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Netflix's new true-crime show Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story gives a fictionalized take on two of the world's most infamous killers. In 1990, teenagers Lyle and Erik Menendez (played in the series by Nicholas Chavez and Cooper Koch, respectively) were arrested after fatally shooting their parents José and Kitty Menendez. At their trials, both of the brothers claimed that they had acted in self-defense after they were physically and sexually abused by their parents throughout their childhoods. The case dominated headlines and became one of the most notorious murder trials ever, with the world shocked at the secrets of the wealthy family.
Now that Monsters has brought the case back to the spotlight, many are wondering about José and Kitty's backstories, and what in the series is fact vs. (already controversial) fiction. Read on to learn more about José and Kitty Menendez.
José Menendez was a Cuban immigrant, who met Kitty in college.
According to a 1990 PEOPLE article, José Menendez (portrayed in Monsters by Javier Bardem) moved to the U.S. from Cuba in 1960 at age 16, after his father encouraged him to immigrate. His father, also named José, was "a onetime soccer star who stayed behind in Cuba until his last investment property was seized by Fidel Castro," per the outlet. The teenager moved in with family friends in Pennsylvania, and earned a swimming scholarship to Southern Illinois University in Carbondale. However, he gave up swimming due to "the exhausting training schedule" and transferred schools, moving to N.Y.C., where he graduated with an accounting degree from Queens College.
When he was a sophomore, José met Kitty Anderson (brought to life in the Netflix series by Chloë Sevigny), a senior and communications major, in a debate class. They began dating and when José decided to move to New York, he proposed to her. Though José's father opposed the match due to his son's age, José argued back via letter, "If I was old enough to be on my own at 16, I'm old enough to be married at 19."
José and Kitty were wed in 1963, and soon after she relocated with him. While José worked washing dishes during the remainder of college, Kitty worked as a teacher until she quit to stay at home and raise their sons Lyle and Erik full time.
Kitty Menendez dealt with household abuse as a child.
Mary Louise "Kitty" Andersen (played in the Netflix series by Chloë Sevigny) was born and raised in Oak Lawn, Illinois, and she was a "former beauty queen," per the Los Angeles Times. Though she grew up in a middle-class suburb of Chicago, Kitty had a difficult childhood; per Biography.com, her father Charles was abusive toward her mother, Mae, and the couple's children. Kitty was still young when they divorced, and she dealt with depression and resentment toward her father in the aftermath, per the outlet.
Despite the hardship, Kitty still had big dreams of becoming an actress. While enrolled at Southern Illinois University (and after meeting José), she won the Miss Oak Lawn beauty pageant in 1962. Her friends at the time also described Kitty as "glamorous and a trifle mysterious," and "a bit of a quiet rebel."
After marrying José at age 21 and moving to N.Y.C., Kitty gave birth to Lyle in January 1968, and Erik in November 1970.
José Menendez became a music and entertainment executive.
Menendez started his career in the business world as an accountant for the firm Coopers & Lybrand, and he eventually became the executive vice president in charge of U.S. operations at Hertz rental cars, then a subsidiary of RCA. As reported by the Los Angeles Times, in 1980, the corporation put him in charge of RCA Records, where he eventually served as COO—with a $500,000 salary—and helped signed artists like Duran Duran, the Eurythmics, José Feliciano, and Menudo.
The Menendez family moved to L.A. in 1986 after José got a job with International Video Entertainment, a debt-saddled video distributor, then acquired by the production company Carolco Pictures. The exec was able to turn the failing business (which was later renamed Live Entertainment) around, and he was widely known as a successful businessman at the time of the murders.
During Lyle and Erik's 1993 trial, Roger R. Smith, José's second-in-command at Live Entertainment, testified that Menendez was "the ultimate control freak," per Los Angeles Times. According to Smith, José once told him that his business credo was "I’ve always thought it far better, Roger, to be feared than loved." Though Smith admitted to not liking the exec, he did admit that Menendez "got things done" in the business world.
José Menendez was accused of assaulting a member of a boy band.
Years after the murders, a public figure outside of the family came forward with assault accusations against José Menendez. In the 2023 Peacock docuseries Menendez + Menudo: Boys Betrayed, former Menudo member Roy Rosselló claimed that Menendez, then an executive at RCA Records, sexually assaulted him, per Rolling Stone. In the doc, Rosselló alleges that Menudo's then-manager Edgardo Díaz—who has long been accused of sexually abusing the then-teenaged boy band members—delivered Rosselló to Menendez in an alleged attempt to seal the band's multimillion-dollar recording contract.
Kitty Menendez was "devastated" by José's years of cheating.
As José became more and more successful, he and Kitty began to face marital problems. Per the Los Angeles Times, Kitty wasn't thrilled about the family's move from New Jersey to California, with anonymous friends telling the outlet that she would rather have stayed on the East Coast.
Later, Vanity Fair reported that Kitty was "deeply unhappy," and that she was "devastated" over José's flagrant cheating. Per the Los Angeles Times, during the 1993 trial, Kitty's former psychologist testified that she had been suicidal over José's eight-year affair with a woman in New York. The physician also described her as "dependent on drugs and alcohol, depressed and obsessed with appearances." A friend of Kitty's, Karen Lamm, corroborated Kitty's despair while speaking with Vanity Fair.
Lyle and Erik Menendez accused José and Kitty Menendez of controlling behavior and emotional, physical, and sexual abuse.
After their parents José and Kitty's murders in 1990, Lyle and Erik Menendez were arrested and eventually charged with first-degree murder. At their separate trials, the brothers both claimed they killed their parents in self-defense after suffering years of sexual abuse by José and, to a lesser extent, Kitty.
Some of the behavior alleged by the brothers (and depicted in Monsters) was corroborated by accounts from acquaintances who testified during the 1993 trial. One of Erik's tennis coaches said José exerted control on every aspect of the boys' lives, including "academically, socially, [and] the girls they went out with.” Lyle's sixth-grade history teacher called José "belligerent" and Kitty "negligent," and claimed that other students at the school considered the couple "problem parents." The brothers' first tennis coach, who taught the pair for five years, said he was fired after confronting José, adding, "I just couldn’t stand the guy... because I saw him being mean to the boys."
During the trials themselves, both Lyle and Erik separately accused José of sexually abusing them when they were children. Lyle testified that José had molested him from age 6 to 8, while Erik claimed that his father molested him from age 6 to 18. Per the Los Angeles Times, Lyle alleged Kitty would wash his body and touch him "everywhere" until he was 13, and that it "enraged" her when he stopped her. He also claimed that she "harassed" him with "increasingly bizarre sexual conduct" throughout his adolescence.
