Ryan Murphy‘s Monsters came under fire for insinuating that Lyle and Erik Menéndez had an incestuous relationship, and now journalists who covered the original murder case are slamming the claim.
Robert Rand, who wrote the 2018 book The Menéndez Murders, weighed in on scenes in the Netflix show’ that hinted at Lyle and Erik having a sexual relationship.
“I don’t believe that Erik and Lyle Menéndez were ever lovers,” Rand told The Hollywood Reporter on Tuesday, September 24. “I think that’s a fantasy that was in the mind of [reporter] Dominick Dunne [Nathan Lane].”
Rand recalled “rumors” going around during the high-profile trial about “some sort of weird relationship” between Erik and Lyle.
“But I believe the only physical contact they might have had is what Lyle testified,” Rand continued. “That when Lyle was 8 years old, he took Erik out in the woods and played with him with a toothbrush — which is what [their father] José [Menéndez] had done with him. And so I certainly wouldn’t call that a sexual relationship of any sort. It’s a response to trauma.”
Monsters, which was released on September 19, centered around Lyle (Nicholas Alexander Chavez) and Erik (Cooper Koch), who were convicted for the 1989 murder of their parents. Season 2 of Monsters presented different perspectives about what led the siblings to kill their parents, José (Javier Bardem) and Kitty (Chloë Sevigny), including their claims that it was in self-defense following years of alleged physical, emotional and sexual abuse.
In the first episode, Lyle and Erik spoke about the aftermath of their parents’ death. Lyle — who was on drugs — subsequently kissed Erik on the lips. The show later featured a sequence where Dominick, who wrote about the trial for Vanity Fair, mentioned the siblings’ motives. . After he suggested that the brothers were hiding a secret before the murders, the episodecut to a scene of Kitty opening the bathroom door to discover her sons taking a shower together.
Neither Erik nor Lyle ever claimed to have been involved in a romantic or sexual relationship. Lyle specifically testified at his trial in 1994 that he never had a sexual relationship with his brother.
Erik has since called Murphy out for how the scripted series approached their story.
“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,” read a statement from Erik that was shared on Lyle’s Facebook page. “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.”
Erik specifically expressed frustration with how his and Lyle’s perspectives were portrayed, adding, “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.”
He continued: “So now Murphy shapes his horrible narrative through vile and appalling character portrayals of Lyle and of me and disheartening slander. Is the truth not enough?”
Murphy, for his part, defended how Monsters tried not to pick a side.
“I think it’s interesting that he’s issued a statement without having seen the show. It’s really, really hard — if it’s your life — to see your life up on screen,” he told Entertainment Tonight on Monday, September 23. “If you watch the show, I would say 60 to 65 percent [of the content centers] around the abuse and what they claim happened to them. And we do it very carefully and we give them their day in court and they talk openly about it.”
Monsters is currently streaming on Netflix.
If you or someone you know has been sexually assaulted, contact the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673).