Cooper Koch as Erik Menendez, Nicholas Chavez as Lyle Menendez (left to right) in episode 8 of Monsters: The Story of Lyle and Erik Menendez.

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Erik Menendez spoke out against the new Netflix series, Monsters: The Story of Lyle and Erik Menendez, which revisits the trials in which he and his brother Lyle were convicted of murdering their parents.

In a statement shared on X by his wife, Tammi Menendez, Erik criticized the show, saying it portrayed him and his brother in a misleading manner and that there were “blatant lies on the show.” He accused co-creator Ryan Murphy of intentionally distorting the facts surrounding their crime.

“Murphy shapes his horrific story through disgusting and appalling characterizations of Lyle and myself and through disheartening smears,” he wrote in the post shared Thursday.

Erik added: “It’s sad to know that Netflix’s dishonest portrayal of the tragedies surrounding our crimes has taken the painful truth several steps back in time – back to an era when the prosecution built a narrative on a belief system that men were not sexually abused and that men experienced rape trauma differently than women.”

Ryan Murphy Productions and Netflix did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

In 1989, José and Kitty Menendez were shot to death in their Beverly Hills home. Lyle and Erik were 21 and 18 at the time. Police initially suspected that members of the Mafia were after their parents. But the brothers later said they killed their parents as a result of years of physical, emotional and sexual abuse.

In 1993, their trial was broadcast on national television. It became a media sensation that sharply divided public opinion over the brothers’ motives: were they acting in response to abuse or out of greed for their parents’ fortune?

A cousin supported the defense’s claims of sexual assault, saying Erik had spoken about it before. But prosecutors argued that the abuse allegations were trumped up and that the brothers were instead motivated by greed, specifically to inherit millions of dollars.

Their first trial resulted in a deadlocked jury. But after a retrial, in which the judge refused to allow the defense to fully present the brothers’ claims of sexual abuse, Erik and Lyle were found guilty of murder and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole in 1996. Both are serving their time at the Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility in Southern California.

Nearly 30 years after their convictions, Netflix is ​​revisiting the brothers’ crime and trial in a nine-episode drama starring Nicholas Alexander Chavez as Lyle and Cooper Koch as Erik. In a press release, Netflix described the series as an exploration of the question, “Who are the real monsters?”

It is the second season of Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan’s true-crime anthology series. The first season looked at serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer.