The case of Lyle and Erik Menendez is a complicated one. One day, a loving family existed, the next, the parents had been murdered by their own sons. Many people believed that the motive was money. I mean, both brothers went on a shopping spree and spent nearly 1 million dollars. When defending themselves during their first trial, the brothers brought up the years of sexual torture and abuse they endured at the hands of their father. Their claim for killing their parents was imperfect self-defense, which means that you have an unreasonable fear of being in imminent harm. Imperfect self-defense lessens a sentence from murder to voluntary manslaughter.
The documentary opens with the phone call Beverly Hills police received after the murder of José and Mary Louise “Kitty” Menendez on Aug. 20, 1989. The documentary follows the series of events through a timeline, from the abuse both brothers endured to the resurfacing of the case in 2020.
The case was considered to be a “celebrity” case because of how well known the Menendez family was, so the case was recorded. With all of the public traction on the case, the documentary was able to add in real footage from the trials and excerpts from letters and notes that were written around the time of the case.
In the documentary, they had people who were involved in the case give their own perspectives. Some of these people were the brothers’ relatives, jurors in the case and the prosecutor. Some of the people such as attorneys and relatives spoke in favor of the brothers, while others believed that justice was served.
Including these pieces of evidence allows the public to make their own judgment of whether the brothers were deserving of their sentences or not.
The documentary came out 18 days after Ryan Murphy’s show about the case,, “Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story.” The show is nine episodes long, with each episode being at least an hour. The show had many fantasy sequences that were used to feed into a perspective. An example of these fantasy sequences was when Murphy portrayed the brothers to have an incestious relationship, placing a kissing scene of the brothers and a clip of them in the shower together. If I hadn’t known the case prior to watching the show, I would have believed that the Menendez brothers really are monsters.
In both the documentary and the show, connections to the O.J. Simpson case had been drawn. Both brothers ran into Simpson at the county jail and Lyle believes that Simpson’s acquittal is the start of why the brothers lost their second trial. I think this inclusion shows how certain biases and shifts of focus can change the outcome of a trial.
There was a pattern that the documentary seemingly followed. A clip of the trial or a person with involvement in the case would show and then we would hear Erik or Lyle’s recollection of what happened and their thoughts. I liked that sort of structure within the documentary because it allowed us to hear both sides, what the public is portraying and what the brothers were feeling.
When it comes to the case, the documentary shows the bias that the Beverly Hills police department had when dealing with this case. When it came to arriving at the crime scene and first interactions with the brothers, BHPD didn’t treat them like suspects. Pamela Bozanich, the prosecutor in the first trial, said, “Statistically, if you have a domestic homicide, you would be an idiot police officer to not consider other family members.” I think including this into the documentary shows both the ignorance and humanity of the BHPD.
When Bozanich was looking for witnesses to speak on behalf of José Menedez’s character, she couldn’t find a single person, other than his secretary, that had a good thing to say about him. Bozanich says, “And everybody else had just these awful stories about him and what a monster he was. The loss of José Menendez in my mind was an actual plus for mankind.”
I honestly enjoyed the documentary and hope that if people are looking to find other perspectives regarding the case, they watch it.
“The Menendez Brothers:” ★★★★★
