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The family of Lyle and Erik Menéndez has denounced Ryan Murphy’s Netflix show about the brothers as a “gross, anachronistic, serial episodic nightmare”.
Erik Menéndez’s wife, Tammi Menéndez, released a statement from 24 family members criticising the “repulsive” storytelling on Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menéndez Story, which is meant to be a retelling of the 1989 murder of José and Mary Louise “Kitty” Menéndez by their children.
“We are virtually the entire extended family of Erik and Lyle Menéndez. We are 24 strong and today we want the world to know we support Erik and Lyle,” the statement reads. “We individually and collectively pray for their release after being imprisoned for 35 years. We know them, love them, and want them home with us.
“Ryan Murphy’s Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menéndez Story is a phobic, gross, anachronistic, serial episodic nightmare that is not only riddled with mistruths and outright falsehoods but ignores the most recent exculpatory revelations.
“Our family has been victimised by this grotesque shockudrama.
“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 character assassination of Erik and Lyle, who are our nephews and cousins, under the guise of a ‘storytelling narrative’ is repulsive.”
“We know these men. We grew up with them since they were boys. We love them and to this very day we are close to them. We also know what went on in their home and the unimaginably turbulent lives they have endured. Several of us were eyewitnesses to many atrocities one should never have to bear witness to.
“It is sad that Ryan Murphy, Netflix and all others involved in this series do not have an understanding of the impact of years of physical, emotional and sexual abuse. Perhaps, after all, Monsters is all about Ryan Murphy.”
The Menéndez brothers were arrested for murdering their parents, José and Kitty, in 1989, and sentenced to life in prison in 1996.
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In 2024, new evidence emerged that has the potential to set them free.
Previously, Erik, who is serving a life sentence at the RJ Donovan Correctional Facility in California alongside Lyle, shared a statement via Tammi in which he slammed the show “as a “dishonest portrayal” of the crimes he committed with his brother, accusing show creator Murphy of “disheartening slander.”
Murphy has since defended the show saying: “If you watch the show, I would say 60-65 per cent of the scripted narrative centres around the abuse and what they claim happened to them. And we do it very carefully and we give them their day in court and they talk openly about it.”
Monsters covers the harrowing sexual abuse that Lyle and Erik alleged they were subjected to by their father, but Erik Menéndez has accused Murphy of distorting the truth.
The Independent’s Katie Rosseinsky gave the show three stars. “This latest in the Monster series lacks the gruesome excesses of Dahmer. But it also feels like a muddled mix of the best and worst of Murphy’s oeuvre. It’s likely to please his legions of fans, but may leave his detractors feeling a little queasy,” she wrote.
Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menéndez Story stars Cooper Koch and Nicholas Alexander Chavez as Erik and Lyle Menéndez, and Javier Bardem and Chloë Sevigny as their parents José and Kitty.
