Menendez Brothers To Break Silence In New Netflix Documentary After Criticizing ‘Monsters’

Erik and Lyle Menendez will be speaking out for the first time in decades. The brothers will revisit their parents’ brutal murders and the trials that followed in Netflix’s new documentary feature, The Menendez Brothers, premiering on Oct. 7.

“Everyone asks why we killed our parents,” Lyle says in an audio interview from prison in the documentary’s official trailer, which debuted on Sept. 23. “Maybe now people can understand the truth.”

“What happened that night is very well known but so much hasn’t been told,” Erik adds. “We were not the ones who told the story about our lives. Two kids don’t commit this crime for money.”

According to Netflix, the doc will see the brothers revisit the trial that shocked the country in the early ’90s. “Through extensive audio interviews with Lyle and Erik, lawyers involved in the trial, journalists who covered it, jurors, family and other informed observers, acclaimed Argentinian director Alejandro Hartmann offers new insight and a fresh perspective on a case that people only think they know,” the official synopsis reads.

On Aug. 20, 1989, their parents, Jose and Kitty Menendez, were found shot multiple times at close range in the family room of their Beverly Hills mansion. Lyle and Erik, who were 21 and 18 at the time, initially told investigators they found their parents shot to death when they arrived home.

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Detectives began to focus on the brothers as suspects after the mistress of Erik’s psychologist, Jerome Oziel, alerted authorities. She disclosed that Erik had confessed to the murders during therapy sessions, and there were audiotapes of those confessions.

Prosecutors portrayed the brothers as cold-blooded killers motivated by a desire to inherit their family fortune. Meanwhile, the brothers argued the killings were self-defense after years of sexual and physical abuse by their parents, especially their father, José.

The Menendez brothers were found guilty of first-degree murder. They were sentenced to two consecutive life terms without the possibility of parole and are currently serving their sentences at the RJ Donovan Correctional Facility in San Diego, California.

Netflix announced the documentary just days after releasing Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story, the second installment in Ryan Murphy’s anthology series. Currently the No. 1 series on the platform, Nicholas Alexander Chavez, Cooper Koch, Oscar-winner Javier Bardem, and Oscar nominee Chloë Sevigny portray the members of the troubled family.

Erik swiftly criticized the 10-episode series following its release. On Friday, Sept. 20, the younger Menendez brother issued a statement on Facebook condemning Monsters for its portrayal of him and his brother, Lyle.

“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,” he said. “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.”

Erik also criticized Murphy, the creator of Monsters, claiming that he shaped “his horrible narrative through vile and appalling character portrayals of Lyle and me and disheartening slander.” Erik continued, “Is the truth not enough? Let the truth stand as the truth. How demoralizing is it to know that one man with power can undermine decades of progress in shedding light on childhood trauma.”

But Erik's harsh criticism isn’t the only controversy surrounding the series. On September 20, Forbes reported that critics raised concerns about scenes implying an incestuous relationship between the brothers.

During his retrial in 1995, Lyle testified he had molested Erik while they were children. However, the series portrays their sexualized interactions while they are adults and as apparently consensual acts.

Another moment in the show involving journalist Dominick Dunne implies that the brothers killed their parents to conceal their romantic relationship. However, Today.com reported that the real-life Dunne never proposed this theory in his trial coverage. In his 1990 Vanity Fair article, “Nightmare on Elm Drive,” sources told him that the brothers had been sexually abused.

Watch the official trailer for The Menendez Brothers on Netflix, below.