The case of the Menendez brothers, revived by Netflix's Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story in September 2024, has held true-crime fans in its grip for several decades. The tale of Lyle and Erik, who murdered their parents, José and Kitty Menendez, in 1989, contained much more than just a story with themes of wealth, luxury, and murder.
Their defense was based on claims of horrific abuse suffered during their childhood and shocking claims of molestation by their father, José. The brothers claimed to have acted in self-defense since they feared losing their lives at the hands of emotional, physical, and s*xual maltreatment for several years.
Were these alleged molestations true or cooked up to get out of punishment? Thirty years later, questions about the validity of these allegations still exist. Some family members and witnesses told the court that they believed versions of the attack from the brothers, but some prosecutors dismissed allegations as another ploy for leniency.
This article will look into the complicated nature of the case and the validity of the abuse Lyle and Erik Menendez claimed they suffered at the hands of their parents or whether they lied about such abuse to justify their heinous crime.
Were Lyle and Erik molested by their father?
The central claim of the case is that the brothers suffered abuse by their father, José. Lyle testified that when he was about six years old, molestations began and continued for two years. Based on what Lyle testified, José made him commit s*xual acts under a variety of pretexts, the most frequent of which was "discipline."
"I told my mom to tell dad to leave me alone," Lyle remembered in court, "but she told me I was exaggerating," the New York Times reported.
The younger brother, Erik, testified that the abuse turned to him when Lyle got older.
In A&E's 2017 documentary, The Menendez Murders: Erik Tells All, Erik gave a chilling testimony, saying that their father:
“Would have me massage him, and he would have me perform oral s*x on him."
Erik also revealed that José threatened to kill him if he ever told anyone about the abuse. This fear, according to the defense, culminated in the brothers feeling they had no choice but to kill their parents. The defense produced several witnesses who testified that José was a dictator.
Lyle and Eriks's tennis coach, Charles Wadlington, said José was a tough disciplinarian. He aggressively pushed the brothers to their limits in sports training, often pushing them under extreme conditions. Still, despite all this testimony, the accusation of s*xual abuse remained polarizing.
One of Erik and Lyle's cousins, Diane Vander Molen, testified that Lyle confided in her during the 1970s, telling her about the alleged s*xual abuse perpetrated by his father. Kitty reportedly denied the claims when Diane discussed it with her aunt, Kitty. Others did not believe the allegations.
In her defense, Kitty's brother Milton Andersen argued that statements were "bull," claiming that the brothers had trotted up the story to hide their bad behavior.
Prosecutors concentrated their attack on the merits of the case on a string of wild, reckless spending sprees they went on in the aftermath of the murder, including a luxury car and hiring a tennis coach to shoot holes in the brothers' claims of self-defense and fear.
Did Lyle and Erik lie about their parents?
While defense attorneys portrayed the Menendez brothers as acting out of self-preservation after years of abuse, prosecutors told an entirely different story. Prosecutors argued that the brothers killed their parents for control of their family's fortune, which was more than $14 million. Prosecutors also pointed to the brothers' lavish spending after the murder as evidence of greed rather than fear.
The trial scrutinized the attitude of the brothers, arguing that they were deceiving the police immediately after the murder, reporting that they had returned from a movie and found their parents murdered. The tearful and frantic 911 calls made by Lyle were discovered to have been staged when he admitted to being overwhelmed by stress, not grief.
The prosecution argued that the alleged confrontation between brothers and father just days before the murders did not occur or, if it did, certainly was not anything like what Lyle and Erik testified to. While all of it generally left people wondering if one could believe the brothers' words, several defense witnesses testified that the house in which they lived was indeed dysfunctional and abusive.
Joan Vander Molen, Kitty's sister, said in a 2017 PEOPLE interview, referring to the brothers' accounts of abuse:
“There are certain things in life people do not make up,”
With a divided opinion in the family and an outright lack of physical evidence, the truth about Lyle and Erik sank into obscurity.
In 1996, the verdicts were those of first-degree murder for both Lyle and Erik, and they were sentenced to spend the rest of their lives in prison without parole. Whether they lied about their parents or told the truth is up for debate until now, especially with the light brought by Monsters 2.
Streaming on Netflix - Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story.
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