Early reports claimed that a priest had married the couple while Beltrame lay on his death bed, but Aude Bariéty, the priest himself, refuted the story as nonsense, that the couple could not be married because Beltrame was unconscious at the time. Le Figaro, 25 March 2018.
In her first public statement, his widow said that "His was the heroic achievement of a gendarme and the heroic achievement of a Christian. For him, the two were bound together." Le Figaro.
