Erik Menéndez‘s prison life sentence didn’t stop him from finding love with wife Tammi Menéndez.
Erik and his brother, Lyle Menéndez, were arrested in 1990 on two counts of first-degree murder after their parents — José and Kitty — were found shot to death in their home in August 1989. Two trials resulted in Erik and Lyle being sentenced to life without parole. Both have maintained that their mother and father were physically, emotionally and sexually abusive.
After the trial, Erik’s sexual orientation became a topic of conversation.
“No [I am not gay]. The prosecutor brought that up because I was sexually molested and he felt in his own thinking that if I was sodomized by my father that I must have enjoyed it and therefore I must be gay,” Erik said in a tell-all with Barbara Walters from 1996. “And people that are gay out there must be sexually molested or they wouldn’t be. It was upsetting to hear, but I am not gay. But a lot of gay people write and feel connected to me.”
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Tammi first reached out to Erik via mail in 1993, when he was in prison but not yet sentenced. At the time, she was still married to Chuck Saccoman. Her connection with Erik took a turn after Saccoman’s death in 1996 which led to a year 1999 wedding ceremony in prison. Tammi was later asked whether she was initially “troubled” by Erik being responsible for his parents’ death.
“I know his soul, and I do know what happened that night,” she told NBC News in 2005. “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.”
That same year, Tammi explained why she wasn’t bothered by the lack of conjugal visits. (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.)
“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,” she explained to People in 2005 while Erik added in a separate interview with the outlet, “It’s not the sex you seek, but the emotional connection. There is no makeup sex, only a 15-minute phone call, so you really have to try to make things work.”
Erik’s brother, Lyle, also found The One while incarcerated. After his arrest, Lyle met Anna Eriksson through mail correspondence and they exchanged vows in 1996 in a wedding attended by his attorney Leslie Abramson and his aunt Marta Menéndez. Lyle and Anna called it quits in 2001 and he has been married to Rebecca Sneed since 2003.
Both Menéndez siblings now have a chance to reunite with their wives after the Los Angeles District Attorney recommended in October 2024 that a judge resentence Erik and Lyle to 50 years.
Keep scrolling to relive Erik and Tammi’s relationship:
Inside the Menendez Brothers’ Lives in Prison: Restrictions, No Conjugal Visits
1993
Before Erik was sentenced in his high-profile murder case, he connected with Tammi when she wrote him a letter in prison. Tammi was still married to Chuck at the time and was living with him and her teenage daughter from a prior relationship when she started to follow the Menéndez trial.
“I told [Chuck] that I was going to write to Erik,” Tammi recalled to People in 2005. “He said to go ahead. I really didn’t know if Erik would write back.”
As for Erik, he told the outlet that fate made him open Tammi’s letter, adding, “I saw Tammi’s letter and I felt something. I received thousands of letters, but I set this one aside. I got a feeling. 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.”
1996
Three years into her correspondence with Erik, Tammi found out that Chuck allegedly started to rape her teenage daughter when she was 15 years old. Chuck, who shared a then-9-month-old daughter Talia with Tammi, turned himself into the police and died by suicide two days later.
“I reached out to Erik. He comforted me,” Tammi told People. “Our letters started taking on a more serious tone.”
Timeline of Erik, Lyle Menendez’s Murder Case: From Arrest to Resentencing
1997
Erik and Tammi met in-person after he was convicted of first-degree murder. Tammi recalled being “really nervous” to visit Erik in prison.
“I’d only sent him a tiny, 1-by-1 [inch] picture,” she recalled to People. “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 called his first meeting Tammi the “most beautiful experience” of his life.
1999
Tammi’s original plan was to move to Georgia, but after connecting with Erik she found a home much closer to his prison, in Sacramento. She visited him four times a week and in 1998 Erik proposed to Tammi when he was 27 and she was 36. The pair subsequently had a prison wedding with a Twinkie that served as their wedding cake.
Erik’s prison transfer from Folsom Prison to Pleasant Valley State Prison made Tammi and Talia have to drive 150 miles every week to visit him.
“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 admitted to People while referring to her youngest child who considers Erik her father. “There is always that question in my mind.”
Menendez Brothers Break Silence on Murder Case 30 Years Later: Revelations
2005
During an interview with MSNBC, Tammi opened up about how her relationship with Erik evolved, saying, “We did get very close through letters and then you know the relationship moved forward when I did meet him. But it was the correspondence that he became a really good friend of mine and understood what I was going through and I understood what he was going through.”
She continued. “And then after I met him things got more and more intense, so it’s you know through letters and your constraint to letter writing.”
Erik also reflected on his bond with his wife despite the unconventional barriers between them.
“Tammi is what gets me through. I can’t think about the sentence. When I do, I do it with great sadness and a primal fear. I break into a cold sweat. It’s so frightening I just haven’t come to terms with it,” he told People in 2005. “Tammi’s love was a major step in my choosing life. 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.”
2024
Over the years, Tammi offered updates to those who supported Erik and Lyle about their appeal process. Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascón recommended in October 2024 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.
“Yesterday was a difficult and emotional day. I am Grateful to DA Gascon for his courage to seek resentencing for Erik,” Tammi wrote via X. “I am naturally disappointed he did not go further and act on his own belief that Erik and Lyle have served enough time in prison.”
2025
“When I first came to prison, I wasn’t just sentenced to prison. I was sentenced to prison to never see my brother again, to never have a hope for freedom,” Erik on an episode of the “2 Angry Men” podcast in February 2025. “It was hard for me. I faced a lot of bullying and trauma. It was a dangerous environment. Fortunately, I had the love of a woman that came into my life and brought a little precious daughter.”
Despite the challenges he faced, Erik was grateful for Tammi’s presence in his life. “I began to experience fatherhood and growth and I began to heal a lot of the self-hate and self-loathing that I dealt with all of my life,” he continued. “When I came to prison, I didn’t come to prison healed. I came to prison dealing with the traumatic wounds of my past and the tragic crime that resulted. I had to face all of those truths and journey through that dark place of prison.”
He added: “A lot of my freedom came from understanding that I’m actually someone that is capable of being loved and that I deserve love. I’m striving to be a good person. I’m striving to be a better person every day and I want to be a person that my family can be proud of for certain. I want my daughter to be proud of me and my wife to be proud of me and my extended family to be proud of me and my brother to be proud of me.”
