If there’s one thing that can be said with absolute certainty it’s that Lyle and Erik Menendez did, in fact, kill their parents with shotguns on August 20th, 1989. We’re here thanks to the Netflix series Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story, where creators Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan put the crime under a microscope and try to look at it with a fresh perspective. Since there’s zero doubt about the crime committed, the real topic of discussion has to be the motive here. While Lyle and Erik continue to claim that they had to endure extreme sexual abuse and torture at the hands of their father, Jose Menendez, the verdict that was given to them all those years ago says otherwise. It nullified the sexual abuse claims on their part and concluded money as the main motive. Anyway, the Netflix series doesn’t necessarily confirm or deny anything, but it is bound to raise a lot of questions amongst the audience. One such question is: why did they kill their mother? I mean, if we believe what they’re saying, killing the father does make sense, but why kill the mother? In this article, we’re going to look into that.
Why Did The Brothers Kill Their Mother?
One thing I urge you to keep in mind is that a lot of what you read here is based on what we see in the Netflix series. If we take the brothers’ claim of their father abusing them into consideration, then the mother is equally responsible, because she was an enabler. He kept doing those terrible things to the kids, and she looked the other way only because she was way too in love with her husband. So much that she even hated her kids for taking “the love of her life” away. Jose was, of course, an utterly terrible human being to do such things to his own children, that too at such a tender age of five or six. Sure, there’s this possibility that Kitty didn’t know about the abuse initially, but when she finally got to know about it, she didn’t do anything to save the kids. That makes her a big failure of a mother who probably had it coming. Add to that, Kitty asked Erik to strip in order to check his male parts to make sure there’s no allergies or blisters. In my book, that’s also abuse, especially given Erik was a teen by then.
But that’s not why Lyle and Erik killed their mother. Despite everything, they continued to stress they loved their mother. The reason they killed Kitty was actually their father, Jose. Kitty was on the edge already, as she was severely depressed thanks to Jose having an affair. She was popping pills like they were candy and had this unhealthy addiction to her husband, no matter what he did. Lyle and Erik realized that their mother wouldn’t be able to survive this world without their father around her. They did intend to kill Jose, but killing Kitty was more of a show of mercy. There’s a moment in the series when we see the brothers have already shot Jose to death, but Kitty is still alive. Lyle, the elder one, then decides to reload the shotgun and finish off their mother. They didn’t want her to suffer so they decided to put her out of her misery.
Were The Brothers Telling The Truth?
If we go by the court verdict, then we’ve got to conclude that the brothers were actually lying about the whole sexual abuse part. If there was no abuse, then there can’t be any question of Kitty being an enabler. That doesn’t mean that she was a good mother, but at least she wasn’t the worst. If we side with the theory that Lyle and Erik killed their father because he cut them out of his will, then it can be said that Kitty had to die because she supported her husband. She didn’t ask him to consider his decision, warranting the chances of her sons having a grudge against her. However, Lyle and Erik might be lying about the abuse, but the other part, where they claimed to be freeing their mother by killing her, might still be true. Jose Menendez did have an affair, and the series did show us that the marriage between him and Kitty was far from perfect. Sure, he did end the affair and promise to make things better, but that was not enough for Kitty to stop with the pills. She was still miserable, so her sons decided to do her a favor.
Did Kitty Menendez deserve to die?
Sorry to disappoint you, but I’m not going to say yes or no here. If you think about it, the series also doesn’t necessarily say anything that you didn’t already know. You get to see the same thing over and over, from many perspectives. Kitty Menendez does mention hating the brothers more than once, but then again, she’s talking about children in general. If there’s one thing that can’t be denied, it would be the kind of love she had for Jose. So much so that when Jose himself says he doesn’t love her anymore, she screams that he’s lying. For her, Jose was everything, and she would do anything for him.
Obviously, she’s as terrible as her husband if she knowingly let the abuse happen to her kids. Even if she didn’t love them, she had no right to let them suffer and not save them from the monster that was Jose. In fact, that does make her a monster as well. However, if we are not considering the abuse, then Kitty is not quite a monster. All she is is most likely a bad mother and unfortunate wife. In this scenario, of course, she didn’t deserve such a terrible fate. I’m not sure if it was intentional on the creator’s part to not show much of Kitty (and sort of wasting the talent of the incredible Chloe Sevigny), but from what we get, this is the best I could do when it comes to the “what” and “why” behind the death of Kitty Menendez.
