What I know is that William’s grandmother’s death left a big, giant festering hole in the Choyce family that nobody would speak too openly about. There were candid memories to fill the air about her life as a hard worker and as a strong matriarch, but there was no thoughtful digging into her past which would reveal true insights about the matriarch’s struggles and early life in the segregated South.
Fiona fled the south when William’s mother was just a child. But the family’s history before they moved to California was a “family secret”— until William’s trial. Then it became an investigative imperative (by William’s defense) to try and draw a familial correlation to his rise to monsterdom. Was it genetic, or was the truth buried somewhere deep in the “roots” of his beginnings?
People knew that Mrs. Dutton, aka, Finny, had accomplished things that many black women of her day couldn’t; working two jobs— one of which was at the United States Post Office. She supported William’s mother, her only child, and she amassed property that was only minimally collateral to her primary legacy— she could, like any man, make her way in a cruel and oppressive world.
People said that Finny could “hold her own. This included a gun. And on one occasion, she used “Betsy”, her .38 caliber weapon, when an intruder tried to gain access to her home; this was just a short time before her death. The blast from her pistol damn near tore the door off its hinges. The fact that Finny used her gun to defend herself tickled William to death. He was so proud of her.
But the issue of guns and William’s use of them in the commission of his crimes were foreshadowed, even at this early time in his life. Only I knew that William used to sneak his grandmother’s gun out of its hiding place when she was alive. Why? I had asked. William never gave me the answer about why he was so fascinated with his grandmother’s gun. But I would have never guessed that his stealing the gun was just a “sign” of things to come.
Back to Finny’s death—
A turning point came in William’s family relations, particularly between him and his mother, when he found out that she tore up the will his grandmother had drawn up. Why would someone do such a thing? To make matters worse, Mrs. Choyce boasted that it was her right to tear up the will because as she said, ‘Mrs. Dutton was her mother, not her children’s.’ She added, “…nobody cleaned her ass but me!”
It was a surreal and toxic moment. I took it all in.
Those words hurt William and took him aback because he loved his grandmother. I believe he did everything he could to help her. He loved her. And his mother’s betrayal (tearing up the will) would go far, I believe, to set William into a world of darkness, which up to the time of his grandmother’s death, remained out of distance…but not totally.
I can honestly note that hatred seemed to stir up inside of William with fervor only he could know. From time to time, it would flare up, though not directly at his mother. He would say things about her that he would never say to her face. He said she was greedy and selfish. But I had to wonder where this tremendous and quiet angst came from and I wondered where it would go?
At that time, I had no idea that William was already secretly incubating ill feelings for his mother that went all the way back to his youth. This too would come out at his trial.
Anyway, time passed slowly after William’s grandmother died. There was so much quiet in our home. And then out of seemingly nowhere (again) William began to show signs of what I perceived to be depression.
HE STOPPED TAKING BATHS and refused to cut his hair. He would put on the same dirty clothes for work, day after day. I remembered that he said his grandmother thought boys were only mannish when their hair needed cutting. It was one of the funniest things I had ever heard. But, William made sure to keep his cut. Then his grandmother was gone. He lost the reason to take heed to her imparted wisdom.
Men don’t get depressed. I tried to assure myself.
But things persisted. It was like William had turned on a new kind of defiance. But who was he defying? And even though I tried to deny the likelihood of anything resembling the blues happening to someone who shared little emotion, it was clear that William was suffering internally and he didn’t want to engage in any discussion about what was ailing him.
Then months passed after William’s grandmother’s death and no one in the immediate Choyce clan opened the door for healing. Yes, William and his siblings helped to clean and clear the grandmother’s house. But they could not live in it. At the time, none of William’s siblings owned homes, and staying in the grandmother’s mortgage-free home would have given them a great start with raising their families. Mrs. Choyce wouldn’t hear of it.
Could they even choose something from her belongings that they could keep for a memento? No! William’s mother refused to give her own kids that much consideration or comfort. Instead, she elected to rent the property out to strangers, who in turn, nearly destroyed it. The duplex which the grandmother left to her grandsons, William and his brother, was also rented out. And so the property which was legally and thoughtfully bequeathed to the Choyce children would not be theirs.
WILLIAM’S ANGER KEPT BUILDING. I know now that his was a quiet anger; it’s the worst kind.
Clearly, the Choyce family didn’t know anything about healing. I have to believe this is why William was able to get so mentally and criminally sick. He was a time bomb.
To add to William’s emotional turmoil, Mrs. Choyce would threaten her children. She was going to cut them out of HER WILL if they would even hint to go against something she said. William thought of this behavior as the cruelest kind of attempt at manipulation. He hated that kind of treatment with a passion. I would watch him when he was caught in moments of reflection about his mother’s mistreatment; his face would twitch.
William would also defy his mother in his own kind of way. He would avoid her phone calls and feign sickness when she needed his physical help with something around her home. Perhaps this kind of defiant response worked to vent his anger…for a while.
19
The Drugs & Guns
NOT TOO LONG AFTER HIS GRANDMOTHER’S DEATH, William was arrested for having a concealed weapon in his car. The gun belonged to his grandmother and the actual facts behind how he came into possession, has never been made clear to me. All I know is that William called me from the downtown Oakland County jail and requested that I get out of bed at 2 a.m. to post bail for him. He was whispering and it took a good minute for me to realize, first, what he was saying and, second, what he actually needed me to do.
I was to dig in the left pocket of his gray overcoat that was located in the far back of our guest bedroom. Dig…Pocket…what…?
He was very clear and specific, telling me to count out $1500.00. I went into a mini-stupor. Drums were banging in my head.
One hundred…two…three… I didn’t stop where he told me to. I kept counting until I got past $5,000.00. My heart was pumping hard enough to burst through my chest.
Where did he get all this money? Slowly, I backed all the way out of the closet as I held on tightly to the mystery money. I recounted. I got to $1500.00. I put the rest back in the coat pocket. Hardly obedient, just scared. I had counted three or four times; I kept losing count. And once I was out of the closet and in the light of the room, I noticed that a plastic bag had fallen onto the floor. I wasn’t a dummy. It was crack! There was also about twenty little black pieces that looked like rocks made of tar. I wasn’t sure what it was. Later, I learned it was black tar heroin.
Things were getting clearer and clearer as the walls of the smallest bedroom in our house seemed to close in on me. William must have been dealing drugs. And even though I tried not to see the pattern of behavior that emerged after he hooked up with his partner, Rodney, the truth was inescapable. Was my husband leading a secret life of drug dealing? But, I had to wonder why a working man with a family and a seemingly legitimate life would want to get involved with drugs and guns? I wondered if this was the cause of his strange
behavior. Had it topped off the feelings of sadness he still seemed to have about his grandmother’s death?
I snapped back to the urgent task I had been given by my husband. Oh yeah—he was in jail. Count the money one last time, girl!
Before William hung up, he said, “HURRY UP, PLEASE.”
But I did not want to hurry. I wanted his ass to know what it was like to be in jail so that he wouldn’t do anything to take himself back there. But it seemed that going back to jail was already in his future. What did I know?
It took me two minutes to get dressed. I couldn’t wait to hear his explanation for the shit he had gotten himself into.
I dropped Crystal off at my mother’s house, and I promised to explain things to her later. Then I drove William’s truck downtown to the Oakland Police headquarters. He must have left home with the BMW. Where was it? I had on my pajamas and a coat. ‘Come to the downtown building.’ I remembered William’s words. I knew exactly where I was going because the Oakland Police Department was the organization that had offered me a job once I completed college.
I can’t believe this shit. I’m actually going to the jailhouse to bail out someone I’m married to. I hope no one that I know is on duty. This ain’t supposed to be happening to me! Damn…I am above all this ghetto bullshit!
I couldn’t stop the dreadful thoughts from speeding inside my head.
I wondered around the quiet and dimly lit building until I came to a desk behind a window where two policemen were talking. One was sitting down at a desk, and the other one who was standing wanted to play a guessing game with me.
“I’m here to pick up the papers for William Choyce. He’s my husband. Is this where I’m supposed to get the papers I need to take to a bail bondsman?” I tried not to stumble over my words. It was hard though because I was so nervous and upset.
“Spell the last name please.” The sitting officer asked without looking at me.
“Yes, it’s C-H-O-Y-C-E.”
“Oh yeah,” he grinned and then caught my glance. “Do you want to know what your husband has been charged with?” The red-faced, fat head, standing up officer asked. Then he looked at another officer sitting down.
They both laughed. I hoped the fuckers weren’t on overtime.
“No!” I answered. I was pretty sure that William had been arrested for dealing drugs. I saw the evidence in my own house. No need for me to get slapped in the face again with news I already knew. Ha-ha on them.
The two officers grunted their disappointment.
I kept my head as high as I could, took the bail documents, and quietly walked across the streets to the bails bondsmen who were probably waiting for me or someone like me to come through the twenty-four hour door.
At last, the final process for getting William out of jail on bail required that I walk back across the street to the police station and hand them William’s release documents. As I was walking, I thought about a poem I had written. It’s called, “Men Lie.” It goes—
Men lie
Their tongues swell
Making it impossible for
Them to swallow the truth.
I wondered what lie William was chewing on as he waited for me to arrange for his bail.
The truth— nothing about anything that William claimed was the truth of his arrest had even an ounce of believability. I believed that he had a loaded gun in the truck, and I could even believe that he carried it because it had belonged to his beloved grandmother. Hey…how did he get the gun from his mother? But I couldn’t accept that he needed to be on San Pablo Avenue at 1:00a.m., because he wanted a burger from ¼ Pounder’s, which just so happened to be located right in the heart of prostitution row.
What?!
And the drugs and the money that I found in our closet, well, he said they belonged to his friend Rodney. He was holding them for him.
“WHAT?” My shock had to be showing. “Doesn’t Rodney have a house?”
“…oh, he didn’t want Monica to know he had it because—”
I cut him off. “So… you’re saying he’s protecting his wife from the drugs while…”
“Babe, wait,” William pleaded, “all I’m saying is that I was doing Rodney a favor. Is that okay?”
“HELL NO! It ain’t okay—not when it means that I will have drugs and dirty money in MY HOUSE.” I paused again to catch my breath. “Does what you just said even make sense?”
William didn’t want to answer because any answer would surely make him look stupid. I knew that the last thing he wanted to do was to look stupid in front of a college graduate who was also his wife. Yes, he was conscious of the fact that I had completed college and he hadn’t. So, he shut down. That’s how he dealt with me and it wasn’t long before I detected a consistent pattern.
When William promised that he would give Rodney his drugs back, I was left with no choice except to let the issue go. As for the unregistered gun, William’s mother had to go downtown to pick it up. I suspect that she must have lied and claimed that she gave William the gun. That’s right, protect the family image. As a result, the charge against William for possession of a concealed was dropped— at least that’s what he told me.
Even after the arrest ordeal was momentarily behind us, I still had to come back to the issue of William’s prolonged bout with undiagnosed depression. Even without a medical degree, I knew that his pain went deeper than beneath his skin. Sometimes it was all over his face. He would look like he was having a nightmare with his eyes wide open. It was a trip. His face was serious and intense, but William wouldn’t share what was going on in his mind.
20
Starting with the Pornography, 1982
WHEN THE PRICES CAME DOWN ON VCRs (Video Cassette Recorders), we purchased one so that we could watch movies that weren’t necessarily on television. Naturally, my thinking was that the “family type” videos would be a good source of entertainment for all of us (Me, William and Crystal). So, I didn’t waste any time in getting a membership with a couple of the closest video stores that rented out movies.
It wasn’t long before we all went video crazy! Crystal loaded up on cartoons. I wanted to watch all the science fiction and dramas I could get my hands on. It was funny because William and I delighted in watching Crystal enjoy some of the same movies that we watched as children. We rented the Three Stooges, the Outer Limits and Amos and Andy. That show was so unbelievable. The supposed humor of “A & A” was way over Crystal’s head, but William and I could certainly understand how film had once been used to exploit and demean the talents of the few black folks who were on television.
Then—
Wah-la!
It was like magic. William seemed to come out of his depression funk. He started bathing regularly. Is that all it takes…a VCR? Sometimes he’d even laugh. But what was most definitive of his changing state of mind was that he stopped wanting people to come visit us. That was a little bit okay; I just wanted him to get better. And although William looked and sometimes sounded like himself, it still felt like he was becoming a stranger. Even with the hygienic upgrade and his new ½ happiness, he still didn’t want to talk about his feelings. He didn’t want to talk about his extended sadness. He didn’t want to say where he went at night. He didn’t want to talk about our relationship. And he refused to go to a marriage counselor.
But a couple of months after we had established our family routine of visiting the video stores on Friday nights, William began to ditch me and Crystal at the door. Then he would disappear, sometimes for thirty minutes at a time. I kept myself busy scoping out the new video titles and watching my child so no one would snatch her; suddenly the world was becoming less safe for children. Pedophiles, you know.
One night, an hour passed while we were in the store and William was nowhere to be found. When I asked Crystal if she knew where her father was, she immediately pointed to the back of the store. We went to see if we could find him. We did. There was a sign: NO ONE UNDER 18 BEYOND THIS POINT.<
br />
I spotted William as he was reading the jacket on one of the video covers. What is he looking at so hard? I called over to him. He didn’t seem to hear me so I called again. He looked up and appeared to be startled. When he arrived at the counter, he had about three cassettes in his hand. Those were “his” movies.
Umph! I suppose that William thought a long time before he decided it was okay for him to rent X-rated videos while Crystal and I were with him. The first time was the worse time, because I was shocked that he would do such a thing knowing that our daughter could read really well. Don’t trip, I told myself. I made William stand at the counter alone so that he could to pay for everything. Crystal and I walked to the car. I didn’t want her to see more than she had already seen. I didn’t know it then, but Crystal had gone to the video store with her dad while I was at work. She was already onto what he doing and what he was looking at.
The drive home that night was quiet. But I felt William knew he had crossed the line of decency, or at least I hoped he knew. When we got home, he went straight to our bedroom. He was really quiet as he watched the videos he had chosen. Crystal and I watched her cartoons for hours into the evening. I spent the night in her room. I downgraded his “decency” standing in my mind. I think this was just one of the times I really began looking down at my husband.
The time came when all William wanted to do while he was home was watch “his” movies. He would be alone in the room and we wouldn’t hear a peep out of him for hours…or until it was time for him to put on his overcoat with the .38 pistol in the pocket. I couldn’t see it then, but I realize now that William had established a strict routine; he would watch the pornography and then he leave home to hit the streets where he would look for a prostitute to help him realize his fantasies. I strongly believe that the pornography probably revved him up. When he would come down the stairs to walk out of our door, his eyes seemed glazed over.
Conquering Darkness Memoir of the Serial Killer's Wife Page 9