Erik Menendez spoke out against the new Netflix series, Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story, which revisits the trials that convicted him and his brother, Lyle, of murdering their parents. In a statement shared by his wife, Tammi Menendez, on X , Erik criticized the show, saying it misleadingly portrayed him and his brother and there are "blatant lies rampant in the show." He accused co-creator Ryan Murphy of intentionally distorting the facts surrounding their crime.
"Murphy shapes his horrible narrative through vile and appalling character portrayals of Lyle and of me and disheartening slander," he said in the post shared on Thursday. Erik added, "It is sad for me to know that Netflix's dishonest portrayal of the tragedies surrounding our crime have taken the painful truths several steps backward — back through time to an era when the prosecution built a narrative on a belief system that males were not sexually abused, and that males experienced rape trauma differently than women." Ryan Murphy Productions and Netflix did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
In 1989, José and Kitty Menendez were shot and killed in their Beverly Hills mansion. At the time, Lyle and Erik were 21 and 18. Police initially believed that members of a mafia went after their parents.
But the brothers later said that they killed their parents as a result of years of physical, emotional and sexual abuse. In 1993, their trial was aired on national television, becoming a media sen.