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In the immediate aftermath of the deaths, the brothers began spending lavishly, behaviour that contributed to the perception of greed as a motive. But Monsters: The Erik and Lyle Menendez Story presents as fact the sexual abuse, though it is more ambiguous about what happened on the night of the killings.
“[The show] is really more interested in talking about how monsters are made as opposed to born,” Murphy said at the New York event, according to the Netflix blog Tudum. “We try to not have too much judgment about that because we’re trying to understand why they did something, as opposed to the act of doing something. I think the audience is in for a real rollercoaster ride because every episode shifts perspective to a certain degree.”
Erik (then 19) and Kyle (22) Menendez leave their parents’ memorial service in 1989, six months before they were charged with their murders.Credit: Steve Dykes/Los Angeles Times
According to a 2021 New York Times report, renewed interest in the brothers’ side of the story was first sparked by the 2017 documentary series The Menendez Murders: Erik Tells All, which featured in-depth interviews with Erik Menendez.
That series gained a wider audience once it began streaming on Hulu in 2019. Robert Rand, a former journalist who covered the trial and later became an advocate for the brothers, told the Times that traffic to his website MenendezMurders.com surged towards the end of 2020.
“We typically have 500 visitors a day,” he said, but by January, “we had 50,000 visitors”.
There’s renewed legal interest in the case, too. In March, CBS News reported new evidence had been found to support the brothers’ case.
Musician Roy Rossello alleged he had also been sexually abused by Jose Menendez in the early 1980s when he was a 14-year-old member of Puerto Rican boy band Menudo. He claimed that after drinking a glass of wine given to him by Menendez he felt he had “no control” over his body. Menendez then took him to a room, he alleged, and raped him.
Cooper Koch as Erik and Nicholas Chavez as Lyle in the series.Credit: Miles Crist/Netflix
CBS also revealed that lawyer Cliff Gardner had been given a letter allegedly written by Erik Menendez to his cousin Andy Cano in December 1988, about eight months before the crime, in which he appears to reveal the abuse.
“I’ve been trying to avoid Dad,” Erik writes. “It’s still happening, Andy, but it’s worse for me now … every night I stay up thinking he might come in … I’m afraid … He’s crazy. He’s warned me a hundred times about telling anyone, especially Lyle.”
These new pieces of evidence are the basis of an appeal in which the brothers seek to have their sentences overturned. Whether the new Netflix series helps their case or hinders it remains to be seen.
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