Menendez brothers' family slam ‘gross’ Netflix Monsters series in newly released statement
Topics: Netflix, Ryan Murphy, True crime, Menendez Brothers
Joe Yates
Featured Image Credit: VINCE BUCCI/AFP via Getty Images/Netflix
Topics: Netflix, Ryan Murphy, True crime, Menendez Brothers
Days after Erik Menendez hit out at Netflix's Monsters, his and Lyle's family have come forward to label the show 'repulsive' and 'a character assassination'.
If miraculously you've not already heard all about Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story, I'll very quickly brief you on why the brothers are serving life behind bars without the possibility of parole.
Back in 1989, the shotgun-wielding siblings burst into their living room where their parents 45-year-old José, and his 47-year-old wife Kitty Menendez, were watching TV, shot them 15 times.
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While on trial, Lyle and Erik claimed they were subject to years of physical, emotional and sexual abuse by their parents and that was why they killed them. Prosecutors alleged that they did so for money from their parent's $14.5 million estate, according to Forbes.
Now, Ryan Murphy, director of the hit series which also brought us Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story, has been slammed for his take on the events leading up to the brutal murder - including creating a scene that features incest for the show.
Erik Menendez has already spoken out about the true crime series, via his wife Tammi Saccoman - who he married in the waiting room at Folsom State Prison back in 1999.
Now his and Lyle's extended family are also weighing in on the issue.
They released the following statement: "We are virtually the entire extended family of Erik and Lyle Menéndez. We are 24 strong and today we want the world to know we support Erik and Lyle.
"We individually and collectively pray for their release after being imprisoned for 35 years. We know them, love them, and want them home with us.
"Ryan Murphy's Monsters, the Lyle and Erik Menéndez Story is a phobic, gross, anachronistic, serial episodic nightmare that is not only riddled with mistruths and outright falsehoods but ignores the most recent exculpatory revelations."
It continued: "Our family has been victimized by this grotesque shockadrama. Murphy claims he spent years researching the case but in the end relied on debunked Dominick Dunne, the pro-prosecution hack, to justify his slander against us and never spoke to us.
"The character assassination of Erik and Lyle, who are our nephews and cousins, under the guise of a 'story telling narrative' is repulsive. We know these men. We grew up with them since they were boys. We love them and to this very day we are close to them."
They added: "We also know what went on in their home and the unimaginably turbulent lives they have endured. Several of us were eyewitnesses to many atrocities one should never have to bear witness to.
"It is sad that Ryan Murphy, Netflix, and all others involved in this series, do not have an understanding of the impact of years of physical, emotional, and sexual abuse. Perhaps, after all, Monsters is all about Ryan Murphy."
UNILAD has contacted Murphy's representatives for comment.