Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan’s “DAHMER — Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story” enjoyed record-breaking success on Netflix in 2022, which led to two additional installments of the “Monster” anthology being greenlit. The second installment, “Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story,” is garnering a ton of attention at the moment, continuing the tradition of real-life horrors being re-enacted by a stacked ensemble cast. The unsavory aspects of such a trend are pretty hard to ignore, but it has been proven time and again that audiences gravitate toward these kinds of stories, even when they are actualized at the cost of those who suffered. “The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story” happens to offer an appropriate amount of suspense and tension, as there are no questions about the validity of the accusations, but rather the how and why behind the crimes that were committed.
For brief context, the Menendez siblings brutally killed their parents – José and Kitty (played by Javier Bardem and Chloë Sevigny respectively) — on August 20, 1989, and they were eventually convicted of first-degree murder and received life sentences without the possibility of parole. During their trial, their motives were called into question: while the defense argued that the parents were abusive for decades, the prosecutors reasoned that the Menendez siblings did it to nab the family fortune. In Murphy and Brennan’s film, Lyle (Nicholas Chavez) and Erik (Cooper Koch) seem on edge after their parents’ funeral, and the latter confides in his therapist Jerome Oziel (Dallas Roberts) about the murders.
Erik’s confessions to Oziel become the gateway for flashbacks, where we are privy to his interpretation of the past, which also highlights the high-stress, abusive environment that the brothers grew up in. Erik becomes more agitated with each memory cropping up, prompting Oziel to call Lyle in, but the second brother threatens to kill the therapist, leading Oziel to vow to keep the conversations confidential.
Was Dr. Jerome Oziel involved in the Menendez trial?
Of course, these conversations did not remain confidential, as they emerged as key evidence in the Menendez trial. However, Oziel himself did not confide in authorities; it was his mistress, Judalon Smyth (Leslie Grossman) who tipped off the police. In the show, Oziel begs Smyth to act as a covert witness to these confessions, and she urges Oziel to go to the authorities as the boys had threatened to kill him at one point. In real life, Smyth directly went to the police in March 1990 after she had broken up with Oziel, stating that she had accidentally overheard the brothers’ confession to the therapist. Although patient-doctor confidentiality terms cannot be easily broken even for evidential purposes, the judge made an exception as the brothers had threatened Oziel, and the tapes were considered key evidence.
Where is Dr. Oziel now? Well, he is no longer in California, as the Department of Consumer Affairs’ Board of Psychology revoked his therapist license in 1997 on two counts: breaking confidentiality rules and engaging in sexual misconduct with several patients. The confidentiality clause was considered broken as Oziel had involved Smyth in the Menendez brothers’ case and shared sensitive information with her, and the sexual misconduct charges were denied by Oziel, who opted to not contest these charges in court.
The latest information about Oziel can be traced to his website, which lists him as providing sessions to improve “marriages through mediation as an alternative to divorce” and choosing an appropriate marital mediator that takes “the intangible personal ‘fit’ between the mediator and the clients” into consideration. Prior to this, Dr. Oziel hosted relationship seminars for women in Portland, Oregon up until 2017.
“Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story” is currently streaming on Netflix.
