Seven years before Netflix got into the Erik and Lyle Menéndez business with Monsters and now its new docuseries that dropped Oct. 7, Hollywood was practically obsessed with the 1989 murders of Jose and Kitty Menéndez.
First there was the ABC documentary Truth and Lies: The Menéndez Brothers – American Sons, American Murderers, followed by the Dick Wolf-produced Law & Order True Crime: The Menéndez Murders for and the telefilm Menéndez: Blood Brothers for Lifetime. There was even an episode of HLN’s How it Really Happened With Hill Harper that featured a telephone interview with Lyle Menéndez from prison with Chris Cuomo.
And then, there was A&E’s The Menéndez Murders: Erik Tells All, a 2017 five-parter in which documentarian/EP Nancy Saslow interviewed the younger brother via telephone from the Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility in San Diego. Besides the hours of audio with Erik Menéndez — Saslow could only conduct 15-minute interviews at any one time — the comprehensive series from MEgTV and EP Eamon Harrington featured then-new interviews with the likes of attorney Anne Bremner, juror Betty Oldfield, tennis coach Charles Washington, prosecutors Chris Darden and Gil Garcetti, Det. Les Moeller and extended members of the Menéndez clan.
Within months of A&E’s airing of Erik Tells All, Lyle Menéndez was moved from his Northern California prison so he could be incarcerated with his brother in San Diego. “There’s no way that the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation would ever say, ‘oh, yes, Erik Tells All had an influence, and there’s no way we could prove that,” says Saslow. “But the timing was always interesting.”
What Erik Tells All couldn’t do, however, was prompt the L.A. District Attorney to announce a “review” of the evidence. Even after a flurry of specials and docs that aired from 2021-23, it wasn’t until Ryan Murphy‘s Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menéndez Story did George Gascón make a big to-do about dusting off the old case.
So does Murphy really deserve the credit for finally moving the needle? Yes, says Saslow — but that should be besides the point.
“I don’t think there’s anything new,” she says, in reference to Netflix’s new The Menéndez Murders doc. “They’re talking about this letter that’s new evidence. It’s not new evidence. We knew about the letter seven years ago. I mean, I’m sure Erik is going to say the same things that he said to us seven years ago. I don’t think Lyle’s going to say anything different. But in my opinion, none of that is bad. Whether Ryan Murphy or Kim Kardashian or Rosie O’Donnell are taking credit for this new turn, I don’t think it matters because it’s not about any of them. It’s not about me saying, ‘Hey, we did this seven years ago.’ People are looking at the case. And I think that’s a very positive thing I do.”
“I can’t say whether the sentence should be overturned. I’m not in the justice system,” Saslow continues. “But my observation is that because of everything that went down, because of what we found out, this deserved another look. And the fact that it took seven more years to get it done, God bless Ryan Murphy. The [extended family] may not have liked the story that Murphy put forth, but a lot more people are talking about it on a global platform. And if you lean on the side of these guys deserve another look, then this is all good.”
If anything, Saslow wants to remind viewers that Hollywood filmmakers aren’t the only ones who are trying to keep the Menéndez case fresh in people’s minds. “As much as we would like to say the filmmaking community has had influence on this, there have been actual attorneys who’ve been working on this,” she said.
The Menéndez Murders: Erik Tells All can be streamed for free on the A&E website.
