Erik Menendez says Ryan Murphy’s ‘Monsters’ is full of ‘blatant lies’
By Lisa Respers France, CNN
(CNN) — Erik Menendez is slamming the “dishonest portrayal” of his life in Netflix’s “Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story.”
Menendez was convicted with his older brother, Lyle, of the fatal 1989 shootings of their parents Kitty and Jose Menendez. The two brothers, who are serving life sentences for the murders, argued that they acted in self-defense after enduring a lifetime of abuse by their father. In a statement shared on social media by his wife, Erik Menendez called the series, which was co-created by Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan, “ruinous.”
“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,” Menendez wrote. “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 nine-episode series revisits the crime from various perspectives, including speculation about the brothers’ relationship and the argument by prosecutors that the murders were motivated by money.
“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,” Mendendez wrote. “Is the truth not enough? Let the truth stand as the truth. How demoralizing is it to know that one man with power can undermine decades of progress in shedding light on childhood trauma.”
Prior to the show’s premiere, Murphy and Brennan spoke about their approach to the project at a screening in New York.
“(The show) is really more interested in talking about how monsters are made as opposed to born,” Murphy said during a panel at an early screening of the show’s first episode, according to Netflix. “We try to not have too much judgment about that because we’re trying to understand why they did something, as opposed to the act of doing something.”
“Ultimately the truth of what happened is not knowable by anybody else, other than two people who are sitting in prison right now,” Brennan added.
On Monday, Murphy was asked about Menendez’s criticism in an interview with Entertainment Tonight.
“I think it’s interesting that he’s issued a statement without having seen the show,” Murphy said in part. “If you watch the show, I would say 60 to 65 percent of our show in the scripts and in the film form center 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” second season released last week and follows “Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story.” Erik Menendez, now 53, and Lyle Menendez, 56, are serving their sentences at the same correctional facility near San Diego, California. Their attorneys argued in a petition last year that new evidence in the case should overturn their convictions.
“Violence is never an answer, never a solution, and is always tragic,” Menendez wrote. “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.”
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