The wild, true story behind “Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story”

On Friday, Monster—an anthology series from the super producer Robert F. Kennedy And Ian Brennan which explores the psychology of society’s most unfortunate figures – returns to Netflix for its second installment. Last time, the show was about Jeffrey Dahmer. This time, Murphy and Brennan focus their lens on not one, but two “monsters” in Lyle And Eric Menendez, the brothers, who were sentenced to life in prison without parole after being found guilty of murdering their parents, José and Mary Louise “Kitty” Menendez. The brothers claim their crime was self-defense after enduring years of psychological, emotional and sexual abuse at the hands of their father.

New arrivals Nicholas Alexander Chavez And Cooper Cook play Lyle and Erik, while Oscar winners Javier Bardem and Oscar nominee Chloe Sevigny play José and Kitty.

When deciding on a continuation of Dahmer, Murphy and Brennan found inspiration in a very unusual place: TikTok. “There are literally thousands and thousands of TikToks of young people, particularly young women, talking about the Lyle and Erik Menendez case,” Murphy said during a Q&A after a recent screening of the series' first episode in New York.

The renewed interest in the Menendez brothers, Brennan believes, may have something to do with how society's views have evolved since the 1990s. “We finally have a vernacular to think about and discuss sexual abuse and mental health that didn't exist back then,” Brennan said. “I think this is for a certain age group that looks back at their parents' generation and wonders, 'What did you do? You don't know how to see the world.'”

On the surface, the Menendez family seemed to be the American dream incarnated. José had emigrated from Cuba to the United States at the end of the Cuban Revolution and met and married Kitty while studying at Southern Illinois University. Joseph “Lyle” Menendez was born in 1968 and Erik Galen Menendez in 1970. José's corporate job in the home video industry helped the family climb the socioeconomic ladder, moving from suburban New Jersey to Beverly Hills when the boys were still teenagers. But behind their picture-perfect facade – Lyle enrolled at Princeton while Erik was a national junior tennis player – a nightmare was brewing.

Erik and Lyle were 18 and 21 when they shot and killed their parents in the study of their Beverly Hills mansion on August 20, 1989. After they were arrested for the murders in March 1990, two competing narratives emerged. The prosecution claimed the boys murdered their parents to inherit their immense wealth — citing as evidence their wild spending after the murders, with Lyle buying a Rolex and a Porsche Carrera immediately afterward. Erik, meanwhile, hired a full-time tennis coach and traveled to Israel to play in tournaments. But their defense attorney, Leslie Abramson—played in the series by Ari Graynor– argued that Erik and Lyle were emotionally, psychologically and sexually abused by José, torments that were ignored by alcoholic and pill-popping Kitty. According to their tearful testimony, Lyle and Erik claimed their father threatened to kill them if they ever spoke about the abuse, which prompted them to commit their heinous act.

Initially, Lyle and Erik were tried simultaneously before separate juries. Both cases ended in a stalemate and were declared mistrials. They were then tried together in a new trial presided over by Judge Stanley Weisberg, which limited the recording of testimony about sexual assault. In 1996, Lyle and Erik were found guilty of two counts of first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder. Both brothers are currently serving life sentences at the Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility.

“I think sexual abuse, particularly male sexual abuse, is not something that is really talked about a lot in the media,” Murphy said. “I think this is going to spark many, many discussions about it.”

When creating the controversial series, Murphy stressed that staying true to the facts was a top priority. “Everything here is true, by the way,” he said. “We spent many, many, many years researching this.” As is often the case with sensationalist stories, this contains some of the wildest and most unbelievable details found in the Netflix series.

Wing stop

The first episode of Monster: The story of Lyle and Erik Menendezy thrusts us right into the belly of the beast, opening with the brothers in the backseat of a limo on their way to a memorial service for their recently deceased parents. Erik struggles to keep himself together while Lyle manically dreams of owning and running a buffalo wing franchise. While that sounds absurd, the older Menendez brother was actually quite passionate about chicken wings, going so far as to buy the spicy chicken wing joint Chuck's Spring Street Cafe in Princeton, New Jersey, after the murders and renaming it Mr. Buffalo. His roommate in Princeton, Hayden Rogers, even worked for Mendez for a time as the restaurant's CFO.

“He called me — I was working in construction — and he called me and asked me if I'd be interested in managing a restaurant he was looking to buy,” Rogers explained to Roll Call in 2012. “I went, talked about it, decided it was a good opportunity, so I started working for him.” Rogers was with Lyle the day of his arrest. “We had actually driven to California, him and I and another guy, to look for, if I remember correctly, another location to possibly expand the restaurant somewhere near UCLA,” Rogers said. “It was a pretty unusual situation to be in, but we were on our way to lunch with him when he got arrested.”

The rain is to blame

Wings was just the tip of the iceberg for Lyle. The series premiere paints Lyle as the more outgoing, intense brother, played with aplomb by Chavez. No moment in the premiere captures Lyle's bravery better than the eulogy he delivers at his parents' memorial service, which ends with the most bizarre pinprick: Milli Vanilli's “Girl I'm Gonna Miss You.” According to the Emmy-winning reporter Robert Rand, Who wrote the book? The Menendez Murders: The Shocking, Untold Story of the Menendez Family and the Murders That Shocked the Nation and co-executive producer of the Peacock documentary series Menendez + Menudo: Betrayed Boys, This embarrassing moment actually happened in real life. “The song 'Miss You' by Milli Vanilli was also played at the Directors Guild memorial service for Jose and Kitty, parents of the #MenendezBrothers, on August 25, 1989, 35 years ago this week,” Rand posted on X on August 20.