Menendez Family Slams ‘Monsters’ Series: Ryan Murphy “Never Spoke to Us”
The full Menendez family is now sharing their thoughts on the Netflix series Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story, accusing co-creator Ryan Murphy of never speaking to the relatives of Erik and Lyle Menendez, the incarcerated brothers who are the subjects of the hit Murphy and Ian Brennan series.
In a searing statement from the 24-person extended Menendez family shared on social media early Thursday morning, Erik and Lyle Menendez’s family members begin their missive by saying that, after the brothers have been imprisoned for more than three decades — for the 1989 murder of their parents, José and Kitty Menendez — they “know them, love them and want them home with us.”
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The family then went on to call the true-crime drama a “phobic, gross, anachronistic, serial episodic nightmare that is not only riddled with mistruths and outright falsehoods but ignores the most recent exculpatory revelations.”
Calling Monsters a “grotesque shockadrama,” the family said they have been “victimized” by the series, which has been the No. 1 U.S. series on Netflix since its Sept. 19 release.
“Murphy claims he spent years researching the case but in the end relied on debunked Dominick Dunne, the pro-prosecution hack, to justify his slander against us and never spoke to us,” the family said of the prolific producer and showrunner, whose anthology series include American Crime Story, American Horror Story and American Sports Story, among many others.
The family went on to call Monsters a “character assassination,” saying they “know what went on in their home and the unimaginably turbulent lives they have endured,” adding that several witnessed the “many atrocities one should never have to bear witness to.”
They ended their statement by turning the series back on Murphy and Netflix “and all others involved” for not having “an understanding of the impact of years of physical, emotional and sexual abuse. Perhaps, after all, Monsters is all about Ryan Murphy.”
Erik Menendez’s wife, Tammi Menendez, shared the statement on her X account saying it was on behalf of Erik’s aunt, Joan VanderMolen, and the Menendez family. The note was addressed to the Netflix show and to Murphy. Tammi had previously shared Erik’s response, which was widely covered (including by The Hollywood Reporter). The Menendez brothers are incarcerated in Donovan Correctional Facility in California and don’t have Netflix access in prison. The Hollywood Reporter spoke with journalist and Menendez trial expert Robert Rand last week, who said Erik was likely given a description of the series by his wife as to how he and Lyle are depicted.
One day after the series released, Erik’s statement slammed the series, Netflix and Murphy, saying their “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.”
Murphy then responded to Erik’s reaction by sympathizing and also defending the research that went into the show, which chronicles the case of real-life brothers, who are played by Nicholas Chavez and Cooper Koch.
“The thing that I find interesting that [Erik] doesn’t mention in his quote is, if you watch the show, I would say 60 to 65 percent of our show in the scripts, and in the film form, center around the abuse and what they claim happened to them,” Murphy had said. “And we do it very carefully, and we give them their day in court, and they talk openly about it. In this age, where people can really talk about sexual abuse, talking about it and writing about it and writing about all points of view can be controversial.”
Monsters has also faced criticism from viewers for how some scenes have portrayed an incestuous relationship between the adult brothers (some of the sexualized interactions include the brothers kissing). During his retrial in 1995, Lyle testified that he had molested Erik while they were children. In the series, the brothers each discuss this as adults with their attorney, Leslie Abramson, played by Ari Graynor, while they recount the abuse they suffered at the hands of their father.
Erik’s statement did not directly address the show’s innuendo that the brothers were lovers. But Rand told THR this week that depiction is false, and more about what others involved in the trial thought at the time, mentioning how it was a “fantasy that was in the mind of Dominick Dunne,” the reporter mentioned by the Menendez family in their statement, who is portrayed in the series by Nathan Lane. “Rumors were going around the trial that maybe there was some sort of weird relationship between Erik and Lyle themselves,” said Rand, adding, “I don’t believe that Erik and Lyle Menendez were ever lovers.”
Murphy addressed the series showing Dunne’s point of view directly, saying Monsters takes a “Rashomon kind of approach” in its storytelling over the course of the nine episodes.
“There were four people involved — two of them are dead,” said Murphy about José and Kitty Menendez, portrayed by Javier Bardem and Chlo? Sevigny in the series. “What about the parents? We had an obligation as storytellers to also try to put in their perspective based on our research, which we did.”
When asked directly about implication that the brothers had a sexual relationship, Murphy said, “If you watch the show, what the show is doing is presenting the points of view and theories from so many people who were involved in the case. Dominick Dunne wrote several articles talking about that theory. We are presenting his point of view, just as we present Leslie Abramson’s point of view. And we had an obligation to show all of that, and we did.”
The series delves into Erik and Lyle’s claims that RCA executive José Menendez was molesting his sons since they were young children, while his wife knew and never intervened. At one point in the series, during a showcasing episode for Lyle, “The Hurt Man,” Graynor’s Abramson heartbreakingly sums up to Lyle (Chavez) that he has been raped by his father hundreds of times throughout his life, after Lyle painstakingly detailed the years of physical, emotional and sexual abuse he suffered. The episode follows Erik’s (Koch) confessions about the sexual abuse that he suffered at the hands of his father. According to the series, once José stopped abusing Erik, he turned the abuse to Lyle.
That was the defense presented by Lyle and Erik Menendez’s legal teams in court after the brothers gunned down their parents in the den of their Beverly Hills mansion on Aug. 20, 1989. But the notion that the murder was one of self-defense by two sons who feared for their lives was rejected by half of two deadlocked juries in the separate trials, and then barred from mention in a second joint retrial where they were found guilty. After their conviction for premeditated murder and conspiracy to commit murder, both boys were given consecutive life sentences without any possibility of parole.
More than a decade’s worth of appeals were rejected by California’s courts, but, prior to Murphy’s show and before the Menendez brothers’ exoneration turned into a TikTok cause, a habeas corpus petition was filed in 2023 with the hopes of vacating their sentences and releasing them from Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility, where they’ve been housed in separate cells since 2018. Rand, who has uncovered new evidence in the case, is also dedicated to pursuing the fight for their freedom.
The brothers will also be sharing their stories for the first time in 30 years in their own words, via audio interviews from prison, in the upcoming Netflix documentary The Menendez Brothers, streaming Oct. 7. The project was announced shortly after Monsters released, with Netflix promising, “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.”
Netflix has not yet commented on the Menendez comments about the series; THR reached back out on Thursday.
Kevin Dolak contributed to this story.
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