The extended family of Erik and Lyle Menendez released a statement on Thursday pledging their love and support for the incarcerated brothers and condemning Ryan Murphy’s Netflix series “Monsters” as a “grotesque shockudrama.”
Their aunt Joan VanderMolen, alongside 23 other members of the family, shared this statement to social media about “Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story” and Murphy’s portrayal of Erik and Lyle.
“We are virtually the entire extended family of Erik and Lyle Menendez. We are 24 strong and today we want the world to know we support Erik and Lyle. 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 Menendez 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 victimized 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 the 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.“
Erik has already denounced the series for its “ruinous character portrayals” of himself and his brother.
In “Monsters,” which debuted Sept. 18, younger brother Erik is played by Cooper Koch while Lyle, who is three years older, is played by Nicholas Chavez. Parents Jose and Kitty are portrayed, respectively, by Javier Bardem and Chloë Sevigny.
For his part, Murphy has defended his portrayal of Lyle and Erik Menendez having an incestuous relationship in his reimagining of the siblings’ life story, saying the show had an obligation to present “all points of view and theories” of the case.
“We had an obligation as storytellers to also try and put in their perspective based on our research, which we did,” Murphy said. “If you watch the show, what the show is doing is presenting the points of view and theories from so many people who were involved in the case.”
“[Journalist] Dominick Dunne wrote several articles talking about that theory. We are presenting his point of view, just as we present [the Menendez brothers’ attorney] Leslie Abramson’s point of view,” Murphy explained. “We had an obligation to show all of that, and we did.”
