Crime: you hope you are never a victim, politicians mine it for their own selfish ends, and Netflix has managed to turn it into a wave of profitable content. It happened with several serial killers, and, now, the Menéndez brothers will get theirs.
The streaming service posted the above teaser on their Twitter account earlier today. The show — which has no cast or crew announced at this time — is the next installment in the Monster anthology series from Ryan Murphy, which began with Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story (a poorly worded title if ever there was one). The teaser trailer features the call Lyle Menendez made to emergency services on the night he and his brother killed their parents, José and Mary Louise “Kitty” Menéndez. For those unaware, the pair’s case in 1996 attracted cultural fascination as well as infamy. The family was wealthy, lived in Beverly Hills, and in the months after the killings, the pair spent extravagantly before Erik confessed to his psychologist during a treatment session.
From here, the psychologist told his mistress, and the mistress went to the police. Both brothers were taken into custody in 1990, and initially pled not guilty before saying at the start of their trial they killed their parents due to fear after a lifetime of abuse — particularly sexual abuse at the hands of their father. This was corroborated by some family members, though one of the prosecutors said men could not be raped because they lack the “necessary equipment” and, after an initial mistrial, a new jury bought the prosecutorial case and sentenced each to life in prison without the possibility of parole, and they were kept apart until 2018.
Today, both of the brothers are married (yes, really) and in a part of California’s penitentiary system for those who participate in rehabilitative programs. Their story has been told countless times (and even parodied in work like The Cable Guy), and is likely to attract a new wave of attention. Their claims of abuse at the hands of their parents were recently given more credence thanks to former Menudo member Roy Rosselló saying in a new documentary he was assaulted by their father, too. Legal experts say this will likely not result in a new trial or the pair’s convictions being overturned, but, anything is certainly possible in this current time where even the most ludicrous things from years ago — like the Chicago Cubs winning the World Series — have now come to fruition.
