Lyle Menendez has claimed in that the “sleazy psychologist” Dr. Jerome Oziel attempted to “blackmail” him and his brother.
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The Netflix show Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story was released on Netflix on September 19, and stars Cooper 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.
And now, Lyle has made the allegation that their therapist Dr. Jerome Oziel, whom they had been seeing since before the murders, blackmailed the brothers into making a confession of the killings in 1990.
A major incident in the original case came about when police seized a tape from Oziel, following a tip-off from the therapist’s mistress and patient, Judalon Smyth. The brothers were arrested shortly afterwards.
Oziel claimed the brothers had threatened him, allowing him to waive his patient-doctor confidentiality, while the Menendez brothers claim Oziel blackmailed them into making the confession.
Lyle claims in the documentary that their father only booked Oziel as their therapist because he knew Oziel would waive his anonymity and tell the father everything the brothers were telling him.
“My father refused to hire Dr. Oziel unless he signed a document saying that everything Erik told him he would relay to my father,” said Lyle. “And Dr. Oziel signed a document to that effect.”
“My father chose this sleazy psychologist because it was the only psychologist who would be willing to waive confidentiality so his son couldn’t actually confide in the doctor.”
Lyle also denied he and his brother threatened Oziel, saying “I don’t go around threatening people”.
Nicholas Chavez and Cooper Koch in ‘Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menéndez Story’ CREDIT: Netflix
“I had never had an act of violence in my life until my parents’ shooting,” he added. “Obviously he wasn’t feeling that threatened. He didn’t go to the police and say, ‘I feel threatened.’ He knew that he could. He chose not to.”
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.
Koch has argued that he “believes” the Menendez brothers, describing them as “upstanding individuals”, and hopes they are granted parole so they can have “amazing” lives in the future.
Erik Menendez, meanwhile, 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”.
Following the show’s success, Murphy has suggested he might not be finished with the story, given the news that a court hearing has been set that will consider the new evidence that the Menendez brothers were molested by their father.
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