Iin the wake of the enormous popularity of RoofRyan Murphy and Ian Brennan are back with a new season of their Sample anthology series exploring the lives and crimes of the infamous Menendez brothers.

Monsters: The Story of Lyle and Erik Menendezstreaming on Netflix from September 19, stars Nicholas Chavez and Cooper Koch as Lyle and Erik, the real-life brothers convicted in 1996 for the brutal 1989 murders of their parents, entertainment executive Jose Menendez (played by Javier Bardem) and his wife, Mary Louise “Kitty” Menendez (Chloë Sevigny). The true-crime drama arrives two years after its polarizing predecessor became only the third series to reach over a billion hours of viewing in its first 60 days on Netflix, amid divided critics and audiences over its portrayal of notorious serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer (Evan Peters).

“I was never interested in Jeffrey Dahmer, the monster. I was interested in what made him,” Murphy said Variety in 2022 of the controversy surrounding the show. “I think the fact that all the characters on this show are seen as real people makes some people uncomfortable. I understand that and I try not to have an opinion on that.”

Now, The Story of Lyle and Erik Menendez is being touted as an investigation into who the “real monsters” were in the Menendez case. The 10-episode season purports to explore whether the title brothers were cold-blooded killers looking to inherit their family fortune, as the prosecution alleged, or victims of a lifetime of physical, emotional and sexual abuse at the hands of their parents, as the defense alleged and the brothers continue to maintain to this day.

This is the true story behind The Story of Lyle and Erik Menendez.

The murders

On the evening of August 20, 1989, Lyle and Erik, then 21 and 18, walked into the den of their Beverly Hills family home armed with 12-gauge shotguns and shot their parents a total of 14 times. The killings were so violent that police initially suspected Mafia involvement.

About six months after the crime, however, authorities received a tip from an unlikely source: Judalon Smyth (played by Leslie Grossman), the mistress of Erik’s psychologist, Jerome Oziel (Dallas Roberts). Smyth told police that Erik had confessed to the murders during a therapy session and that there was an audio recording of it. The brothers were subsequently arrested in March 1990, and a years-long legal battle ensued over the admissibility of Oziel’s recordings.

In August 1992, the California Supreme Court ultimately ruled that most of Oziel’s tapes were admissible, except for the tape in which Erik described the murders.

The trials

By the time their much-publicized trial began on July 20, 1993, there was no longer any doubt that Lyle and Erik had murdered their mother and father. The question was why.

The prosecution, led by Deputy District Attorneys Pamela Bozanich and Lester Kuriyama, argued that the murders were premeditated and motivated by greed. Prosecutors alleged that the brothers planned and carried out the gruesome shootings to gain control of their parents’ $14.5 million estate. Their case was bolstered by the fact that in the months between the murders and their arrests, Lyle and Erik allegedly burned through as much as $700,000 of their inheritance on luxury items, business ventures and travel.

The defense, led by attorney Leslie Abramson (played by Ari Gaynor), argued that the brothers acted in self-defense after years of abuse at the hands of both parents, with specific emphasis on Jose’s alleged abuse of both sons. These allegations were supported by testimony from two of the brothers’ cousins, Andy Cano and Diane Vander Molen, who said that Lyle and Erik told them about the sexual abuse as children.

A number of spicy details played a role in the trial, including allegations that Jose cheated on Kitty and insinuations about Erik’s sexuality. Kuriyama told the jury in his plea that Erik was gay and that “if the defendant had consensual sex with other men, he would be able to describe what he described … his sexual encounters with his father.”

The six-month trial became a national sensation when it aired on Court TV (now TruTV), a cable network launched two years earlier that provided viewers with live coverage of trials and expert commentary. “The first trial of Erik and Lyle Menendez was a soap opera wrapped in a psychodrama,” wrote the Los Angeles Times Times‘ Ann O’Neill on the media hype surrounding the case.

The brothers were tried simultaneously, but with separate juries. Ultimately, neither could reach a unanimous decision on whether Lyle and Erik were guilty of manslaughter or murder. This resulted in a mistrial, and it was quickly announced that the brothers would be retried. During the second trial, which began on October 11, 1995, Judge Stanley Weisberg convened only a single jury to decide the brothers’ fate. He also did not allow the proceedings to be televised, limited testimony about claims of sexual abuse, and prohibited the jury from voting on manslaughter charges in lieu of murder charges.

On March 20, 1996, Lyle and Erik were both convicted of two counts of first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder. That July, they were sentenced to multiple life sentences without the possibility of parole.

Read more: Anatomy of a Ryan Murphy Queer Murderer Show

The aftermath

After more than a decade of appeals being rejected by California courts, Lyle and Erik resigned themselves to spending their adult lives in prison. In January 2017, Lyle told ABC News that he had made peace with his crime.

“I’m the kid who killed his parents, and no amount of tears has changed that and no amount of regret has changed that,” he said. “I accept that. You’re often defined by a few moments in your life, but that’s not who you are in your life, you know. Your life is your totality… You can’t change it. You’re just stuck with the decisions that you’ve made.”

However, recent revelations prompted the brothers’ attorney, Cliff Gardner, to file a petition demanding a new hearing that could lead to a new trial. The first development in the case came in early 2023 when Roy Rosselló, a former member of the Puerto Rican boy band Menudo, came forward with allegations that he was sexually abused by Jose as a teenager after the latter offered Menudo a recording contract as an executive with RCA Records in the mid-1980s.

A second breakthrough came in the form of an unearthed letter that Gardner says Erik wrote in December 1988 to his cousin, Andy Cano, who died in 2003. The letter allegedly details Jose’s sexual abuse, and reads in part: “I’ve tried to avoid my father. It’s still happening, Andy, but it’s worse for me now… Every night I stay up thinking he might come in… I’m scared… He’s crazy. He’s warned me a hundred times not to tell anyone, especially Lyle.”

Gardner has cited Rosselló’s affidavit and Erik’s alleged letter as new evidence proving that Menendez’s convictions should be overturned. A decision has yet to be made on what will happen next in the case.