With the new Netflix show Monsters going viral, the Menendez case is all the rage. The Menendez case is a tragic one that had a large spotlight back in the 90s when the case was live. Two brothers, Erik and Lyle, who are telling stories of being sexually and physically abused for over a decade and saying how they thought one day their parents were just going to kill them. On August 20, 1989 Lyle and Erik killed both of their parents. The followers of the case were split with some thinking they were justified as they did it as self defense. Some others were saying that it was wrong and abuse is no grounds for murder, there were other ways they could have gone at handling this. There were two trials, the first one ending in a mistrial with the jury ending in a split no decision and the second trial the judge unfairly saying they couldn’t use any evidence of abuse as grounds to justify the killings. The boys were sentenced to life in prison without the opportunity for parole. 30 years later, the brothers are still in prison.
Morgan Coleman, a DHS student and viewer of the Monsters show, said,“I liked the show. I know it wasn’t 100% accurate but I’m glad it brought awareness to the case,” Coleman added, “I think a big factor was the family they grew up in. They watched her [Kitty] get walked all over by him [Jose] and they wanted to take control. They were afraid. They thought the abuse was normal, but they also had to save themselves to get out of this fatal situation.” Ms. Biser, the DHS AP Psychology teacher, didn’t know too much about the case before the new resurgence in popularity. When asked about her knowledge on the case she replied, “I knew it was brothers who were stuck in an abuse cycle…In AP Psychology we study the reason why humans do the things we do, we hope to get a better understanding of ourselves.” She explained how abuse is a constant cycle unless someone intervenes, like a therapist. “There is a fine line between the actions of the defendants and their mental ages being behind causing them to lose their rational thinking skills,” Biser explained. “There should still be repercussions but they weren’t fully aware what would happen.” Ella Zigmund, a student of Biser’s, stated she believes their punishments were too harsh. “They shouldn’t have gotten life without parole,” Zigmund claims, “They shouldn’t have been freed but the brothers were in a self defense situation. As we see in the show [Monsters], their mental ages being over ten years behind impacts them because they just start spending their parents’ money not realizing the impact of what’s about to happen to them.” Zigmund says she thinks the show was a very good way to give attention to the situation and how unfairly the boys were treated during the trial.
But most people don’t know about the new evidence that could potentially cause another retrial. New evidence shows another person who can corroborate their abuse stories via a letter. Eight weeks before the murders, Erik wrote a letter to one of his cousins saying that he believed that the abuse would eventually lead to his dad killing him. Coleman believes that, “This letter is true written evidence that this abuse did happen so they should be freed.” She thinks a good comparison is the Gypsy Rose case. A similar case where the child is abused and kept prisoner in their own home, yet the only difference is Gypsy didn’t do the actual murder and the Menendez brothers did. Zigmund agrees with Coleman’s statement, “I think especially with the introduction of the letter they should be free,” Zigmund says.
Overall, with social media and majority of the public on their side, the Menendez brothers have a good shot at getting out.
