Erik and Lyle Menendez, who were convicted in 1996, got married while serving time behind bars
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NEED TO KNOW
- Lyle and Erik Menendez have been serving time in prison since 1996, when they were convicted of murdering their parents José and Kitty Menendez
- Lyle was married to Anna Eriksson from 1996 to 2001 before marrying Rebecca Sneed in 2003, though they later separated
- Erik has been married to his wife Tammi Menendez since 1999
Both Menendez brothers got married while incarcerated.
During their time in prison, which has included new developments and parole hearings, Erik Menendez has been supported by his wife, Tammi Menendez. Meanwhile, Lyle Menendez has leaned on estranged wife Rebecca Sneed.
The brothers shot their parents, José and Kitty Menendez, at point-blank range on Aug. 20, 1989. After their subsequent arrests in March 1990 and years spent in trials, Lyle and Erik were convicted of two counts of first-degree murder on March 20, 1996, and sentenced to life in prison on July 2, 1996.
Lyle was initially married to Anna Eriksson from 1996 to 2001. He later wed Sneed in 2003, who announced their separation in November 2024.
As for Erik, he wed Tammi in June 1999 inside the waiting room of Folsom State Prison, after the two corresponded for nearly six years.
“Tammi’s love has propelled me to become a better person. I want to be the greatest possible husband to her,” Erik told PEOPLE in October 2005. “And this affects the choices I make every day in prison. Tammi has taught me how to be a good husband.”
The brothers emerged in the spotlight in September 2024 thanks to Ryan Murphy‘s Netflix anthology series Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story. In May 2025, they were resentenced to 50 years to life, making them eligible for parole. Erik was denied parole on Aug. 21, 2025, and Lyle’s denial came one day later.
Here’s what to know about the Menendez brothers’ wives, 37 years after they killed their parents.
Lyle was previously married to a model
Credit: Ted Soqui/Sygma/Getty
Lyle’s first wife was Eriksson, a former salon receptionist turned model. According to The Sun, Eriksson wrote a letter to Lyle during his and Erik’s first trial. He responded, and they began corresponding regularly, eventually developing a relationship.
In 1994, Eriksson moved to Los Angeles to be closer to Lyle and got a job at a record label. They married on July 2, 1996 — the day Lyle was sentenced to life in prison. Erik’s attorney Leslie Abramson and their aunt, Marta Menendez, attended the ceremony, which was conducted via speakerphone.
The couple stayed together until Eriksson filed for divorce in 2001, alleging that Lyle was unfaithful to her and exchanged letters with other women without her knowledge.
Lyle remarried two years after divorcing Eriksson
Sneed and Lyle knew each other for a decade before marrying in November 2003, per NBC News. A former magazine journalist and editor, Sneed first began communicating with Lyle through letters, and they became a couple after he and Eriksson split.
Since marrying Lyle, she became an attorney. She lives in Sacramento, Calif., and has visited Lyle weekly.
“Our interaction tends to be very free of distractions, and we probably have more intimate conversations than most married spouses do, who are distracted by life’s events,” Lyle told PEOPLE in January 2017. “We try and talk on the phone every day, sometimes several times a day.”
He added, “I have a very steady, involved marriage and that helps sustain me and brings a lot of peace and joy. It’s a counter to the unpredictable, very stressful environment here.”
Erik and his wife Tammi started exchanging letters in 1993
Credit: Chris Morton/Getty
Tammi was married to Chuck Saccoman and living with him and her teenage daughter from a prior relationship when she began following the brothers’ trial on TV in 1993. Feeling sorry for Erik, she sent him a letter while he was in prison — with Saccoman’s blessing.
“I told him that I was going to write to Erik,” Tammi told PEOPLE. “He said to go ahead. I really didn’t know if Erik would write back.”
Erik previously told PEOPLE he believed fate led him to open Tammi’s letter out of the flood of mail he received.
“I saw Tammi’s letter, and I felt something. I received thousands of letters, but I set this one aside. I got a feeling,” Erik said in 2005. “And I wrote her back. Tammi and I continued to correspond. I enjoyed writing to her. It was a slow friendship. It was special to me because it was not associated with the trial and the media. Tammi was someone not in the craziness.”
Erik and Tammi started dating after her husband died
In June 1996, Tammi discovered that her then-husband, Saccoman, had allegedly begun raping her teenage daughter when she was 15 years old. He turned himself in to the police and died by suicide two days later.
At the time of his death, Tammi and Saccoman’s daughter, Talia, was 9 months old.
“I reached out to Erik. He comforted me; our letters started taking on a more serious tone,” she recalled to PEOPLE.
Erik and Tammi first met four years after they started communicating
Credit: Ted Soqui/Sygma/Getty
After Erik was convicted of first-degree murder, he invited Tammi, who was dating a doctor at the time, to visit him at Folsom State Prison, which is located near Sacramento, Calif. They met for the first time in August 1997.
Tammi told PEOPLE she was “really nervous” to meet Erik and that he didn’t even know what she looked like.
“I’d only sent him a tiny, 1-by-1 [inch] picture,” she said. “But when he walked into the room, he was so full of life, he hopped down the stairs. It was like I was meeting an old friend.”
Erik said meeting Tammi for the first time was the “most beautiful experience of [his] life.”
Tammi and Erik married about a year after they met
Tammi planned to use her inheritance from Saccoman’s death to move to Georgia and establish a life for herself and Talia there, but she changed her plans after meeting and falling in love with Erik. She moved to Sacramento to be closer to him and visited him four times per week.
In 1998, Erik proposed to Tammi, and they married at Folsom Prison on June 12, 1999, with a Twinkie serving as their wedding cake.
After Erik’s transfer to Pleasant Valley State Prison in Coalinga, Calif., Tammi and Talia trekked nearly 150 miles every week for visits.
Tammi revealed that a lot of her friends were put off by her relationship with Erik. She also noted that while kids at school never bullied Talia about her stepfather, Tammi thought the other students’ parents might have been keeping their distance because of her infamous husband.
“Every single time a parent would say to me, ‘No, my daughter can’t stay over at your house,’ I would wonder if the underlying reason was Erik,” Tammi said. “There is always that question in my mind.”
Erik called Tammi a “lifesaver”
Credit: Ted Soqui/Sygma/Getty; Chris Morton/Getty
When asked if she was “troubled” by Erik murdering his parents, Tammi told NBC News in December 2005 that she was, but that she didn’t believe her husband was beyond redemption.
“I know his soul, and I do know what happened that night,” she said. “And I do understand. I believe that within everybody, put in certain circumstances, you will, you know, be able to kill somebody. I mean, I do believe that Erik is a very good person.”
The same year, Erik told PEOPLE that Tammi was a lifesaver for him.
“Tammi’s love was a major step in my choosing life,” he said. “Having someone who loves you unconditionally, who you can be completely open with, is good for anybody — to know that this person loves me as I am.”
Neither brother is allowed conjugal visits
While Lyle and Erik have both been married, neither has consummated their marriages because conjugal visits are prohibited for inmates serving life sentences in California.
It doesn’t bother Lyle much. As the older brother told ABC News in January 2017, “One thing I’ve learned is that your physical comfort is much less important than your connection with the people around you. I’ve found I can have a healthy marriage that is complicated and built around conversation and finding creative ways to communicate, sharing, without all the props that are normally there in marriage in terms of going out to dinner and having as much intimate time together and so on.”
Tammi is largely unbothered as well, telling PEOPLE in 2005, “Not having sex in my life is difficult, but it’s not a problem for me. I have to be physically detached, and I’m emotionally attached to Erik.”
For his part, Erik isn’t thrilled about the lack of physical contact but says it’s part of what makes the relationship work.
“It’s not the sex you seek, but the emotional connection,” he said, adding, “There is no makeup sex, only a 15-minute phone call. So you really have to try to make things work.”
Sneed announced that she and Lyle were separated in November 2024
In a post on a Facebook page focused on the brothers that Sneed runs, she shared that she and Lyle had been separated “for a while now.”
“This is NOT a cheating scandal,” she wrote. “Lyle and I have been separated for a while now but remain best friends and family. I continue to run his Facebook pages, with input from him, and I am forever committed to the enduring fight for Lyle and Erik’s freedom, as has been so evident over the years.”
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