Seven years before Netflix got its hands on Monsters and the new docuseries from Erik and Lyle Menéndez, which debuts October 7, Hollywood was pretty much obsessed with the 1989 murders of Jose and Kitty Menéndez.

First came the ABC documentary Truth and Lies: The Menéndez Brothers – American Sons, American Murderers , followed by the Dick Wolf-produced Law & Order True Crime: The Menéndez Murders for and the made-for-TV movie Menéndez: Blood Brothers for Lifetime. There was even an episode of HLN's How it Really Happened With Hill Harper featuring a phone interview with Lyle Menéndez from jail with Chris Cuomo.

And then there was A&E’s The Menéndez Murders: Erik Tells All, a 2017 five-part series that saw documentarian/EP Nancy Saslow interview the younger brother by phone from the Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility in San Diego. In addition to the hours of audio with Erik Menéndez—Saslow could only conduct 15-minute interviews at a time—the sprawling series from MEgTV and EP Eamon Harrington included then-new interviews with the likes of attorney Anne Bremner, juror Betty Oldfield, tennis coach Charles Washington, prosecutors Chris Darden and Gil Garcetti, Detective Les Moeller, and extended members of the Menéndez clan.

Within months of A&E airing Erik Tells All, Lyle Menéndez was transferred from his prison in Northern California so he could be incarcerated with his brother in San Diego. "The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation would never say, 'Oh yeah, Erik Tells All had an impact, and there's no way we can prove that,'" Saslow says. "But the timing was always interesting."