Cooper Kock, star of Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story, has said he hopes the two titular brothers eventually get paroled and “have an amazing rest of their lives”.
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The Netflix show, which came out last week (September 19), stars Koch and Nicholas Alexander Chavez as the Menendez brothers, who murdered their parents José and Kitty with a shotgun in their Beverly Hills mansion in 1989.
To this day, the brothers, who were aged 18 and 21 at the time, claim they acted in self-defence after years of alleged sexual abuse by their father, portrayed by Javier Bardem in the show.
The brothers were initially tried separately in 1993 in a highly publicised trial which aired on TV, where the prosecution argued that Lyle and Erik killed their parents for financial gain. Both trials ended in two hung juries.
The two brothers were later tried together in a second trial, where they were both convicted on two counts of first-degree murder and conspiracy to murder. They were sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole in 1996.
Now Koch, after having recently paid the brothers a visit in their prison facility in San Diego, California alongside Kim Kardashian, has spoken out in support of them, saying he “believes” them, described them as “upstanding individuals” and hopes they are granted parole so that they can have “amazing” lives in the future.
“They committed the crime when they were 18 and 21 years old, and at the time, it was really hard for people to believe that male-on-male sexual abuse could occur, especially with father and son,” Koch said.
“It was really hard for people to understand that the story that they were telling was true, and this theory that they killed their parents for money is just bonkers. But it was easier for people at the time to sort of swallow that story. But now, after 35 years, we have so much more evidence of child sexual abuse and male-on-male sexual abuse that I think they do deserve to be retried. And everything that happened in that second trial too, they weren’t allowed to use their sexual abuse claims.”
He added: “I really do hope that they are able to get paroled and have an amazing rest of their lives.”
Erik Menendez has dismissed the show as a “dishonest portrayal”, which caused series creator Ryan Murphy to defend the show, claiming that Erik “hasn’t watched the show”.
Koch also responded to Erik’s comments: “I sympathise with him, I empathise with him. I get it. I understand how difficult it would be to have the worst part of your life be televised for millions of people to see. It’s so exposing. I understand how he feels and I stand by him. In terms of approaching him and approaching the part, I just really wanted to do as much research and dig really deep into myself to really portray him with integrity and just be as authentic as possible to support him and also to support his family and all the people who stand with him.”
The show also recently attracted more criticism for depicting an incestuous relationship between the brothers, with scenes depicting them kissing. One scene involved their mother, played by Chloë Sevigny, walking in on them kissing in the shower.
This is the second season of Monster, with the first having covered the serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer. A third is in development, set to focus on Ed Gein, the killer who was the inspiration for Norman Bates in Psycho.
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