Lyle and Erik Menendez continue to serve life sentences in prison for the brutal murders of their parents on August 20, 1989, when the brothers—then 21 and 18—shot and killed them in their family’s Beverly Hills mansion. Thirty-five years later, Ryan Murphy ‘s Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story —now streaming on Netflix since September 19—rekindled interest in the Menendez brothers . The 10-episode season aims to explore whether the siblings 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 high-profile defense attorney Leslie Abramson claimed and the brothers continue to maintain.
Here’s everything to know about Abramson. Abramson Was Erik Menendez’s Defense Lawyer Abramson took on Erik’s case roughly six months after the murder of his parents, Jose and Kitty Menendez . She defended the then-21-year-old Erik during his murder trial, which began in 1993.
“I’ve represented people charged with murder for 27 years, and these guys just don’t measure up to anybody else I’ve ever represented,” she told the Washington Post . “These are not murderers. These are troubled kids in a very difficult and grotesque home environment, and they cracked.
” As a fierce and fiery lawyer, the now 80-year-old successfully convinced jurors to find Erik not guilty of first-degree murder, despite his confession to kil.