Erik Menendez is slamming Netflix’s show “Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story,” based on the 1989 murder of Jose and Kitty Menendez, as “awful lies” and a “horrible narrative,” in a statement shared by his wife, Tammi Menendez.
Tammi Menendez, who married Erik Menendez in 1999, posted what she labeled as “Erik’s response to the Netflix’s series” to X on Sept. 19, the day “Monsters” dropped on the streaming platform.
“The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story” is the second season in the Ryan Murphy’s “Monster” anthology, which started with a series on Jeffrey Dahmer.
The nine-episode show follows the lead up and aftermath of the murder of Jose and Kitty Menendez on Aug. 20, 1989.
Joseph “Lyle” Menendez, now 56, and Erik Menendez, now 53, were convicted of the murders in 1996 after two trials. They were sentenced to life imprisonment without parole and remain incarcerated.
The X account for Tammi Menendez has posted updates on Erik Menendez for years, including his reported reaction to “Monsters.” TODAY.com reached out to an attorney for Lyle and Erik Menendez and numbers listed for Tammi Menendez but did not hear back at the time of publication.
“I believed we had moved beyond the lies and ruinous character portrayals of Lyle, creating a caricature of Lyle rooted in horrible and blatant lies rampant in the show,” the statement posted by Tammi Menendez began. “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.”
The statement went on to call the show a “dishonest portrayal” and criticized the depiction of the sexual abuse Erik and Lyle Menendez accused their father of in their first trial, which ended in hung juries.
Lyle and Erik Menendez testified that their father started abusing them when they were each 6 years old, according to “The Menendez Murders” by journalist Robert Rand. But prosecutors at the first trial argued the brothers killed their parents for their estate’s money.
In a second trial that began in 1995, the allegations of abuse were deemed inadmissible.
“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,” the statement posted by Tammi Menendez said.
“How demoralizing is it to know that one man with power can undermine decades of progress in shedding light on childhood trauma,” the statement continued. “Violence is never an answer, never a solution, and is always tragic. As such, I hope it is never forgotten that violence against a child creates a hundred horrendous and silent crime scenes darkly shadowed behind glitter and glamor and rarely exposed until tragedy penetrates everyone involved.”
TODAY.com did not immediately hear back from representatives for Netflix and Murphy.
Since premiering Thursday, “Monsters” has also faced criticism from viewers for scenes that suggest the brothers had an intimate relationship. In the show’s second episode, the brothers kiss and dance seductively as a party. Rand’s “The Menendez Murders” book does not imply the brothers had a sexual relationship.
Murphy has not publicly responded to the backlash.
