Javier Bardem portrays the Menendez brothers’ controversial father in the new Netflix series Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story.

José Menendez came to the United States as a penniless teenager and was determined to succeed, demanding excellence of himself and later his two sons, Lyle and Erik. However, the Menendez brothers would eventually say that drive for prestige and fortune came with a dark side that nobody knew about—leading them to take deadly action.

Thirty-five years later, the 1989 murders of José and his wife, Kitty, at the hands of their children are the subject of Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story. A follow-up to the wildly successful first installment of the Netflix anthology series that featured serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer, the new season began streaming one week ago and stars Academy Award winner Javier Bardem as José Menendez.

Although the element of family drama was enough to make the Menendez murders one of the most shocking in recent history, the brothers alleged disturbing secrets about their father, José, that continue to linger over the case today.

José emigrated from Cuba as a teenager

José Menendez was born in Havana, Cuba, in 1944. According to crime researcher and author Rachel Pergament, his father was a soccer player who owned an accounting firm, while his mother was a star swimmer and member of the country’s sports hall of fame. He had two older sisters, Terry and Marta.

In Cuba, José was spoiled by his mother and developed a reputation as a troublemaker. “He was the only boy, and [his] mother adored him and emphasized his machismo and his male image, so much so that he became a little bit of a bully,” Alicia Hercz, a family neighbor, told 20/20. “He became a little bit of a monster to the parents. It was hard to control him.”

After Fidel Castro seized power in 1959 following the Cuban Revolution, José’s parents decided to send their son to the United States to escape the tumultuous political climate. The teenager settled in Hazleton, Pennsylvania, where he lived in a cousin’s attic. Unable to speak English, he worked hard to learn the language and maintain his grades in high school.

Like his mother, José was a proficient swimmer and earned an athletic scholarship to Southern Illinois University. When he was a freshman, he met a senior named Mary Louise “Kitty” Andersen, who was two years older. Although his family objected, believing José was too young, the 19-year-old married Kitty in 1963. The couple relocated to New York City, where José transferred to Queens College to pursue an accounting degree.

José and Kitty eventually had two sons. Lyle arrived in January 1968, and Erik followed in November 1970.

He was a relentless worker

Now with a family to support, José was more determined than ever to succeed in America. According to The Los Angeles Times, he picked up his first professional job at the Coopers & Lybrand accounting firm. One of his clients, Lyon’s Container Service in Illinois, was so impressed by his work that the company hired him away to become its comptroller. Within three years, José was company president.

AP
José Menendez in 1988, the year before he was killed

At age 35, he became the executive vice president of U.S. operations for car rental company Hertz, a subsidiary of consumer electronics corporation RCA. A year later, RCA transferred José to its records division, and he was eventually named chief operating officer. “His attitude was, ‘I’m a winner. I’m going to take this dog company and make it No. 1,’” John Mason, an entertainment attorney and friend of José, told the Times.

José expanded the company’s Latin music catalog and helped sign notable groups including Duran Duran, the Eurythmics, and the boy band Menudo. His success allowed him to relocate the family from New Jersey to California, first to the Calabasas suburb of Los Angeles and then Beverly Hills.

But along with his relentless drive to succeed, Menendez had a tendency to flaunt his power and status. According to the Times, Lyle told stories of how his father berated employees and mistreated wait staff at restaurants. “I get that from my father. They’re here to serve me,” Lyle once said, justifying his own similar behavior.

Behind the scenes, José was just as hard on his children.

José drove Lyle and Erik to be perfect

Growing up, both Lyle and Erik—who had a standoffish reputation and often kept to themselves—showed promise in sports like swimming and tennis. Wanting them to not just succeed but also be the best out of everyone, José coached his sons hard, perhaps too hard.

Erik would win his swimming races handily only for José to yell at him near the pool. “It seemed like José was so competitive, he was doing everything he could to try to make him better,” a former coach told the Times. “But he was so completely overbearing, it had the opposite effect. Erik had so much less self-confidence because everything he did was never good enough.” When both of his children decided to pursue tennis competitively, José spent hours with them on the court behind their house near Princeton, New Jersey. They would hit balls together, as José screamed instructions.

His helicopter parenting went beyond sports. José intervened when Lyle and Erik were caught in two burglaries after the family’s move to California. Erik took the fall and received probation so Lyle could still attend Princeton University. When Lyle was accused of plagiarism at the Ivy League school and received a year-long suspension, José insisted his elder son stay in New Jersey so he didn’t have to admit Lyle’s offense to anyone, according to Vanity Fair.

José reportedly clashed with Lyle over his girlfriends as well, leading to a rift between them. By the time of José and Kitty’s murders, Lyle lived in the guesthouse on the property instead of the family home.

Although it was clear the brothers held a degree of resentment toward their father, no one predicted the horrific abuse they would accuse him of after their arrests.

The Menendez brothers said José sexually assaulted them

On August 20, 1989, the Menendez brothers shot their parents inside their Beverly Hills home. Although it was initially hypothesized the killings might have been connected to the mafia or a business deal gone horribly wrong, Lyle and Erik were arrested in March 1990 and later charged with first-degree murder. The defense team argued that the brothers, fearful their father would kill them for exposing his alleged history of sexual abuse, shot their parents in self-defense.

During Lyle and Erik’s trials in front of separate juries, attorney Leslie Abramson called on more than a dozen family friends to corroborate their stories of emotional and sexual abuse, A&E reported. According to the Times, each brother said José had molested them—Lyle from ages 6 through 8 and Erik for roughly a dozen years from ages 6 through 18. Lyle also testified his father punched him in the mouth and stomach and sometimes whipped him with a belt.

But after Lyle and Erik’s initial trials resulted in hung juries, a judge determined in their joint retrial that the defense failed to show sufficient evidence of José’s alleged abuse. The brothers were convicted on March 21, 1996.

More allegations emerged since José’s death

Although the Menendez brothers remain behind bars for life without chance of parole, more evidence has emerged that shed further light on their claims against José.

In 2018, journalist and author Robert Rand uncovered a letter Erik wrote to his cousin Andy Cano a year before the murders of José and Kitty. Erik, who was 17 at the time, wrote of ongoing abuse committed by his father. The letter was never brought to court during the brothers’ trial. “I looked at it, and I said, ‘Oh, my God, this could be really important to the case,’” Rand told The Hollywood Reporter.Although the brothers’ claims against their father were never proven, they received new scrutiny just last year when Roy Rosselló—a former member of Menudo, the boy band that José helped sign—accused the late music executive of raping him at a party during the mid-1980s. Rosselló was only 14 when he said the sexual assault occurred. “I know what he did to me in his house,” Rosselló said in the documentary Menendez + Menudo: Boys Betrayed. The brothers’ alleged abuse plays a significant role in the narrative of Monsters.

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All nine episodes of Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story began streaming on Netflix September 19. Javier Bardem portrays José Menendez alongside Chloë Sevigny as Kitty Menendez and Nicholas Alexander Chavez and Cooper Koch as brothers Lyle and Erik.