How young women on TikTok prompted a rethink on the ‘murderous’ Menendez brothers

Prolific show creator Ryan Murphy has admitted the second season of his true-crime Netflix series Monster was partly inspired by social media sleuths who have argued its subjects, brothers Lyle and Erik Menendez, were wrongly convicted of murdering their parents more than 30 years ago.

“There are thousands of TikToks from young people, specifically young women, talking about the Lyle and Erik case,” Murphy said at the New York launch of the series. “I was blown away because it seemed so current to them.”

Nicholas Chavez, Chloë Sevigny, Javier Bardem and Cooper Koch as the Menendez family in Monsters.Credit: Netflix

During their two trials – the first of which was broadcast on Court TV but resulted in a hung jury – the brothers argued they had killed their parents, record company executive Jose Menendez and former journalist Kitty (played in the series by Javier Bardem and Chloë Sevigny), in their Beverly Hills mansion in August 1989 as an act of self-defence.

The brothers claimed they feared for their lives because they threatened to reveal the sustained abuse, including sexual, to which they had been subjected by their father, while their mother knew of it and had done nothing to protect them.

That argument was deemed inadmissible in the second trial and was largely dismissed in media coverage at the time as a thin veneer for the real motive, financial gain. In 1998, they were found guilty of murder and sentenced to life without parole.

However, the view of their culpability has begun to shift recently, as the experience of, and the damage inflicted by, sexual abuse has become more openly discussed.

“It was just not a sophisticated way of looking at trauma, which I think we understand better now,” Murphy’s co-writer, Ian Brennan, said at the launch event, according to The Hollywood Reporter. “And I think that feels really electric and alive for a certain age group, who look back at their parents’ generations, like, ’What were you doing? You didn’t know how to see the world.”

Lyle Menendez claimed his father began raping him when he was only six years old. Erik only revealed to his older brother that he was also being abused a couple of weeks before the shotgun killings.

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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