Ryan Murphy‘s record-breaking anthology series Monster is coming back to Netflix with yet another gruesome season.
Netflix announced the true crime series will be focusing on the violent case of the Menendez brothers, who were convicted in 1996 of murdering their parents. The streaming platform also shared that they have exclusive access to Lyle and Erik Menendez, who are still serving life sentences in prison, for a forthcoming documentary.
The Menendez brothers were the only children of entertainment businessman Jose Menendez and his wife Mary Louise, otherwise known as Kitty. On August 20, 1989, the brothers brutally shot their parents multiple times in the den of their $5 million dollar family home in Beverly Hills, where they staged the murders to look like a mob hit.
Lyle was 21 at the time and Erik was 19.
It would take months for them to be arrested and placed on trial for the murders, during which Lyle and Erik lived lavishly, spending money on clothes, sports cars and business ventures. The police said the crime was motivated by greed, since they were set to inherit their parents’ $14-million estate.
But during his trial, Lyle testified that they killed their parents out of fear after experiencing years of sexual and mental abuse in their household.
The brothers underwent highly publicized trials. They were kept in separate prisons and did not reunite until 2018 after having served almost 22 years of their life prison sentences. They are still in prison, and have become a sort of internet sensation on social media with the growing interest in true crime.
The case was previously depicted in the NBC series Law & Order True Crime: The Menendez Murders, starring Edie Falco, Gus Halper and Miles Gaston Villanueva.
This will be the second season of the Netflix anthology series, which previously broke records with its dramatized recap of Jeffrey Dahmer’s heinous murders in Season 1. DAHMER – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story, starring Evan Peters as the titular serial killer, detailed the cannibalistic murder spree Dahmer conducted undetected for over a decade.
The show drew some controversy, namely from the families of the victims depicted in the series. But it became one of Netflix’s biggest series ever, snagging a Critics Choice Award for Niecy Nash and a Golden Globe for Peters.
But it looks like the controversial true crime anthology is pushing forward with the Menendez case. The brothers were very vocal in the aftermath of the murders, and were even interviewed by Barbara Walters in 1996. The upcoming Netflix doc could possibly reveal some new insights from the brothers over 30 years later.
This is not the only true crime story Netflix is tackling. The Nurse, a Danish thriller that recently released on the platform, tells the harrowing story of killer nurse Christina Hansen.
