Case closed? True crime shows keep affecting real cases, including Menendez brothers.
Thirty-five years after Erik and Lyle Menendez shot their parents to death in their Southern California home, the brothers might be granted a resentencing in what advocates have called a move toward justice. It’s thanks in large part to a surge in media attention and the nation’s appetite for true crime content.
The Menendezes were convicted of the 1989 slaying of their parents, Jose and Kitty Menendez, in a retrial after their first murder trial ended with an undecided jury. To secure a conviction the second time, substantial evidence of the abuse the brothers said they suffered at the hands of their parents was excluded, their attorneys contend.
But a groundswell of support for the brothers, who are currently serving life sentences without the possibility of parole, followed the release of the Netflix documentary “The Menendez Brothers” about the case this month. Another Netflix offering, a dramatized portrayal, was released in September.
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Popular true crime content – which explores and often reinvestigates elements of real murder and other criminal cases in documentaries, podcasts and books – often leads to a wave of public interest and increased scrutiny, and multiple cases have seen major developments following that attention.
Here are four times true crime has affected real cases:
The 'Serial' podcast and Adnan Syed's overturned conviction
Adnan Syed was more than a decade into serving his life sentence for the murder of his ex-girlfriend when the release of the podcast “Serial” in 2014 changed everything. In it, journalist Sarah Koenig reexamined the evidence used to convict him and followed some loose threads in the case.
One bit of evidence raised some of the biggest questions about the case: the existence of a potential alibi witness, who said she was with Syed when the prosecution contended the murder was committed. Though the podcast didn’t conclude that Syed was innocent, it launched massive public campaigns for his freedom.
'Serial' case keeps going: An undo turns into a redo in Adnan Syed murder conviction
In 2022, he walked out of prison after having his conviction overturned. The judge that vacated the conviction said prosecutors during his murder trial two decades ago improperly withheld exculpatory evidence. Prosecutors said they were dropping all charges after DNA evidence newly suggested Syed's innocence.
Syed’s case is still in a complicated web of legal limbo, however. Last year, his conviction was reinstated after family members of the victim, Hae Min Lee, said their rights were violated when they weren’t given time to appear in person for the hearing that led to his freedom.
Though his conviction has been reinstated, he remains out of prison while he awaits a redo of that hearing.
"Adnan Syed would be nowhere if Sarah Koenig hadn't stepped in and turned him into a national spectacle," Deirdre Enright, a law professor and founder of the Innocence Project at the University of Virginia School of Law who was featured on the podcast, told Paste BN after the conviction was initially overturned. "Like most, he would have been on his own."
'Jinxed' by a documentary: Robert Durst
In another case, public attention brought on by a documentary had the opposite effect. Robert Durst, who died in 2022, was featured in the 2015 documentary series “The Jinx,” in which prosecutors said he confessed to killing his best friend back in 2000.
Durst was 78 by the time he was convicted of the execution-style murder of Susan Berman. Prosecutors said he killed Berman because she knew he had also killed his wife Kathie in 1982, though he was never charged with his wife’s murder.
In the six-part HBO documentary “The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst,” which aired in early 2015, Durst was heard on a hot mic saying that he "killed them all," among other damning statements and evidence presented. Before that documentary, Durst became a public figure with the 2010 film "All Good Things," based on his life.
Participating in the 2015 documentary was a "very, very, very big mistake,” he later said in court, The Associated Press reported.
Brandon Dassey and 'Making a Murderer'
The Netflix documentary series "Making a Murderer" nearly helped free Brandon Dassey from his life sentence. Dassey was convicted of first-degree intentional homicide, mutilating a corpse and second-degree sexual assault in 2007 and sentenced to life for the murder of photographer Teresa Halbach. Prosecutors said he helped his uncle, Steven Avery, who was also sentenced to life in a separate trial.
The series, which came out in late 2015, raised concerns about the legitimacy of the confession given to police by Dassey, a teenager at the time of the murder. An outpouring of support for Dassey's conviction to be overturned followed the documentary's release as advocates and attorneys said his confession was coerced by authorities and no forensic evidence linked him to the crime.
In the aftermath, his conviction was overturned by a federal magistrate, and he seemed within reach of getting out of prison, until a divided appeals court reinstated it. In 2018, the Supreme Court declined to hear his case, effectively upholding the conviction.
The Menendezes
The Menendezes’ original trial featured testimony from the brothers accusing their father of horrific physical and sexual abuse. Their attorneys argued that the young men killed their parents out of self-defense, because they believed, perhaps irrationally, that their parents were going to kill them.
That trial’s jury was hung, and a retrial included much less of that testimony, their attorneys and family members have said.
The saga was dramatized in the Netflix series “Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story,” and the two-hour documentary followed. The result was renewed attention on a case that dominated headlines decades ago, this time driven by streaming services and social media.
Kim Kardashian even penned an opinion piece calling for their sentence to be reconsidered. She wrote that a lack of awareness and pervasive stigma about sexual abuse against boys clouded their chances at a fair trial.
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“I have spent time with Lyle and Erik; they are not monsters. They are kind, intelligent, and honest men,” she wrote for NBC News. “I don’t believe that spending their entire natural lives incarcerated was the right punishment for this complex case.”
Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón said in announcing his decision to recommend resentencing that he was considering new evidence of the alleged abuse. He said there was an influx of inquiries to his office after the documentary came out.
Contributing: John Bacon, Christopher Cann, Minnah Arshad, Erin Jensen, Celina Tebor and Kelly Lawler, Paste BN; Kelli Arseneau, the Appleton Post-Crescent