Menendez brothers murder case: The true crime behind controversial Netflix drama
It was the trial that shocked America, now 30 years later the real-life story of two brothers who killed their parents in their Beverly Hills mansion is hitting the headlines again.
Lyle and Erik Menendez were convicted of shooting their father and mother Jose and Kitty Menendez multiple times at close range on 20 August 1989. They were 21 and 18 at the time.
(L to R) Nicholas Chavez as Lyle Menendez, Chloë Sevigny as Kitty Menendez, Javier Bardem as Jose Menendez and Cooper Koch as Erik Menendez. Pic: Netflix
A Netflix dramatization of their story – which has drawn accusations of “dishonesty” from Erik Menendez – is currently number one in the streamer’s viewing chart.
The same platform will be putting out a documentary next month.
So, what was the Menendez brothers’ crime, and why are people so fascinated by it?
The crime, trial and punishment
On 20 August 1989 Lyle and Erik Menendez shot their parents, Jose and Mary Louise “Kitty” Menendez, multiple times at close range in the family mansion in Beverly Hills, California.
While the brothers initially told police they found them dead when they got home, they were eventually tried for their murder.
An initial attempt to try each brother individually in front of separate juries ended in a mistrial after both juries failed to reach a verdict.
A second trial saw the brothers tried together.
Erik Menendez (L) left and his brother Lyle (R) in front of their Beverly Hills home in November 1989. Pic: Getty
The defence claimed the brothers committed the murders in self-defence after many years of alleged physical, emotional and sexual abuse at the hands of their father, with no protection from their mother.
They said they had feared for their lives after they threatened to expose their father.
The prosecution argued the murders were motivated by greed, and they killed their parents to avoid disinheritance.
Evidence of alleged abuse from their defence case was largely excluded from the joint trial by the judge.
In 1996, seven years after the killings, a jury found the brothers guilty, and they were convicted of first-degree murder and conspiracy to murder.
They were sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.
Erik and Lyle Menendez, now aged 53 and 56 respectively, are currently in prison in San Diego, California.
To this day, both brothers say their actions stemmed from abuse at the hands of their parents which they say they had suffered over many years.
The Netflix drama
Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story stars Oscar-winner Javier Bardem as Jose, Chloë Sevigny as Kitty, and Cooper Koch and Nicholas Alexander Chavez as the Menendez brothers.
Monsters: The Lyle And Erik Menendez Story. Pic: Netflix
It attempts to explore the crime from different perspectives – both from the brothers’ and parents’ point of view.
Many viewers have commented on the graphic and violent nature of the show, which is both gory and gruesome.
Viewers have also been critical of implications the brothers had an intimate relationship.
Bardem, who plays the father Jose Menendez, said he was able to separate art from his personal life when working on the show.
“I’m a true believer in the fiction, in the imagination, in the joy of playing something without being taken by it,” he said.
Cooper Koch, who plays Erik, said he used recordings from the real-life trial to inform his performance.
“I just read everything that I could. I watched the entire trial. I slept with that trial on. So, like, I went to sleep listening to Erik [Menendez] and Leslie [Hope Abramson – the lawyer who defended the brothers] on the stand.”
What does Erik Menendez say?
The day after the show came out on Netflix, one of the real-life brothers, Erik Menendez, criticised the show, calling it “dishonest” and “inaccurate”, and hitting out at what he called “blatant lies” that made up the characterisation of his older brother Lyle.
In a statement shared by Erik’s wife Tammi on X, he said: “I believed we had moved beyond the lies and ruinous character portrayals of Lyle, creating a caricature of Lyle rooted in horrible and blatant lies rampant in the show. I can only believe they were done so on purpose.”
He went on to accuse the show’s creator, Ryan Murphy, of “bad intent”, and said the show put back the cause of male sexual assault victims by many years.
He also asked: “Is the truth not enough?” and thanked people for their support.
How has Ryan Murphy responded?
Murphy, who made the first series of Monser about US serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer, responded to the comments, saying Erik had not actually seen the show, and that it was his obligation as the show’s creator to portray both sides of the story.
(L-R) Javier Bardem with Ryan Murphy at the Monsters premiere in LA. Pic: AP
Murphy told Entertainment Tonight: “It’s really hard, if it’s your life, to see your life up on screen…
“There were four people involved, two people are dead, what about the parents? We had an obligation as storytellers to also try and put in their perspective based on our research, which we did.”
Murphy was also the showrunner behind Glee, Pose, The Watcher, Feud, American Horror Story, Hollywood and Ratched.
It’s not the first dramatization of the crime, which has previously been made into three TV movies and inspired an episode of US police procedural Law And Order.
The Netflix documentary
Hot on the heels of the Netflix drama, the streamer has a factual film on the way – but this one seems to have the approval of the Menendez brothers.
Directed by Argentinian filmmaker Alejandro Hartmann, the documentary The Menendez Brothers will stream on Netflix from 7 October.
The project promises to “offer new insight and a fresh perspective on a case that people only think they know”.
It will feature extensive audio interviews with Lyle and Erik Menendez, lawyers involved in the trial, journalists who covered it, jurors, family, and other informed observers.
A new development
In 2023 a documentary which aired on Peacock titled Menendez + Menudo: Boys Betrayed featured claims from former Puerto Rican boyband member Roy Rossello, who claimed the brothers’ father sexually assaulted him when he was a teenager.
Jose was a former executive at RCA Records.
Joseph Lyle Menéndez and Erik Galen Menéndez. Pics: Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility
Shortly after that documentary premiered, attorneys for Lyle and Erik Menendez filed a petition asking for a new trial, in light of the new evidence.
The LA county’s district attorney’s office told Sky News’ US partner NBC News they are investigating the claims and will have a response by 26 September.
The brothers’ defence team also say they’ve uncovered a letter that Erik Menendez had written to his cousin that was dated months before the murders, where he talked about what he said was abuse from his father and being afraid of him.
The defence team say this should warrant a new trial because it’s information they didn’t have when the case was first presented to a jury.
There are two main differences between election coverage in the UK and the United States.
Last July, at 10pm, Sky News’ exit poll graphic predicted a Labour landslide and a massive defeat for the Conservatives.
Confirmation of this forecast was a long time coming since constituency results are only announced by local returning officers once all votes have been counted.
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Americans do things differently and for good reason. Polling stations close much earlier in the east than they do in the west. When voting has hours to go in some states, they’ve already started counting elsewhere.
There is a “wait for it” moment when voting closes in west coast states and the broadcasters can reveal the national exit poll headline, but this won’t tell us the winner.
Instead, it will tell us the types of people who have voted for Harris or Trump and the issues that dominated the outcome.
So far, one-nil to the UK, I think. But, here comes the next bit.
Instead of postponing announcements about votes until every last one has been accounted for, each state then begins releasing figures as and when votes are being counted.
And they do so in such a way where we can compare this time with previously. Not for them declarations in sports halls with dodgy microphones but rather running tallies for precincts (think our local council wards) and counties (ranging from tiny to huge).
It’s these data that US broadcasters such as NBC will use to “call” each state’s vote for president. The television networks are big players in the US election drama.
Early voting in Henderson, Nevada, on 19 October. Pic: AP
Over 160 million votes will be cast in the election, more than five times the number cast in our general election last July.
And while the outcome of our election was in no doubt once the broadcasters’ exit poll revealed Labour had won a landslide majority, that will be far from the case in the battle for the presidency.
As in the UK, a consortium of US broadcasters, comprising NBC, ABC, CBS and CNN, form the national election pool.
This commissions the consumer research company, Edison Research, to survey voters in over 600 polling places as people exit their polling station.
The survey also includes telephone interviews with people casting a ballot before 5 November. Once completed, the US exit poll will have obtained responses from over 20,000 voters, a similar number that were collected for the general election.
Two surveys of voters, therefore, but now important differences in their purpose become clear.
The UK version is entirely focussed on predicting the distribution of seats among the competing parties and, thereby, the winner and its likely House of Commons majority. Over recent elections it has proved pretty good at achieving this task.
Pic: AP
US pollsters are more interested in campaign issues that mattered to voters. Pic: AP
By contrast, the US version is much less concerned about predicting the winner (and there are very good reasons for taking this approach) and more interested in the campaign issues that mattered to voters, how they viewed the candidates and what factors motivated them to make their choices.
The survey identifies key demographic characteristics for each respondent – men or women, age, ethnic heritage, and educational qualifications.
Combined with questions relating to their choice for president this time around, their usual partisan preference, Democrat, Republican or none of the above, the survey data enables a considered and detailed analysis of what kinds of voters made what kinds of choices and their reasons for doing so.
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How will America vote on election day?
Broadcast organisations, including Sky News, will use the 2024 exit poll to highlight differences between men and women voters in relation to the abortion issue.
The poll will also show how the economy ranked among voters and whether Donald Trump’s stance on low taxation gained or lost him votes among different social groups. Did Kamala Harris’s association with the Biden administration and the challenges of illegal immigration prove to be a positive or a negative in her bid for the White House?
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All very interesting, but aren’t we all tuning in to see who’s won? While the US exit poll can, in theory, be used for this purpose it is unwise to do so in what is proving to be an extremely close race.
Sky’s tracker of national polls shows the Democrat blue line and the Republican red line moving ever closer together but with Harris currently marginally ahead. But even if she loses the national vote, the polls would still be within the margin of error.
Of course, she could yet win more votes than Trump and still lose the election, as Hillary Clinton discovered when she lost to him in 2016. Winning votes is necessary, but it’s where those votes are and the available number of electoral college votes that matters the most.
Trump beat Clinton because his votes were better distributed than hers. History could be repeated.
Releasing precinct-level voting numbers as counting progresses is essential to US election coverage. The national election pool employs over a thousand researchers to collect votes from each of the 50 states.
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Keep up with all the latest news from the UK and around the world by following Sky News
Additionally, NBC News will augment these figures with more detailed analysis prior to making its call for each state and the electoral college votes for Harris or Trump. The first to reach 270 college votes wins.
Professor John Lapinsky of Pennsylvania University leads NBC’s decision desk.
Although the broadcasters have pooled resources to bring us the exit poll, each will independently analyse the actual voting figures as they become available.
Lapinsky and his team on behalf of NBC will call the state for either Harris or Trump only when they are satisfied that the leading candidate’s vote is sufficiently large that he or she cannot be overtaken.
This a big moment for each broadcaster, especially when the race is likely to be close and where social media may be playing a significant role in stoking accusations and counter-accusations of a fraudulent election.
With so much at stake, these decisions will take time and patience.
Our July election was done and dusted in time for the breakfast bulletins. It could be days of counting, recounting and legal appeals before we know the winner of the 2024 presidential election.
When they made America truly great its backbone was forged in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.
The steel for 80% of Manhattan’s skyscrapers, many of the US Navy’s battleships, and even the entire San Francisco Golden Gate Bridge, all came from its blast furnaces in the hills north of Philadelphia.
Its mammoth steel plants stretched for almost five miles.
They lie empty and unused, now a huge open-air museum for guided tours led by former plant workers like Don Young.
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The 87-year-old has been married to Barbara for 20 years, but their marriage has been tested in recent months, as have many others in the most divisive presidential election in living memory.
Both Republicans, she is for Donald Trump, he is emphatically not.
Mr Trump, I pointed out, claimed he could make America great again. Did he believe him?
“No, I do not believe him. My wife does,” he said. “I’ve seen the rise of dictators in history.
“As much as I am a studier of the history of industry, I’m also a studier of the history of politics and world politics. And, you know, Mr Trump’s campaign literally, literally mirrors that of Adolf Hitler.”
His wife sees Mr Trump completely differently: “I absolutely do not agree with that. And I’m sorry to hear my husband say this. And I actually believe we have seen what President Trump can do and how our country was when he was in office.”
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Mr Young now offers tours of the former steel plants
Trump ‘is the future for America’, Ms Young says
Their town has recovered from the collapse of Bethlehem Steel. But it’s the state of America that worries Ms Young now.
And it is Mr Trump who can save it, she said.
“He is the future for America,” she said. “I don’t want to see people coming over our border. We’ve had women murdered and raped by illegal immigrants. Who wants their children dead as a result of fentanyl, which comes over the border?”
Trump is ‘going to run America into the ground’
Her husband’s view is diametrically opposed.
“I think he’s going to run America into the ground because he does not observe any of the Democratic norms that his predecessors have,” he said.
“He didn’t observe them when he was in office. And so that’s just a window on what will happen in this coming term.”
Pennsylvania will likely determine presidential election result
Their marriage mirrors the state of play in the place they live in.
Pennsylvania is on a knife edge, say the polls, split right down the middle and the outcome here will likely determine the result on election day in this most important of swing states.
They can agree on one thing. They cannot wait for this election to be over.
Mr Young said their marriage can survive a Trump victory. Ms Young thinks so too.
The closest, nastiest, most divisive presidential election in living memory will be over soon. The bitterness and division that has plagued it less so in this deeply polarised country.
The Los Angeles Dodgers have won baseball’s World Series for the second time in five years but the celebrations were marred by looting and violence.
The Dodgers took the title by beating the New York Yankees 4-1 in the best-of-seven final in New York on Wednesday night, US time.
But soon after the match ended and jubilant Dodgers fans spilled on to the streets to celebrate, there were reports of a bus being set on fire, shops being looted and fireworks thrown at police in scenes of “absolute chaos” in downtown LA.
Los Angeles Dodgers players celebrate winning baseball’s World Series. Pic: AP
At around 10.45pm, the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) said it received reports of “looting at several stores in the area of 8th and Broadway”.
Ordering people to “leave the area immediately” on X, the force reposted a video of looters raiding a Nike store where a door had been removed so thieves could get in.
A Dodgers fan celebrates in Los Angeles. Pic: Reuters
Several dispersal orders were issued for different locations in the city, including in streets close to the Dodger Stadium in the Elysian Park area.
A bus was set on fire as part of the disorder.
Eyewitness and LA resident Taylor Rosa, 27, told Sky’s US partner network NBC News it was “absolute chaos”, as people “got out of control and started looting and jumping on top of a bus”.
Among the comments on Instagram were “damn embarrassment” and “they act like the Dodgers lost”.
Multiple arrests were made throughout the night in Echo Park and the downtown area, according to the Los Angeles Scanner account on X.
The LAPD later spoke of a “hostile crowd” and that “various projectiles”, including rocks and bottles, were being thrown at officers.
Keep up with all the latest news from the UK and around the world by following Sky News
Meanwhile, two Yankees fans missed the end of the series after they were banned for interfering with play during the fourth match, the New York team’s only win.
They grappled with the Dodgers’s Mookie Betts as he tried to catch a shot by the fence at the Yankee Stadium on Tuesday night.
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As Betts leapt at the wall and caught the ball, one fan grabbed his glove with both hands and wrenched the ball out, as another grabbed Betts’s other hand.
They were thrown out of the game and banned from the next one.
The Dodgers beat the Yankees 7-6 in game five. Pic: AP
Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani with the trophy. Pic: AP
The last time the Dodgers won the title, in 2020, the season was shortened by the COVID pandemic, which prevented them from staging a victory parade.
This year’s parade is to take place on Friday.
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