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AN explosive row over Lyle Menendez’s toupee could allegedly have been the final straw before he and his brother murdered their parents to get their millionaire fortune.
The brothers’ harrowing story has been portrayed on Netflix’s Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story, which delves further into their relationship.
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One painful scene shows Kitty Menendez ripping her son Lyle’s wig off to expose his bald head.
It’s depicted as one of the several ways the parents allegedly mistreated Lyle and Erik, as well as a turning point that strengthens their bond, Dexerto reports.
Lyle then struggles to keep his toupee in place after the Menendez brothers are imprisoned in Episode 3 of the Netflix drama.
The show is said to be based off a book named The Menendez Murders: The Shocking Untold Story of the Menendez Family and the Killings that Stunned the Nation.
More on the Menendez brothers
But the series and its producers have been slammed by true crime fans and the Menendez family themselves for “innacuracies”, raising doubts on whether Lyle’s baldness and the wig scene truly happened in real life.
Turns out that Lyle Menendez did wear a wig, as he reportedly began having hair loss issues as a teen.
He disclosed in his testimony that he and his mother had a fight over his hairpiece five days prior to him and Erik shooting Kitty and Jose in 1989.
He told the court at the time: “She was completely out of control, flailing her arms and screaming at me about how I was going to be the cause of her father’s death.
At one moment, Lyle claimed his mum allegedly lunged at him and he covered his face.
“She reached and she grabbed my hairpiece and she just ripped it off,” he said.
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Another element that is shown in Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story is the toupee’s method of attachment, which Lyle explained as being done with solvent glue.
He described it as “painful” since you’re “supposed to use this blue chemical to detach it.”
In his testimony Lyle also revealed how, at the age of 14, he began to realise that he was losing hair.
He claimed that, at roughly the age of 19, his dad Jose Menendez allegedly urged him to get a toupee as it would be a “good idea” for his Princeton appearance.
The severity of Lyle’s hair loss seems to be where the situation deviates from the Netflix series as Lyle appears to be entirely bald by this age in Monsters Season 2.
He said in his testimony that although it “wasn’t very noticeable,” the entire area where the hairpiece would sit needed to be “shaved.”
After the fight, Lyle said that him and Erik became closer.
Erik is said to have confided in Lyle, while reattaching the hairpiece, about his father’s alleged continued sexual abuse of him, according to Dexerto.
“Clearly he was coming to me, wanted me to do something about it, and it was true because my dad never denied it when I talked to him about it,” he said.
Lyle was allowed to wear a wig during the trials even though he couldn’t have one while he was incarcerated. In prisons, hairpieces are still prohibited.
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THE CASE THAT GRIPPED AMERICA
Greed had driven spoiled brothers Lyle and Erik Menendez to slaughter their parents in a bid to get their hands on their $14million (£10million) inheritance, said the prosecution.
But the boys claimed they killed in self-defence after years of sexual and emotional abuse by their controlling father Jose.
After seven years and three trials, televised to millions, the brothers were convicted and sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole.
It was 20 August 1989 when Jose and Kitty Menendez sat down to watch a movie in their lavish Beverly Hills mansion that had once been home to Sir Elton John and Michael Jackson.
Just hours later they were dead – brutally murdered by 15 rounds from two 12-gauge shotguns.
The killings were so barbaric that police initially thought it was a mob hit.
On arrival, cops found a seemingly distraught Erik sobbing on the lawn and the brothers told police they had gone out to watch a movie but had to detour home to pick up his ID.
That, they claimed, was when they uncovered the shocking murder scene of their parents’ decimated bodies and called 911.
But in the months after the murders, neither of the brothers acted like grieving boys who had found their parents brutally slain in pools of their own blood.
Instead they went on a spending spree with 21-year-old Lyle snapping up a Porsche, a Rolex watch and a restaurant and 18-year-old Erik treating himself to a Jeep Wrangler and a private tennis coach.
The trials began in 1993 and were broadcast on a relatively new cable channel Court TV.
With the heady mixture of a rich family torn apart by scandal, a gruesome murder, celebrity connections, Beverly Hills glitz and two handsome young men on trial it became a real-life soap opera that gripped America.
Timeline of the Menendez brothers case
Erik and Lyle Menendez are serving life sentences in prison after being found guilty of shooting their parents to death over 30 years ago.
August 20, 1989 – José and Kitty Menendez are shot to death
March 8, 1990 – Lyle is arrested for the murders
March 11, 1990 – Erik turns himself in
July 20, 1993 – Highly publicized trial begins and ends weeks later in a mistrial
October 11, 1995 – Second trial begins
March 20, 1996 – Menendez brothers are convicted of two counts of first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder
July 2, 1996 – Menendez brothers are sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole and sent to separate prisons
February 2018 – Lyle is transferred to the San Diego prison where Erik is held
April 4, 2018 – Erik and Lyle are reunited
May 2023 – Attorney representing the Menendez brothers files a habeas petition
September 19, 2024 – Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story comes out on Netflix
