Marriages, Death Plots & Escape Plan: The Menendez Brothers’ Prison Secrets Exposed!
Aug. 20 2019, Updated 5:17 p.m. ET
Lyle and Erik Menendez were convicted of killing their parents in cold blood 30 years ago, on the evening of Aug. 20, 1989.
Though the siblings tried to claim their father, Jose, sexually assaulted them while their mom, Kitty, ignored what was happening behind the closed doors of their Beverly Hills mansion, Lyle and Erik were eventually found guilty of first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder.
In 1996, a judge sentenced Lyle and Eric — who were just 20 and 18 at the time of the killings — to spend the rest of the lives in prison without the possibility of parole.
Over 20 years later, the brothers are still locked up and have experienced their fair share of shocking situations even though they're behind bars.
Scroll through Breaking Celebrity News's gallery to find out more about Lyle and Erik’s strange life behind bars.
Love After Lockup
Erik married Tammi Saccoman at Folsom State Prison in 1999 after she noticed him on TV during his trial. They are still together to this day.
Second Chance
Lyle first married model Anna Eriksson in 1996, but the blonde divorced him after she caught him “cheating” by writing to other women. He married again at the Mule Creek State Prison in Ione, Calif., in 2003 — this time to Rebecca Sneed, who later became a defense attorney.
Connecting While Incarcerated
“One thing I’ve learned is that your physical comfort is much less important than your connection with the people around you,” Lyle once said during a prison interview with ABC. “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.”
Booked For Bad Behavior
In the tell-all book, They Said We’d Never Make It: My Life with Erik Menendez, Tammi revealed how her imprisoned husband, Erik, once was severely beaten behind bars after he was targeted for death. Erik asked his fellow inmate Scottie if he could return a book he had let him borrow, Tammi wrote. The inmate told him he had given the book to a man who was “easily six feet five inches tall and about 300 pounds,” and that Erik had to “get it from him.” The two men got into a vicious fight.
“On the top of Erik, Scottie wildly clawed and punched,” she explained. “Erik managed to squeeze his hands up to the man’s chest and shove him off him. Erik heard a new voice holler, ‘Get down!’ Suddenly something powerful rammed into Erik’s back. His body rocketed forward and plowed into the ground. Then a fist struck the back of his head. Another hit his neck. Another collided with the left side of his face. The world flickered and momentarily went black. This was a guard on his back hitting him, he realized.’”