Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story stirs questions of real-life killer brothers’ guilt

In the mid-1990s, the Menendez brothers became a byword for parricide, AKA killing your parents.

Their sensational trial was broadcast on America’s Court TV and everyone, including President Bill Clinton, had tuned in for the drama and scandalous accusations.

Did Lyle and Erik march into their parents’ Beverly Hills mansion and pump several rounds from two 12-gauge shotguns into them, brutally murdering them and disfiguring their bodies beyond recognition?

A second jury came back and said yes, and they were sentenced to life without the possibility of parole.

The first trial resulted in two hung juries, one for each brother, unable to agree on if, as Lyle and Erik had claimed, Jose Menendez had verbally, physically and sexually abused his sons and their violent act had been one born from trauma. Those allegations were not admissible in their second trial.

The Menendezes are back in the public consciousness thanks to Netflix which, last night, dropped Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story. It’s the second instalment of Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan’s anthology series. The first season was the Jeffrey Dahmer one.

The series portrays as fact Jose Menendez’s abuse, so you could easily read the label “monster” as applying not to the boys but their father, an executive at RCA Records and, on the surface, a Cuban immigrant success story.

The brothers’ fate has become a cause celebre on TikTok and Instagram in recent years, especially among a generation who weren’t yet born when the triggers were pulled that August night in 1989 and likely not even when the Menendezes were convicted in 1996.

But the social media throng have been forensically examining the trial and questioning whether justice was really served given what Lyle and Erik have claimed about their father.

Their defence was the murders were done in self-defence, born out of a very real fear that they would be killed by their dad if they didn’t do it first.

The prosecutors argued there was no abuse and that the brothers committed the murders out of greed, citing as evidence the profligacy with their dead parents’ money in the months following the deaths, including overseas holidays, a Rolex watch and even buying a New Jersey restaurant. The bill came up to $US700,000.

They were arrested when Erik confessed to his therapist, which was then discovered by the therapist’s mistress who tipped off the police.

Since their incarceration, they have appealed their fates several times. And rejected at every one. After decades of separation, they were reunited in the same facility in 2018, the RJ Donovan Correctional Facility in San Diego, California.

In 2017, Lyle told ABC News that he had accepted his actions, but expressed regret that he wasn’t able to shield Erik, the younger brother, from their father’s alleged abuse.

“It was pretty crushing to, in the end, realise that I had not been able to protect or save him from such horrible abuse as I thought. I thought we had sort of survived early childhood pretty well and that turned out not to be true.”

The brothers have another petition before the courts. They’re not disputing that they killed their parents but their lawyer, Cliff Gardner, contends Lyle and Erik should have been convicted of manslaughter and not murder, due to the abuse claims.

One of the key pieces of new evidence the brothers have presented is a 1988 letter that was alleged to have been written by Erik and sent to their cousin, Andy Cano. It read, in part, “I’ve been trying to avoid dad. 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.”

Cano testified at the brothers’ first trial, that Erik had told him when he was 13 years old of their dad’s abuse. Prosecutors suggested Cano had been lying. The letter was only discovered in recent years by Cano’s mother after his death in 2003.

The Menendez brothers’ lawyer argued that the existence of the letter proves Cano was not lying.

Last year, Roy Rossello, a former member of the boy band Menudo, swore in a legal document that Jose Menendez sexually abused him in the 1980s when he was a minor. At the time, Menudo was signed to RCA Records, where Jose worked.

Rossello, now 54, said he drank a glass of wine in Jose’s home and was then taken into a room where the older man raped him. He alleged two further incidents including at New York City’s Radio City Music Hall, before and after a performance.

Gardner, the lawyer, filed in May 2023 a habeas corpus petition with the courts, based on these two new pieces of evidence.

A judge has yet to decide whether the case will be heard.

For now, the brothers remain in prison with no prospect of release. Their TikTok defenders are hoping the Netflix series may rally enough people to their cause to move the needle.

Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story is streaming on Netflix