Timeline of the relationship between Lyle Menendez and wife Rebecca Snead

Lyle Menendez have a wife Rebecca Sneed by his side while he serves a life sentence for first-degree murder.

Before Lyle found love with Sneed, he made headlines after being involved in the murder of his parents. Lyle and his brother Eric Menendezwere charged in 1990 with two counts of first-degree murder.

Lyle started texting with a former model Anna Ericsson shortly after his arrest. Their whirlwind romance led to the couple almost getting married the day before Eric and Lyle were sentenced. In the end, representatives of the court and prison prevented the ceremony from taking place.

Two subsequent trials led to Eric and Lyle’s convictions and life sentences without the possibility of parole. Eric and Lyle, meanwhile, claimed that their mother and father were physically, emotionally and sexually abused and that their actions were acts of self-defense.

On the day of his sentencing in 1996, Lyle secretly married Eriksson via conference call. New York Times At the time, it was reported that Lyle and Eric, who was his brother’s best man, called into the wedding while their lawyer, Leslie Abramson, put the ring on Ericsson’s finger for Lyle.

However, the California Department of Corrections did not consider Lyle and Eriksson’s marriage legal. After five years of marriage, Ericsson filed for divorce in 2001 after discovering that Lyle had been communicating with other women.

Sneed was one of the people Lyle wrote to after his arrest. They continued to communicate, and by 2003, Lyle and Sneed became a married couple. Unlike Eric’s wife, Tammy MenendezSneed remained completely out of the public eye.

“People are judgmental and she has to put up with a lot,” Lyle said. People in 2017. “But she has the courage to overcome obstacles. It would have been easier to walk away, but I am deeply grateful that she doesn’t.”

Sneed and Lyle now have a chance to reunite in person after the Los Angeles District Attorney recommended to a judge in October 2024 that Eric and Lyle be resentenced to 50 years in prison, which could make them eligible for parole and release from prison.

Keep scrolling to relive Lyle and Sneed’s relationship:

1993

When Lyle first contacted her, Snead was a magazine journalist who wrote to him in prison. The couple became pen pals and stayed in a relationship for 10 years before they started dating and eventually exchanged vows.

2003

Lyle and Snead married two years after his divorce from Ericsson. Lyle was 35 and Snead was 33 at the time of their wedding at Mule Creek State Prison. Over the years, Sneed moved from journalism to law. She is currently an attorney living in California and visits Lyle weekly.

2017

“Our interactions tend to be distraction-free, and we probably have more intimate conversations than most married spouses who are distracted by life events,” Lyle said. People at that time about the lack of conjugal visits between him and Snead. (California prisons allow conjugal visits, but inmates serving life without parole are denied such benefits. The law was changed in 2016, but because Eric and Lyle committed a violent crime against a family member, they are still ineligible for a family date). visits.)

Sneed, for her part, did not give any interviews and chose to support Lyle while remaining out of the public eye.

2017

Reflecting on his connection with Sneed, Lyle explained ABC News how they manage to save their marriage, saying: “One thing I have learned is that your physical comfort is much less important than your connection with the people around you. I have found that I can have a healthy marriage that is challenging and built on talking and finding creative ways to communicate, share information, without all the requisites that are usually present in a marriage, such as going to a restaurant and spending as much time together as possible. and so on.”

2024

Although Eric and Lyle’s previous attempts to appeal the life sentence were rejected, projects such as Ryan Murphycontroversial series Monsters, Menendez brothers and many others offered the brothers another chance at a possible resentencing.

A month after release MonstersLos Angeles District Attorney George Gascon announced in October 2024 that a new hearing had been ordered due to the emergence of new evidence in the murder case of Lyle and Eric. Gascón provided an update later that month, recommending that Eric and Lyle’s sentences be reduced to 50 years, which could allow them to be paroled if approved by a judge.