Are Lyle and Erik Menendez married?

Lyle and Erik Menendez are serving two consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole for the 1989 murders of their parents, José and Kitty Menendez.

But their personal lives continued to evolve. The two have been married since his 1996 murder convictions and have spoken about their marriages in interviews, as have their wives.

“I’m asking myself questions,” Tammi Menendez, who has been married to Erik Menendez since 1999, told Dan Abrams of MSNBC’s “The Abrams Report” in 2005. “Everybody’s asking me. You know, ‘Is she crazy? Is she crazy?’ It was a very emotional experience.”

Neither brother qualifies for conjugal visits, as confirmed by the LA Times in the case of Lyle Menendez and by MSNBC in the case of Erik Menendez.

Who is Erik Menendez’s wife?

Tammi Ruth Saccoman and Erik Menendez began corresponding while he was in prison.

“We got really close through letters and then, you know, it just kind of took off when I met him. But it was through letters that he became a really good friend of mine and he understood what I was going through and I understood what he was going through,” she told MSNBC.

She wrote about their relationship in her self-published memoir, “They Said We’d Never Make It: My Life with Erik Menendez,” which served as the basis for the 2010 A&E documentary, “Mrs. Menendez.”

Tammi Menendez told People magazine that she initially had doubts that Erik and his brother had been molested by their parents, something their defense team argued during their first trials in 1993, which ended in a hung jury. During their second trial in 1995, which was held before a single jury, the brothers’ evidence of molestation was not admitted. Both were sentenced to life in prison.

Tammi Menendez changed her mind in 1996 when she learned her husband had been abusing her daughter, his stepdaughter, starting when she was 15, she told People magazine. Tammi’s husband turned himself in to police, then committed suicide two days later. Tammi was left to care for their 9-month-old baby.

“I contacted Eric,” she recalled. “He comforted me; our letters began to take on a more serious tone.”

But as she told MSNBC, “I didn’t set out to build a relationship with Eric; it just happened.”

Erik Menendez proposed to her in the prison visiting room, and in 1999 they were married in the waiting room at Folsom State Prison.

Tammi Menendez told MSNBC that she is in contact with a psychologist who will help her explain everything to her daughter.

“She loves Erik,” she said. “She loves to visit him. She… wants to see him every weekend. And he’s very good to her, very nice, very sweet.”

In a 2005 interview with People magazine, Erik Menendez spoke about the impact his marriage had on his life in prison.

“Tammi’s love was a big step in my life of choice. Having someone who loves you unconditionally, who you can be completely open with, is good for anyone. Knowing that person loves me for who I am,” he said.

He said their marriage changed him. “You can’t imagine what it was like for those first five years in prison, when no one told you, ‘I love you.’ It makes you a colder, harder person. Tammi’s love pushed me to be a better person. I want to be the best husband I can be to her. And that affects the decisions I make every day in prison,” he said.

They both touched on the issue of building a successful marriage without intimacy.

“Tammi taught me how to be a good husband. There’s no make-up sex, just a 15-minute phone call, so you really have to try to make it work,” Erik Menendez told People magazine.

“It’s very difficult,” Tammi Menendez told MSNBC. “But I have emotional support from Erik. He’s my best friend.”

TODAY.com has reached out to Talia and Tammi Menendez for comment.

Who are Joseph Lyle Menendez’s wives?

Lyle Menendez found his first wife, Anna Eriksson, the same way Erik did: through letters.

As she told People magazine in 1996, Eriksson was born in Chicago and began her modeling career as a teenager, working for the Lord & Taylor advertising agency, before moving to Europe in the 1980s.

In an interview, she said that during her first trial, she wrote Lyle Menendez a letter with the message, “Hang in there.”

They began corresponding and became closer when Eriksson moved to Los Angeles. “I can only say that we connected, even though we never touched,” she told People magazine.

Robert Rand’s “The Menendez Murders,” which inspired a new Netflix series about the brothers, details their 1996 wedding, which took place over the phone in what Leslie Abramson, Erik Menendez’s attorney, called a “proxy wedding.”

“Since you are not in Leslie’s office right now, I will say that in the future, you will place the wedding ring on Anna’s ring finger, and you, Anna, will place the wedding ring on Lyle’s ring finger,” the judge said. Abramson placed the ring on Eriksson’s hand.

Rand, who attended the wedding, recalled in the book that Eriksson called Lyle Menendez his “guardian angel.” Lyle Menendez said it was “the best day” of his life.

The couple separated a year later, with the LA Times reporting that the California Department of Corrections “did not recognize the wedding” and that theirs was “not a legal marriage” because it took place over the phone.

As NBC News reported at the time, in November 2003, Lyle Menendez married Rebecca Sneed.

In 2017, Lyle Menendez gave an interview to People magazine about his marriage to Sneed.

“We try to talk on the phone every day, sometimes multiple times a day,” Lyle says. “I have a very stable, committed marriage that helps me get by and brings me a lot of peace and joy. It’s a counterbalance to the unpredictable, high-stress environment here.”

He said his wife “puts up with a lot” from “judgmental people.”

“But she has the courage to face the obstacles. It would have been easier to walk away, but I am deeply grateful that she doesn’t,” he said.

More about the Menendez brothers

• Where Are The Menendez Brothers Now? Lyle and Erik Menendez’s Lives Since Their Parents Were Killed

• How the Actors of Netflix’s ‘Monsters: Lyle & Erik Menendez’ Compare to Real People

This article was originally published on TODAY.com