The True Story Behind Ryan Murphy’s Menendez Brothers Series

By Megan McCluskey
September 19, 2024 8:05 AM EDT

In the wake of the massive popularity of Dahmer, Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan are back with a new season of their Monster anthology series that explores the lives and crimes of the infamous Menendez brothers.

Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story, streaming Sept. 19 on Netflix, stars Nicholas Chavez and Cooper Koch as Lyle and Erik, the real-life brothers who were convicted in 1996 of the brutal 1989 murders of their parents, entertainment executive Jose Menendez (played by Javier Bardem) and his wife, Mary Louise “Kitty” Menendez (Chloë Sevigny). The true-crime drama arrives two years after its polarizing predecessor became just the third series to surpass one billion hours viewed in its first 60 days on Netflix while simultaneously dividing critics and audiences over its depiction of notorious serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer (Evan Peters).

"I was never interested in Jeffrey Dahmer, the monster. I was interested in what made him," Murphy told Variety in 2022 of the controversy surrounding the show. "I think that the fact that all of the characters in this are seen as true humans makes some people uncomfortable. I understand that and I try not to have an opinion on that."

Now, The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story is being touted as an investigation into who the "real monsters" were in the Menendez case. The 10-episode season purports to examine whether the titular brothers were cold-blooded killers seeking to inherit their family's fortune, as the prosecution argued, or victims of a lifetime of physical, emotional, and sexual abuse at the hands of their parents, as the defense claimed and the brothers maintain to this day.

Here's the true story behind The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story.

The murders

On the evening of Aug. 20, 1989, Lyle and Erik, then 21 and 18, walked into the den of their family's Beverly Hills mansion armed with 12-gauge shotguns and fatally shot their parents a total of 14 times. The murders were so violent that the police initially suspected the mob had been involved.

However, about six months after the crime, authorities received a tip from an unlikely source: Judalon Smyth (played by Leslie Grossman), the mistress of Erik's psychologist, Jerome Oziel (Dallas Roberts). Smyth told the cops that Erik had confessed to the killings in therapy and that there were audiotape recordings of it. The brothers were subsequently arrested in March 1990 and a multi-year legal battle over the admissibility of Oziel's recordings ensued.

In August 1992, the Supreme Court of California ultimately ruled that most of Oziel's tapes were admissible, with the exception of the tape on which Erik had described the murders.

The trials

By the time their highly-publicized trial began on July 20, 1993, there was no doubt that Lyle and Erik had killed their mother and father. The question was why.

The prosecution, led by Deputy District Attorneys Pamela Bozanich and Lester Kuriyama, argued that the murders were premeditated and motivated by greed. Prosecutors alleged that the brothers had planned and carried out the grisly shootings in order to gain control of their parents' $14.5-million estate. Their case was bolstered by the fact that, in the months between the murders and their arrests, Lyle and Erik had reportedly burned through as much as $700,000 of their inheritance on luxury items, business ventures, and travel.

The defense, led by attorney Leslie Abramson (played by Ari Gaynor), countered that the brothers had acted in self-defense after years of abuse at the hands of both their parents, with specific emphasis placed on Jose's alleged molestation of both of his sons. These allegations were supported by testimony from two of the brothers' cousins, Andy Cano and Diane Vander Molen, who said that Lyle and Erik had told them about the sexual abuse as children.

A number of salacious details played a role in the trial, including claims that Jose was cheating on Kitty and insinuations about Erik's sexuality—Kuriyama told the jury in his closing argument that Erik was gay and "if the defendant were engaging in consensual sex with other men that would account for him being able to describe what he described...his sexual encounters with his father."

The six-month-long proceedings became a national sensation as they were broadcast on Court TV (now TruTV), a cable network that had launched two years earlier and provided viewers with live coverage of trials and commentary from experts. "The first trial of Erik and Lyle Menendez was a soap opera wrapped within a psychodrama,” wrote the Los Angeles Times' Ann O’Neill of the media frenzy surrounding the case.

The brothers were tried simultaneously but with separate juries—neither of which was ultimately able to reach a unanimous decision as to whether Lyle and Erik were guilty of manslaughter or murder. This resulted in a mistrial and it was quickly announced that the brothers would be retried. During the second trial, which began on Oct. 11, 1995, Judge Stanley Weisberg brought in only one jury to decide the brothers' fate. He also didn't allow the proceedings to be televised, limited testimony about sexual abuse claims, and prohibited the jury from voting on manslaughter charges instead of murder charges.

On March 20, 1996, Lyle and Erik were both convicted of two counts of first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder. That July, they were sentenced to multiple life sentences without the possibility of parole.

Read More: Anatomy of a Ryan Murphy Queer Murderer Show

The aftermath

After more than a decade’s worth of appeals were rejected by California’s courts, Lyle and Erik resigned themselves to spending the entirety of their adult lives incarcerated. In January 2017, Lyle told ABC News that he had come to terms with his crime.

"I am the kid that did kill his parents, and no river of tears has changed that and no amount of regret has changed it," he said. "I accept that. You are often defined by a few moments of your life, but that’s not who you are in your life, you know. Your life is your totality of it...You can’t change it. You just, you’re stuck with the decisions you made."

However, some recent revelations prompted the brothers' attorney, Cliff Gardner, to file a petition demanding a new hearing that could lead to a new trial. The first development in the case occurred in early 2023 when Roy Rosselló, a former member of the Puerto Rican boy band Menudo, came forward claiming that he was sexually assaulted by Jose as a teenager after the latter signed Menudo to a recording contract as an executive at RCA Records in the mid-1980s.

A second break came in the form of an unearthed letter that Gardner says Erik wrote in December 1988 to his cousin, Andy Cano, who died in 2003. The letter supposedly details Jose's sexual abuse, reading, 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."

Gardner has cited Rosselló's affidavit and Erik's alleged letter as new evidence that proves the Menendez' convictions should be vacated. A decision as to what will happen next in the case has yet to be made.