New Law & Order Series Features Menendez Case

Notorious '90s case will be back in the spotlight
By Rob Quinn,  Newser Staff
Posted Apr 7, 2016 4:27 AM CDT
New Law & Order Series Features Menendez Case
A media frenzy surrounded the brothers' three trials.   (YouTube)

The sensational trials of the '90s have rolled back around faster than some of the era's fashions. Parent-killing rich kids Lyle and Erik Menendez will be in the spotlight once again in a new Law & Order series that the Los Angeles Times describes as NBC's attempt to get on the "true crime bandwagon" after the success of the likes of The People v. OJ Simpson. Dick Wolf will produce the eight-episode series on the brothers, who were 21 and 18 years old when their parents were shot dead in their Beverly Hills home. After three closely watched murder trials—the first two ending in hung juries—the brothers, who said they had been physically and mentally abused by their wealthy parents, were sentenced to life in prison in 1996. The network plans more series of Law & Order: True Crime, focusing on a different crime every season.

"We've been talking with Dick about how to create an event series coming out of the Law & Order ripped-from-the-headlines brand," NBC Entertainment President Jennifer Salke said Wednesday, per the Hollywood Reporter. "This case captured the public's attention like nothing before it as it examined taboo issues such as patricide and matricide in gruesome detail, all against a backdrop of privilege and wealth. We will re-create the cultural and societal surroundings of both the murders and trials when people were not only obsessed with the case but examining how and why these brothers committed these heinous crimes.” (More Law and Order stories.)

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