Warning: This post contains spoilers for “Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story.”

In a shocking scene during the first episode of “Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story,” Kitty Menendez, played by Chloë Sevigny, rips a hairpiece from the head of her son Lyle Menendez, played by Nicholas Chavez.

In this scene, her other son, Erik Menendez (Cooper Koch), is describing to his therapist Dr. Jerome Oziel the events that led to the murder of his parents in 1989.

Jose and Kitty Menendez were shot multiple times in the living room of their Beverly Hills, California, home on August 20, 1989, and seven months later their sons were charged with murder.

Lyle and Erik Menendez were convicted of murder in 1996 and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

What did a toupee have to do with the murder of a wealthy businessman and his wife just five days later? Read on to learn the true story behind Lyle Menendez’s hairpiece.

Did Lyle Menendez really have a toupee?

In Monsters, Lyle Menendez argued with his parents at the dinner table about wanting to marry his girlfriend. Since he was only 20 years old, his parents said he couldn’t get married.

“You can’t say that when you did the same thing when you were my age!” Lyle Menendez, played by Nicholas Chavez, responds on the show, alluding to the fact that his parents got married months after they met in college.

Then Kitty Menendez comes over and rips the hairpiece off his head.

The scene is based on true events and goes back to the book “The Menendez Murders” by Robert Rand, which served as inspiration for the series.

On August 15, 1989, just five days before Jose and Kitty Menendez were shot, Kitty and Lyle Menendez got into an unspecified argument, according to The Menendez Murders.

Kitty Menendez screamed and punched her son with clenched fists, who raised his arms in defense, the book says. Then Kitty Menendez ripped her son’s hair from his head.

“It was his toupee, and it looked like a brutal scalping,” Rand wrote.

According to the book, Lyle Menendez had to shave his head to fit the hairpiece, which was attached with high-strength glue.

“It took a special solvent to carefully remove it,” Rand wrote. “When Kitty ripped it off, Lyle felt tremendous pain.”

The toupee led to the breakthrough between the brothers

According to The Menendez Murders, Lyle Menendez got the toupee two years earlier when his father told him his future lay in politics and “to be successful, he would need thick hair.”

By this time, Lyle Menendez’s hair was already beginning to thin on top, and his father insisted that he get a full hairpiece before attending Princeton University, according to “The Menendez Murders.”

Erik Menendez, who witnessed what happened between his mother and brother, said he needed to talk to his brother, according to the book.

The couple ran to their guest house, where Lyle Menendez fixed his hair in the bathroom and then approached his brother in the bedroom.

“I’m sad we’re not family,” Erik Menendez said, according to The Menendez Murders, before he began shaking and sobbing. “I didn’t know about your hair. We have so many secrets.”

According to The Menendez Murders, Erik Menendez confessed to his brother that his father had sexually abused him. Both brothers later testified at their first trial in 1993 that their father had sexually abused them for years.

According to The Menendez Murders, after Erik Menendez told his brother, Lyle Menendez came up with a plan to stop the abuse: Erik Menendez would move to Princeton with him. His little brother quickly agreed to the deal.

The actual events differ slightly from those depicted in “Monsters.”

After Kitty Menendez rips off her son’s hairpiece on the show, Erik Menendez rushes to the guest house to comfort his brother and confronts him for not telling him that he wears a toupee.

Lyle Menendez explains that he got it about three or four years ago, and his younger brother asks why he didn’t say anything about it.

“Because I didn’t want you to know, that’s the damn point, Erik! No one should know,” he replied.

Lyle Menendez explains that his father, Jose Menendez, forced him to buy the hairpiece and that the brothers subsequently had a serious conversation about the abuse they suffered at the hands of their father.

Erik Menendez tells his therapist, Dr. Jerome Oziel, about the conversation and the therapist asked him what he had told his brother.

“Only that I love him,” he replies. “And that from now on I will choose my brother over my parents.”