The Menendez brothers have been back in the headlines since Ryan Murphy’s Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story launched to the top of Netflix.
But the infamous case of Lyle and Erik Menendez — convicted for murdering their parents, Jose and Kitty Menendez, in 1989 in their Beverly Hills mansion — has received a slew of true-crime TV treatments over the years.
The further we get from the brothers’ 1994 mistrial and retrial, and imprisonment sentence in 1996, the more public opinion shifts as the Menendez brothers, who are still in prison serving life sentences, have claimed their father, José Menendez, sexually and physically abused them, while their mother looked the other way. Now, their 2023 habeas corpus petition is under review by the Los Angeles District Attorney’s office, as new evidence could lead to a reevaluation of their sentences.
Victims or villains?
Viewers can be the judge on whether justice was done or handed down unfairly after bingeing Netflix’s Monsters series and these other takes on the Menendez brothers and their story.
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The Menendez Brothers
In wake of Netflix’s massive hit with Monsters, the streamer announced The Menendez Documentary would hit shortly after on the streamer and would feature the first interviews with Erik and Lyle Menendez together in decades. Released on Oct. 7, the two-hour documentary hears from the brothers in their own words as they revisit the trial that shocked the nation via extensive phone interviews. The Campfire Studios project, directed by Argentinian director Alejandro Hartmann, set out to offer “new insight and a fresh perspective on a case that people only think they know,” per Netflix.
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Menendez + Menudo: Boys Betrayed
The three-part Peacock docuseries touches on the original Menendez brothers’ murder case, but links directly to their claims of family abuse with a new allegation against their father, José Menendez. The 2023 series, which premiered one month before Erik and Lyle filed their habeas petition, focused on former boy band Menudo member Roy Rosselló. The group was signed to a label deal by José, then president of RCA Records. In the docuseries, Rosselló talks about the alleged sexual abuse he endured from the band’s manager, Edgardo Diaz, and then another incident of sexual abuse involving José when Rosselló was 14 years old. The docuseries implies that Díaz offered Rosselló to Menendez as a means to seal the deal.
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Menendez Brothers: Victims or Villains
The four-part Fox Nation docuseries bowed in March 2024 featuring testimony from an imprisoned Lyle Menendez, prosecutor Pamela Bozanich and from the brothers’ attorney, Mark Geragos. There’s also appearances by TV host and comic Rosie O’Donnell, who interviewed Lyle from prison in 2023, and former Saturday Night Live cast member Darrell Hammond, who has campaigned for the pair’s prison release.
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Menendez Brothers: Misjudged?
This 2022 true-crime feature directed by Andrea De Brito returned to a common theme of the treatment the Menendez brothers received during their murder trials: Did they kill for money or because of chronic abuse? This Max offering has archival footage of the brothers’ intertwined by re-enactments performed by Eric Phelps playing Erik Menendez.
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Suburban Nightmare: The Menendez Brothers
This 2022 Tubi doc opens with the 1989 911 dispatch call from Lyle Menendez claiming someone brutally murdered his parents. But the focus ultimately turns to father José Menendez being hard on and eventually sexually abusive towards his sons. Here, the Menendez brothers’ self-defense motive for the murders is explored, complete with re-enactments of José stalking his sons in their bedrooms, and of the brutal murders of the parents in their Beverly Hills home.
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Law and Order True Crime: The Menendez Murders
Though not a documentary, this eight-episode NBC miniseries starred Edie Falco as Leslie Abramson, who became a star defending Erik Menendez at his trial by asking not what the young men did to their mother and father but why. The ripped-from-the-headlines 2017 dramatization details the day-to-day battles in the courtroom, and the media circus that grew around the trial. NBC at the time promised to reveal the “shocking truth of what really went down when the cameras stopped rolling.”
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The Menendez Murders: Erik Tells All
A&E Networks 2017 true-crime documentary had a unique focus on Erik Menendez in his own words. Using phone interviews, for the first time in years, he recounted his childhood abuse as his family’s dirty secret to explain how that drove him and his brother to murder their parents. As cultural touchstones, there’s also interviews with CNN’s Larry King and star Associated Press trial reporter Linda Deutsch.
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Truth and Lies: The Menendez Brothers – American Sons, American Murders
The 2017 ABC documentary focused on the Menendez brothers as Beverly Hills party boys who murdered their parents, and promised to reveal “the hidden clues of the Menendez family’s descent into hell.” To get there, the doc shows home movies, photos and testimony from people close to the Menendez family, as well as detectives, lawyers and jurors involved with the infamous case.
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Honor Thy Father and Mother: The True Story of the Menendez Murders
In 1994, Fox aired its own take on the Menendez brothers’ crime and trial. The true crime TV movie starred James Farentino as José Menendez, Jill Clayburgh is Kitty Menendez, Billy Warlock as Lyle and David Beron as Erik. As with the CBS movie (below), the Fox effort drew criticism for coming after the mistrial of the Menendez brothers, and well ahead of their retrial in 1996.
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Menendez: A Killing in Beverly Hills
The 1994, the CBS TV movie, besides being an early investigation into the Menendez brothers and the murder of their parents, was also among the first TV movies based on an infamous case that included a mistrial that year. Larry Elikann directed the marathon four-hour movie, with Lyle being played by Damian Chapa and Eric by Travis Fine. Edward James Olmos filled the role of José Menendez, while Beverly D’Angelo is his wife Kitty.
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Source: Hollywoodreporter
