Alabama inmate Jeffrey Hall's widow claims her husband was MURDERED because he was a DoJ informant who helped expose state prison's horrific conditions

A key informant who helped the Department of Justice to build a case against the appalling conditions in Alabama prisons died under mysterious circumstances shortly after being moved from his honor dorm to another one said to ruled by gangs.

Now Jeffrey Hall's 'prison bride' widow is demanding a full investigation into how he died and whether his cooperation with the federal probe had anything to do with it.

Speaking exclusively to DailyMail.com on Monday, former nurse Lisa Hall, 62, said: 'When I think about it now, Jeff tried to warn me that something like this might happen.'

'We didn't talk about it much on the phone because it wasn't private, but he said to me, 'This is going to catch up to me one day'. 

Hall, 65, was 21 years into a life term in Limestone Correctional Facility in Harvest, Alabama, when he was found dead on March 29.

Six weeks after his death, Lisa, who married him behind bars six years ago, is yet to receive an official cause of death, her husband's autopsy report or his death certificate on the grounds that it is the subject of an 'ongoing investigation'.

John Hall married Lisa while in prison. His widow is yet to learn the official cause of his death in March

Speaking to DailyMail.com in an exclusive interview on Monday, Hall said she believes her husband was murdered because he was a key informant for the Department of Justice

Hall was serving a life sentence at Limestone Correctional Facility, in Harvest, when he was found unresponsive in his cell on March 29 

Prison authorities say he had been 'under chronic care for an ongoing medical condition'.   

But Lisa refutes this claim, saying her husband was 'healthy as a horse'.

Jeffrey was on medication for elevated blood pressure but nothing that was ever raised as a significant concern, according to his widow.

The truth, she says, is that on the night of his death, Jeffrey was moved, without explanation, from the relative safety of the Honor ward in which he had been held, to the L dorm, known throughout the prison for being run by gangs.

Choking back emotion, Lisa recalled the last time she spoke with her husband. 

'One of his friends called me earlier that evening and said Jeff had been moved and they didn't know why,' she said. 

'That was around 6:00, 6:30pm and I didn't hear from Jeff until after 8:00pm that night. 

'I asked him, 'What's going on?' And he said, 'They won't tell me.' 

'He said, 'I've asked several times, but they won't tell me why they moved me'.

'He also told me there was a virus going round making people nauseous and he said, 'I've been in here about 30 minutes and I'm starting to get nauseous to my stomach.'

'I remember saying, 'Oh baby I hope you're not getting sick'.

'I later learned he'd had to go to another dorm to use the phone because both phones in L dorm were not working. I thought about that later because it meant he couldn't get outside help.'

They finished their conversation that evening as they always did, with Hall telling Lisa that he loved her and her telling him she loved him too and they would talk tomorrow. 

The Alabama Department of Corrections has faced numerous allegations of brutality and of attempting to cover up inmate deaths within its walls over the years. Pictured: A 2016 file photo of a dorm at Limestone Correctional Facility

Sources linked to inmates told DailyMail.com other prisoners have been previously targeted for speaking about 'the horrible conditions which are going on in the Alabama prison system'

Limestone made headlines in 2022 after a prisoner strike demanding better conditions at the facility 

Within hours he was dead.

In an official statement, the Alabama Department of Corrections said: 'On Friday March 29, 2024, an inmate…Jeffrey Hall was discovered unresponsive in his cell. Medical staff responded and he was pronounced decease by the attending physician. Hall had been under chronic care for an ongoing medical condition.' 

Lisa has still not received any official account of what transpired in her husband's last hours but communications between her and fellow inmates, shared with DailyMail.com and corroborated by a different prison source with whom DailyMail.com has spoken directly, paint a disturbing picture.

According to one prisoner: 'The police [guards] moved him where the gang members could get to him.'

Another stated, that Hall was moved after a prison guard, whom we are not naming, 'ordered the hit.'

This source said: 'It was told to me that they drug tested H dorm and 15 minutes after the drug test they moved him to L dorm.'

Lisa is adamant that her husband did not do drugs. 

She explained: 'That had been part of his life once, before he was in prison and it's something he said he would never, ever do again.'

Sources inside the prison confirm that Hall was strongly anti-drugs.

Certainly, there has been no official statement to the effect that he failed any test if one were conducted. 

Instead, Lisa fears this was part of a ruse to facilitate a move that left him helpless and open to attack.

She has been told by multiple sources, as has DailyMail.com, that Hall started complaining of chest pains later that evening and tried to get medical assistance on five separate occasions but that he was denied it.

Lisa Hall pointed out that her husband's sudden death came just hours after he was inexplicably moved from the prison's 'honor ward' to the much more unfavorable 'L dorm' 

Message exchanges between Lisa and her husband's fellow inmates, shared with DailyMail.com, paint a disturbing picture

The prison source told Lisa that Jeffrey was allegedly moved to a 'gang cell' where gang members 'could get to him' because he was a DoJ informant 

One prison source told DailyMail.com: 'The guys who were in his cell were banging on the door trying to get the guards to come but they wouldn't. 

'They refused him five times.'

Lisa believes her husband was deliberately placed in a dorm riddled with contraband and run by gangs. She believes that he was poisoned and that he was then denied the medical help that might have saved him.

If that sounds far far-fetched, it is worth noting that Alabama Department of Corrections has faced numerous allegations of brutality and of attempting to cover up inmate deaths within its walls.

Last year 325 inmates died in prison in Alabama – five times the national average and the highest rate since records began. 

At least another 40 have died this year according to statistics kept by prison advocates.

Conditions across Alabama's 13 state prisons are allegedly so bad that the US Department of Justice has sued the state twice. 

First in 2019 and again in 2021 when they filed another lawsuit stating that the squalid and dangerous conditions and excessive force used by many guards, had not improved since the original filing.

In a complaint signed by US Attorney General Merrick Garland the DOJ alleged: 'In the two and a half years following the United States' original notification to the State of Alabama of unconstitutional conditions of confinement, prisoners at Alabama's Prisons for Men have continued to daily endure a high risk of death, physical violence and sexual abuse at the hands of other prisoners.'

It continued: 'The conditions are pervasive and systemic across all 13 Alabama's Prisons for Men…as indicated by facility-level data and… examples of the violence, sexual abuse, excessive force and unsafe physical conditions.'

And Lisa is not the first to accuse Alabama Department of Corrections of covering up the truth about the death of an inmate.

In a letter dated April 11, the Alabama Department of Forensic Sciences informed Lisa that reports regarding her husband's death are not yet available because the case is still under investigation

DailyMail.com has learned that the officer who ordered Hall's transfer, has been named in multiple lawsuits

Lisa believes her husband was deliberately placed in a dorm riddled with contraband and run by gangs

Last November, the death of 22-year-old father of one, Daniel Williams, made headlines and provoked outrage after prison authorities told his family that he had died of an overdose, only for insiders to inform his loved ones that he had been, 'kidnapped, bound, assaulted and sold out by other inmates.'

According to sources the attack lasted more than two days and resulted in Williams being found unresponsive in his cell October 22. 

He was transported from Staton Correctional Facility where he had been serving a year sentence for theft, to Kilby Correctional Facility medical ward and subsequently to Jackson Hospital where he was declared brain dead and taken off life support November 5 – the very day of his scheduled release.

DailyMail.com went on to expose the fact that Staton's warden, Joseph Headley, the man who told Williams's family he had overdosed, is the subject of more than 40 federal lawsuits alleging abuse, brutality, and dereliction of duty.

Similarly, DailyMail.com has learned, the corrections officer who is said to have ordered Hall's transfer from the Honor dorm to L dorm has been named in multiple lawsuits, accused of brutality, failure to protect prisoners in his care and even calling for their murder.

Last November prisoner and activist Robert Earl Council filed a suit against Limestone in which he alleges that officer threatened his life and asked other inmates who are gang members to kill him.

According to the suit, obtained by DailyMail.com, told other inmates: 'Even if y'all killed him I'll make sure nothing happens to y'all.'

Council's attorney, Andrew Menefee, told DailyMail.com that his client, who has been in prison since 1994, was targeted 'because he's willing to speak about the horrible conditions which are going on in the Alabama prison system.'

Attorney, Lauren Faraino, who represents Lisa and specializes in representing incarcerated people, their families, and victims of government corruption, agrees that the system is riddled with corruption that puts prisoners at risk – none more than those who try to expose it.

She believes that Hall is the third DOJ informant to die in Alabama prisons within the last year.

Faraino described Hall as, 'one of the top sources for the DOJ,' and revealed that he was due to be deposed as a witness for the upcoming trial against the state which is slated to take place in November.

Lisa admits her husband was not a perfect man, serving time in prison for domestic assault and a sexual crime

She revealed Jeffrey was up front about his criminal past when they first met, at which time he had already served 15 years of a life sentence

For her part, being denied any real account of what happened to her husband has only added to Lisa's pain and shock at his loss.

In a particularly awful detail she reveals that, when she went to view his body, she was shocked to find he had not been sown up after autopsy.

She said: 'I was expecting for him to be stitched up, but he wasn't, and it was obvious. 

'You could tell from his forehead. It was covered up, so that just his face was showing, but it was protruding. And his body was covered too but you could tell.'

To Lisa it is further proof of the disdain with which Alabama's prison system treats both its prisoners and their families.

Indeed, UAB Medical Center, where prisoner autopsies are conducted, is currently at the center of a controversial lawsuit in which families of prisoners have alleged that their loved one's bodies were returned without internal organs which had been kept without permission.

Wherever you look, it seems, there are allegations of brutality, wrongdoing, and their concealment. 

It's what Lisa says her husband saw every day and it's what he chose to knowingly risk his own safety to try to change.

He was not a perfect man, she says. 

She said he was upfront about his past from the moment they met at which time he had already served 15 years of a life sentence.

Lisa believes her late husband is the third DOJ informant to die in Alabama prisons within the last year

Last year, Daniel Williams, 22, was reported to have been found dead while serving a 12-month sentence for second-degree theft at Staton Correctional Facility in Elmore, Alabama on October 22

Inside one of the rooms at ADOC's Staton Correctional Facility - where Williams was being held

She recalled: 'My sister was dating a friend of ours who ended up in prison and she asked me to come along with her to visit. I wasn't at all keen, but I had to put down a name of someone I was visiting – so it was his friend Jeff.'

Then a widowed mother of four grown children, Lisa says that she was strongly opposed to her sister's prison romance and even did her best to persuade her to abandon it. She had no intention of embarking on one herself.

But she said: 'We met and there was just a connection. He was very honest with me about what he had done and his past. And I wrestled with it. 

'I paced the floor when I got home and tried to talk myself out of it but in the end I couldn't.'

Hall had been in prison for 17 years by the time he and Lisa met. He had, she said, done a lot of thinking and a lot of changing.

Once a successful contractor, his life had, he told her, imploded following the suicide of his adult son and his marriage to his then wife had fallen catastrophically and violently apart.

She said: 'He wasn't proud of what he'd done but he was open about it and I appreciated that. That first time we met we were sitting next to my sister and her guy and she told me later they were trying to talk to us but I just couldn't hear a thing, they couldn't reach us. 

'They were just a blank to me and Jeff, we were just so wrapped up in each other.'

Hall was, she said simply, 'an awesome man who would do anything to help other inmates both on the inside and once they got out.'

His generosity of spirit – organizing clothing through her for men about to be released who had no-one on the outside, making sure there was someone to meet them - is one of the reasons she fell in love with him.

They spoke about their shared love of the outdoors – fishing and hunting – though each knew they could never enjoy it together. He told her that when he died he wanted his ashes to be scattered along with hers in 'his' river which flows between Phenix City, Alabama, and Columbus, Georgia.

But, Lisa said, 'It got to it that he said it didn't matter so much to him anymore so long as we were together.'

And despite her hesitation the woman who had 'begged' her sister: 'Please don't marry an inmate,' married one herself on February 21, 2018 after a year of dating.

They had just celebrated their sixth wedding anniversary the month before Hall's death.

Lisa said: 'Jeff had found God and we shared that, and it was a comfort to me that he had that. He used to say to me, Lisa, if I can just get one foot in the door, I'll make it to Glory.

'He saw the injustice around him. He saw things, he heard things, and he did what he did for a better system. 

'That's all he hoped for. That's why they set him up for the kill…and that's why I'm speaking for him now.'

Because wherever the truth lies one thing seems clear - whether by design or neglect, Hall was ultimately a victim of the system he was working so hard to expose.