What we learned from the Netflix documentary “The Menendez Brothers.”

ERik and Lyle Menendez have been behind bars for killing their parents for more than three decades – but the brothers haven't disappeared from the spotlight.

Her story inspired Ryan Murphy to create his hit Netflix drama Monster, which came out in September, and the streamer will continue with the documentary on October 7th The Menendez brotherswith telephone interviews with the brothers in prison.

The Menendez brothers have never denied that they killed their parents in their Beverly Hills mansion on August 20, 1989, but they have long called for the public to better understand their story. In their high-profile trials, which began in 1993 and ended in 1996, when they were sentenced to life in prison, prosecutors argued that they were motivated to murder Jose and Kitty Menendez in order to get their hands on their parents' roughly $14 million estate As the defense explained, they acted in self-defense after being sexually abused for years by their father, a prominent music manager.

The Menendez brothers Recalls the trial footage that Erik and Lyle took to the stand and spoke about the abuse they allegedly suffered. In addition to the brothers, filmmakers interview an attorney from their defense team, jurors, experts and journalists who covered the case in the early 1990s. The film includes commentary from the Menendez brothers at each milestone throughout the course of their case.

Here are some notable moments from the brothers' interviews The Menendez brothers.

The night of the murderS

Lyle and Erik Menendez want to make it clear that they were not gloating when they killed their parents when they were 21 and 18, respectively.

The documentary begins with an audio recording of Lyle calling 9-1-1 and saying that someone killed his parents.

But the brothers weren't arrested until seven months later, and both say in the documentary that they were surprised they weren't treated as suspects sooner. According to Erik, “The gunpowder residue was all over our hands… There were gun cartridges in my car.” And: “If they had just harassed me, I wouldn't have been able to withstand any questioning. I was in a completely broken and shattered state of mind. I was completely shocked.”

Lyle described the “secret” that he was responsible for killing his parents as “an enormous burden.” “It was a feeling of relief to be arrested,” he says. “Like so many emotions at this time in my life, it doesn’t make much sense.”

The Menendez brothers' reaction to the murderS

They came to the police's attention when they began spending extravagantly, such as buying a Porsche, three Rolex watches and hiring a tennis coach that cost $50,000 a year.

But they say it was an attempt to distract them from their deep grief.

“The idea that I had a good time is absurd,” says Erik. “Everything was meant to cover up this terrible pain of not wanting to be alive anymore.”

Lyle says that although he acted like a playboy, he didn't really have any fun. He describes sobbing at night and not being able to sleep. He says, “Without my father's help in my life, I was pretty lost” and that “a part of Erik and I died that night.”

Complicated feelings towards her father

Erik explains that he and his brother committed the crime because “something very, very wrong happened in the family.”

Throughout the documentary, trial footage shows Erik and Lyle breaking down as they explain how their father forced them to perform sexual acts on him. Lyle said he had to fondle his father's genitals and give him blowjobs. Erik said he willingly went along with the sexual abuse because it was difficult to get one-on-one time with his father. Lyle was apparently so confused by all this intimate family time that he says he molested Erik.

And yet the Menendez brothers want Netflix viewers to know that they were afraid to talk about their father. They say they don't want to destroy his father's reputation. Erik explains: “Spilling sick family secrets would be like killing my parents again.”

In the documentary, Erik says, “One of the things that stopped me from killing myself is that at that point I felt like I was a complete failure to my father.”

Where the Menendez brothers are now

Both men are being held at the RJ Donovan Correctional Facility in San Diego, California. Lyle is 56 and Erik is 53. In the documentary, Erik describes how he found painting as an escape.

They are waiting to hear whether a judge is willing to consider evidence discovered after the trial. There is a letter that Erik Menendez wrote to his cousin Andy Cano eight months before the murder in which he explained how afraid he was of his father and feared for his life. The letter was only discovered in the camp after Cano's death in 2003. And there is an affidavit from 2023 in which Roy Rossello of the boy band Menudo claims that Jose Menendez sexually abused him.

The Menendez brothers have exhausted their state and federal appeal options and a retrial is unlikely. As Robert Rand, who wrote about the case and appears in the documentary, tells TIME: “Half the witnesses are dead or have dementia. And do LA County taxpayers really want to spend this money (millions of dollars) to retry Eric and Lyle Menendez?” (Rand is close to the brothers and recently visited Lyle Menendez in prison.)

As the MeToo movement has sparked a national conversation about sexual abuse and the case has gone viral on TikTok in recent years, the brothers believe the Netflix documentary can reach a more sympathetic audience that didn't exist in the early 1990s . The TikTok generation, for example, was largely born after conviction. As Lyle puts it in the documentary, “For the first time I feel like it's a conversation that people can now understand and believe.”