The Menendez Brothers Are Behind True Crime’s Strangest Coincidence
What does a Mark Jackson basketball card have to do with the Menendez Brothers? Netflix's Monsters doesn't explain but we will.
Netflix’s Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story is as thorough a dramatized retelling of the Menendez Brothers case as you’re likely to find. The nine-episode series from creators Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan follows the events of Lyle and Erik’s lives from their time as privileged teens in Southern California to the murder of their parents to the subsequent public spectacle of their trials.
Through it all, Monsters leaves few storytelling stones unturned. Viewers are entreated to all the compelling minutiae of the Menendez case. This includes the boys’ receiving murderous inspiration from the 1987 miniseries Billionaire Boys Club, their penning of the hilariously-titled screenplay “Friends,” and the revelation of Lyle Menendez’ hair loss.
Still, there’s one interesting bit that Monsters does leave out and it just so happens to be one of the strangest true crime coincidences in history. Lyle and Erik Mendendez have their own basketball card…sort of.
As the series reveals, Lyle and Erik engaged in an opulent spending spree in the months following their parents’ murders that included the purchasing of a Buffalo wing restaurant in Princeton, New Jersey, a Rolex, a Porsche, and tennis lessons to compete in a tennis tournament in Israel. Whether this was an unexpected reaction to grief or outright gloating over successfully killing their parents is up for debate. But the Menendez’s $700,000 months of spending did contribute to one bizarre pop culture artifact.
In 2018 a true crime fan decided to look for evidence of all the expenses the brothers made in the time between their parents murder and their own arrest. Eventually that fan-turned-investigator, Stephen Zerance, uncovered something truly unexpected. You see, at some point during Lyle and Erik’s post-murder binge, they decided to check out a New York Knicks game at Madison Square Garden in Manhattan. And since no expense needed spared, they likely sat courtside. Zerance ordered a bunch of bulk 1989 season basketball cards off of eBay, starting flipping through them, and made a startling discovery.
Zerance’s tweet would eventually go viral when it was posted to Reddit and boosted by ESPN reporter Darren Rovell. Here’s a clearer version of the card, Lyle and Erik are seated courtside to the left of Jackson.
And that is how evidence of two killers’ opulent post-murder spending spree forever came to be immortalized on New York Knick Mark Jackson’s basketball card. For what it’s worth, Jackson’s career wasn’t cursed by it as he went on to become an NBA coach and a live commentator of NBA games for ESPN.
For some time after the discovery of the Menendez brothers on Jackson’s card, eBay disallowed sales of the card due to its policy forbidding anything “affiliated with murders or serial killers.” Copies of the card can still be found over the internet for exorbitant price points, contingent on grading. As far as true crime memorabilia goes, a Mark Jackson basketball card is a relatively benign collectible. Still, there’s gotta be a better way to spend $4,000.
All nine episodes of Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story are available to stream on Netflix now.
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TV Editor at Den of Geek and Television Critics Association member. Based in Cleveland, Ohio. Very upset about various sporting events.