Married to Murder: The Bizarre and True Accounts of People Who Married Murderers (6 page)

Lyle also teamed up with his brother Erik to commit a series of burglaries that targeted their parents’ wealthy neighbors in Calabasas, California. The two apparently stole jewelry and
cash worth over $100,000 from their neighbors. Police eventually found part of the loot in Erik’s car.

The brothers’ father, Jose, a wealthy entertainment industry executive, came to their help. Jose hired an expensive defense attorney to defend them and repaid some of their victims out of his own pocket.

The two repaid Jose by blowing him and his wife, Kitty, their own mother, away with a shotgun in the family room of their new home in Beverly Hills. The couple was apparently asleep in front of the TV set and unable to defend themselves. Jose had moved to Beverly Hills because of the embarrassment his sons’ activities had brought them.

The brothers then showed their psychopathic nature by claiming that they killed Jose in self-defense because he had been abusing them. Since Lyle was 21 at the time and Erik was 18, these claims are questionable. Lyle had actually been living away from home at the time.

A more plausible motive was that Lyle and Erik were trying to get their hands on their parents’ money. The Menendez’s were living in a $4 million Beverly Hills mansion that had once belonged to Elton John. A likely reason for the crime was that Jose was planning to cut his sons off from their allowance unless they cleaned up their act. Lyle’s real motive might have been to avoid the possibility of having to go to work.

Lyle’s behavior was particularly cold blooded; he called 911 after the crime. He then went on a shopping spree that included such items as a Rolex watch and a Porsche. Erik spent part of the money on a therapist whom he told about the murders. When Lyle heard that Erik had told somebody else about the crime, he threatened to kill the therapist. The therapist’s girlfriend eventually told the police.

Not only did Lyle and Erik Menendez murder the parents who had tried to help them in cold blood, but they tried to beat the murder rap by smearing their late father’s reputation; their defense was that they had experienced years of psychological and sexual abuse at their father’s hands. They had to kill him to protect themselves even though they were both grown men.

Incredibly, the bizarre ploy worked. Lyle and Erik, who were tried separately, were spared the death penalty by hung juries in 1994. In 1995 they were tried together and convicted of first degree murder and sentenced to life in prison without parole. The first set of Menendez brothers’ trials was a media circus that attracted Anna Eriksson’s attention.

Unlike most marriages between celebrity killers and groupies, Anna Eriksson’s marriage to Lyle Menendez didn’t last. The marriage apparently broke up in 1998, about a year after it began. In 2003 Lyle married for a second time to a woman named Rebecca Sneed.

Today Lyle Menendez is imprisoned at the Mule Creek State Prison in Ione, California. Recent media reports indicate that the would-be playboy from Beverly Hills now spends most of his time lifting weights like a typical prisoner. Lyle also has a pet lizard and occasionally plays basketball with his cellmates. His efforts to get another trial or a successful appeal have failed miserably.

At the end of the day, Lyle Menendez is nothing but a criminal and a psychopath. The best thing about him is that he was caught and jailed before he could become a full-fledged serial killer. Anna Eriksson has since dropped out of sight.

biography.com. "Lyle Menendez biography." n.d.
biography.com.
Online Encyclopedia Entry. 26 January 2013.

Jerome, Richard. "Lyle's Lady." 22 July 1996.
www.people.com/people/archive.
Magazine Article . 26 January 2013.

Pergament, Rachel. "The Menendez Brothers." n.d.
trutv.com/library/crime.
Online Encyclopedia Article . 26 January 2013.

The New York Times. "Menendez Secretly Married." 1 February 1997.
nytimes.com/1997.
Newspaper Article. 26 January 2013.

The strangest prison marriage of all time might be that of Edith Casas. Casas tried to marry the man who shot her twin sister in the head and dumped her body in a field.

Edith wanted to marry Victor Cingolani on December 21, 2012. If the ceremony had gone through, Cingolani would have brought some special guests to the marriage ceremony in Pico Truncado, Argentina; armed police officers that escorted him from prison. Cingolani is serving a 13-year sentence for the murder of Edith Casas’s twin sister, Johana. The marriage was blocked at the last minute by a judge who responded to an order requested by Edith’s mother.

Johana’s
body was found dumped in a field outside of town in 2010. At the time Cingolani was reportedly Johana’s boyfriend. Besides the police, the only guests at the wedding were two friends of Edith’s. Edith’s mother, Marcelina, refused to attend the ceremony. Edith’s father, Valentin Casas, also refused to attend the wedding.  Instead, Marcelina told the press that her daughter was suffering from mental health problems.

Cingolani
is one of two men accused of murdering Johana Casas. The other, Marcos Diaz, a friend of Cingolani’s, is scheduled to go on trial for the murder in 2013. Diaz was reportedly the last person to see Johana Casas alive.

Johana
believes that Cingolani, who was convicted of the murder in 2012, is innocent; she told the Argentine media that she didn’t think Cingolani would hurt a fly. Argentine newspapers reported that Cingolani said he was involved with Johana, a model, in a “casual relationship.” Press reports indicate that Cingolani was Johana’s boyfriend at the time. Cingolani has told the Argentine media that he was in love with Edith at the time of Johana’s death.

It isn’t clear what Marcos Diaz had to do with the murder. Media reports indicate that the circumstances of the killing remain mysterious.
Cingolani’s lawyer has claimed that cigarettes found at the murder scene prove that Diaz was the real killer. The attorney has also said he has witnesses that can prove Diaz was the real killer.

Some newspaper reports indicate that Diaz, and not
Cingolani, was Johana’s boyfriend at the time of her murder. The nature of Cingolani’s relationship with Johana has never been adequately explained.

Edith’s parents are doing everything in their power to prevent the relationship from becoming legalized. Edith’s mother,
Marcelina del Carmen Orellana, petitioned a court to block the wedding because she thinks her daughter is mentally ill.

A judge agreed with
Orellana and issued an order blocking the marriage. Orellana’s lawyer told reporters that Edith was not in full control of her faculties and that her physical and psychological health were threatened by the relationship.

The judge was scheduled to make a final ruling on the marriage on December 31, 2013. Edith’s parents were concerned because she had left home and moved in with
Cingolani’s sister two weeks before the scheduled wedding. News reports haven’t revealed whether the judge has allowed the wedding yet or not.

Edith is also backing
Cingolani’s appeal of the murder conviction. Instead, she doesn’t think that Cingolani is a violent person. She also told the press that she is not mad. Cingolani told the press that he and Edith have a lot of things in common.

It’s easy to see why Edith’s parents want to prevent the wedding. They are afraid that
Cingolani will kill Edith like he did Johana. One frightening aspect of the whole situation is that no motive for the crime has been put forward. A possible motive is that Diaz killed Johana because she was cheating on him with Cingolani.

Cingolani
has admitted that he dated Johana and had a casual relationship with her. He has denied being Johana’s boyfriend and instead insists he was already in love with Edith at the time of the murder.

Another possibility is that
Cingolani helped Diaz kill Johana. If he did, he obviously doesn’t think much of his fiancé or her family. If he truly loved Edith, Cingolani would not have been involved in the murder of her twin sister.

One thing is for certain: The drama in Argentina is going to continue for some time. Edith Casas is still determined to marry Victor
Cingolani, and her family is determined to stop her. At the same time, the investigation into Johana Casas’s murder continues, and Marcos Diaz’s trial is sure to produce some court room theatrics.

BBC News. "Argentine woman marriage to twin sister's killer suspended." 21 December 2012.
bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america.
News Article. 30 January 2013.

—. "Argentine woman to marry twin sister's killer." 20 December 2012.
bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america.
News Article. 30 January 2013.

Couzens, Gerard. "Family devestated as Argentinian woman agrees to marry the man who killed her twin sister." 21 December 2012.
dailymail.co.uk.
Newspaper Article. 30 January 2013.

Huffington Post. "Edith Casas Wants to Marry Victor Cingolani, Convicted of Murdering Her Twin Sister Johana." 22 December 2012.
huffingtonpost.com.
News Article . 30 January 2013.

Sarah Trevelyan, a psychiatrist, came from a powerful and influential British family. Her father even held an important and influential political appointment. Yet she had an odd choice for a husband; in 1980 she married Jimmy Boyle, a notorious Scottish gangster, who was serving a life sentence for murder.

Boyle was notorious as the “most violent man in Scotland” and one of the most violent inmates in Her Majesty’s prison system at the time of the marriage. Boyle was so violent that he had once been held in solitary confinement for six years.

Their marriage was a simple ceremony, yet it attracted the attention of the world’s press. Reporters from different countries attended the ceremony held in a village registrars’ office in Stirlingshire, Scotland.

At the time of the marriage, Boyle was an acclaimed author because of his autobiography,
A Sense of Freedom
. He was also a renowned sculptor for work he did in the “special unit” at Barlinnie Prison near Glasgow.

Sarah Trevelyan was a minor celebrity in Britain because she was the daughter of John Trevelyan, who had served as secretary of the British Board of Film Censors in the 1960s. The Board of Film Censors approved what movies could be released in the United Kingdom, and it had a profound effect on Hollywood.

The so-called Hollywood production code of the 1930s was written to please the Board. American movie studios deliberately censored Hollywood productions so they could be released in the United Kingdom and the British Empire. John Trevelyan’s liberal approach to censorship eased production standards for sex and violence and ended the code. Movie director Roy Ward Baker called John Trevelyan “a sinister, mean hypocrite” because the censor allowed almost unlimited amounts of sex and violence in art films but censored commercial movies, such as the James Bond films.

In contrast, Jimmy Boyle grew up in poverty in a tough Glasgow neighborhood called
Gorbals and became involved in the city’s gangs as a young man. He was accused of three different murderers but was only arrested and convicted for one—that of a mob boss named William “Babs” Rooney. Boyle was given a life sentence and imprisoned in Barlinnie.

Unlike most women that marry celebrity killers behind bars, Sarah Trevelyan actually saw her man walk free and lived a normal family life with him. Boyle was reportedly reformed in the
Barlinnie Prison’s “special unit” through art.

Whether art really reformed Boyle or not is a matter of debate. By 1999 he was reportedly receiving £10,000 ($15,674) apiece for his sculptures. Boyle might have simply found a more profitable line of work that didn’t involve the risk of jail time or getting shot by rival gangsters.

Boyle was very successful in his new occupation; some of his works were displayed at Europe’s top art shows. One of his works, “Gulliver,” was the largest concrete statue in Europe when it was unveiled in 1976 while he was still in the stir.

Jimmy Boyle was released from prison in 1982 and moved to Edinburgh to live with his wife. In 1999 the BBC reported that Boyle and Trevelyan were living in a 12-room house, and their two children were both attending private schools in the Scottish capital. An Edinburgh newspaper even reported that Boyle was considered a highly desirable dinner party guest in Edinburgh society.