An Inaccurate Retelling of the Menendez Brothers Tragic Story

By now, the Menendez Brothers are almost universally recognized. One of the most well-known murder cases has reappeared lately, piquing the interest of the current generation. The Menendez Murders took place on August 20th, 1989. It was a tragic situation where Lyle and Erik Menendez murdered their parents Jose and Kitty Menendez. Many people think that they killed their parents to gain money, but the truth is that they had suffered terrible abuse from both parents their entire lives.

The recently released Netflix documentary “Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story” has brought this case back into focus. This documentary was released September 19th of this year and was made by the same man who made the Jeffery Dahmer documentary back in 2022, Ryan Murphy. Ryan Murphy is facing a lot of criticism for his new work, despite his popularity with the Jeffery Dahmer series. Critics claim that it is wildly untrue to the actual situation, portraying the brothers as the monsters instead of the parents and making Lyle appear more belligerent than he actually is.

Even Erik Menendez made a statement about the documentary, 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. It is with a heavy heart that I say, I believe Ryan Murphy cannot be this naive and inaccurate about the facts of our lives so as to do this without bad intent. It is sad for me to know that Netflix’s dishonest portrayal of the tragedies surrounding our crime have taken the painful truths several steps backward — back through time to an era when the prosecution built a narrative on a belief system that males were not sexually abused, and that males experienced rape trauma differently than women. ‘’ It is clear that Erik and his family who also made a statement recently, feel very strongly about the show as well as other followers of the case.

Numerous viewers of the documentary have taken to TikTok to voice their opinions on the limited series and most tend to agree with Erik. The series is full of lies and is more of a direct attack to the brothers, making them seem like pure psychopaths, not victims. Thousands around the globe are campaigning to free the brothers, despite their 33-year prison sentence. They feel that their life sentence without the possibility of parole was unfair and that they deserve to be freed. There have been requests for the brothers to go through a third trial, but it has already been said that this is unlikely to happen because of its expense. However, Erik’s stepdaughter took to Instagram to state that in less than 60 days, we will get word if the brothers will be released or continue their life in prison sentence. Supporters of the brothers are anticipating this news as well as the rest of the world.