1968-present
Lyle Menendez Today: The Menendez Brothers Are Featured in a New Netflix Show
More than a year ago, Netflix announced the second season of its hit anthology series Monster will focus on Lyle Menendez and his brother, Erik. Now that Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story is officially streaming, true-crime fans can watch the latest retelling of why the Menendez brothers killed their parents.
Monsters, which released September 19, follows the conviction of the Menendez brothers for their parents’ murders and the events surrounding the deaths. In the show, Lyle is portrayed by Daytime Emmy Award winner Nicholas Alexander Chavez. Show creators Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan previously delved into the twisted acts of serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer for the show’s first season in 2022.
Neither 56-year-old Lyle nor 53-year-old Erik were directly involved in the making of Monsters, but Netflix does have exclusive access to the brothers for an upcoming documentary feature.
Who Is Lyle Menendez?
Lyle Menendez is a convicted murderer who, with his younger brother, Erik, killed their parents. On August 20, 1989, the Menendez brothers fatally shot their parents, José and Kitty, at their Beverly Hills home. Their arrest the following year set off a trial that captivated the nation, with the brothers citing years of sexual and emotional abuse as the reason for their actions. They were found guilty of first-degree murder in 1996, and each was sentenced to two consecutive life terms. Lyle is now married to his wife, Rebecca, and serving time in a San Diego prison. In 2023, the Menendez brothers filed a petition to vacate their convictions based on new evidence that supports their earlier testimonies that José sexually abused them.
Quick Facts
FULL NAME: Joseph Lyle Menendez
BORN: January 10, 1968
BIRTHPLACE: New York City
SPOUSES: Anna Eriksson (1996-2001) and Rebecca Sneed (2003-present)
ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Capricorn
Early Life
Joseph Lyle Menendez was born in New York City on January 10, 1968, and grew up outside of Princeton, New Jersey. The older son of José Menendez, a Cuban immigrant and successful entertainment executive, and Mary Louise “Kitty” Menendez, Lyle and his younger brother, Erik, grew up amid wealth and privilege. However, their father exerted immense pressure on them to succeed in school and athletics.
The Menendez brothers maintain their father’s actions crossed further lines. Diane Vander Molen, Lyle’s cousin who spent summers with the Menendez family during their childhoods, says that in the summer of 1976, then 8-year-old Lyle confided to her that his father was sexually abusing him. Vander Molen, then 17, told Kitty Menendez about Lyle’s claims, but Kitty didn’t believe them. Vander Molen said Kitty “yanked him by the arm and took him back upstairs and I never heard anything else about that.”
According to a 1993 article from The New York Times, Lyle says he was abused from ages 6 to 8, and Erik says José attacked him for a span of 12 years. Erik also told a cousin about his dad’s behavior.
“My own father, he was a person of means and stature, and my mother was sort of a socialite-type person, a country club type person,” Lyle said in an interview decades later. “No one’s going to intervene in how they raise their family.” He also described his mother as an alcoholic who had suicidal tendencies.
After the family moved to Southern California in 1986, the brothers grew more rebellious under the tight grip of their father. Lyle returned to New Jersey the following year by enrolling at Princeton University but was suspended for a year for plagiarism.
Murder of José and Kitty Menendez
On August 20, 1989, José and Kitty were shot to death in their Beverly Hills home. José was shot six times with a shotgun, while Kitty suffered 10 gunshot wounds. The crime was so brutal that police initially believed the slayings were a mob hit. Lyle, then 21, called the police to report the murders, nearly two hours after they had taken place. Early investigations focused on business rivals and a porn executive who previously had problems with José.
Although the brothers were distraught that night, their behavior over the next few months hardly suggested they were in mourning. They quickly blew through some of the family’s fortune, with Lyle buying himself a Rolex watch, a Porsche sports car, and even put a $300,000 down payment on a restaurant, which he named Mr. Buffalo’s. The two brothers spent a total of $700,000 in the six months following their parents’ deaths.
Suspicious of this exorbitant spending, the police began to suspect the Menendez brothers of committing the murder and arranged for a friend to wear a wire during a lunch with Erik and ask whether he killed his parents, which Erik denied. Later, though, Erik confessed the killings to his therapist, L. Jerome Oziel. Lyle reportedly threatened to kill the therapist if he relayed the information to anyone else. However, Oziel told his girlfriend, who alerted authorities, and the Menendez brothers were eventually arrested in March 1990.
Trials and Conviction
Tape recordings made by Oziel became a subject of legal jousting over the issue of doctor-patient privilege violation, but eventually some of the tapes were admitted as evidence. The brothers were indicted on first-degree murder charges in late 1992. The Menendez brothers’ trial went on to become a national sensation due to its broadcast on Court TV, then a relatively new cable television channel that later became TruTV.
Beginning in July 1993, Lyle and Erik were tried by different juries. They claimed self-defense for the murders, citing years of psychological and sexual abuse and the belief that they would be killed if they didn’t act first. Lyle testified that his father had raped him when he was 7 years old, and his defense attorney presented pictures that he claimed José had taken of his young sons’ genitals. Erik testified that Lyle threatened to expose José as a child molester the night of the murders and that they feared he would kill them to keep them quiet.
Prosecutors, who were seeking the death penalty, countered that the brothers wanted to get their hands on the family fortune. Shortly before he was killed, José reportedly discussed plans to write his sons out of his will, which prosecutors cited as a motive for the murders.
In January 1994, a mistrial was declared when neither jury could reach a verdict. The retrial began the following year, with both brothers tried by one jury. The judge in the second trial limited the amount of testimony and expert witnesses regarding the brothers’ sexual abuse claims, which changed the direction of the case. Additionally, the judge didn’t allow the jury to consider a charge of manslaughter, instead of murder, this time. Lyle and Erik were found guilty of first-degree murder, and in July 1996, they were both sentenced to two consecutive life terms in prison without parole.
Life in Prison
The Menendez brothers were incarcerated separately, and Lyle was sent to Mule Creek State Prison in Ione, California. They kept in touch by writing letters back and forth, even playing a chess match via mail. Along with Erik, Lyle has continuously fought for a new trial, though his appeals have been repeatedly denied.
According to a People magazine article, Lyle has spent some of his time lifting weights, playing basketball, and caring for a pet lizard. He also served as president of the inmate government and led a support group for victims of sexual abuse and violence.
“This tragedy will always be the most astounding and regrettable thing that has ever happened in my life,” Lyle told People in 2017. “You can’t escape the memories, and I long ago stopped trying.”
In February 2018, Lyle transferred from Mule Creek State Prison to San Diego’s R.J. Donovan Correctional Facility, where his brother was incarcerated. That April, news broke that Erik had been moved to his brother’s same housing unit, where they would have the chance to participate in educational and other rehabilitation programs together.
Upon seeing each other for the first time in more than 20 years, the brothers “burst into tears immediately,” journalist Robert Rand, who has reported on their case intimately, told ABC News. “They just hugged each other for a few minutes without saying any words to each other. Then the prison officials let them spend an hour together in a room.”
The brothers had always hoped to be reunited, but the prospects were dim for many years. “It was just something I wasn’t sure was ever going to happen,” Lyle told DailyMailTV after the reunion. “It was just a remarkable moment.”
In 2023, Lyle made a high-profile friend in Rosie O’Donnell. The comedian had watched Menendez + Menudo: Boys Betrayed, a limited docuseries in which a former boy band member says José Menendez also sexually assaulted him, and rewatched the Menendez brothers’ own trial, then made a TikTok video saying she believed the incarcerated men. Soon after, O’Donnell received a call from Lyle’s wife who asked to set up a phone call between the celebrity and her husband. “We have been talking and sharing and becoming very close,” O’Donnell said of her conversations with Lyle.
This June, O’Donnell made another video calling for the Menendez brothers to be released. “They did the unthinkable, which had been done to them day after day after day, and they paid the price for that,” she said and later added, “Free the Menendez brothers. Free the Menendez brothers. It’s time.”
Wife
Since 2003, Menendez has been married to magazine editor Rebecca Sneed. Menendez described his relationship with Sneed as “a very steady, involved marriage that helps sustain me and brings much peace and joy.” The couple isn’t allowed conjugal visits. “One thing I’ve learned is that your physical comfort is much less important that your connection with the people around you,” Menendez said.
It isn’t his first marriage behind bars. Menendez wed Anna Eriksson, a pen pal and former model, in 1996. Earlier that year, he described her as “a saint to put up with everything that comes with this” in an interview with Barbara Walters. “Even though it’s a very limited relationship because of where we are, the exchange of love and sharing, it keeps you in touch with yourself and softer and otherwise you can become very hard and cold in here,” Menendez said. The couple divorced after five years, in 2001.
2023 Court Petition
Citing new evidence, Lyle and his brother filed a petition in July 2023 asking the court to vacate their murder convictions. They referenced a letter Erik had written to their cousin Andy Cano eight months before the murders describing his father’s continued abuse and the emotional toll it caused. Their aunt had recently found the letter in her late son’s belongings.
“I’ve been trying to avoid dad. It’s still happening Andy, but it’s worse for me now,” Erik wrote. “I can’t explain it. He [sic] so overweight that I can’t stand to see him. I never know. When it’s going to happen and it’s driving me crazy. Every night, I stay up thinking he might come in. I need to put it out of my mind.”
The brothers also pointed to Roy Rosselló’s statements about the abuse he says he suffered at the hands of José Menendez. The former member of the boy band Menudo shared his story in the May 2023 docuseries Menendez + Menudo: Boys Betrayed. Rosselló described how José, a former music executive who worked with Menudo, had drugged and raped him as a teenager in the mid-1980s.
Menendez Brothers Documentaries and Movie
Because of their televised trial, the saga of the Menendez brothers became a popular subject for news and magazine articles. Dominick Dunne wrote extensively about their case in Vanity Fair, and the lives and crimes of the brothers inspired several television movies in the mid-1990s.
In early 2017, Menendez opened up to ABC News prior to the network’s airing of Truth and Lies: The Menendez Brothers—American Sons, American Murderers. He said that he was in some ways “more at peace” and that it was “shocking” to think about what he had done nearly three decades earlier. That June, Lifetime aired the movie Menendez: Blood Brothers, starring Courtney Love as mom Kitty.
The true crime anthology series Law & Order: True Crime debuted on NBC in September 2017, starring Edie Falco starring as the Menendez brothers’ controversial attorney Leslie Abramson. Verne Gay said the series basically amounted to “a good and particularly long episode of Law & Order,” though he praised Falco’s performance.
In October 2017, A&E dug into some of the motivating factors that fueled the brothers by interviewing Dr. Stuart Hart, who served as an expert defense witness during their trials. The following month, the network debuted the limited series The Menendez Murders: Erik Tells All, featuring interviews with the younger brother and family members, as well as other exclusive footage.
In September 2024, Netflix released the second season of its hit anthology series Monster, which previously delved into the twisted acts of serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer. For Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story, Lyle is portrayed by Nicholas Alexander Chavez, who is a Daytime Emmy Award–winning actor. Additionally, Netflix will have exclusive access to Lyle and Erik Menendez for an upcoming documentary feature about the infamous killers.
Quotes
- There was no plan. I mean, there was no alibi, no plan... it would be a crazy plan to use a shotgun in the middle of Beverly Hills. The houses are literally 10 yards apart, and the police station is a quarter mile away. There’s no sane person who would have a plan like that.
- I am the kid that did kill his parents, and no river of tears has changed that, and no amount of regret has changed it. I accept that.
- You are often defined by a few moments of your life, but that’s not who you are in your life, you know. Your life is your totality of it... You’re stuck with the decisions you made.
- This tragedy will always be the most astounding and regrettable thing that has ever happened in my life. You can’t escape the memories, and I long ago stopped trying.
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Colin McEvoy joined the Biography.com staff in 2023, and before that had spent 16 years as a journalist, writer, and communications professional. He is the author of two true crime books: Love Me or Else and Fatal Jealousy. He is also an avid film buff, reader, and lover of great stories.
