TRUE CRIMEErik Menendez's Wife Tammi 'Denied' Being in Love With the Murderer 'for a Long Time' — But Her 'Heart' Kept Bringing Her Back
Erik Menendez is currently serving life in prison for the murders of his parents, Kitty and Jose.
Falling in love with a convicted murderer seems like a fictional story — but for Tammi Menendez, it's her real life.
The 62-year-old tied the knot with infamous killer Erik Menendez, 53, in June 1999, more than three years after he and his brother, Lyle Menendez, 56, were found guilty in 1996 of murdering their allegedly abusive parents in 1989.
Tammi Menendez opened up about her and Erik's love story in an unearthed interview from 2005.
In a recently unearthed interview from 2005, Tammi opened up to a news publication about how her relationship with Erik began.
"I watched the first trial on Court TV and I saw the pain that he was going through," she recalled of Erik, who was 18 when he and Lyle, then 21, fatally shot their mother, Kitty, and father, Jose, more than three decades ago. "I could sense a pain. It was after I saw him on the stand and I saw the pain [that] I wanted to write one letter and tell him that I supported him."
Pictured: Erik Menendez in court in 1996.
"I didn’t expect him to write back — if he did, that’s fine. If he didn’t that’s fine too. I was going to write one letter and that was it," Tammi explained. "He wrote back about a month later."
Tammi noted Erik's response was "a short letter" since "he was getting a lot of mail at the time" due to the Menendez brothers' double murder case becoming a notorious phenomenon.
After receiving his reply, Tammi said the duo "gradually" began "corresponding," though she was still married to her first husband at the time.
"My husband knew that we were corresponding. He didn’t mind, he thought it was kind of cool. He watched the trial with me," she mentioned.
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- Erik and Lyle Menendez's First Days of Freedom Will Be 'Very Difficult' Because 'They Went Away as Monsters'
- Inside Erik and Lyle Menendez's Thanksgiving Prison Menu as Family Hopes for Potential Resentencing
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Erik Menendez tied the knot with his wife, Tammi, from behind bars in June 1999.
The Menendez brothers' trial divided the nation, as there was a split between who believed the siblings' claims they were sexually abused by their father for years and those who thought the boys' murdered their parents out of greed.
After growing their bond through written letters and phone calls, Tammi and Erik finally met face to face in August 1997, when she went to visit him at Folsom State Prison in California.
"Erik was full of energy and very bubbly and I’m thinking to myself — how could he be so upbeat and still live in this place?" Tammi remembered of their first in-person interaction. "When he walked in, he was just so happy and bubbly. I think he was happy I was there."
"The first time I met him he was so full of life. I could sense that I was attracted to him, but we had been writing for so long that we were like best friends," she noted. "We talked on the phone a lot and had written letters for a long time, years, so when I first met him I felt like I knew him. Then it was reality, when he walked in, I was like, 'There he is. This is real.'"
Tammi Menendez, 62, was recently spotted on a rare public outing near her Las Vegas home.
Soon after, Erik and Tammi started falling in love, however, she "denied it for a long time."
"I probably had been visiting him for six months and I kept finding myself wanting to come back," Tammi admitted. "I would think, 'This can’t be good,' but my heart just kept bringing me there. There was no way back."
Entertainment Tonight interviewed Tammi in 2005.
