Lyle and Eric Menendez's family wonders who the real “monster” is after Ryan Murphy's recent portrayal on Netflix.
On Wednesday, Eric's wife, Tammy Menendez, shared a letter written by his aunt Joan Vandermeulen on behalf of 24 extended family members, showing their support for the brotherhood and criticizing Murphy's “disgusting” depiction of the 1989 murder of their parents Jose and Marie Louise “Kitty.” Menendez in Monsters: The Story of Lyle and Eric Menendez.
“We're pretty much Eric and Lyle Menendez's entire extended family,” Vandermeulen began letter. “We are 24 strong and today we want the world to know that we support Eric and Lyle. Individually and collectively we are praying for their release after spending 35 years in prison. We know them, we love them and we want them to come home with us.
“Ryan Murphy Monsters: The Story of Lyle and Eric Menendez It is an episodic, gross, anachronistic, serial-phobic nightmare that is not only full of lies and outright falsehoods but ignores the latest exculpatory revelations. Our family has fallen victim to this horrific, shocking drama. Murphy claims he spent years researching the case, but ultimately relied on Dominic Dunne, a pro-prosecution hacker, to justify his slander and never spoke to us.
“The character assassination of Eric and Lyle, our nephews and cousins, under the guise of ‘telling the story’ is disgusting,” she continued. “We know these men. We have grown up with them since they were boys. We love them and to this day we are close to them. We also know what happened in their home and the unimaginably turbulent life they led. Many of us have been eyewitnesses to many unspeakable atrocities.” One should ever bear witness to it.
“It is sad that Ryan Murphy, Netflix, and everyone else involved in this series have no understanding of the impact of years of physical, emotional, and sexual abuse. And perhaps after all, Monsters “It's all about Ryan Murphy,” Vandermeulen added.
After Tammy previously shared a statement from Eric, in which she criticized the show as a “naive and inaccurate” portrayal, Monsters Actor Cooper Koch (who played Eric) visited the brothers at Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility in San Diego County, along with fellow Murphy collaborator Kim Kardashian. Meanwhile, Lyle's representative Nicholas Alexander Chavez expressed his “sympathy and sympathy” for the brothers in an interview with USA Today.
Murphy has since defended the show as depicting “many, many, many points of view,” noting E! News: “There seems to be some controversy surrounding people thinking, for example, that the brothers have an incestuous relationship. There are those who say that never happened. “There were those who said this had already happened.”
The Golden Globe winner said that 60 to 65 percent of the series “is about Eric and Lyle Menendez talking about their abuse, talking about their victimization, talking about what they've been through emotionally, and these two boys on our show getting their moment in court.”
Courtesy of Netflix
After shooting Jose six times and Kitty 10 times on August 20, 1989, police initially investigated several mob leads. The brothers were arrested in March 1990 after Eric confessed to his psychiatrist, and claimed at trial that they had killed their parents out of fear for their lives after suffering lifelong abuse, including sexual abuse from their father.
Although Eric and Lyle were convicted of first-degree murder in 1996 and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, their attorney Mark Geragos said the people He is “cautiously optimistic” that new family testimony will help convert the case to culpable homicide.
According to the official Netflix log for the show, Monsters “It delves into the historical case that swept the world and paved the way for modern audiences' fascination with true crime, and in turn asks those audiences: Who are the real monsters?”
Koch and Chavez star as Eric and Lyle Menendez, with Javier Bardem as José, Chloë Sevigny as Kitty, Nathan Lane as Dominique Dunne, and Ari Graynor as Leslie Abramson.
Despite the controversy, quite reminiscent of season one's depiction of the murders committed by Jeffrey Dahmer, the series topped the Netflix charts with 12.3 million views in its opening weekend.
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