Yahoo News Were Erik Menendez and O.J. Simpson Really in Neighboring Jail Cells?
In the closing minutes of the penultimate episode of Monsters: the Lyle and Erik Menendez Story, a familiar name appears: O.J. Simpson.
Erik (Cooper Koch) is sitting in his jail cell, sketching, when he hears a prison guard say, "Can we call you Juice?" O.J. (never seen, but played by Trae Ireland) replies, "You are the guards. Call me whatever you want. Juice is fine with me." Soon, the guards put O.J. in the cell right next to Erik, and Erik starts to talk to him.
"I heard, well, is this right? That, um, Robert Shapiro is your lawyer?" Erik says to him. O.J. replies, "Yeah. I mean, I'm getting a bunch. You know what I'm saying." Erik says, "I just wanted to tell you... he was our lawyer, too, and actually, he... well, you should watch out for him, because he kind of fucked us. Like, I could've stayed in London, and I wouldn't be up for the death penalty, probably. But he was the one that told me to come home, so...." Later on, Erik tells him, "You should consider a plea bargain."
While we can never know if that conversation between really happened, it is true that Erik and O.J. were really in neighboring cells after Simpson was arrested following a car chase on June 17, 1994.
"I told him not to talk to the deputies or inmates about his case. I told him not to worry — just calm down and relax. After that long chase, you can imagine what shape he was in," Erik told journalist Robert Rand in The Menendez Murders. "He wasn't happy to be in jail like anyone else. He wasn't any worse than I was or Lyle was. He was real delusional, thinking that he was going to get out in three weeks."
"I remember Erik telling me that O.J. was just super friendly with all the deputies, and all the deputies you know, like, came around with signed pictures," Rand told the Hollywood Reporter. "They were used to having celebrities of O.J.’s level in their custody. So Erik was calling me like every night giving me updates, ‘This happened today or that happened today.’ But I had the impression that O.J. really appreciated the friendship and advice from Erik."
Additionally, Erik and Lyle had known Simpson before their incarcerations. "O.J. Simpson came over to our house several times," Lyle told People in 2017. "I certainly never thought that we’d be later meeting in prison, facing murder charges. That’s for sure." Jose Menendez, their father, had signed Simpson to an advertising contract with Hertz rental cars. "He happened to be the head of a company and they were moving into heavy advertising, and they had this novel idea of having a sports hero do it. More people knew O.J. for that [the TV ads] than anything else," Lyle explains.
Lyle also spent time with Simpson in jail. "We were able to talk quite a bit," he says. "We shared the same attorney [meeting] room and we were housed in the same area. My brother was in the cell next to him for most of his trial, so we had a lot of conversations."
You Might Also Like
