The Menendez brothers, Lyle, now 56, and Erik, now 53, in all probability by no means had an incestuous relationship. There has by no means been any proof offered anyplace that they did, and in court docket, each have vehemently denied a sexual relationship.
None of this stops Monsters, the brand new Ryan Murphy-helmed Netflix drama in regards to the brothers — who have been convicted of murdering their highly effective Hollywood dad and mom, José and Kitty Menendez, in 1989 — from suggesting that they did.
The present is a spin-off of Monster, Murphy’s wildly standard collection about Jeffrey Dahmer, one other infamous killer whose trial within the Nineteen Nineties scandalized People.
That collection drew vital backlash from survivors for closely fictionalizing the crimes dedicated by Dahmer. And any true crime followers who wished Monsters to take steps ahead from that controversy should be recoiling in disbelief on the path Murphy has chosen to go as a substitute — not solely fictionalizing particulars, however virtually definitely fabricating a relationship between the brothers.
This portrait rests atop an outline of the pair as grasping, entitled fortune hunters who coveted the $14 million property of their father, a producer at RCA Data. Alongside the best way, the drama suggests not solely that Lyle (Nicholas Alexander Chavez) was a sociopath who used his brother’s affection to control him, however that Erik (Cooper Koch) was a confused, closeted homosexual man — although, once more, there is no such thing as a proof anyplace to counsel this.
The present does acquire some complexity as Murphy and his longtime collaborator Ian Brennan (who additionally co-wrote Monster) start to peel again years of emotional, bodily, and sexual abuse the brothers say they endured from their father and mom. The brothers have maintained for over three a long time that abuse underpinned their crime.
However Monsters, with its slick, oversaturated ’80s filter, seedy tone, and obsession with wealth, largely undermines the nuances of the infamous case at practically each flip. It finally means that the pair made the entire thing up for sympathy — regardless of just lately uncovered compelling proof that implies they have been telling the reality all alongside.
On the time of their convictions, the brothers and their protection have been fully culturally dismissed; it could have been arduous to seek out anybody within the ’90s and early 2000s who didn’t imagine the Menendez brothers have been responsible.
Slightly than flip these assumptions on their head, Murphy’s method in Monsters is to present them a brand new platform. It’s an amazing, infuriating disgrace, as a result of this case, and the best way People perceive and deal with abuse victims at trial, significantly male abuse victims, is present process a gradual public reckoning. Quite a few different documentaries and articles have supplied a unique, extraordinarily belated, and revelatory take: What if that they had been telling the reality?
To grasp how a lot Monsters overlooks, and the way a lot it distorts, it’s useful to look at the info of the Menendez brothers’ story.
The way in which the general public noticed the Menendez case within the ’90s was very completely different from how we see it now
Media shops have referred to as Monsters “irresponsible” and prompt that steamy scenes between the brothers “blurs the traces between what’s ‘sizzling’ and what’s completely inappropriate.” It’s additionally drawn scathing criticism from each brothers, and provoked defenses from practically each member of the principle forged. In an announcement shared on X by his spouse, Erik Menendez referred to as Monsters a “vile and appalling character portrayals of Lyle and me” — significantly of Lyle, who was the goal of a “caricature” that was “rooted in blatant lies.”
Murphy, for his half, rebutted this in an interview with Leisure Tonight, arguing that Erik had “issued an announcement with out having seen the present,” and that “60 to 65 p.c of our present within the scripts and within the movie … middle across the abuse and what they declare occurred to them.”
Lots of the present’s depictions of the brothers are rooted within the precise protection of the case from the Nineteen Nineties. In a well-known 1996 interview with each brothers, for instance, Barbara Walters downplayed the pair’s allegations of abuse and as a substitute grilled Erik about whether or not he was homosexual. Erik firmly denied it.
“The prosecutor introduced that up as a result of I used to be sexually molested,” Erik replied, “and he felt in his personal pondering that if I used to be sodomized by my father that I should have loved it, and subsequently I should be homosexual, and the folks which are homosexual on the market should be sexually molested or they wouldn’t be [gay].”
It was a trenchant summing-up of the prevailing cultural assumptions of the broadly anti-LGBTQ decade.
Actually, corroboration that there was abuse within the Menendez residence has come from at the least three members of the family, all of whom took the stand within the brothers’ first trials. One among them, a cousin, witnessed José repeatedly bodily abuse the brothers, and claimed he noticed José go to bathe with the boys; two others claimed that Erik and Lyle individually advised them in regards to the abuse as a baby. They every nonetheless stand by these claims and imagine the brothers immediately. In 2023, legal professionals for the brothers introduced the current discovery of a letter written by Erik Menendez eight months earlier than the murders — a letter to a cousin through which he goes into harrowing element in regards to the ongoing abuse:
“I’ve been attempting to keep away from dad,” Erik writes within the letter. “It’s nonetheless occurring Andy but it surely’s worse for me now. … Each night time, I keep up pondering he would possibly are available. … I’m afraid … He’s loopy. He’s warned me 100 instances about telling anybody, particularly Lyle.”
Of their interview within the mid-Nineteen Nineties, Walters, apparently barely holding again a watch roll, referred to as the brothers out on the “abuse excuse,” a phrase coined by lawyer Alan Dershowitz in a 1994 ebook and utilized to this case by the prosecution within the Menendez brothers’ second trial. When she challenged Erik on why he was snug confessing to the murders to his therapist however to not the alleged years of sexual abuse, Erik defined, “Except you’ve been molested, you possibly can’t understand how arduous it’s to inform.”
“Due to disgrace?” Walters requested skeptically.
“Due to disgrace,” Erik confirmed.
What really occurred within the Menendez brothers’ trials
Arguably due to the compelling nature of the brothers’ abuse claims, their first trials — the 2 have been initially tried individually — every resulted in deadlocked juries.
One of many foremost obstacles within the first spherical of trials was whether or not or to not convict the pair of manslaughter or homicide; in Lyle’s trial, the choice was break up by gender, with feminine jurors voting for the lesser cost and male jurors voting for homicide.
For the second trial, through which the brothers have been tried collectively, nevertheless, quite a lot of issues modified. Choose Stanley Weisberg disallowed practically all protection proof associated to the brothers’ abuse claims, together with psychological well being consultants and medical consultants, in addition to the “trivialities” of proof testifying to the abuse the brothers suffered of their each day lives, which worn out a overwhelming majority of the testimony on José’s controlling, temperamental, and bodily violent conduct.
Each protection attorneys for the duo have since said that given what we now know in regards to the influence of long-term abuse on kids, a manslaughter conviction, which might have carried a a lot lighter sentence, would have been extra acceptable for each Lyle and Erik.
As an alternative, the brothers have been convicted of first-degree homicide and sentenced to life with out parole.
Now attorneys for the duo are hoping to make use of the brand new info within the case to win their shoppers’ retrials.
Murphy’s depiction of the case undermines all abuse survivors
Monsters might effectively result in one other tidal shift towards the brothers and their quest for a cultural reframing.
Murphy has returned the Menendez brothers’ narrative to “an period when the prosecution constructed a story on a perception system that males weren’t sexually abused, and that males skilled rape trauma otherwise than ladies,” Erik Menendez wrote within the assertion shared on X. “How demoralizing to know that one man with energy can undermine a long time of progress in shedding gentle on childhood trauma.”
Erik Menendez is correct. Ryan Murphy has compellingly depicted the trauma and repression of the queer closet in his musical movie The Promenade in addition to in Dahmer and an American Crime Story installment, The Assassination of Gianni Versace, which he government produced. His capability to precisely depict the influence of lifelong abusive conditions on the harmless, and even the responsible, isn’t unsure.
Murphy has claimed that Monsters makes an attempt a “Rashomon sort of method,” referring to Akira Kurosawa’s well-known movie through which the story of a sexual assault is depicted from a number of conflicting factors of view. He additional argued that he had an obligation to the “storytellers” to incorporate their views.
That’s an extremely disingenuous framing of the present Murphy made. It chooses to additional victimize the Menendez brothers with a surprising and unfounded accusation, constructing the sibling incest narrative over the course of its 9 episodes regardless of compelling proof of maximum abuse by the hands of a mother or father.
It’s not simply a particularly irresponsible tackle a particularly sophisticated case — it’s probably the most backward, regressive, and confounding method Murphy might presumably have taken.
“[V]iolence towards a baby creates 100 horrendous and silent crime scenes darkly shadowed behind glitter and glamor,” Erik wrote.
He might simply have been describing Monsters itself.
