How Rob and Michele Reiner formed a bond with a Texas man sentenced to death

Nanon Williams was sent to death row for a murder he says he didn't commit. Decades later, through daily emails and prison calls, Rob and Michele Reiner became family.

Less than 36 hours before they were killed last month, Rob and Michele Reiner sat in a Los Angeles theater watching “Lyrics From Lockdown,” a one-man show about race, justice and mass incarceration in America.

The show focuses on Nanon Williams, who is serving his 34th year in a Texas prison for a murder he says he didn’t commit — and who, over the past decade, quietly forged a remarkable relationship with the Reiners.

Rob, a famed director, and Michele, a photographer, producer and activist, had come to love Williams, 51, like a son, emailing him almost daily. They had invited him to live with them if he ever got out of prison. Their daughter, Romy, called Williams her big brother.

“He became like family,” Romy said in a statement to NBC News.

Add NBC News to GoogleMichele and Rob Reiner’s remarkable bond with a man serving life in a Texas prison09:46The Reiners’ bond with Williams, which has not previously been reported, was built on ideals that animated much of Rob’s work — love, chosen family, compassion and redemption. After being charged with murder at 17, Williams had spent his entire adult life behind bars, much of it in near-total isolation. The Reiners lived in a world defined by film premieres, public platforms and near-constant access to power. The connection they discovered was as profound as it was unlikely.