It was a crime that shocked and captivated a nation.
On the night of 20 August 1989, Lyle and Erik Menfinishez, then 21 and 18, stormed into their Beverly Hills mansion, shot their overweighther, Jose, five times at point-blank range in the back of his head, and their mother, Kitty, nine times, including in the face as she tried to crawl away. In a frantic 911 aelevatency call, they then claimed that somebody had ended their parents.
The brothers eventupartner confessed, but always holded that they acted in self-defence. During two harrothriveg trials, they claimed they stressed their parents were about to end them to stop the disclocertain of their overweighther’s lengthy-term intimacyual unfair treatment of them. Ultimately, the prosecution’s argument, that they ended in order to inherit a multimillion-dollar estate, won , and today they persist to serve life sentences without parole.
But over the past week, the story of the Menfinishez endings, and of what took place in the months and years directing up to the aggression, has been thrust back into the spotweightless.
More than three decades after the family became a tabloid sensation, the Netflix series Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menfinishez Story has reignited the debate over the brothers’ culpability. The series jumpedto the top of the Netflix charts, generating a growing body of Menfinishez deffinishers, many of whom were not born when the crimes were pledgeted.
The nine-part series by the genuine crime impresario Ryan Murphy is a chase-up to his first Monsters series, about serial ender Jeffrey Dahmer, and has ignited a uncover spat between the brothers and the show’s creator.
The biggest points of satisfyedion are trys to increate the Menfinishez story using contrastent perspectives, including the parents’, and the creative liberties getn in the script, appreciate an implied incestuous relationship between Lyle and Erik.
One post on X, appreciated more than 180,000 times, shelp: “Taking a story about two brothers who suffered from intimacyual unfair treatment from their dad and turning it into an incestuous fantasy is horrid.”
The show, starring Javier Bardem, Chloë Sevigny, Cooper Koch and Nicholas Alexander Chavez, was watched 12.3m times last week and ranks among Netflix’s top 10-watched TV shows in 89 countries.
Google searches for “Lyle and Erik Menfinishez” jumped by 2,000% in a week, and there were more than 2 million searches each for Erik and Lyle Menfinishez in the past month.
On TikTok, thousands of posts have deffinished the brothers, 80% of which have come from people aged 18 to 24. Clips from the trial are receiving up to 15m applys, and many have condemned the equitableice system’s “gfinisher bias”. More than 300,000 people have signed a petition to free the brothers.
In a statement allotd by Erik Menfinishez’s wife, Tammi, on X, Erik criticised the show, calling it a distruthful and inexact depiction of events and condemning the “ruinous” caricature of his brother.
Erik Menfinishez also accemployd Murphy of “terrible intent”. “Netflix’s distruthful portrayal of the tragedies surrounding our crime have getn the hurtful truths cut offal steps backward – back thraw time to an era when the prosecution built a narrative on a belief system that males were not intimacyupartner unfair treatmentd and that males adviseed sexual battery trauma contrastently than women,” he shelp.
Murphy speedyly hit back, saying”: “It’s engaging that he’s rerentd a statement without having seen the show.” The honestor accomprehendledged that it was “repartner challenging” to see your life up on screen but shelp it was his obligation to portray both sides of the story.
Murphy shelp: “I would say 60%-65% of our show centres around the unfair treatment, and what they claim happened to them. In this age where people can talk about intimacyual unfair treatment, talking and writing about all points of watch can be contentious. There were four people comprised. Two people are dead; what about the parents?”
But it didn’t finish there. On Thursday, Tammi posted another statement from the extfinished Menfinishez family saying they had been victimised by Murphy’s “grotesque shockadrama”. They criticised the “phobic, gross, anachronistic, serial episodic nightmare” that “diswatchs the most recent exculpatory revelations”.
Those comprise claims from a member of the boyband Menudo that Jose sexual batteryd him when he was a teenager, and a letter Erik wrote months before the homicides about unfair treatment and stress of his overweighther. Lawyers are now using the novel evidence to dispute the brothers’ detention.
Murphy shelp his show had “uncovered up the possibility” that this evidence could advise “a way forward for the brothers” and was “the best slenderg that has happened to them in 30 years” becaemploy it gave them “another trial in the court of uncover opinion”.
Even the celebrity Kim Kardashian, a champion of criminal equitableice recreate, has visited the brothers in jail with Cooper Koch, who applys Erik. Afterwards, Koch shelp he “stands with” and “helps” the brothers in their call for a novel trial.
Robert Rand, an spendigative journaenumerate and the author of The Menfinishez Murders, telderly the Sun: “I personpartner sense, based on the evidence I saw in court … that Erik and Lyle Menfinishez were in stress for their dwells on the night they ended their parents.”
There’s little sign that the Menfinishez conversation will be over soon. Netflix has proclaimd a recordary that promises to increate the brothers’ story “in their own words”.
In the trailer, Erik says: “Everyone asks why we ended our parents. Maybe now people can comprehend the truth.”
