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‘Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story,’ Explained

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2 months ago

September 20, 2024

'Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story,' Explained

In the wake of the large reputation of Dahmer, Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan are again with a brand new season of their Monster anthology sequence that explores the lives and crimes of the notorious Menendez brothers.

Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story, streaming Sept. 19 on Netflix, stars Nicholas Chavez and Cooper Koch as Lyle and Erik, the real-life brothers who have been convicted in 1996 of the brutal 1989 murders of their dad and mom, leisure government Jose Menendez (performed by Javier Bardem) and his spouse, Mary Louise “Kitty” Menendez (Chloë Sevigny). The true-crime drama arrives two years after its polarizing predecessor turned simply the third sequence to surpass one billion hours considered in its first 60 days on Netflix whereas concurrently dividing critics and audiences over its depiction of infamous serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer (Evan Peters).

“I used to be by no means interested by Jeffrey Dahmer, the monster. I used to be interested by what made him,” Murphy instructed Selection in 2022 of the controversy surrounding the present. “I believe that the truth that all the characters on this are seen as true people makes some individuals uncomfortable. I perceive that and I attempt to not have an opinion on that.”

Now, The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story is being touted as an investigation into who the “actual monsters” have been within the Menendez case. The ten-episode season purports to look at whether or not the titular brothers have been cold-blooded killers looking for to inherit their household’s fortune, because the prosecution argued, or victims of a lifetime of bodily, emotional, and sexual abuse by the hands of their dad and mom, because the protection claimed and the brothers preserve to at the present time.

This is the true story behind The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story.

The murders

(L-R): Nicholas Chavez as Lyle Menendez, Chloë Sevigny as Kitty Menendez, Javier Bardem as Jose Menendez, and Cooper Koch as Erik Menendez in Monsters: The Lyle And Erik Menendez Story.Netflix

On the night of Aug. 20, 1989, Lyle and Erik, then 21 and 18, walked into the den of their household’s Beverly Hills mansion armed with 12-gauge shotguns and fatally shot their dad and mom a complete of 14 occasions. The murders have been so violent that the police initially suspected the mob had been concerned.

Nonetheless, about six months after the crime, authorities acquired a tip from an unlikely supply: Judalon Smyth (performed by Leslie Grossman), the mistress of Erik’s psychologist, Jerome Oziel (Dallas Roberts). Smyth instructed the cops that Erik had confessed to the killings in remedy and that there have been audiotape recordings of it. The brothers have been subsequently arrested in March 1990 and a multi-year authorized battle over the admissibility of Oziel’s recordings ensued.

In August 1992, the Supreme Courtroom of California finally dominated that almost all of Oziel’s tapes have been admissible, aside from the tape on which Erik had described the murders.

The trials

(L-R): Nicholas Chavez as Lyle Menendez, Javier Bardem as Jose Menendez, and Cooper Koch as Erik Menendez in Monsters: The Lyle And Erik Menendez Story.Miles Crist—Netflix

By the point their highly-publicized trial started on July 20, 1993, there was little doubt that Lyle and Erik had killed their mom and father. The query was why.

The prosecution, led by Deputy District Attorneys Pamela Bozanich and Lester Kuriyama, argued that the murders have been premeditated and motivated by greed. Prosecutors alleged that the brothers had deliberate and carried out the grisly shootings with a view to acquire management of their dad and mom’ $14.5-million property. Their case was bolstered by the truth that, within the months between the murders and their arrests, Lyle and Erik had reportedly burned by as a lot as $700,000 of their inheritance on luxurious gadgets, enterprise ventures, and journey.

The protection, led by lawyer Leslie Abramson (performed by Ari Gaynor), countered that the brothers had acted in self-defense after years of abuse by the hands of each their dad and mom, with particular emphasis positioned on Jose’s alleged molestation of each of his sons. These allegations have been supported by testimony from two of the brothers’ cousins, Andy Cano and Diane Vander Molen, who mentioned that Lyle and Erik had instructed them in regards to the sexual abuse as kids.

A variety of salacious particulars performed a job within the trial, together with claims that Jose was dishonest on Kitty and insinuations about Erik’s sexuality—Kuriyama instructed the jury in his closing argument that Erik was homosexual and “if the defendant have been partaking in consensual intercourse with different males that may account for him having the ability to describe what he described…his sexual encounters along with his father.”

The six-month-long proceedings turned a nationwide sensation as they have been broadcast on Courtroom TV (now TruTV), a cable community that had launched two years earlier and supplied viewers with stay protection of trials and commentary from specialists. “The primary trial of Erik and Lyle Menendez was a cleaning soap opera wrapped inside a psychodrama,” wrote the Los Angeles Instances‘ Ann O’Neill of the media frenzy surrounding the case.

The brothers have been tried concurrently however with separate juries—neither of which was finally in a position to attain a unanimous choice as as to whether Lyle and Erik have been responsible of manslaughter or homicide. This resulted in a mistrial and it was rapidly introduced that the brothers can be retried. In the course of the second trial, which started on Oct. 11, 1995, Choose Stanley Weisberg introduced in just one jury to determine the brothers’ destiny. He additionally did not enable the proceedings to be televised, restricted testimony about sexual abuse claims, and prohibited the jury from voting on manslaughter expenses as an alternative of homicide expenses.

On March 20, 1996, Lyle and Erik have been each convicted of two counts of first-degree homicide and conspiracy to commit homicide. That July, they have been sentenced to a number of life sentences with out the potential for parole.

Learn Extra: Anatomy of a Ryan Murphy Queer Assassin Present

The aftermath

(L-R): Cooper Koch as Erik Menendez and Nicholas Chavez as Lyle Menendez in Monsters: The Lyle And Erik Menendez Story.Netflix

After greater than a decade’s price of appeals have been rejected by California’s courts, Lyle and Erik resigned themselves to spending everything of their grownup lives incarcerated. In January 2017, Lyle instructed ABC Information that he had come to phrases along with his crime.

“I’m the child that did kill his dad and mom, and no river of tears has modified that and no quantity of remorse has modified it,” he mentioned. “I settle for that. You might be typically outlined by a couple of moments of your life, however that’s not who you’re in your life, you recognize. Your life is your totality of it…You may’t change it. You simply, you’re caught with the choices you made.”

Nonetheless, some latest revelations prompted the brothers’ lawyer, Cliff Gardner, to file a petition demanding a brand new listening to that would result in a brand new trial. The primary improvement within the case occurred in early 2023 when Roy Rosselló, a former member of the Puerto Rican boy band Menudo, got here ahead claiming that he was sexually assaulted by Jose as a youngster after the latter signed Menudo to a recording contract as an government at RCA Information within the mid-Eighties.

A second break got here within the type of an unearthed letter that Gardner says Erik wrote in December 1988 to his cousin, Andy Cano, who died in 2003. The letter supposedly particulars Jose’s sexual abuse, studying, partly, “I have been attempting to keep away from dad. It is nonetheless occurring, Andy, but it surely’s worse for me now…Each evening I keep up considering he would possibly are available in…I am afraid…He is loopy. He is warned me 100 occasions about telling anybody, particularly Lyle.”

Gardner has cited Rosselló’s affidavit and Erik’s alleged letter as new proof that proves the Menendez’ convictions needs to be vacated. A call as to what’s going to occur subsequent within the case has but to be made.