On one, he wrote, “My Heart and Soul Mate.” Photo courtesy of Monicka Henry The photos, on the right, arrived in an envelope postmarked hours before he died. The two spent holidays together taking photographs at Angola but their relationship ended when he died of an overdose in July. Monicka Henry and Reginald Santinac made the most of their life even though Santinac was incarcerated for the last 24 years. district judge recently condemned the prison, saying access to medical care was unconstitutionally inadequate and deaths of incarcerated people are the result of “overwhelming deficiencies.” Santinac was serving a life sentence for second-degree murder at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola, a facility with a brutal past located on a former slave plantation. We didn’t have physical intimacy, but we had something so much deeper. It’s the hardest thing,” Henry said, as she cried. I keep saying to myself that I have to accept that he’s not coming back. Though the 49-year-old spent years behind bars, the two made a life together.

Henry said he died of a fentanyl overdose.

Twelve hours later, Santiac was dead, found lifeless in his prison cell. On the night of July 7, they spent time talking by phone about what they needed to do to stay on track. This summer, with the possibility of an early release in the next two or three years, they started to make plans to finally get married.

For the last 34 years, they were “husband and wife in every sense of the word,” even after Santinac entered prison at 25. They met as teens, went to prom together, became adults together. Monicka Henry and Reginald Santinac were high school sweethearts.

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