Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story is now on Netflix, sparking new interest in the case of the two brothers who murdered their parents. But as with any true crime series, it’s interesting to find out what the people really involved are up to now.
Erik and Lyle Menendez have been in prison since their 1996 conviction for the murder of their parents. As a note at the end of a series tells us, “Lyle and Erik Menendez maintain allegations of sexual abuse by their mother and father. They continue to serve life sentences without the possibility of parole.”
Everyone is standing here.
Erik Menendez
Erik, the younger brother, is now 53 years old. He has been in a San Diego prison since his conviction and was only reunited with his brother Lyle in 2018 after being transferred to the same prison.
In 1999, he married Tammi Ruth Saccoman in Folsom State Prison. According to the Today Show, neither brother is allowed conjugal visits.
In 2023, the brothers filed papers for a new hearing after former Menudo member Roy Rosselló testified that he was drugged and raped by José Menendez at age 14.
Lyle Menendez
The older brother Lyle is now 56 years old. In 2018, his request to be transferred to the same facility as his younger brother, the Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility in San Diego, was approved.
Like Erik, he met his first wife through correspondence and their wedding ceremony took place over the phone. Two years later, they separated because the prison authorities did not recognize the marriage as legal.
Erik married his second wife Rebecca Sneed in November 2003.
Leslie Abramson
The defense attorney, who chain-smoked during both trials, became something of a “surrogate mother” to her younger brother Erik, as TheWrap’s Sharon Waxman wrote in the Washington Post in 1996. She had previously secured a lesser manslaughter sentence for Arnel Salvatierra, a 17-year-old who also killed his father because of alleged abuse.
Abramson was ABC’s legal commentator on the OJ Simpson case, the other “trial of the century,” and also wrote the 1997 memoir “The Defense Is Ready: Life in the Trenches of Criminal Law.”
In 2004, she replaced attorney Robert Shapiro of Simpson’s “Dream Team” to defend music producer Phil Spector, who was accused of shooting actress Lana Clarkson in his home. She later resigned from the post and, with a new attorney, was eventually convicted of Clarkson’s murder.
At the time of the Menendez trial, she was married to Los Angeles Times reporter Tim Rutten. She told TheWrap in 2017 that she would not revisit the role of Edie Falco in “Law & Order True Crime: The Menendez Murders.” “Oh man. I have nothing to say. Absolutely nothing. Goodbye,” she said at the time.
Dominic Dunne
The celebrated journalist, played by Nathan Lane in “Monsters,” began writing about crime for Vanity Fair while covering the trial of the man who murdered his daughter, “Poltergeist” actress Dominique Dunne. His article “Justice: A father’s account of the trial of his daughter’s murderer” appeared in the March 1984 issue of Vanity Fair. He then covered the trials of OJ Simpson, Claus von Bülow (whose story was portrayed in the 1990 film The Affair), and the Menendez brothers. His article on the brothers, “Nightmare on Elm Drive,” appeared in the October 1990 issue.
Dunne died of bladder cancer in 2009 at the age of 83. He is also the father of actor, writer and director Griffin Dunne, whose films include After Hours and An American Werewolf in London.
The Zoellers
The Beverly Hills police officer was the lead investigator in the Menendez case, the Billionaire Boys Club case and the robbery-murder at the Van Cleef & Arpels jewelry store in Beverly Hills. In 1996, he told the Los Angeles Times that he suspected immediately that the brothers had killed their parents, but he was unable to prove it for seven years.
Zoeller, played by “Sugar” actor Jason Butler Harner, retired in 2002 and died in October 2021.
Tim Rutten
Rutten, who is played in “Monsters” by “Mad Men” alumnus Michael Gladis, was part of the Pulitzer Prize-winning team of Los Angeles Times writers that covered the 1994 Northridge earthquake. After being laid off in 2011 due to cost-cutting at the Times, he became a columnist at the Los Angeles Daily News.
At the time of the Menendez trials, he was married to criminal defense attorney Leslie Abramson. He was previously portrayed by Chris Bauer of True Blood and Fellow Travelers in the 2017 NBC version of the case, which starred Edie Falco as Abramson.
Rutten died in November 2022 after a fall in his home.
Jerome Oziel
The brothers’ therapist, to whom they had initially confessed their guilt, then broke confidentiality and told his lover, who then informed the police. Oziel claimed that the usual confidentiality agreement did not apply because Erik and Lyle had threatened to kill him.
The breach of confidentiality – and allegations of having sex with female patients – led to Oziel’s California license as a psychologist being revoked in 1997, the LA Times reported.
When he was portrayed by Josh Charles in the 2017 Law & Order: True Crime version of the case, he told Bustle that the allegations against him of professional misconduct were “plainly false” and that the television drama was “a trashy soap opera” that was “completely fabricated.”
Oziel is played by “The Good Wife” actor Dallas Roberts in the Netflix series.
All episodes of “Monster” are now available to stream on Netflix.
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