How Lyle Menendez' Toupee, Featured in Netflix's “Monsters”, Played Key Role in the Brothers' Defense
Erik and Lyle Menendez were convicted of killing their parents Jose and Kitty Menendez
The Menendez brothers became infamous in 1989 when Lyle, then 21, and Erik, 18, came into the den of their family home in Beverly Hills, Calif., and fatally shot their parents Kitty and Jose with shotguns.
The Aug. 20, 1989 killings, according to the brothers, came after years of alleged sexual abuse by their Hollywood executive father — abuse they claim was ignored by their mother.
In Ryan Murphy’s scripted Netflix show Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story, which follows the brothers before and after the murders, the killings are depicted as occurring days after Kitty ripped off Lyle’s toupee during a family fight at the dinner table over Lyle’s plan to marry his girlfriend.
Though many of the characterizations in Monsters have been disputed — Erik claimed its depiction of Lyle was "rooted in horrible and blatant lies" — the hairpiece incident did indeed happen.
According to USA Today, Lyle testified about the incident in court, saying, "She reached, and she grabbed my hairpiece and she just ripped it off."
Lyle testified, per USA Today, that his brother "didn't know I had a hairpiece. I was completely embarrassed in front of my brother."
On the subject of the hairpiece, Robert Rand wrote in the book, The Menendez Brothers: The Shocking Untold Story of the Menendez Family and the Killings that Stunned the Nation, that removing the wig "took a special solvent," per Today. "When Kitty tore it off, Lyle felt immense pain."
In the depiction in Monsters, the hairpiece incident caused the brothers, played by Alexander Chavez and Cooper Koch, to admit to each other they were allegedly sexually abused by their father, which set in motion the deadly shooting.
Related: Erik Menéndez Slams Ryan Murphy's New Monsters Series as 'Horrible' and Full of 'Blatant Lies'
A Vanity Fair article by writer Dominick Dunne, who covered the trial, says the claim about the hairpiece, and its tie to the molestation allegations was a key part of the brothers' defense at trial: “The defense claimed that until the moment Kitty pulled the hairpiece off Lyle, Erik did not know that his brother wore a toupee,” wrote Dunne. “The defense further claimed that the sight of his older brother's baldness and the sudden awareness of his brother's vulnerability and embarrassment freed Erik to confess to Lyle his own deep secret, that their father had been sexually molesting him for 12 years.”
Dunne wrote: “Menendez's state-of-the-art hairpiece, or toupee, or wig, or hair replacement, as his very expensive rug was variously called, became a constant prop in the trial, almost as important as the two missing Mossberg 12-gauge shotguns the brothers used to blow away their parents.”
AP
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According to Rand’s book, Lyle began wearing a hairpiece two years before the slayings at the insistence of his father who believed his son had a career in politics and that "to be successful, he'd need a thick head of hair," per Today.
Per Dunne, Lyle allegedly was fitted with a toupee for $1,450 in 1988 and had three others over the next year and a half.
“He always insisted on 100 percent human hair,” wrote Dunne. “The piece had three inches of hair in front, four inches on the sides, and five inches in back. It required four to six weeks for delivery.”
“On one,” wrote Dunne, “he ordered a permanent wave. On another, he requested sun-streaking and highlights.”
In 1996, three years after their first trial ended in a deadlock, the siblings were convicted of the first-degree murders of their parents and sentenced to life in prison without parole.
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