Erik is gay

The claim that Erik was gay only emerged due to the prosecutor’s approach during the closing arguments of the first trial. It was never proven in court, and Erik himself has consistently refuted it. Were the Menendez brothers gay? A teaser trailer for Netflix's series about Erik and Lyle Menendez shows them hugging in a very intimate way.

Did Erik and Lyle Menendez actually go to the movies for an alibi? Monsters: The Menendez Brothers Story features Cooper Koch as Erik Menendez and Nicholas Chavez as Lyle Menendez. The photographer also claimed that Erik once told him that if he were gay, he would have Craig as his boyfriend. Lyle and Erik Menendez Have Asserted They are Straight A lot of theories and speculations have been made about Lyle and Erik Menendez over the years.

Cooper Koch is a standout as Erik Menéndez in Netflix's 'Monsters,' but an acting teacher once told him his 'gay voice' would prevent him from booking roles. By Kevin Dolak. One of the most watched TV series last year came under fire for the bad-taste inclusion of the incest storyline. Why did a series rooted in facts, while playing with shifts in perspectives, intermittently portray the brothers as having an incestuous relationship?

This insinuation, which comes early in the series, leaving its suggestion in the air for the remainder, has no basis in fact and sticks out in a series rooted in actual events. Murphy has called the writing on his show a Rashomon -style round-robin of perspectives. Anyone introduced to the Menendez tragedy via his show, however, could make the assumption that something intimate was going on between Erik and Lyle.

Case in point: the hotel party scene in the second episode when one brother cuts in to dance with another and kisses him as guests look on confused and disgusted. The implied incest moments — that scene at the Beverly Hills Hotel and another where Kitty Menendez catches her boys in an intimate moment while showering together or is it all in her head?

There are also no other indicators that she thought this about her sons, in the series or trial evidence.

Monsters: The Menendez Brothers

The confusing moments turned the Menendez family and their supporters against Murphy and the show. Yet when looking back at some of the source material used to create the show, some light is shed on including such a potentially slanderous claim in the massive hit series.

To understand why the brothers could be seen as incestuous, one has to dig back to the first trial of Erik Menendez and take in the book written by a juror who sat for that trial — which ended in a deadlock and ushered the brothers toward their evidence-restricted second joint trial, which concluded with the two taken to prison to serve two life sentence with no possibility of parole. Over the next seven months, she heard every detail of the case that shocked the nation and captivated true-crime fans.

The trial ended in a split-hung jury after the six men and six women had deadlocked; the women wanted to see Erik sentenced for manslaughter and given a lighter sentence. Tellingly she shared that, in many ways, the jury was split on gender lines. Though the outcome was disappointing for Thornton, she came out of the arduous but ultimately fruitless juror experience having been one of 12 deciders on a case that had become the talk of the nation.

And she had notebooks of raw material no one else had: the thorough journals and notations she had jotted down during protracted deliberations in the jury room, which became a battle of the sexes with women jurors banding together to get the men to understand the psychology of physical and mental abuse.

The judge admonished us daily to not discuss any of the details of the trial with anybody. And so that was my way of dealing with the stress of the trial. It was not intended for anybody to ever see. But after some arm-twisting from a publisher, her journals were soon released as a book. Thornton says that she had to push back at the suggestion that gory crime details be added into her material.

This is because Los Angeles County Deputy District Attorney Lester Kuriyama suggested in his closing argument that Erik Menendez was a closeted homosexual and that it was his sexual orientation and not years of molestation by his father that was the taboo topic around their Beverly Hills home that caused tension to blow up into rounds of bullets directed at the parents.

For those too young to recall, being gay was not nearly as accepted in But the discussions, Thornton tells THR , centered only on claims he was gay by the prosecution — not on whether he was gay and having a sexual relationship with Lyle. But the incest theory these male jurors concocted was amplified by none other than Robert Rand, author of The Menendez Murders and producer of Menendez and Menudo: Boys Beytrayed.

The rift this element and its confused presentation caused between the Menendez brothers, the family along with their newfound fans and Team Murphy is still palpable; no apologies have been given or are likely to be received. At a time when their case is being re-examined, and a lot of people are being introduced to it for the first time, I think that was a horrible thing to have done.