A prisoner waited until the end of his 15 year sentence to admit to an unrelated murder of a pregnant woman and her son which occurred 21 years ago.
Lewis Ladon Spivey, 39, was immediately taken back into custody in Florida after his shocking confession to the slaughter of Monica Rollins, 23, and six-year-old son Dalton Rollins from Alabama.
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Rollins was eight months pregnant when she was murdered in September 2002.
The bodies were left for several days before somebody discovered them in the city of Heflin.
Another son of Rollins, who was three at the time of his mother's murder, was found hiding upstairs in the family home.
Two decades had been spent trying to find the person responsible for the gruesome crime but police had no luck tracking down the culprit.
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Spivey, who has a swastika neck tattoo, kept his dark secret to himself for over two decades.
That is until he finished his sentence for unrelated robbery and aggravated assault charges on Tuesday.
Heflin Police Capt. Scott Bonner said: "Spivey has since cooperated with the investigation and has given a complete confession wherein he outlined the timeline of the events that day and taken sole responsibility for both murders."
Capt. Bonner said that Spivey and Rollins 'had a relationship' but has not yet revealed a motive for the harrowing crime.
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Few details have been given on what led to a break in the case, but the department have been given a grant for DNA analysis and several items were processed by a state lab and private labs in Canada.
Spivey had been investigated by police at the time of the murder, but detectives had run into a 'dead end'.
Capt. Bonner said: "We didn’t have surveillance, pictures or cameras. We didn’t have the things that you would have nowadays."
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After his startling confession, Spivey has been transported from Florida to Alabama where he is being held at at the Cleburne County Jail.
He is currently being held without bail under Aniah's Law, which denies bail to violent offenders.
This law covers crimes ranging from human trafficking to murder.
Aniah's Law received overwhelming support from Alabama voters in the November 2022 mid-term election, with 81% of Alabamians backing it.
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The law is named after Aniah Blanchard, who was murdered in 2019 by a man who had been charged with a violent crime and was out on bail.
Ben Thompson