“He is an amazing person who is really caring and sweet.” – that’s how this 39-year-old woman describes her husband, Alan. But criminal records from the Union Correctional Institution in Florida describes him as a convicted murderer who was sentenced to death for robbing, kidnapping, and burying alive a retired couple with three other accomplices. For about half a decade, Sigrid has been married to the prisoner on death row after the two began connecting through letters.
“I started writing to death row inmates because I was against the death penalty,” Sigrid said.
Pretty soon, she and Alan began writing to each other more frequently until Sigrid realized she was starting to fall for the inmate.
“When I started to realise I was having feelings for him and him for me, we both got scared,” the mother said. “We took a step back and we tried to stop writing to each other and we were both miserable. And after six weeks he wrote back – his first words were I love you.”
A year after their relationship sparked, Alan asked Sigrid to marry and spend the rest of her life with him.
“He made a little speech, saying how much he loved me and how much I mattered to him, that he really wanted to spend the rest of his life with me,” Sigrid said in an interview with Truly. “It’s bittersweet when I look at the pictures. Seeing us together and holding hands, it makes me really nostalgic and I really hope I can have that again soon.”
To be closer to her partner, Sigrid moved some 4,000 miles from France all the way to Florida for Alan. While he may have a dark past that included tying up an elderly retired couple and burying them alive after gaining entry into their house under the pretense of using their phone, Sigrid is convinced he’s changed for the better now.
After the couple got married in 2016, the young woman became a mother to the death row inmate’s child.
“We don’t want to say how my son was conceived. I think it’s important that we can sit and explain to my son how he was conceived before someone else does it for us,” Sigrid shared. “I like to respond that he’s in prison but I’m not. It was really hard, but we managed and now we have a son.”
Talking about the hardships of raising her nine-month-old son on her own while her partner spends most of his time in a jail cell, Sigrid said, “I try to send short videos but it’s not the same. I will tell him that his dad is not who people are going to tell him he is, that he’s an amazing person. Really caring and sweet, that he loves him very, very much.”
Admitting that she has been judged and cut off for marrying Alan in 2016, Sigrid added, “I want people to understand he makes me happy and I don’t get why it bothers people so much. People who are supposed to love me, they’re bothered because someone is loving me right and making me happy.” It sometimes scares her to tell people who her husband is, but she can’t imagine having any other partner to have a child with.
“Being with Alan definitely changed everything in my life because I’ve really embraced who I am completely and loved unconditionally by someone who I love the same,” Sigrid said. “And now we have the little guy here. This is something I would never have wanted with anyone else.”