Matthew Taylor Coleman has reportedly sent a handwritten letter from prison to his childhood friend, begging for forgiveness.
“He’s really despondent and hopeless,” the longtime family friend tells PEOPLE.
“He’s alone with his thoughts 24/7. He’s reflecting on the mistakes he made in life and wondering if there’s any chance for redemption.”
“He poured out his heart,” the friend says. “He begged for forgiveness, but says that he’s now where he deserves to be.”
His childhood friend shared with the outlet how he is not confident if Coleman sent letters to anyone else, but that he was dreading the holidays in jail.
“He said he’s sorry, that he never wanted to cause pain, and that he’s working through why he made the choices he made,” the friend says. “It was a very sad note.”
RELATED: Matthew Coleman Texted Friend Weeks Before Allegedly Killing His 2 Children How He Wanted More Kids
Coleman has been at an undisclosed federal prison after being arrested for killing his kids and in the fall, asked his family for forgiveness.
“He has spoken to his family on the phone,” a longtime family friend tells PEOPLE. “It’s sinking in what happened, and he’s devastated. He has begged his family for forgiveness.”
The family’s fates shifted on August 7, when the father and his wife, Abby were packing up around the house for a family trip.
Authorities allege that Coleman abruptly put his two kids — Kaleo, 2, and Roxy, 10 months — into his van and drove away from their Santa Barbara, Calif., home.
Police then say that he then drove the children into Mexico.
Authorities allege that two days later, he took the kids to a ranch, where he killed them with a spearfishing gun and returned to his hotel a few hours later. He was then arrested when he attempted to cross the border back into the United States.
RELATED: QAnon Supporter Matthew Coleman’s Wife Wants Answers About Their Children’s Murders
The father allegedly told police he was motivated by the QAnon conspiracy theory, according to an FBI criminal complaint.
This is a false conspiracy that believes that former president Donald Trump has secretly been battling a cabal of Satan-worshipping pedophiles at the highest levels of political power and influence.
In the criminal complaint, FBI special agent Jennifer Bannon wrote that Coleman claimed to be “enlightened by QAnon and Illuminati conspiracy theories and was receiving visions and signs revealing that his wife, A.C., possessed serpent DNA and had passed it on to his children.”
“M. Coleman stated that he believed his children were going to grow into monsters so he had to kill them,” Bannon wrote.
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