Diksha Sundriyal
Netflix’s ‘Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story’ presents the shocking case of two brothers murdering their parents in their house. The nine-episode season delves into all possible angles of the case to present different sides of the story. A major point in the Menendez brothers’ defense emerges with the allegation their father, Jose Menendez, had sexually abused them. They mention one incident as a critical point when they knew they needed to escape their parents. In the show, and in the brothers’ version of events, this happens during an argument where Kitty rips off Lyle’s hair, which turns out to be fake. It is quite a shocking scene, but it is true.
Lyle Menendez’s Hair Loss Problem at an Early Age Made Him Opt for a Toupee
There aren’t a lot of times that we see Lyle Menendez without his fake hair in the show, which is why, when it does happen, the effect is quite unexpected. In bringing Lyle Menendez to the Netflix screen, actor Nicholas Chavez didn’t have to shave his own head. Because there are very few scenes that focus on the question of the toupee, Chavez got by with prosthetics and makeup. The rest of the time, he got to keep his hair. The incident with Kitty ripping out the toupee from Lyle’s head is borrowed by the show from Robert Rand’s book ‘The Menendez Murders,’ which also serves as a source material for the series. In it, Rand describes Kitty screaming and flailing “with clenched fists at her son” during the argument, which ended with the “savage scalping” of Lyle’s toupee. Rand noted that usually Lyle would go easy on the fake hair and use solvents to carefully remove it. In comparison, his mother’s action was rather violent, and he was in “immense pain” because of it.
Lyle Menendez was Very Particular About His Toupees
While Erik claimed that this was the first time he came to know about the hair, Lyle had been wearing a toupee for about two years. It was around the time he got into Princeton. When his father noted his abnormal hair fall, he suggested that Lyle should get a hairpiece. In one of his Vanity Fair articles about the case, Dominick Dunne mentions Jose’s secretary, Marzie Eisenberg, telling him about Jose’s concerns for his son’s hair and how he had repeatedly discussed it with her. Over time, Lyle became obsessed with his hair and wanted the best, most realistic-looking toupee. The first one he got didn’t satisfy him, so he went to the Hair Replacement Center in west LA and ordered a toupee, Model 124 EX, worth $1,450, with a $400 trade-in for his used one. This was in February 1988. Over the next year or so, he ordered three more pieces, with the fourth ordered about a month before he and Erik killed their parents.
From his interviews with several people, Dunne found that Lyle was very particular about the kind of toupee he wanted. For starters, it had to be 100 percent human hair. He would also go for different hairstyles and textures to get different looks. At one time, he expressed his desire not to wear it but said that he had to because his father told him he had an image to uphold. He kept the same thought process following the murders, especially during the times he had to appear in public, like the memorial service for his parents and the trial of their murders.
Even when Lyle was in prison, he was diligent about having the right toupee and the accessories to wear it right. Reportedly, in March 1991, when he was in Los Angeles County Jail, he ordered another toupee and got Topstick Strips by Vapon to affix it on his head because the prison regulations wouldn’t allow him to use the usual stuff. He was allowed to keep the fake hair on during their appearance in court for the trial. However, according to regulations, he couldn’t wear it in prison. Reportedly, one time, the other inmates his toupee, and he was forced to go to the trail without it, which he didn’t like at all because appearance meant everything to him, especially when he knew he was going to be judged for it and his life depended on it. Now, however, he seems to have left behind his obsession with hair that plagued him so much back then.
The Story of Erik Not Knowing About the Toupee Has Been Questioned
Anyone who found out about Lyle’s fake hair during the trial was entirely shocked. The hair looked so real that people had trouble believing it was a toupee. Dunne confessed that even he was impressed by how real it looked. Reportedly, the detectives on the case found out about it when Lyle got in a fight with a fellow inmate in Los Angeles County Jail, where the other person hit him while they were in the shower, and his toupee fell off. Still, even if it was a very good toupee, a lot of people found it hard to believe that his own brother didn’t know about it, which further led to holes in their story about the fight with Kitty and the subsequent series of events.
During the trial, Lyle’s ex-girlfriend Jamie Pisarcik testified that Erik knew about the toupee before the fight because he had talked about it with her. She mentioned how he was amazed and yet joked about it at the same time. However, when the defense dug deeper into her memory of the conversation, Pisarcik confessed that she couldn’t correctly place the timeline, failing to poke holes in the brothers’ story. Still, Dunne countered in his article that it seems highly unlikely that, being so close to each other, Erik wouldn’t know about the hair.
The journalist mentioned that several sources revealed that Lyle was “consumed with his hair,” with a friend of his mentioning that he seemed to be more concerned about the toupee and his correct positioning than the outcome of the trial. Considering that he had always been this focused on getting his hair right and was regularly getting new ones, Dunne found it hard to digest that his brother hadn’t noticed it earlier and was completely taken by surprise when his mother pulled the hair out of his brother’s head.
Read More: José Menéndez’s Net Worth: How Rich Was the Business Executive?
