Netflix’s Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story to probe killer brothers

It’s been said before and it’ll be said again – there really is a 30 Rock joke for everything.

In a season three episode, Tracy Jordan (Tracy Morgan) is so convinced his young sons are trying to kill him for his money, he coins a new verb – “My kids are trying to Menendez me!”

Such is the familiarity of the case of Lyle and Erik Menendez, American brothers who were convicted of the murder of their parents, Jose and Kitty, that a sitcom in 2008 can turn their name into another word for kill, and have it land.

In 1989, Lyle and Erik walked into the $5 million Beverly Hills mansion of their parents, each carrying a shotgun. Jose was shot six times, including to the back of his head. Kitty was hit with 10 bullets, the fatal shot was the one to her cheek. The physical damage to their bodies was so gory, that eyewitness reports claimed they were virtually unidentifiable.

In the months between the killings and their arrest, the brothers lived it up, spending big on overseas holidays, a Rolex watch and a New Jersey restaurant.

By the time they were cuffed, they’d blown $700,000 of their late parents’ money although family members later said there had been no change in the boys’ profligacy. They were symbols of spoilt rich kids and 1980s excess.

The notoriety of the murders and the media circus of the trials that followed was muddied with accusations of greed and abuse. The brothers weren’t convicted until 1996 and by then, the sensational crime had penetrated the American consciousness.

The first trial was televised on Court TV and according to a contemporaneous report in Newsday, Bill Clinton, then president, even admitted to sneaking out of the Oval Office in the afternoons to sneak a dose of the drama.

It came to be one of the defining moments of how the wider public engaged with true crime cases and you can draw a thread from the Menendezes to the present-day obsession with all things gory, shocking and murder-y.

The defence lawyer, Leslie Abramson, was a firecracker. She was brash and direct and she revelled in the performance of a righteous crusader, trying to clear her clients whom she painted as not cold-blooded murderers but as victims.

Lyle, the older and more stoic brother compared to the weepier Erik, took the stand and said, “he raped me”, referring to their father. He recounted horror tales of his father’s sexual abuse when he was six years old.

The brothers argued they killed their parents because they genuinely feared they were about to be killed.

After six months of testimonies from cousins, therapists and everyone under the sun, and further weeks in deliberations, the first trial ended in a deadlock. There were two juries, one for each brother, and they separately could not agree on guilty or not guilty.

The second trial resulted in a conviction. Life without parole.

The drama was perfect for TV. It had compelling characters and twists, better than anything a screenwriter could’ve cooked up. And through it all, Vanity Fair’s famed society writer, the late Dominick Dunne, he of sharp wit and even sharper pen, sat in the gallery, documenting every moment and pondering the physical logistics of child rape.

So, it’s no surprise that Netflix has picked the Menendez brothers as the subject of its follow-up to Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story.

The second season of the anthology series will be released on September 19 and be titled Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story. Note the plural – it’s Monsters and not Monster. It could be because there are two brothers, but it could also refer to Jose, who Abramson specifically referred to as a “monster”.

The Dahmer series was conceived as a miniseries but when it quickly became Netflix’s second most-watched English language series within a month of release, the format was adapted to be an anthology.

The brothers will be portrayed by Nicholas Alexander Chavez as Lyle and Cooper Koch as Erik while Javier Bardem and Chloe Sevigny will play Jose and Kitty. Nathan Lane will take on the role of Dunne while Ari Graynor will play Abramson.

The streamer released the first teaser trailer today and the vibe is already giving ominous and grim. The official logline said the series will ask the question, “Who are the real monsters?”

While massively popular, the Dahmer series also attracted a fair whack of controversy. Some of the families of the serial killer’s victims said the production had not contacted them and one, the sister to Errol Lindsey, said she felt re-traumatised by seeing herself dramatised on screen.