30 years after being convicted for the murder of their parents, Lyle and Erik Menendez are speaking out in a new Netflix docuseries.
“The Menendez Brothers,” which will premiere Oct. 7, will offer new insight and a fresh perspective on one of the most famous criminal cases of the late 20th century, featuring extensive audio interviews with the pair, as well as lawyers involved in the trial, journalists who covered it, jurors, family and other informed observers.
“What happened that night is very well known but so much hasn’t been told,” Erik says in a trailer released on Monday. “We looked like the perfect family. But behind the walls, something very wrong was happening.”
The project, which comes from Campfire Studios, is directed by Alejandro Hartmann (“Carmel: Who Killed Maria Marta?,” “The Photographer: Murder in Pinamar”) and executive produced by Ross Girard and Mark McCune. Diane Sloane, Gina Scarlata, Cecilia Salguero, Will Mavronicolas and JP Quicquaro serve as co-executive producers, while Ross M. Dinerstein and Rebecca Evans serve as producers.
The trailer for the docuseries comes after Erik recently denounced Ryan Murphy’s “Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story.”
The show, which premiered on Thursday, depicts the Menendez Brothers both as spoiled rich brats who went on a spending spree after the brutal shotgun murder of their parents and — as we learn later in the series — sympathetic victims who suffered years of horrific sexual abuse from their father and mother. The show also speculates about Erik’s sexuality and the nature of the brothers’ relationship.
“I believed we had moved beyond the lies and ruinous character portrayals of Lyle, creating a caricature of Lyle rooted in horrible and blatant lies rampant in the show,” the statement posted by Tammi Menendez began. “I can only believe they were done so on purpose. It is with a heavy heart that I say, I believe Ryan Murphy cannot be this naive and inaccurate about the facts of our lives so as to do this without bad intent.”
Erik called the Netflix series a “dishonest portrayal” that has taken “the painful truths several steps backward” to an “era when the prosecution built a narrative on a belief system that males were not sexually abused, and that males experienced rape trauma differently than women.”
He argued that Murphy “shapes his horrible narrative through vile and appalling character portrayals” of him and his brother Lyle and “disheartening slander.”
“How demoralizing is it to know that one man with power can undermine decades of progress in shedding light on childhood trauma,” the statement continued. “Violence is never an answer, never a solution, and is always tragic. As such, I hope it is never forgotten that violence against a child creates a hundred horrendous and silent crime scenes darkly shadowed behind glitter and glamor and rarely exposed until tragedy penetrates everyone involved.”
The story behind the infamous murders has been told several times before now, including, most recently, in 2017 with the limited series “Law & Order True Crime: The Menendez Murder.”
It’s also been the subject of several docuseries, from the 1996 Biography series, “Menendez Brothers: Sins of the Children,” up through 2023 Peacock doc “Menendez + Menudo: Boys Betrayed,” which included sexual assault allegations against José Menendez from a former Menudo member.
Watch the trailer for “The Menendez Brothers” in the video below:
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