How the Menendez Brothers Case Launched Our Era of True Crime Obsession

Although brothers Lyle and Eric Menendez of Beverly Hills did not escape the murder of their mother and father, it was a perfect crime in one respect: It set the stage for the last three decades of our current media obsession with sensational, true crime stories. .

The tormented saga of the patricidal siblings – who were convicted of the 1989 shooting deaths of their parents, director Jose Menendez and his wife Kitty in 1996 after one of the most high-profile trials of the 20th century – is revisited in Ryan Murphy’s film. Netflix series, “Monsters: The Story of Lyle and Eric Menendez”.

And while the Netflix series has sparked controversy with its interpretation of events, that very statement is a powerful reminder of how the brothers’ journey through the legal system dominated the cultural conversation of its time and, in doing so, created a infrastructure built. to efficiently deliver all manner of lurid, high-profile crime content to an ever-hungry audience.

The setting was certainly irresistible: in 1989, Beverly Hills—with its long history of abundant wealth, privilege, and Hollywood pedigrees, as well as the recent rise of Rodeo Drive as the epicenter of conspicuous consumption—was steeped in the popular imagination. as a capital of glitz and glamor, with hit films like “Beverly Hills Cop” and, later, “Pretty Woman,” hinting at a dark side beneath the opulent, fun shine.

And historically, real-world crimes taking place in this city, like the 1929 Greystone Mansion murder-suicide, the 1958 murder of Lana Turner’s handsome gangster Johnny Stompanato, and subsequent cases have sparked a frenzy of attention media. I began my reporting career at a local Beverly Hills newspaper as the Menendez trial was winding down. While my book “Beverly Hills Noir: Crime, Sin & Scandal in 90210” chronicles several other shocking but true transgressions of the Golden City, and how this infamous zip code poured kerosene on local crimes to fuel their notoriety, I I chose not to do it. re-examine the brothers’ tale in this first volume, because of its oft-told character and epic scale.

The crime itself was, fittingly, almost unthinkably horrific: the alleged culprits were two seemingly pampered descendants of privilege, accused of coldly and calculatedly murdering their parents in their home in an attempt to claim the family fortune. . All around the case offered a fashionable name: They plotted at places like the then-hip The Cheesecake Factory, established their alibi at a screening of the hit film “Batman” and then spent lavishly on lavish indulgences like Rolex watches.

By the time the case came to trial in 1993, the public was duly saturated with media coverage increasingly adept at inventing more innovative ways of consuming the case. For a decade, the rise of cable television and the advent of news networks like CNN launched a new 24/7 news cycle; The network’s newsmagazines, like the fledgling hit “Dateline” and the booming “20/20,” adapted the more in-depth reporting pioneered by “60 Minutes” and exploded in popularity, expanding into multiple time slots prime time every week. A tsunami of afternoon talk shows, from “Oprah” to “Geraldo,” had hours to fill, while a new generation of syndicated programs like “A Current Affair” and “Inside Edition” told stories sleaze through the lens of the tabloids. On paper, Vanity Fair was successfully relaunched in part by bolstering its coverage of the crimes of the rich and famous with the unvarnished courtroom reporting of Dominick Dunne, who had lost his own daughter to murder.

From the start, the Menendez saga was catnip for everyone.

But nothing took viewers deeper into the story than Court TV, which launched two years after the murders and which, at the time of the brothers’ trial, was able to take its audience directly into the courtroom for practically every moment. And curious viewers found the court proceedings even more dramatic than the daytime dramas that typically populated television time slots, particularly when the defense dropped a megaton bombshell by introducing what became known as of “abuse excuse”, insisting that the brothers’ heinous act had been motivated. by years of brutal emotional and sexual abuse at the hands of their father. Now audiences could watch in real time, wondering whether Lyle and Eric’s anguished performances on the witness stand were genuine or merely theatrical.

Viewers were hooked, the courtroom drama dragged on for years before the dramatic sentencing, juicier content filtered into even more newsstand headlines and more TV segments across the dial. And the relevance of a new network was now firmly established.

Pop culture’s newly immersive true crime genre was bolstered and polished by its subsequent coverage of other crimes in the Menendez mold as the 1990s delivered a succession of “Crimes of the Century”, among them assault by Olympian Nancy Kerrigan, the mysterious murder of a child. pageant queen JonBenet Ramsey, the assassination of fashion designer Gianni Versace and of course the all-consuming history of the genre no longer ultrathe prosecution and trial of NFL icon and Hollywood star OJ Simpson for the murder of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman.

True crime with a glitzy twist has always captured the imagination and horror of the public, long before Jack the Ripper and long after the Manson Family, but now a voracious and never-satiated appetite has been created: over time , new players like Discovery’s investigative series. entered the fray, as media coverage split into specialized subgenres, such as serial killers, cold cases, forensic mysteries, or celebrities – particularly sexy young starlets – who became uncontrollable.

Scripted television has borrowed heavily from the genre, with the “CSI” franchise drawing on the public’s new fascination with forensic science or Lifetime’s headline-grabbing TV movies; sales of true crime books increased, captivating readers with their increased familiarity with infamous tales or investigative procedures; a proliferation of podcasts unearthing and re-examining countless cases; and more recently, streaming has brought even more explorations of surprising cases, famous and obscure, through meticulously researched docuseries like “The Jinx” (itself a Beverly Hills-adjacent case) or dramatizations like “ Murphy’s American Crime Story and, now, his highly controversial film. “Monsters,” bringing the brothers full circle.

Indeed, even as the series resurrects old debates about the motivation and innocence of the Menendez brothers, it is clear that this case has inflamed our real cultural preoccupation with crime to exaggerated proportions, in the most Beverly way Hills possible.

Scott Huver is a veteran entertainment journalist and author of the true crime anthology Beverly Hills Noir: Crime, sin and scandal in 90210available October 1st.

The article How the Menendez Brothers Case Launched Our Era of True Crime Obsession | The guest column appeared first on TheWrap.