Almost 35 years later, the artist Mona Shafer Edwards resumes her pencils to be in the same court of the court as the Menéndez brothers. At the end of the 1990s, this renowned legal designer covered the two trials of Erik and Lyle Menéndez, sentenced to life imprisonment for having demolished his rich parents in 1989.
During their trial in 1996, the two brothers admitted to having killed their parents José and Mary Louise Menéndez. They had justified their gesture by claiming to have been raped for years by their father. For their part, prosecutors accused them of having killed their parents to inherit their fortune of $ 14 million.
Netflix output of the series Monsters Ryan Murphy last September, revived the public interest in this hypermedia issue. Faced with the public’s enthusiasm, the new Los Angeles prosecutor admitted that the series had pushed the Prosecutor’s Office to reconsider this matter with a new eye, in a world where The #MeToo Movement The perception of victims of sexual aggression changed: therefore, at the end of the new audience scheduled for Wednesday, May 14, the two brothers were considered eligible for probation.
“The world is curious to see what they have become”
Three decades later and before this new judicial chapter, Mona Shafer Edwards confused BFMTV.com to be able to immortalize this new chapter of the case. “We are 35 years later to talk about them again. It is very curious to say that we will end the reporters who had covered the event at that time. It is not common.”
“What will happen to the audience this time is a mystery, we will see, but it will be very interesting to see how Erik and Luke are seen today, when they are about fifty. I think the world is curious to see how they have become.”
The designer requires a step back after the emotion from the launch of the Netflix series. The capture, according to her, lies in the fact that these series “dramatize but the facts are also romance.” “Young people were able to join these children because they organize characters and their moods, sometimes taking generosity with reality,” he said.
She tells him, for example, that since the end of 2024, the residents of the old property of the Menéndez family in Berverly Hills “have seen that the cars spend every day to see the house.” “While he was 35 years old, there is no one to live there.”
A recognized press designer
Initially, the fashion illustrator, Mona Shafer Edwards covered many important evidence in the United States, for media such as NBC, ABC or Reuters. Emblematic issues such as OJ Simpson’s civil trial or Michael Jackson’s trials, Winona Ryder, Lindsay Lohan and Chris Brown. His markers in his hand knows how to capture the majority of the public quickly.
The advantage of this format, “is to be able to look at my drawings years later and tell him precisely what was said at that time, or what was the emotion that crossed the room.” On the contrary, “a photo is something very flat and quite cold, which does not take into account everything that can happen.”
Mona Shafer Edwards, likes to understand “body language and emotions: the people who cry, lower their heads, explosions of anger, someone who falls on the ground … Everything we call it ‘haha’, where we know that it will be the drawing of the day.”
“I carefully look at what is happening, I take a mental image and draw directly, without a previous sketch,” explains the artist, which usually performs three to four boards per audience.
Two tests at the end of the 90s
The American remembers very well with the two Menéndez tests that she had covered in 1993 and 1996 in Hollywood, during which the designers were not particularly welcome. “Our task was difficult because we were not very well located, we were in the back because the judge was reluctant to bring the press,” said the illustrator of the press.
He also remembers the contrast that had hit her between the image “Good Chic Good genre” that Lyle and Erik tried to send and the sordid details that could see or listen at that time during the auditions, which bothered her.
“The surprising thing is that their lawyer Leslie Abramson always called them ‘The Boys’, although they are 19 and 21 years old,” he recalls. “And they arrived at the audition dressed in pastel sweatshirts every day, with small poles at the Ralph Lauren to look clean on them.”
“Some nights, I was sad for them after everything I had heard, other times, the testimonies were overwhelming,” said the designer.
She specifies that, even if these cases affect it, her role has always remained that of an observer. “I saw all the photos of the crime scene, I understood horrible details … but when I draw, I am a goal. It is not me or my emotions what they say.”
Source: BFM TV
