Quick Read
- Rob and Michele Reiner had a deep, familial bond with Nanon Williams, a man on death row for a murder he denies.
- Williams, convicted at 17, spent 34 years in prison for a murder he denies, with evidence discrediting his conviction.
- The Reiners became advocates for Williams, believing in his innocence and inviting him to live with them if he were released.
- Days after a hopeful event for Williams’ exoneration, the Reiners were found dead, and their son, Nick, was charged with their murders.
- Williams expresses profound grief and empathy for Nick, seeing parallels to his own experience with the justice system and committing to help him.
In a story that intertwines Hollywood influence with the stark realities of the American justice system, famed director Rob Reiner and his wife, Michele, forged an extraordinary, deeply personal bond with a man named Nanon Williams, who spent decades on death row for a murder he steadfastly denied. This remarkable connection, previously unreported, came to light only in the wake of the Reiners’ tragic deaths last month, casting a poignant, and at times, heartbreaking irony over their unwavering commitment to justice and redemption.
Less than 36 hours before they were killed, Rob and Michele Reiner were immersed in ‘Lyrics From Lockdown,’ a powerful one-man show centered on Williams’s life and his decades-long fight for freedom. They were advocates, mentors, and, most profoundly, a chosen family to Williams, emailing him almost daily and even inviting him to live with them if he were ever released. Their daughter, Romy, affectionately called Williams her ‘big brother,’ a testament to the depth of a relationship built on compassion and shared ideals.
The Unseen Family: Rob and Michele Reiner’s Profound Connection to Nanon Williams
The Reiners, icons in a world of film premieres and public platforms, discovered an unlikely kinship with Williams, a man who had spent his entire adult life behind bars, much of it in near-total isolation. ‘He became like family,’ Romy Reiner told NBC News, echoing Williams’s own sentiment: ‘They became a part of me.’ This bond, forged over a decade, was a living embodiment of the themes that often animated Rob Reiner’s work – love, redemption, and the search for truth.
Michele Reiner, a photographer, producer, and activist whose mother survived Auschwitz, carried a lifelong sensitivity to dehumanization and state violence. Rob Reiner had spent decades opposing the death penalty. Their initial interest in Williams’s case was rooted in these convictions, but what blossomed was far more profound than mere advocacy. It was a genuine, reciprocal love that transcended the prison walls. Williams, who had gone decades with little access to movies or television, initially didn’t even know who Rob Reiner was. What mattered was that they listened, truly listened, to his story.
The relationship deepened significantly in 2021 when the Texas Department of Criminal Justice issued tablets to incarcerated individuals, allowing Williams and the Reiners to email whenever they wished. Michele, in particular, became a maternal figure, inquiring about his well-being, sharing details of her own family, and offering reassurance without judgment. Rob, warm and curious, asked questions that helped Williams process his struggles. He even encouraged Williams to marry his wife, Tera, after a discussion about ‘The Princess Bride,’ reminding him, ‘If you don’t fight for love, Nanon, what would you fight for?’
Rob Reiner’s personal letter of support for Williams’s appeal was particularly moving. ‘I’ve led a high profile life for over fifty years,’ he wrote. ‘And in that time I’ve met some very impressive and influential people. But if I’m being honest, apart from my father, no one has impressed me more and been more influential to me than Nanon Williams.’ For Williams, this comparison to the legendary Carl Reiner was ‘overwhelming.’
A Life Behind Bars: Nanon Williams’ Decades-Long Fight for Exoneration
Nanon Williams’s journey began in the violence and chaos of 1970s Los Angeles. At 17, while visiting his grandparents in Houston, he found himself involved in a drug-related melee where shots were fired, and 19-year-old Adonius Collier was killed. Williams admits firing his gun, injuring another man, but denies shooting Collier. Despite his youth, he faced the death penalty.
His 1995 conviction rested on two pillars: the testimony of co-defendant Vaal Guevara, who claimed Williams pulled the trigger and received a plea deal for a drug charge, and ballistics testimony asserting the fatal bullet came from Williams’s gun. Prosecutors presented this evidence as ‘uncontradicted’ and ‘failsafe.’ His defense lawyer never challenged it. Williams was sentenced to death, a moment he recalls with chilling clarity: ‘the sentence is until you’re dead, dead, dead.’
However, the pillars of the state’s case began to crumble years later. In 1998, the same ballistics expert who testified at trial, Robert Baldwin, recanted, stating in a letter to the prosecutor that he had been wrong: the bullet from Collier’s head was fired from Guevara’s .22 Derringer, not Williams’s .25-caliber handgun. A year later, the prosecutor himself admitted in a letter opposing Guevara’s parole that his star witness was ‘very evasive and apparently not at all truthful,’ indicating Guevara ‘likely participated in Collier’s murder.’ Despite a state judge recommending a new trial in 2001, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals rejected it, leaving Williams to languish in prison.
His sentence was reduced to life without parole in 2005 after the U.S. Supreme Court banned executions for crimes committed by juveniles. The fight for his exoneration gained significant momentum in 2024 when the Texas Forensic Science Commission issued a 157-page report officially confirming the ballistics testimony used to convict Williams was indeed wrong. Last year, his legal team, joined by the Innocence Project, requested a new trial under a Texas law that allows challenges to convictions based on ‘junk science.’
Tragedy Strikes Home: The Reiners’ Deaths and Their Son’s Legal Ordeal
The mood on December 12, just two days before the Reiners’ deaths, was electric. At the Los Angeles performance of ‘Lyrics From Lockdown,’ with Billy Crystal and Romy Reiner in the audience, Rob Reiner hugged Williams’s sister, Angela Grant Clayton, promising, ‘We’re going to make sure Nanon gets out.’ Georgetown professor Marc Howard, an advocate for Williams, recalled the conversation that night as ‘so full of hope, happiness. It felt like the very next step was Nanon coming home.’
Then, the unimaginable struck. On December 14, Williams, in his cell, received a news alert: two people had been found dead in a home owned by Rob and Michele Reiner. His message to Michele – ‘Please, this can’t be true’ – went unanswered. His fears were confirmed: the Reiners were dead, and their son, Nick, had been charged with murder.
In a heart-wrenching twist, three emails from the Reiners arrived on Williams’s tablet in the days that followed, delayed by prison screening protocols. Michele’s final message, timestamped hours before her death, recounted the ‘amazing’ show, her meeting with Williams’s mother, and the hope for his future. ‘We all said that we can’t wait to watch it with you,’ she wrote, signing off, ‘Love you, Michele.’ As reported by E! Online, this final communication highlighted their boundless optimism for Williams’s freedom, even as tragedy loomed for them.
Echoes of Justice: Williams’ Empathy for Nick Reiner
Williams, who had spent 34 years contemplating culpability, compassion, and the meaning of being deemed irredeemable, found himself grieving alone in prison. The irony was stark: he, who was judged a ‘killer, a monster beyond redemption,’ was now grappling with the news that the Reiners’ own son, Nick, faced similar charges. Authorities have stated Nick was diagnosed with schizophrenia, and sources familiar with his behavior indicated erratic actions prior to the murders.
The parallels were staggering. Williams, once on death row, now heard news suggesting Nick could face the same sentence. ‘I understand being caged like an animal,’ Williams said, recalling his own experience. ‘I understand the pain that is to come. The reflection. Looking into the mirror, wondering if you harmed your own soul by the choices you’ve made.’
Despite his profound sorrow, Williams’s empathy transcended his own pain. He wore a ‘Stand By Me’ bracelet, a nod to Rob Reiner’s movie, which was to have been screened at the prison by Reiner himself. He spoke of a ‘responsibility to Nick.’ ‘If I ever get out of here, how could I not try to do something to help him?’ he questioned. It was a testament to the Reiners’ enduring lesson, one Rob repeated often: ‘The greatest stories should be about love.’
The Reiners’ legacy is not just in the films they created or the causes they championed, but in the radical empathy they extended to Nanon Williams, an empathy that now, in a profound and sorrowful echo, Williams seeks to extend to their own son. Their story stands as a powerful, if tragic, testament to the transformative power of human connection and the enduring quest for justice and compassion, even when it breaks your heart.