The Menendez brothers agreed to participate in their own Netflix documentary after their family criticized the streaming service for its series dramatizing the brutal murders of their parents.
The Netflix documentary will include phone interviews with Lyle and Erik Menendez, who were convicted and sentenced to life in prison without parole for shooting their mother and father, José and Mary Louise ‘Kitty’ Menendez.
This is the first time the brothers, who were 22 and 19 at the time of the 1989 murders, have told their story together outside of a courtroom.
They will be calling from the Donovan Correctional Center in San Diego, 150 miles south of where the murders occurred at his parents’ $5 million Beverly Hills home.
“What happened that night is very well known, but not much has been told,” one of the brothers is heard saying in the documentary’s trailer.
Lyle, left, and Erik Menendez sit in Beverly Hills Municipal Court on March 12, 1990, several months after their parents were murdered.
Monsters, created by Ryan Murphy, tells the chilling story of the Menendez brothers, Erik (played by Cooper Koch, right) and Lyle (played by Nicholas Chavez, left), who killed their parents in 1989.
In the new documentary, Erik (left) and Lyle (right) will call from prison, where they have been since they were convicted in 1996.
In their divisive retrial in 1996 (they were first tried separately in trials that ended with hung juries) the brothers claimed that their parents were abusive, especially their father, who they said sexually abused them during their childhood.
Older brother Lyle also testified that their father had sexually abused Erik when they were children.
While many believe justice was served for the cold-blooded murders of their parents (and prosecutors argue money was the motive), others sympathize with the brothers’ claims of lifelong abuse.
This comes as Ryan Murphy’s ‘Monsters,’ the Netflix drama that revisited the Menendez case, received harsh criticism from the family after its September 19 premiere.
It stars Javier Bardem and Chloë Sevigny as Menéndez’s parents, and Nicholas Chávez and Cooper Koch as his children.
Members of the Menéndez family issued a scathing statement criticizing the new series, which is number one on Netflix’s global top ten.
Co-signed and shared on X by Erik’s wife, Tammi Menendez, the brothers’ aunt, Joan VanderMolen, summed up the family’s feelings.
In this family photo, Lyle flanks Kitty Menéndez, while Erik stands behind José Menéndez.
VanderMolen’s statement read: ‘We are practically the entire extended family of Erik and Lyle Menendez. There are 24 of us and today we want the world to know that we support Erik and Lyle. We know them, we love them and we want them at home with us.’
He went on to accuse the series of painting a false narrative, calling it a “phobic, disgusting, anachronistic serial episodic nightmare” that ignores recent revelations that the family claims would exonerate the brothers.
Contrary to Murphy’s claim of a thorough investigation, VanderMolen claims the family was never consulted during the production of the show.
What possibly angered the family most were the scenes showing the brothers in a homoerotic incestuous relationship.
‘Erik and Lyle’s character assassination, under the guise of a “narrative narrative,” is repulsive. “We know what happened in their home and the unimaginably turbulent lives they have endured,” VanderMolen wrote.
Erik himself also issued a statement criticizing Murphy for the show’s “horrible, blatant lies.”
“I thought we had gone beyond the lies and ruinous portrayals of Lyle’s characters, creating a caricature of Lyle based on the horrible, blatant lies that run rampant on the show. I can only believe they did it on purpose.
“It is with a heavy heart that I say that I believe Ryan Murphy cannot be so naïve and inaccurate about the facts of our lives to do this without malicious intent,” he wrote.
Murphy was criticized for having brothers Erik and Lyle Menendez kiss on the series.
The shocking moment unfolds in the show’s second episode, titled Spree.
Murphy (pictured) responded to critics of the show, saying he felt it was important to “present the views and theories of so many people involved in the case.”
Murphy responded this week, saying, “I think it’s interesting that he issued a statement without having seen the show.”
“It’s very, very difficult, if it’s your life, to see your life on the screen,” he said.
The showrunner also dismissed viewers’ claims that he glossed over the alleged abuse inflicted on the brothers in favor of presenting a forbidden romantic plot.
“What I find interesting and what he doesn’t mention in his quote is that if you look at the show, I would say that 60 to 65 percent of our show, in the scripts and in the film form, focuses on abuse and what they claim happened to them,’ he said.
The Netflix documentary will premiere on October 7 and is just the latest version of the infamous case that captured the country’s attention for much of the 1990s.
Fox and CBS aired TV movies about the murders in 1994, Lifetime aired ‘Menendez: Blood Brothers’ in 2017 and NBC’s ‘Law & Order: True Crime’ also focused on the case.
The 2023 Peacock documentary ‘Menéndez + Menudo: Boys Betrayed’ featured Roy Rosselló, a former member of the boy band Menudo, who claimed that José Menéndez sexually assaulted him when he was a teenager.
