Erik and Lyle Menendez were convicted by a Los Angeles jury for the murder of their parents, Jose and Kitty Menendez in 1996. Their allegations of abuse against their father were not embraced by the courts until now.
After nearly three decades, the Menendez Brothers case turns a new page with the possibility of a retrial or resentencing following the emergence of a new witness who claimed that the Menendez patriarch abused him. According to Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón, a hearing regarding the new evidence is set for November 29.
Nathalie Paniagua, second year studying international relations on a pre-law track, was surprised by the appearance of new evidence.
“I wasn’t expecting this, especially after it being so long, I wasn’t really expecting anything to come out.” Paniagua said, “It was such a big case in the 90s…”
Ryan Murphy’s latest Netflix series titled Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story released on September 19 blurred lines between fact and fiction.
Marisa Gaglio, a health and human science major, recently began streaming the series and found it important to separate TV from reality.
“I think it’s very clear, like, an over-dramatization of what’s going on,” Gaglio said. “There were definitely some things that I thought were a little icky that they did with the brothers and stuff.”
However, Gaglio also said there was a positive side of the series in how it renewed public interest.
“I think if it gets more people to pay attention to it and do their own research on it, it’s a good thing,” said Gaglio.
Paniagua also had mixed opinions on the hyper-fictionalized nature of the latest Monsters series.
“The way that they were depicting the brothers [in the Netflix series] was really questionable,” said Paniagua. She said she stopped watching the show because she believed “it was really just used as a way to try and exploit them.”
Ava Browne, a cinema and media studies major, noted that the case is receiving attention from influential societal figures.
“I heard this morning that Kim Kardashian went to visit them in jail, which I was kind of surprised about,” said Browne.
Kardashian posted on Instagram early Friday morning to express her opinions on the Menendez Brothers case to her 360 million followers. “It’s time for the Menendez brothers to be freed,” Kardashian wrote.
Browne expressed her intrigue in the sensationalization of the characters involved in criminal cases, “I feel like it’s very Gypsy Rose Blanchard coded.” Blanchard, who pleaded guilty to second degree murder charges for the death of her abusive mother, recently rose to fame after the release of the Hulu miniseries “The Act” based on her life story.
" [The Menendez brothers] are gonna come out and they’re gonna be like, on Dancing with the Stars like Anna Dalby,” Browne said.
“I just think it’s interesting because,, I think that that entire case is going to be social media driven,” said Browne. “I think that nowadays most news is very controlled by social media. Like people very much read into Instagram graphics… they don’t necessarily read actual news.”
According to a video released by ABC News in 2021, videos related to the Menendez brothers on tiktok had over 130 million views which “helped renew interest in Menendez brothers’ case for new generation.”
Following Murphy’s latest Netflix series, a new 2-hour documentary The Menendez Brothers will debut on Netflix on October 7, including the interview with Erik and Lyle Menendez revealing “the sick secrets of the family.”