1 week Ago By Jiselle Lee
The new instalment of Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan’s true crime anthology Monsters stars Javier Bardem, Chloe Sevigny, Nicholas Chavez and Cooper Koch. It focuses on the highly publicised Menendez murders and trials. Lyle and Erik Menendez were charged with the 1989 shotgun killings of their parents, Jose and Kitty, at the family’s Beverly Hills mansion.
They claimed it was self-defence, alleging their father had abused them for years, and their mother knew and ignored it. The brothers were convicted in 1996. Broadcast on cable television, the trial captivated the public and media.
As Netflix revisits the Menendez family’s story, the Washington Post outlines the facts behind the case that gripped America. Warning: Mentions sexual abuse. On August 20, 1989, two sobbing brothers called 911 claiming they had discovered their parents shot to death in the living room of their Beverly Hills mansion — an apparent gangland killing resulting from their father’s business dealings, the brothers later claimed.
But in a shocking reversal, Lyle Menendez, then 21, and Erik Menendez, then 18, were charged and eventually convicted in the brutal shotgun killings of their parents, Jose and Kitty Menendez. In 1996, they were sentenced to life in prison. The case captivated viewers throughout the United States, as one of the first criminal trials to be broadcast in full on cable television.
Now, their story is being revisited in a Netflix drama from Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan that explores the brothers’ motives for murder — including their claims of abuse at the hands of their parents, and prosecutors’ suggestions that the slayings were a money grab..
