The Menendez Brothers Got Married How Many Times in Prison?

One of the many indignities of incarceration is that it really puts a crimp in your dating life. That’s the whole reason prison is a punishment: being cut off from the rest of the world. That includes the ability to stick your face in the genitals of your preferred gender as much as your ability to frolic in a public park or eat a Quarter Pounder with Cheese.

That’s not to say that no one ever gets a little lovin’ behind bars; women who fall in love with serial killers have been a punchline for decades. The bloom does tend to come off the rose, though, when you realize that means never having sex or sharing a home or even, like, going bowling, so most inmate-exmate relationships don’t last long. Shocker, we know. The average lifer is lucky if they manage to maintain the interest of even one person long enough to consider legally binding you to them. That’s why the Menendez brothers are the kings of prison pull.

If you watched Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story, you know that Lyle Menendez had a girlfriend when he and his brother killed his parents who stayed by his side after his arrest, even after he asked her to lie that his father assaulted her. Well, she was apparently old news by the time a stunning blonde model named Anna Eriksson saw Lyle on TV and decided to write to him, imploring him to “hang tough.” That was all you needed to do to seduce a man in 1990: quote New Kids on the Block and be a model.

Eriksson was so madly in love with Lyle that she married him the day he was sentenced to life in prison in 1996, though they tried to get married the day before and were denied. Hey, planning a wedding is rough under even the best circumstances. They kept it going for five years until she filed for divorce in 2001, alleging that Lyle had developed relationships with other women who wrote to him. Let that sink in. He not only landed a hot model wife but also cheated on her, all from behind bars. That is undeniable game right there.

Two years later, Lyle Menendez married Rebecca Sneed, a journalist turned lawyer who he met when she first wrote to him in 1993. Yep, that’s three years before he married Eriksson. It’s honestly just exhausting to even think about. Do you think there was ever a wacky mix-up with the envelopes that forced him to pull an elaborate heist on the prison mail system?

By comparison, Erik Menendez is a beacon of conventionality — he’s only managed to snag one wife from his cell. Tammi Saccoman was already married, however, when she wrote to him in 1993. Her husband soon died under, wow, just the darkest circumstances imaginable, but she had actually begun dating a doctor before she dumped him for Erik, who she married in 1999. This isn’t some lady who can’t get a man with the freedom to wear more than one outfit. Imagine being the doctor who got dumped for Erik Menendez.

But don’t let that depress you — let it inspire you. Lyle and Erik didn’t let a little thing like life in prison stop them from not getting out there and finding love. If the Menendez brothers can get married three times in prison, why can’t you get a date?