How Lyle Menendez' Toupee, Featured in Netflix'sMonsters, Played Key Role in the Brothers' Defense

Mar. 15, 2025

Erik and Lyle Menendez.Photo: Ted Soqui/Sygma/Getty

TheMenendez brothersbecame 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.

In Ryan Murphy’s scripted Netflix showMonsters: 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 inMonstershave been disputed —Erik claimed its depiction of Lylewas “rooted in horrible and blatant lies” — the hairpiece incident did indeed happen.

According toUSA Today, Lyle testified about the incident in court, saying, “She reached, and she grabbed my hairpiece and she just ripped it off.”

Lyle testified, perUSA 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,” perToday. “When Kitty tore it off, Lyle felt immense pain.”

Jose, Erik and Lyle Menendez.Los Angeles Times/AP

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.”

Jose Menendez.AP

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,” perToday.

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.

source: people.com