The Menendez Brothers

This is one of the most famous and intriguing cases that has ever happened in America, and now in the second part of a Netflix documentary you will hear directly from the 2 brothers that murdered their parents. 

On August 20, 1989, Brothers Lyle (21) and Erik (18) went up to the register and handed over the cash. This item that the cashier returned to them would be the weapon for one of the most infamous murders of the 1980’s. While their parents were watching TV, Erik and Lyle were convicted of the first-degree murders of their parents and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. They are both incarcerated at Donovan Correctional Facility in California. The 1993 trial was broadcasted on National TV, and it captivated the country.

As the trial progressed, more to the story came to light. The brothers say that they were sexually abused for years by their powerful Hollywood father, and they also claim the abuse was ignored by their mother. During the trial, they claimed the killings were self defense. 

They got arrested 5 months after Erik confessed the crime to his therapist, in October of 1989, just 2 months after the crime. The therapist didn’t actually report the brothers to the police, the crazy fact is that the therapist had told his girlfriend and she was the one that told the police, after they broke up, in March of 1990. To add to the complication of the case, the therapist later finds himself in trouble with the police and his credibility is compromised. 

Authorities were suspicious of the brothers from the very beginning, because they inherited their parents 14 million dollars, and spent a lot of it ($700,000) in a very short time. They bought things like a $60,000 Porsche, a Rolex watch, a $50,000-a-year tennis coach for Erik and a $550,000 café in Princeton, N.J. for Lyle, according to Vanity Fair Magazine. The brothers evaded the police for a while but then the police enlisted the help of Erik’s best friend, who was a wire and got a recorded confession.

At first the Menendez Brothers were considered “monsters” by the media and everyone else. Several documentaries were made including the first part of this one, titled: “Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menedez story”. In light of the story the boys told in trial and continue to tell everyone that visits them in prison, some people believe that may have been justified in killing their parents. 

The second part of the Menendez Brothers documentary on Netflix starts streaming on Oct 7. According to the director, Argentinian filmmaker Alejandro Hartmann, it promises to "offer new insight and a fresh perspective on a case that people only think they know”. For example, because they are in prison for life, interviews with the brothers were conducted and recorded using the prison phones, and they could only talk 15 min at a time. On Oct 7 we will get to hear the brothers in their own words. A teaser from Netflix shows Lyle saying in one of the interviews: “Everyone asks why we killed our parents, maybe now people can understand the truth.”