Celebrity
Rob and Michele Reiner Had a Longtime Secret Friendship With Prisoner Convicted of Murder
Rob and Michele Reiner were in regular daily contact with prison inmate who had been convicted of murder in the days before their deaths — and in a sad quirk of fate, he even received an uplifting email from Michele after she died.
The couple befriended inmate Nanon Williams — who has been behind bars since he was 17 for a murder he says he didn’t commit — in 2016 after they saw a live performance of Lyrics From Lockdown, a spoken-word multimedia performance based partially on Williams’ writings, according to an NBC News report on Monday, January 5.
Over the years, Williams, 51, “became like family” to the Reiners, their daughter Romy, who called him a “big brother,” said in a statement to the outlet.
Williams, whose sentence was reduced from death to life without parole in 2005, told NBC he learned the news of their December 14 murders on a state-issued tablet at the W.F. Ramsey Unit, a maximum-security prison south of Houston, Texas.
His response was to immediately message Michele with the words: “Please tell me the news is lying.”
In the days following their deaths, he also received three letters from the Reiners, because emails can take hours and sometimes days to get through the prison screening process.
In Michele’s final email, sent on December 13, she wrote about re-seeing Lyrics From Lockdown with friend and actor Billy Crystal on December 12. She gushed about how moved Crystal was by the performance, calling the show “amazing…. We all said that we can’t wait to watch it with you.”
Rob and Michele’s son Nick Reiner has been charged with their murders. If convicted, he could face the death penalty.
According to the BBC, Nick’s attorney, Alan Jackson, told reporters on December 17, “We ask that during this process, you allow the system to move forward in the way that it was designed to move forward. Not with a rush to judgement, not with jumping to conclusions, but with restraint and with dignity, and with the respect that this system and this process deserves, and that the family deserves.”
