An expert has rubbished a plotline in Ryan Murphy’s fictional adaptation of the Menéndez brothers in the show Monsters: The Lyle And Erik Menendez Story.
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The Netflix series, which came out last Thursday, stars Nicholas Alexander Chavez and Cooper Koch as the Menéndez brothers, who murdered their parents, José and Kitty, with a shotgun at their Beverly Hills mansion in 1989.
It recently attracted criticism for depicting an incestuous relationship between the brothers, with scenes depicting them kissing. One scene involved their mother, played by Chloë Sevigny, walking in on them kissing in the shower.
During his retrial in 1995, Lyle testified that he had molested Erik while they were children. In the series, the brothers both discuss this as adults with their lawyer Leslie Abramson, (Ari Graynor), while recalling the abuse they suffered at the hands of their father, José.
Now Robert Rand, the author of 2018’s The Menendez Murders book, set the record straight on the show and reality.
He told The Hollywood Reporter: “I don’t believe that Erik and Lyle Menendez were ever lovers. I think that’s a fantasy that was in the mind of Dominick Dunne [the reporter in the series portrayed by Nathan Lane].
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“Rumours were going around the trial that maybe there was some sort of weird relationship between Erik and Lyle themselves, but I believe the only physical contact they might have had is what Lyle testified, that when Lyle was eight-years-old, he took Erik out in the woods and played with him with a toothbrush – which is what [their father] José had done with him.
He added: “I certainly wouldn’t call that a sexual relationship of any sort. It’s a response to trauma.”
Following criticism of the show, Erik released a statement posted by his wife Tammi on social media, which read: “I believed we had moved beyond the lies and ruinous character portrayals of Lyle, creating a caricature of Lyle rooted in horrible and blatant likes rampant in the show. 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.”
He continued: “It is sad for me to know that Netflix’s dishonest portrayal of the tragedies surrounding our crime have taken the painful truths several steps backward – back through time 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.
“Those awful lies have been disrupted and exposed by countless brave victims over the last two decades who have broken through their personal shame and bravely spoken out. So now Murphy shapes his horrible narrative through vile and appalling character portrayals of Lyle and of me and disheartening slander.”
The Menéndez brothers are now involved with a new Netflix documentary on their story which will arrive on the streaming platform on October 7.
According to a press release, it promises to “offer new insight and a fresh perspective on a case that people only think they know”.