Was Lyle Menendez Really Bald? Breaking Down That Shocking ‘Monsters’ Scene

Nicholas Chavez as Lyle Menendez

Nicholas Chaves is making headlines for his portrayal of Lyle Menendez in Netflix’s Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story — but one scene is standing out among all the rest.

In a tense scene during the show’s premiere — all nine episodes hit the streamer on Thursday, September 19 — Kitty Menendez (Chloë Sevigny) is fighting with her eldest son before ripping what appears to be toupée off the top of his head. The mother and son pair are arguing about Lyle wanting to propose to his girlfriend. Kitty declares that at 20, he is too young. The elder Menendez brother calls her a hypocrite, pointing out that Kitty married José Menendez (Javier Bardem) at such a young age.

“Hypocrite, huh? What about this?” Sevigny as Kitty yells, before ripping the hair off her son’s headpiece to reveal that Lyle is balding. Lyle starts crying, appearing to be in serious pain as José attempts to put the hair back on his son’s head.

The younger Menendez brother, Erik (Cooper Koch), appears to be horrified while he watches the entire dinner table scene unfold. Lyle then gets up from the table and his brother follows him. The siblings have a conversation in which it’s revealed that Erik was not privy to Lyle’s hair loss.

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“Because I didn’t want you to know, that’s the f—— point, Erik!” Lyle yelled. “Nobody’s supposed to know.”

The hair loss and Lyle’s baldness, which has been discussed at length on social media, is an accurate part of producer Ryan Murphy’s story.

Mugshot of Joseph ‘Lyle’ Menendez

Lyle and Erik were convicted of the 1989 murder of their parents, claiming they committed the murder in self-defense after suffering years of physical, emotional and sexual abuse. The brothers are currently spending life in prison. While photos of Lyle from their murder trial in the 1990s show him with a full head of hair, he would apparently put on the hairpiece before entering the courtroom and remove it when going back behind bars.

The scene, and further details about Lyle’s hair loss, are depicted in Robert Rand’s 2018 book The Menendez Murders: The Shocking Untold Story of the Menendez Family and the Killings that Stunned the Nation — which was the basis for the Monsters TV show.

Nicholas Chavez as Lyle Menendez

“It was his toupée, and it came off like a savage scalping,” Rand wrote in the book. “Removing it, carefully, took a special solvent. When Kitty tore it off, Lyle felt immense pain.”

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Vanity Fair also detailed Lyle’s “state-of-the-art hairpiece” in a March 1994 story about the Mendendez Brothers. According to the article, Lyle went to a Los Angeles hair replacement center in 1988 and upgraded his toupée for one that cost $1,450. His hair loss became a focal point of the brothers’ murder trial with the story of Kitty pulling off Lyle’s toupée being reiterated in court.

The moment Kitty pulled off her son’s hair proved to be a turning point in Lyle and Erik’s lives — leading to the August 1989 murder of their parents.

“The defense further claimed that the sight of his older brother’s baldness and the sudden awareness of his brother’s vulnerability and embarrassment freed Erik to confess to Lyle his own deep secret,” the Vanity Fair article read. “That their father had been sexually molesting him for 12 years.”

Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story is now streaming on Netflix.