“I am the kid that did kill his parents, and no river of tears has changed that and no amount of regret has changed it,” Lyle said. “I accept that. You are often defined by a few moments of your life, but that’s not who you are in your life, you know. Your life is your totality of it…You can’t change it. You just, you’re stuck with the decisions you made.”