Was Lyle Menendez Bald In Real Life? The Monsters Scene, Explained

Ever since he debuted his "American Crime Story" in 2016 with the critically acclaimed miniseries "The People v. O.J. Simpson," Ryan Murphy has become television/streaming's preeminent purveyor of lurid, fact-based sagas. Murphy and his collaborators are masters of titillation and/or revulsion, but they've yet to come close to matching the whip-smart dialogue and nimble storytelling of "The People v. O.J. Simpson" writers Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski (who are also known for their work on biographical movies like "Ed Wood," "The People vs. Larry Flynt" and "Big Eyes"). "The Assassination of Gianni Versace" and "Impeachment" were more facile and, in alarming respects, callous to the point of mean-spiritedness.

This quality was hugely amplified when Murphy took his true crime game to Netflix for "Dahmer: Monster — The Jeffrey Dahmer Story." The 2022 10-part series was long on unpleasantness, gore, and outright cruelty, but disappointingly short on insight. It was a wallow. And I say this as someone fascinated by serial killers. As such, it'll be interesting to see if Murphy and his writers have found something of human value in their already-massively-popular "Dahmer" follow-up, "Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menéndez Story."

In case you're not up on your infamous, headline-grabbing murders, Lyle and Erik Menéndez (played in the series by Nicholas Alexander Chavez and Cooper Koch) murdered their parents José and Mary Louise "Kitty" Menéndez (Javier Bardem and Chloe Sëvigny) on the evening of August 20, 1989. The brothers' cold-blooded reaction — a seemingly celebratory spending spree that found them buying restaurants, lavish designer clothing, and jet-setting all over the globe — helped seal their fate in court (they're both serving life sentences in prison without the possibility of parole), even though Lyle made semi-credible accusations of sexual abuse at the hands of his father. Both boys also claimed there was mental and physical abuse from both parents as well.

Murphy gives us an acrid taste of the physical abuse in one particularly disturbing scene that has viewers wondering if Lyle really had to wear a hairpiece in his early 20s.

According to "The Menendez Murders: The Shocking Untold Story of the Menendez Family and the Killings That Stunned the Nation," a 2018 book by Robert Rand, the scene where Kitty Menéndez rips Lyle's hairpiece off his head at the dinner table was horrifyingly true to life. "It was his toupée, and it came off like a savage scalping," wrote Rand. "Removing it, carefully, took a special solvent. When Kitty tore it off, Lyle felt immense pain." Yikes.

According to a 1994 article in Vanity Fair, Lyle's toupée was a "state-of-the-art hairpiece" that set him back $1,450 in 1988. The piece also alleges that seeing his brother assaulted in this fashion led Erik to confess to Lyle that their father had been sexually molesting him for 12 years.

Though there is ample evidence that the Menéndez brothers had a gift for mendacity, this is one element of their story that, according to multiple people who've examined the grisly case, checks out. It's certainly a scene that will stick in viewers' minds after they watch "Monsters." As for whether these shocking scenes add up to a worthwhile piece of streaming drama, that's for the audience to decide.

"Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menéndez Story" is now streaming on Netflix.