In the lucrative world of true crime entertainment, the 1989 murders of Jose and Kitty Menendez by their adult sons Lyle and Erik still loom large.
Three decades since the brothers’ televised trial captivated the nation, they’ve been the subject of multiple made-for-TV movies, documentaries, a “Saturday Night Live” parody, podcast episodes, and, most recently, Ryan Murphy’s controversial Netflix series “Monsters.”
But amid a sea of Menendez content, Alejandro Hartmann’s new Netflix documentary has one thing most Menendez docs don’t: both brothers telling their story in their own words.
“The Menendez Brothers,” released on Netflix in October, features more than 20 hours of interviews conducted with Lyle and Erik during their incarceration at the Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility outside San Diego.
It’s the first time the brothers have both spoken about the case for the same project in almost 30 years, when they sat down together with Barbara Walters in 1996 soon after being convicted of murder in their second trial.
Through additional interviews …