Watching your favorite movies abroad? Don’t forget to get your Aeroshield smart DNS to access any geo-restricted content.
Netflix’s new true crime series Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story has seen renewed interest in the harrowing tale of the namesake siblings, who infamously killed their parents — Kitty and Jose Menedez — in their Beverly Hills mansion in 1989.
The case itself was a national sensation, but the Ryan Murphy-produced series — a follow up to Monster’s first, Jeffery Dhamer-focussed season — is attracting controversy in its own right, with viewers criticizing the show’s depiction of Erik and Lyle given that they were victims of parental abuse.
In between questions about the real-life brothers’ confession to the crime, how they were caught, and who their therapist was, one major throughline in viewers’ reaction to the show has been about Lyle Menedez’ hair.
In the first episode of Monsters, it is revealed that the eldest brother wears a toupee, and audiences have naturally questioned whether this was the case in real life.
Was Lyle Menendez really bald?
According to multiple accounts, Monster’s depiction of Lyle’s hair loss is largely based on facts. During his trial for murdering his parents, Lyle’s hair was the subject of much attention, as his defence team argued that the hair loss was a result of the stress he endured as a victim of his father’s physical and sexual abuse.
In the show, Lyle’s baldness is revealed to his brother after Kitty angrily snatches the hair piece from Lyle’s head. According to reports, that incident actually did happen, just five days prior to the siblings killing their parents. Lyle was reportedly so embarrassed by the removal of his wig in front of his brother that it led to Erik confessing that Jose had been abusing him since the age of six — a key element of the brothers’ defence argument.
Since wigs are not allowed in prison, more recent mugshots of Lyle show him sporting a completely bald head, though he continued wearing the toupee during the trial.
Did Lyle Menendez wear a toupee?
Also depicted in the show is Lyle and Jose’s visit to a hair specialist, with the father purchasing Lyle an expensive toupee to conceal his hair loss. That is also true, according to an order placed by the Menedez family to the Hair Replacement Center in Los Angeles in 1988.
According to Vanity Fair reporter Dominick Dunne — who extensively covered the case and is portrayed by Nathan Lane in Monsters — Lyle’s toupee was the subject of much fanfare during the trial. Dunne reported that watchers of the trial would “invariably ask, ‘Which one is the [brother] with the wig?’”, and that he was “worried more about his toupee than about the outcome of the trial.”
It was reported that Lyle had been wearing a toupee for three years before his brother found out about it, and that his father pressured him to wear it. Jose’s secretary, Marzie Eisenberg, testified that her boss was concerned with Lyle’s hair loss. Viewers can see how the toupee played a role in Lyle’s story with the full season of Monster’s available now on Netflix.