Lyle Menéndez has wife Rebecca Sneed by his side as he serves his life sentence for first-degree murder.
Before Lyle found love with Sneed, he made headlines after becoming a person of interest in the murder of his parents. Lyle and his brother, Erik Menéndez, were charged in 1990 on two counts of first-degree murder.
Lyle began to correspond with former model Anna Eriksson shortly after his arrest. Their whirlwind romance resulted in the pair nearly getting married one day before Erik and Lyle’s sentencing. In the end, court and jail officials prevented the ceremony from taking place.
Two subsequent trials resulted in Erik and Lyle’s conviction and a life sentence without the possibility of parole. Erik and Lyle, meanwhile, have maintained that their mother and father were physically, emotionally and sexually abusive and that their actions were that of self-defense.
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On the day of his sentencing in 1996, Lyle secretly got married to Eriksson via a telephone conference call. The New York Times reported at the time that Lyle and Erik —who served as his brother’s best man — phoned into the wedding while their defense lawyer Leslie Abramson placed the ring on Eriksson’s finger for Lyle.
The California Department of Corrections, however, did not consider Lyle and Eriksson’s marriage to be legal. After five years of marriage, Eriksson filed for divorce in 2001 after she found out that Lyle was in contact with other women.
Sneed was one of the people Lyle wrote to after his arrest. They remained in contact and by 2003, Lyle and Sneed were a married couple. Unlike Erik’s wife, Tammi Menéndez, Sneed has remained completely out of the public eye.
“People are judgmental, and she has to put up with a lot,” Lyle told People in 2017. “But she has the courage to deal with the obstacles. It would be easier to leave, but I’m profoundly grateful that she doesn’t.”
Sneed and Lyle now have a chance to reunite in person after the Los Angeles District Attorney recommended in October 2024 that a judge resentence Erik and Lyle to 50 years, which could make them eligible for parole and prison release.
Keep scrolling to relive Lyle and Sneed’s relationship:
Erik Menendez, Wife Tammi’s Relationship Timeline: From Pen Pals to Marriage
1993
When Lyle initially got in contact with her, Sneed was a magazine journalist who wrote to him in prison. The pair became pen pals — and remained in contact for 10 years — before they started dating and eventually exchanged vows.
2003
Lyle and Sneed got married two years after his divorce from Eriksson. Lyle was 35 and Sneed was 33 at the time of their nuptials at Mule Creek State Prison. Over the years, Sneed transitioned from journalism to law. She is currently an attorney who lives in California and visits Lyle weekly.
2017
“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 at the time about the lack of conjugal visits between him and Sneed. (Prisons in California permit conjugal visits, but prisoners serving life sentences without parole are banned from such privileges. The law was changed in 2016 but since Erik and Lyle committed a violent offense against a family member, they still aren’t eligible for the family visits.)
Sneed, for her part, hasn’t done any interviews and has preferred to support Lyle while remaining out of the public eye.
Erik and Lyle Menendez’s Family Guide: Who Supports Them and Who Doesn’t?
2017
While reflecting on his bond with Sneed, Lyle explained to ABC News how they manage to sustain their marriage, saying, “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.”
2024
While Erik and Lyle’s prior attempts to appeal their life sentence decision were denied, projects such as Ryan Murphy’s controversial series Monsters, The Menéndez Brothers and more have offered the brothers another chance at a possible resentencing.
One month after the release of Monsters, Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascón announced in October 2024 that a new hearing was set due to new evidence in Lyle and Erik’s murder case. Gascón offered an update late that same month when he recommended that Erik and Lyle’s sentences be reduced to 50 years, which could allow them to be released on parole if approved by a judge.
