‘Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story’: bizarre new series about brothers who shoot their parents
And everything we know about the Menendez brothers
To murder your own parents, it's almost unimaginable. Yet that's exactly what Lyle and Erik Menendez did. The creators of the Netflix series ‘Dahmer’ are now diving into this bizarre murder case. In ‘Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story’, we follow the brothers in what led to the murder and the trial of their conviction.
The Menendez family seemed the perfect example of the ‘American Dream’. Father José emigrated as a teenager from Cuba to the US and received a scholarship there. At university, he met Kitty and they married a few years later. Through various jobs, José worked his way up to head of the record label RCA Records. The couple had two sons, Lyle and Erik, and moved to Los Angeles where José later got involved in the film industry. They were doing well and were prosperous.
Both sons were good at tennis and were pushed by their father to reach the top. This went so far that it had the opposite effect and they began to rebel against José. Erik got involved in burglaries and got away with mandatory therapy. Lyle was suspended from his university for plagiarism. A year later, the whole situation spiraled out of control. On August 20, 1989, Erik and Lyle shot their parents dead, with 15 bullets leaving José and Kitty almost unrecognizable. The brothers called the police themselves but said they found their parents like that when they came home.
In the months following the murder, the brothers behaved conspicuously. They spent a lot of money, money that belonged to their father. Erik came into contact again with his old therapist Dr. Oziel and during a therapy session, he confessed to the murder. The doctor eventually managed to get him and Lyle on tape. This marked the start of a long series of lawsuits. Because can those tapes be used as evidence? The brothers were convicted of murder and were said to have been after their parents' money. They claim it was self-defense and that they were abused by their father for years while their mother did not intervene. Yet the two remain imprisoned to this day. On social media, people question the life sentences of Lyle and Erik. If it was indeed self-defense, this conviction is far too harsh. Campaigns and Facebook pages have been set up to get them released, so far in vain.
Just like with ‘Dahmer’, the story of the case is reenacted and is based on the facts of the murder of José and Kitty. In ‘Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story’, the whole story is covered. The cast includes Javier Bardem, Chloë Sevigny, Nicholas Chavez, and Cooper Koch. The series will be available on Netflix starting September 19.
