5 Shocking Takeaways From ‘The Menendez Brothers’ Documentary On Netflix

The Menendez brothers are speaking out thirty-five years after brutally murdering their parents. Erik and Lyle Menendez were convicted and sentenced for their crimes, but Netflix’s new documentary, The Menendez Brothers, marks the first time the siblings will discuss what happened in-depth.

Erik, now 51, and Lyle, now 55, are currently serving their life sentences at Donovan Correctional Facility in San Diego, California. The brothers teamed up with director Alejandro Hartman and Netflix for The Menendez Brothers, where they provide insight on the murders and their subsequent trials. There are also interviews with the trial's lawyers, journalists who reported on the case, jurors, family members, and other observers.

“So much hasn’t been told,” Erik said in the documentary, “and I think that not speaking out doesn’t help anyone.” Lyle added that the murders happened because of “family secrets and things in the past,” and that now, 34 years of incarceration, there is finally a conversation happening where people can finally “understand” and “believe.”

The documentary comes a few weeks after the release of Ryan Murphy’s scripted Netflix drama, Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story, which went viral on social media and reignited conversation about the case. Erik swiftly criticized the series, writing on Facebook, “I believe Ryan Murphy cannot be this naive and inaccurate about the facts of our lives so as to do this without bad intent.”

Now, Erik and Lyle are detailing what happened in their own words—just as their case gets a second chance. Because of new evidence, the brothers were recently granted a court hearing on November 29, 2024, which could eventually result in a retrial or resentencing for the brothers. Here are five things we learned from The Menendez Brothers documentary on Netflix.

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Erik Couldn’t Believe That Police Didn’t Suspect The Brothers For The Murders

In the documentary, Erik expressed his disbelief that the police did not consider them suspects at the beginning, especially given that they had no alibi and gunpowder residue on their hands. “The gunpowder residue was all over our hands,” Erik revealed. “Under normal circumstances, they give you a gunpowder residue test. We would have been arrested immediately.”

Erik added that there were also gun shells in his car, which was located inside the police search area. “All they had to do is search my car. And if they would have just pressed me, I wouldn’t have been able to withstand any questioning,” he explained. “I was in a completely broken and shattered state of mind.”

The Brothers’ Spending Spree After The Murders Was To Distract From Their Grief

After murdering their parents, Erik and Lyle began spending lavishly with their inheritance, purchasing Rolex watches, designer clothing, real estate, a new tennis coach, and making various business investments. However, in the documentary, Erik stated that this wasn’t his idea of fun but a way to cope.

“The idea that I was having a good time is absurd,” Erik said in the doc. “Everything was to cover up this horrible pain of not wanting to be alive. One of the things that kept me from killing myself is I felt like I would be a complete failure to my dad at that point.”

Lyle echoed Erik’s sentiment and said he wasn’t “enjoying himself as a playboy.” Instead, he spent many nights crying, struggling to sleep, and feeling deeply distraught in the months after committing the murders.

Lyle Said He Felt Like His Arrest Was ‘Staged’ For The Media

The Beverly Hills police arrested Lyle at the family mansion in what he described as a “media circus.” Reflecting on the moment, Lyle said, “They could have just called me and told me to come into the police station. It was a staged arrest for a media circus—they had called the media to be ready.”

“They arrested me with a SWAT team, you know, cornering the car on the road, like I was a fugitive drug dealer or something,” he alleged. Despite his frustrations, Lyle felt relief after his arrest, mainly because he no longer had to carry the secret of why this happened and that he was partly responsible.

The Brothers Said That OJ Simpson's Acquittal Had A ‘Profound’ Impact On Their Case

In the documentary, Lyle Menendez argued that OJ Simpson’s acquittal had a huge impact on their second trial, which began eight days after Simpson’s trial ended. (The brothers’ first trial, where they were tried separately, ended with a hung jury.)

“I didn’t really think that it would have the profound effect on the public that it did in terms of high profile defendants. We got washed in the wake of that,” Erik said in the documentary.

In the retrial, the brothers’ defense team was not permitted to present evidence and testimony about their years of alleged child sex abuse. “The judge said well Erik and Lyle are not women so the battered women syndrome doesn’t apply, so all of that trauma it’s not relevant and it’s not allowed into the second trial,” Erik explained.

The judge instructed the jury to choose between a verdict of first-degree murder or no crime at all, rather than giving them the option to consider manslaughter. “The second jury convicted the brothers because they saw a completely different trial that was engineered to guarantee murder verdicts. To show them so much less makes it not fair to the brothers,” Hazel Thornton, a juror in the brothers’ first trial, said in the doc.

Erik Blames Himself For The Murders And Everything That Happened After

More than three decades later, Erik still blames himself for what happened on the night of the murders and what went down afterward. “I went to the only person who had ever helped me, that ever protected me. Ultimately, this happened because of me, because I went to him,” he explained.

“And then afterwards, lets just be honest, he was arrested because of me because I told [his therapist] Dr Oziel, because I couldn’t live with what I did. I couldn’t live with it, I wanted to die. In a way I did not protect Lyle, I got him into every aspect of this tragedy, every aspect of this tragedy is my fault,” Erik continued.

Meanwhile, Lyle said he believed “part of this disastrous weekend occurred from me just being naive that somehow I could rescue Erik with no consequence. I could confront my father, that my mother would somehow react for the first time in her life like a mother. Those were very unrealistic expectations.”

The Menendez Brothers is streaming on Netflix. Watch the official trailer below.