One of the most notorious crimes of the 1980s is now a Netflix series. After exploring the chilling murders committed by Jeffrey Dahmer in Monster: Dahmer, creator Ryan Murphy has turned his focus to the Menendez brothers murder case. Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story offers a fictionalized account of the two California brothers who killed their parents, Kitty and Jose Menendez, in 1989.
Lyle and Erik claimed that years of abuse led them to murder. Prosecutors argued they wanted to get their hands on their parents’ money. Lyle and Erik Menendez killed their parents in 1989 On the night of August 20, 1989, Lyle, then 21, called 911 to report a horrible crime.
He and his brother, Erik, then 18, had returned home from seeing a movie to find their parents, Jose and Kitty, dead in the family’s Beverly Hills mansion . At first, police thought that Jose, an entertainment executive, and his wife, might have been killed in a mob hit. But suspicion eventually turned to their brothers.
They were arrested in March 1990 following a tip from a woman who was dating the siblings’ psychologist. She said she’d heard them confessing on a tape recording their doctor had made. In a controversial decision, a judge ruled that the tapes were not covered under doctor-patient privilege.
The first trial began in 1993. (It was one of the first broadcast by Court TV.) Lyle and Erik admitted that they had killed their parents.
But they said they had only done so after enduring years of se.