Season 2 · Episode 4 · September 19, 2024
Kill or Be Killed
Updated
- Season
- Season 2 — Menendez
- Episode
- Episode 4 of 9
- Premiere
- September 19, 2024
- Platform
- Netflix
- Rating
- TV-MA
- Part of
- Monster anthology
Watch
Official trailer for the season.
The episode
Lyle's side of the story fills the hour. Talking with Leslie, he walks through the household: a father whose standards were humiliations, hair loss he hid under toupees, a mother who watched and did nothing, and the burglary arrest that he says pushed José from discipline toward elimination.
His claim crystallizes into the season's central legal theory — that the brothers believed their parents would kill them first. Dominick Dunne, writing from the gallery with open contempt for the defense, becomes the episode's counterweight: the voice of a public that never bought it.
Show vs. the record
Lyle's account of sexual abuse, and the claim that the brothers thought their parents would kill them, is the defense theory. He testified about a father who humiliated him. The brothers' earlier burglary case is part of the biography. Dominick Dunne covered the trial for Vanity Fair and did not believe the defense.
That testimony never became a factual finding. The episode lets Lyle tell it as memory. A jury was not required to accept it.
New to the season? Start with the Season 2 guide for the full picture, or the watch order to see how the anthology fits together.
Keep watching
Browse every guide on the seasons index or jump to the Season 4 hub for the newest chapter of the anthology.