‘Monster’ Season 2 To Focus On Menendez Brothers: What To Know
Ryan Murphy has picked his newest “Monster.”
The director has set his sights on the Menendez brothers for the next installment of his dramatized true crime series, following the success (and controversy) of “DAHMER — Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story.”
The announcement video for “Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story” dropped on Monday, May 1, and opens with the famed 911 call from then 21-year-old Lyle Menendez moments after he and his younger brother Erik Menendez shot and killed their parents in their Beverly Hills, California, home on Aug. 20, 1989.
“Someone killed my parents,” Lyle Menendez yells on the call, before telling the dispatcher he had just arrived home to find his parents dead from gunshot wounds.
Jose Menendez, a 45-year-old business executive, was shot at point-blank range in the back of the head, and 47-year-old Kitty Menendez was shot multiple times in the living room of their home.
According to an appeal filed in 2005, the brothers falsely said they were away from their home the night of the murders. The couple’s oldest son, Lyle Menendez, was arrested on March 8, 1990 and charged with their murder. Erik Menendez, who was traveling abroad at the time, surrendered to authorities three days later.
Their case became a national sensation when their first murder trials were broadcast on Court TV in 1993. Prosecutors argued the brothers killed their parents for financial gain in inheriting their estate, while the defense argued the brothers feared for their safety after a lifetime of abuse at the hands of their father. Erik and Lyle Menendez’s trials ended with hung juries in 1994.
The brothers were tried again in 1995, this time without cameras in the courtroom, and in front of a single jury. Judge Stanley M. Weisberg ruled testimony of their father’s alleged abuse would not be admissible in the new trials, the Los Angeles Times reported.
Erik and Lyle Menendez were convicted of first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder, and both were sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole in 1996.
Murphy’s “DAHMER” series was a massive hit on Netflix when it was released in October, reaching 1 billion view hours in its first 60 days, making it only one of four series to achieve the record, according to the streaming platform.
But the show also received backlash from the families of Dahmer’s victims, some of whom said the show never reached out to them and humanized the actions of the notorious serial killer.
Netflix announced in November it would renew two more installments of the anthology series that would feature “other notorious figures who left their mark on society.”
The streamer added it has “exclusive access to Lyle and Erik Menendez for a forthcoming documentary feature,” meaning the Menendez brothers, now 55 and 52, could be on screen.
