Ryan Murphy’s Emmy-winning Netflix series “Monster” is back, and this time it’s about the case of Lyle and Erik Menendez.
The first season of Murphy’s true crime anthology premiered in 2022, and the new take on the Jeffrey Dahmer story was a huge hit.
This time, Murphy and co-creator Ian Brennan tackle the story of the Menendez brothers, who were given life sentences in 1996 for murdering their parents, José Menendez, who was an executive at RCA records, and Kitty Menendez.
On August 20, 1989, the brothers shot their parents more than a dozen times with 12-gauge shotguns in their Beverly Hills home. They told the authorities they had returned from the cinema and found their parents dead.
The cops initially investigated other suspects, such as mob members, before turning their attention to the brothers. The pair were arrested in 1990, and after two trials were sentenced in 1996, were given two consecutive life sentences.
The brothers admitted to killing their parents during the trial but claimed they did so out of fear and self-defense after years of abuse. The brothers were supported by family members, some of whom testified in court that the pair had shared stories of abuse before they committed the murders.
Prosecutors believed the brothers killed their parents to access their wealth, partly because they spent lots of their money in the months following the murder.
Lyle and Erik Menendez are serving life sentences in the same prison
After the sentencing, the brothers were sent to different prisons — Lyle Menendez to Mule Creek State Prison in Ione, California, and Erik to the Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility in San Diego.
Lyle and Erik Menendez appealed their convictions multiple times, but their petitions were rejected.
The two didn’t see each other again until February 2018, when Lyle Menendez was moved to the same housing unit as his brother at the Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility.
Lyle and Erik Menendez are both married
The New York Times reported in 1997 that Lyle Menendez, who is now 56, married Anna Eriksson, a former model and pen pal, on the day of his sentencing in 1996.
They divorced in 2001, and two years later, Lyle Menendez married Rebecca Sneed, another pen pal and magazine editor.
Erik Menendez, who is now 53, married Tammi Ruth Saccoman, another pen pal, in 1999. When they married, Saccoman already had a daughter from a previous relationship, Talia.
New evidence may allow the brothers to appeal their sentence successfully
In May 2023, attorneys for the brothers filed a new petition to have a retrial, citing new evidence.
That included a letter Erik Menendez wrote and addressed to his cousin Andy Cano, who died in 2003.
The Los Angeles Times reported in 2023, citing the filing, that attorneys claimed the letter was written a year before the murders, and in the letter, Erik Menendez writes that he was trying to avoid his dad.
Per the LA Times, the attorneys argued this was proof that the brothers were being abused around the time of the murders.
Journalist Robert Rand found the letter in Cano’s room while Rand was writing a book about the Menendez murder trial called “The Menendez Murders: The Shocking Untold Story of the Menendez Family and the Killings that Stunned the Nation.”
In 2023, Roy Rosselló, a former member of the boy band Menudo who was signed to RCA Records, claimed in the “Menendez + Menudo: Boys Betrayed” docuseries that José Menendez drugged and raped him at age 14.
Rosselló said the assault occurred when Menudo’s manager, Edgardo DÃaz, took Rosselló to Menendez’s family home in New Jersey.
The brothers are waiting for a judge to decide whether to retry their case.
“Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story” is available to stream on Netflix.
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