What you should know about the Menendez brothers before Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story

In the trailer for Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story, the family, led by father José (Javier Bardem) and mother Kitty (Chloë Sevigny) are taking a photo together, putting on the appearance of a happy family.

"I need to know what's going on with you and the boys," a voiceover from Kitty says.

"What do you mean?" José replies.

"I need to know. I don't want there to be any more lies between us. I won't tell anyone," she says.

"It is over. Stop. I'm going to fix this family."

From there, the family portrait changes to a scene of just the two brothers, shirtless and embracing. After a gunshot, they're covered in blood and their voices say, "It's just us now. We're on our own."

It's a provocative trailer, and one that has many people wondering why these two brothers have such strong, almost homoerotic energy together.

The answer is complicated.

The brothers were certainly close, and due to their home life, had bonded through a lot of trauma.

The Menendez brothers grew up in a wealthy neighborhood of Princeton, New Jersey before their father, a successful Cuban-American businessman, moved them to Beverly Hills.

On the night of August 20, 1989, Lyle called the police to the family house saying that he and his brother had found their parents shot. They claimed they had been out at the movies when the shooting occurred.

Seven months later, Lyle, age 21, and Erik, age 18, were arrested.

Even before their trial began there were rumors of sexual abuse and incest in the family. "They had sexual hatred for their parents," a friend of the brothers told a reporter at the time. "The tapes will show that José molested Lyle at a very young age."

During their trial, the brothers alleged that they were the victims of years of physical, psychological, and sexual abuse at the hands of their parents. They claimed their father sexually abused them, while their mother enabled and facilitated his abuse.

At the trial, the brothers' cousin Andy Cano, testified that he had been told of the abuse at a young age. After Cano died in 2003, a reporter found a letter written to him written by a 17-year-old Erik, one year before the murders, that details the ongoing abuse by his father.

Joan Vander Molen, Kitty Menendez' eldest sister, also commented on the abuse, saying, "Kitty must have felt tremendous shame and guilt knowing her husband's sexual dysfunction went beyond affairs… Our family tragedy should be a lesson to all on the destructive effects of child abuse and molestation, whether they are wealthy or not."

Another man, Roy Rosselló, claimed that he was also sexually abused by José while he was 14. Rosselló was a member of the boy band Menudo, which had been signed to a multi-million dollar deal by the then president of RCA Records, none other than José Menendez.

Rosselló said that at 14, he was drugged and raped by José while visiting the Menendez family home in New Jersey.

Unfortunately for the brothers, prosecutors didn't believe their allegations of abuse, claiming they only committed the murder to get their inheritance.

After deadlocked juries in separate trials, the brothers were retried, this time together. And this time, the judge made a ruling saying that the brothers would be barred from using sexual abuse as a defense.

They were both found guilty of murder in that trial.

Ever since the crime first made headlines, there have been rumors and mystery surrounding the brothers and their family, and it seems as though Murphy and Brennan have decided to lean not just into the abuse allegations, but into further rumors about the brothers and their relationship.