![This New Smyrna Beach rental home, occupied by ASL teacher Kiara Campbell's friend, experienced flooding that overflowed the lake. "Usually her husband and kids can go on the outside of this [fence] and fish in that in that little pond and it almost hit where her pergola is," Campbell said. (Courtesy Kiara Campbell)](https://www.wjpitch.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/1000009847-1200x900.jpg)
The new show “Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story” has become one of the Top 10 shows on Netflix, recounting the details of the infamous and gruesome Menendez brother case. Lyle and Erik Menendez killed their mother and father, Jose and Kitty Menendez, in their own home. The show was highly dramatized and some parts even false leading to show and case in a false perspective. The show, and its related case, have sparked interest around WJ.
The brothers faced awful abuse at the hands of their parents ever since they were children. They “finally had enough of the abuse” and killed their parents in their California home in 1989. Lyle and Erik plead guilty and were charged with first-degree murder with a sentence of life in prison without parole. The trial took over 6 years, finally ending in 1996.
Some have never heard of the case before and just learned about it due to the show.
“I’ve heard of the case before but never really knew the details of the case, the show really put a light to what really happened and what the case was about,” senior Julia Levinson said.
In contrast, others have known about the case for quite some time.
“I have heard about the case before, and felt that some parts of the show were incredibly dramaticized not portraying the whole truth,” senior Annabel Kotek said.
Conversation sparked about whether the show is genuinely realistic. Most viewers understand the baseline of the case due to the widespread media coverage it gained when the crime and case happened back in the 1990s. Some believe, however, that the show is exacerbating what really happened.
Due to the uproar of views that the show got, even the brothers heard about it all the way from jail. The brothers, especially Erik, told news outlets that the show does not accurately portray what happened to the brothers. Thus, the brothers aided in releasing a documentary on the truths of the case called, “The Menendez Brothers Documentary.”
In this documentary the audience hears from the real-life people who dealt with the trial back in 1990, the detectives, the prosecutor and even the brothers themself.
“I really enjoyed the documentary because I was hearing from my friends that some of the stuff in the show ‘Monsters’ was not true and watching the documentary really cleared up some things that I wasn’t sure were true or not,” senior Mimi Dietrich said.
