On the evening of 20 August 1989, José and Kitty Menéndez were watching TV in the den of their Beverly Hills mansion when their two sons, Lyle and Erik, entered the room carrying 12-gauge shotguns. Police sources told the Los Angeles Times that a gun barrel was thrust into José’s mouth after he’d already been shot four times, and a final blast blew off the back of his head. Kitty, who was shot 10 times, attempted to crawl away while her sons reloaded, before receiving a fatal blast to the cheek. Hours later, the older brother, Lyle, called 911, sobbing to the dispatcher: “Somebody killed my parents!”
Now, 35 years on, the notorious murders are the subject of a new Ryan Murphy drama on Netflix, titled Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story. Javier Bardem and Chloë Sevigny star as the parents, Nicholas Chavez and Cooper Koch as the sons. It’s the second in Murphy’s controversial true-crime saga, the first edition of which reignited interest in the “Milwaukee Cannibal”, Jeffrey Dahmer. That show, titled Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story and starring Evan Peters as the bespectacled serial killer, went stratospheric, hitting 1 billion hours of views in its first 60 days and prompting widespread debate about the glamorisation of murderers. This time, though, things are different. This time, the “monsters” might just be the victims.
