Most viewers of the new trailer for Ryan Murphy’s upcoming miniseries, Monster: The Story of Lyle and Erik Menendez, will find the TV spot disturbing. Not because of its concept, in which the smiles disappear from the faces of the Menendez family after they pose for a portrait, while the voices of the mother and father can be heard off-screen and the two now shirtless sons embrace, while a gunshot is heard that spurts blood into one of the young men's face.
Certainly, the cracks in the portrait of a “perfect” family create a grim tone. But it's the voiceover by Chloe Sevigny and Javier Bardem, who portray the murdered Menendez parents, that might raise some eyebrows. “I need to know what's going on with you and the boys,” is whispered, followed by “I'm not telling anyone” and “I'm going to fix this family,” suggesting that something no one could believe in the mid-1990s — that RCA executive Jose Menendez abused his sons while his wife helped cover it up — is actually true.
This was the defense presented in court by the lawyers for Lyle and Erik Menendez after the brothers shot and killed their parents, José and Mary Louise “Kitty” Menéndez, in the study of their Beverly Hills mansion on August 20, 1989. Half of the two juries that could not agree in the separate trials rejected the claim that it was a self-defense killing committed by the two sons because they feared for their lives. The claim was not mentioned in a second joint retrial in which they were found guilty. Yet their story of self-defense after years of gruesome abuse was rejected not only by the men and women who made up the jury in their trials but by the Americans who watched the entire case on the latest cable television, Court TV. After being convicted of premeditated murder and conspiracy to commit murder, both boys were sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Thirty-five years after the murders, Murphy's new Netflix series taps into a new trend of reexamining the maligned news sensations of the 1990s, and with this outing, the star producer upends the entire theory behind the Menendez murders that remains firmly entrenched in American perceptions of the case. Looking at the brothers through a new lens captures the zeitgeist after more than a decade of appeals denied by California courts and their decision to spend their entire adult lives in prison. This comes after a childhood marked, they always insisted, by unspeakable abuse at the hands of their father — abuse that, they said and now perhaps believe, was both physical and emotional, hidden from public view and covered up by the cloak of wealth, with Jose Menendez's high-powered job as an executive at RCA Records and perfection embodied by the family, whose patriarch is a first-generation immigrant with the perfect Beverly Hills home. But before Murphy’s show and before the Menendez brothers were exonerated by a SNL Punchline to a TikTok occasion and now to a clear possibility of a new Habeas Corpus Law petition, Journalist and author Robert Rand reported on it from the second day onwards.
Now, Rand's commitment to the Menendez brothers' story could lead to their sentences being overturned and their release from the Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility, where they have been housed in separate cells since 2018. The author has visited the brothers there several times and saw Lyle just this month. In addition to covering the Menendez brothers' story for the past 35 years for various publications and news outlets, his investigation led to the discovery of a solid piece of evidence that could lead to their release. He pursued multiple avenues in the case and spoke to virtually every related family member, attorney, and law enforcement agency involved in the case. His book, The Menendez Murders: The Shocking, Untold Story of the Menendez Family and the murders that shocked the nationwas first published in 2018. The definitive text of what many believe to be the truth about the family whose tragedies rocked the nation has now been expanded to include a crucial new chapter and epilogue. The re-release is scheduled for next month, the same time when Murphy's series is likely to take a permanent place in Netflix's top 10 menus of most-watched television programs across the country.
“I had a deadline and was close to finishing my book, and she had me come to her house and look through a dresser full of Andy's papers,” Rand said. The Hollywood Reporter of his trip to the Menendez's late cousin's former home in 2018. “And within 15 minutes, I found this letter, looked at it and said, 'Oh my God, this could be really important to the case.'”
In 2003, the brothers' cousin Andy Cano – who had testified at their trials that he learned of Jose Menendez's abuse of the boys at a young age – died of an accidental overdose of sleeping pills. Rand was the reporter most closely involved in the case and was invited by Andy's surviving mother to her West Palm Beach home to search through his belongings. Erik Menendez's letter to Andy contains details and complaints to his cousin about the ongoing abuse by his father, which he had previously disclosed.
This letter was written by Erik when he was 17, a year before the murders of Jose and Kitty Menendez. It was never introduced at any of the three trials in the mid-1990s, but it is a piece of evidence that supports the story of their childhood that the brothers brought to trial – a story that was scoffed at by many in Los Angeles courtrooms and those covering the case and watching the trial on national television. At the time, Lyle and Erik were considered opportunists whose lavish spending during the investigation into their parents' murders made them more notorious than sympathetic.
Now the letter is the only tangible evidence that their story of unspeakable abuse is more true than the fiction of two murderous teenagers. It is in the hands of appellate attorney Cliff Gardner, who is representing the two brothers after they filed papers in 2023 seeking new Habeas Corpus Law Petitions.
The other key piece of evidence that rekindled hopes of proving the brothers had not lied about their family abuse was presented in a documentary series produced by Rand for Peacock called Menendez + Menudo: Betrayed Boys. In the early 1980s, Roy Rosselló was a member of the Latin boy band sensation Menudo from 1983 to 1986, when the group was signed to a multi-million dollar contract by Jose Menendez, then president of RCA Records. In the docuseries and on a Today In a segment promoting the album, Rosselló revealed how he had been drugged and raped by Menendez at age 14 while visiting the family's New Jersey home. The docuseries implicitly suggests that Menudo's manager Edgardo Díaz had offered Rosselló Jose Menendez to sign the group's RCA contract.
The connection to abuse allegations that have dogged Diaz for years, as well as proof from another victim that their father did indeed abuse young boys, now lends credence to the argument the brothers have been making all along. As the two Menendez boys grew up, and after a series of conversations and revelations in the family household that had taken place in the weeks before the murders, they had threatened to expose their father as an abuser. The two brothers, who had suffered years of physical and psychological abuse at the hands of their parents—elites in public but monsters at home—killed their parents in self-defense rather than allow their abusive father to kill them to save his reputation and the family's lifestyle.
“Defense therapy experts who examined Erik and Lyle concluded that their emotional age was somewhere between eight and 10 years old, although their chronological ages were 18 and 21,” Rand told THR“Outside therapy experts we had on the documentary also told me that Erik and Lyle were living in a tunnel. And to you and me, that doesn't make sense. Why didn't they just walk out the front door? But when you're a victim of abuse and you're living in that tunnel, you can't imagine life without your parents.”
The physical and psychological abuse of Jose and Kitty Menendez was no secret to those close to the family. The couple made the brothers very dependent on them, even doing their homework for school, Rand explained. Teachers noticed that while the work they brought from home was flawless, the brothers failed tests and exams in class. Although the alleged abuse by their father was clear, it was Kitty Menendez who enabled it for years, he says, explaining how she knew what was going on and did nothing to stop it. In the arguments the brothers had with their parents in the days before the murders, Kitty Menendez told the brothers, “I knew what was going on all the time. What do you think I am, stupid?”
As Monster: The Story of Lyle and Erik Menendez Premiering Sept. 19, Lyle and Erik Menendez continue to prepare for their final chance at freedom and to convey to the world why, they say, they did what they did. Rand says both have become model citizens in their inmate communities by teaching classes, working on a giant mural on the interior wall of their prison yard and even counseling inmates who were abused as children. Rand recalls visiting Lyle in August and sharing what he had to say with THR as he reflects on freedom and a reversal of the world's understanding of what he believes he and his brother were driven to at a young age.
Rand says: “I was with him and Lyle told us, ‘Look, we are very confident that there will be a positive outcome. Habeas plea. But you know, if that's not the case, Erik and I will have to accept spending our lives, our entire lives, in prison.'”
