[imagesource: Netflix]

Friends and family think they’re out of their minds, but for over 20 years, two women have remained devoted wives to Lyle and Erik Menendez—the brothers who, in a shocking act of brutality, gunned down their parents in what became the most gruesome crimes that Beverly Hills cops had ever seen.

Erik, now 53, and his brother Lyle, 56, the notorious Menendez brothers who gunned down their parents at point-blank range with 16 shotgun blasts in 1989, are now the central characters to Netflix’s latest Monsters series.

At just 18 and 21, the Menendez brothers were convicted of first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder, sealing their fate with life sentences without the possibility of parole. Their initial trials—held before separate juries—ended in dramatic deadlock.

Apparently, prison walls and razor wire are no match for true love. Women from all over the world flooded both young Menendez brothers with letters, and before long, they each found their “happily ever after.” Erik tied the knot in 1999, while Lyle—ever the romantic—has been married twice, with his latest wife, Rebecca Sneed, joining the fairytale in 2003.

For decades, every encounter with their wives has been the picture of intimacy—if you count brief hand-holding and the occasional chaste kiss, all under the watchful eyes of prison guards. But hey, love conquers all, right?

And now, in the ultimate test of devotion, both Menendez wives stand proudly by their men, even as the hit Netflix series Monsters created by Ryan Murphy reimagines their husbands as incestuous lovers who killed their parents after years of abuse.

So we’re all wondering why the heck these women would want to pursue long-term relationships with convicted killers now locked inside the Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility near San Diego.

When Tammi Saccoman, now 63, married Erik 25 years ago, she knew that it wasn’t going to be a normal relationship. Her love story started with a letter of sympathy during Erik’s trial in the early 1990s. At the time she was living in Minnesota with her husband, Chuck, and her teenage daughter from a previous relationship. In a horrific turn, Chuck took his own life after being arrested for molesting Tammi’s daughter. Devastated, Tammi found herself watching the Menendez trial on TV and reaching out to Erik, where they trauma bonded over letters.

Sometime later, they finally met, and sparks flew. Erik recalled his body being on fire when they met at Folsom State Prison in Northern California and the couple tied the knot two years later, when Tammi was 39 and Erik was 29.

“It was a wonderful ceremony until I had to leave,” Tammi remembered. “That was a very lonely night.”

Tammi admits that friends and family thought she was making a huge mistake.

“Everybody questions me. You know, is she crazy? Is she nuts?” Tammi told NBC News. “You know I get all that and so it has been a very emotional experience. The only one that supports me is my mother and his family is supportive. But other than that, it is very difficult…”

Despite being married for 25 years, they are still waiting to consummate their union. California is one of the few states that allows conjugal—excuse me, “family”—visits, but the Menendez brothers have never quite made the cut as their life sentences and violent crimes against their own family members sort of disqualify them.

“Not having sex in my life is difficult, but it’s not a problem for me,” Tammi told People. “I have to be physically detached, and I’m emotionally attached to Erik.”

While Tammi – who wrote a memoir, They Said We’d Never Make It –believes her husband is a changed man and their long marriage proves it, Erik calls Tammi his “lifesaver.”

“Tammi’s love has propelled me to become a better person,” he said. “I want to be the greatest possible husband to her. And this affects the choices I make every day in prison.“

“Tammi has taught me how to be a good husband,” Erik added. “There is no makeup sex, only a 15-minute phone call, so you really have to try to make things work.”

Lyle Menendez, now 56, has had two marriages behind bars.

Also after a letter exchange, he married his first wife, Anna Eriksson, a model and former hair salon receptionist, who fell in love with Lyle at the height of the trial in the early ’90s. They chose quite a memorable day to tie the knot—July 2, 1996, the very day Lyle was sentenced to life in prison. They said their vows over a speakerphone, while Erik served as Lyle’s best man and his defence lawyer placed the wedding ring on Anna’s finger.

After five years, Anna filed for divorce in 2001, citing infidelity, claiming that Lyle had been exchanging letters with other women behind her back. He quickly moved on to marry Rebecca Sneed in 2003, who at the time, worked as a magazine editor before becoming a lawyer.

Lyle and Rebecca have now been married for 21 years, and despite the lack of physical intimacy, they remain committed.

“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 in 2017. “We try and talk on the phone every day, sometimes several times a day. I have a very steady, involved marriage and that helps sustain me and brings a lot of peace and joy. It’s a counter to the unpredictable, very stressful environment here.”

A smart woman, yet choosing to be married to a murderer, is not unheard of. Journalist Sheila Isenberg looked at 35 cases for her book Women Who Love Men Who Kill, interviewing bankers, judges, teachers, and journalists who fell for convicted murderers to suss out why women marry violent criminals behind bars.

She discovered two categories of women with so-called ‘hybristophilia’, the sexual and emotional attraction to people who commit crimes.

One group falls in love with “ordinary murderers” and believes it sees the “true” good side of the killer, she explained to CNN. Another group is attracted to notorious or infamous killers because “they are drawn to the spotlight.”

Isenberg told The New York Times that these women often hail from backgrounds filled with abuse and devoid of love, finding a peculiar allure in the power dynamics of a relationship with a man behind bars. Apparently, the longer the prison sentence, the more irresistible the inmate becomes.

“The inmate focuses all of his attention on the woman and gives her an enormous amount of love,” Isenberg told the Times. “This is a roller coaster love. There are highs and lows, drama, intensity, pain and suffering that can only be provided in the artificial setting of prison.”

The Netflix’s Monsters series has only served to glue these girls tighter to their men.

Tammi and 24 members of the Menendez brothers’ extended family released a statement saying the show is “not only riddled with mistruths and outright falsehoods but ignores the most recent exculpatory revelations. Our family has been victimized by this grotesque shockadrama.”

“We know them, love them, and want them home with us,” Tammi wrote.

She further stated “It is sad that Ryan Murphy, Netflix and all others involved in this series, do not have an understanding of the impact of years of physical, emotional, and sexual abuse,” she wrote.

“Perhaps, after all, Monsters is all about Ryan Murphy.”

[source:dailybeast]