49
Livin’ in the Light
1st Without fail, each morning I will affirm my right to keep looking forward to something good happening to and for me no matter how small. I believe that the failure to have this positive outlook so early in the morning opens the heart, mind and spirit to accepting a lesser realities simply because lesser realities have prevailed for so long. Breaking the cycle of something that breaks the spirit is paramount to claiming one more victory in a day or in a lifetime.
2nd Each morning, I will take a good, long shower or bath to stimulate and condition my mind and body to embrace the necessity of integrating cleanliness and purity in all that I may do as I begin my day. I will remind myself to throw the unnecessary drama of the days before into the hamper so that I can fit well into my garments of positivity.
3rd I will look into the mirror to see myself as I know God must see me. I will strive to be worthy of His love because merely striving to be perfect, means I may never understand my own imperfections enough to recognize how they could harm me or someone else, or that my imperfections are in fact what makes me, Me.
4th I will pray that I will not forget to pray.
5th Pray like it was the only thing I was born to do. In my most desperate hours, I reached out to God, not like He was unreachable, but like He was in the same room with me. He was tangibly close and I could put my burdens straight into His ears and He heard me. And I will surely pray for those who cannot pray for themselves.
6th Before I leave my house in the morning, I will think about someone I can lift up in mind or in spirit. It is through the essence of giving (without having an external mandate) that we truly receive our blessings. That’s why I teach in the community where I was raised.
7th I will take notice of when I fall away from doing the things that make me most happy, like teaching, learning, shopping, reading a good book or being with friends or family. It is so easy to not see when the pattern or the textures of the routines of life are abandoned because of mental imbalances that may not be immediately apparent. I will pay attention to paying attention to myself and what’s going on inside my head. It’s metacognition at its best.
8th Honoring the body and mind God gave me means that I will be conscious of eating properly. Good nutrition really is part of the key to a healthy mind. I will always observe “good sleep hygiene” by rising when my internal clock lets me know that I have had my share of sleep. I will keep my nails, hair and everything that makes me feel pretty on my list of life priorities. Nothing heavy, you know?
9th I will continually seek to embrace the art of forgiveness, as I believe that it is the key to my own salvation.
10th When I feel the insurgence of the blues, or when old emotional wounds threaten to rupture, I will run to my friends and family to tell them what is trying to get at me (if I can). If they cannot help me, I will find a good therapist who is more interested in listening to me than trying to write a prescription for some drug that may do more harm than good.
11th I will run when Denial tries to steal me away from the truth that is sometimes hidden under layers and layers of fear and pain. I know that what I refuse to see is sometimes more dangerous than what is right in front of me.
12th I will claim that my daughter and my granddaughter and all my female kin are off limits to the Darkness. Whatever I have to do to make this so, I will.
50
Finally, the Trial & My Testimony
I TRIED AS HARD AS I COULD TO ANTICIPATE WHAT I WOULD SEE AND LEARN AT William’s trial, but, as God is my witness, I could have never known of the far-reaching enmity that my former spouse had captained.
…
Fall 2008—
I waited for the prosecution team in William’s case to contact me as the firm date for the actual commencement of his trial neared; it had been changed once I think. And just as I had spoken truthfully and been most helpful to Lorna Patton Brown, William’s defense attorney, I was so convicted to align myself with the importance of the People’s case against my former spouse. My point of view, with respect to William’s case, was that I had a vested interest in seeing that justice prevailed, although at times, I found myself feeling sorrowful for William’s dilemma. But thank God, I felt equally so for the families of his victims.
The first time I spoke with someone from the prosecutor’s office was years earlier when the Department of Justice had DNA evidence linking William to three murders and four more rapes. This was in addition to those rapes for which he had already begun serving time, commencing the spring of 2002. That one call from the prosecution put me on official alert: I might be called to testify for the People of the State of California during William’s trial. His trial would join two counties: Alameda and San Joaquin, as they pursued delayed justice for their victims.
The second contact with the prosecution’s office was to confirm a date and time for my appearance as a witness. I had received notice in the mail, but I was bewildered that no one from the other side of the judicial system wanted to interview me before my testimony. So I called them about a month before the trial. I was assured that I only needed to show up in court at the appointed time. I had no other option but to wait for my day and my hour to get on the stand to be questioned and tell the TRUTH.
Why not talk to me in advance? I had reflected on all the questions that William’s defense team had posed to me and it seemed that their quest for answers was insatiable. So it only made sense to me that the prosecution would have just as many inquiries to make on behalf of the People.
Then, the day came for me to testify. It was truly summertime in California. The sun was banging from dust to dawn. Crystal dropped me off in front of the San Joaquin County courthouse. She and Paityn drove off to find a place to have breakfast and await my call for pick up.
I looked up the few stairs that I had to climb to get inside the courthouse. A dull gray and unimposing piece of architecture was ahead of me. It was 7:45a.m and I wondered if William was already inside. Once I made it through the metal detectors, I knew there was no turning back. The coming of the unexpected was already a part of my destiny.
“…so help you God?”
“I DO.” I answered in as strong a voice as I could.
I was shaking like a washing machine on the inside. What am I afraid of?
Everything in the courtroom seemed so large and threatening, making the benign exterior of the building surprisingly deceitful. My place on the witness stand had me strategically and uncomfortably lodged between Judge Lofthus, the presiding judge, and a jury who I could almost reach out and touch. Even though my innocence in the matter of : the People of the State of California vs. William Choyce wasn’t questionable as far as I was concerned, I couldn’t help but reflect on the fact that the gun used to kill three women was registered in MY NAME. How could he?
I had been summoned to testify for the prosecution so they questioned me first. They verified my identity, my relationship to William, the date of our marriage and divorce. The basic stuff was quickly established. After only a few moments on the stand, all the anxiety that had revved me up for the whole morning, dissipated. Then peace stepped forward. I reminded myself to listen carefully to the questions before trying to provide an answer. I remembered dates, places and names that had had no real relevance to me for years and years. It was like my mind brought forward almost all of the details needed to help me through that portion of my testimony.
Next, the issue of the gun, the .38 caliber weapon that was registered in my name, came up. I knew that the prosecution’s primary line of questioning would focus on the custody of the gun. William and I purchased and registered it in my name in the early eighties. I was asked to explain why the gun was purchased in my name. The answer was that Trader Guns in San Leandro, CA, the gun store that sold the weapon to us, had informed us of a law prohibiting one person from having more than one gun registered to them within a specific amount of time. William already had a .22 caliber re
gistered in his name. The sales person told us that the only way around the law was to put the gun in my name. So, around we went even though I wasn’t convinced of the necessity for having yet another gun in the house. William thought it was absolutely necessary. He claimed to be more streetwise than I was. IDK.
I was asked by Thomas Testa, the prosecutor, why William and I purchased an additional gun. “We mutually agreed on buying the gun,” I told the prosecutor. That was the truth, but not as close as it could get. We agreed, but I was terrified of guns. I wanted to offer that I had almost shot a hole into the roof of our new home one morning when our burglar alarm accidentally went off. I ran and got the gun thinking that someone had broken into our home. When I realized that I was in the middle of a false alarm minutes later, I gently put the loaded .22 caliber weapon down on the floor. Yes. I wish I could have told the Court about that experience and what it felt like. And if it wasn’t for William, guns would have never been part of my life.
The prosecutor’s key line of inquiry was structured specifically to establish custody of the gun in question (.38 caliber pistol). I knew this bit of information in advance because William’s attorney had given me a head’s up during an interview with me. She was trying to prepare for William’s defense. So, when asked whether I had custody of the gun in 1988 or around that time, my reply was, “No, I didn’t”. I wanted to say, ‘HELL NO!’ But, I kept the dynamite behind my answer unlit.
Further questioning by the prosecution helped reveal additional facts about the custody of both the .38 and the .22 caliber pistols that we owned. I felt moved by an intense zeal to get the facts straight.
Oh yeah, I was going to let it out. I didn’t want the jury or no one else looking at me sideways like I had broken the law.
When William and I separated October 1, 1988, he took the .38 and I reluctantly took the .22 to keep in my possession. It also came out that I had asked William to properly register the .38 in his name. He didn’t and I had asked him several times. Before the end of that particular line of questioning, it was clear that William was in control of the whereabouts of the gun that he allegedly used to kill three women.
I testified that I had even gone to the Oakland Police Department after William and I separated; I signed an affidavit to the fact that I did not have possession of the gun. It was for my own protection, and interestingly enough, I had the forethought to take this measure as I had casually envisioned some misuse of the gun. Never in a million years would I have even imagined the reality that was before me, as I sat in the witness chair.
Then Mr. Testa came with questions that made me dizzy—questions about William’s white Mazda Sundowner that he drove when we were together. A picture of the truck came upon this large, white screen to my right. I looked slowly towards the image of an artifact of my life with William. A rush of thoughts about our time together locked up my attention for a minute. I remembered driving one of my friends to the hospital in the truck— Natalie. She was in labor and I was terrified, but I got her there without stripping the hell out the gears.
I was asked if I recognized the driver’s license on the truck. I didn’t. Damn! I was always good about storing this kind of information in the front of my mind because it helped me to recognize my husband when we were away from home and driving different cars. Some nights, when William and my relationship was really bad and I felt that he was cheating, or something, I would go looking for him. And the only thing that could point me towards a positive identification of my mobile husband was his license plate. And so, memorizing our license plates, as we purchased new vehicles throughout the years we were together, became part of my investigative repertoire. Even with all that though, I could have never figured out the true evil he was up to.
Then—
HANDCUFFS. That’s all I heard as a whiff of air and sound penetrated my ears simultaneously. The prosecutor was still talking to me. I took a good look around the courtroom for the first time as I tried to anchor myself to the reality of where I was; it felt like I was floating. The lights seemed so bright and the room, so spacious and less ornate than I had dreamed. There was an exhibit before me.
“Yes.” I remembered William showing me a pair of handcuffs, I answered Mr. Testa’s question as best I could.
Then a memory shot forward in my head—William was asking if he could put the cuffs on me. I summoned the time forward and then went inside of myself, as though some private time had been allotted to me by the COURT.
“Are you crazy,” I asked my husband in near disbelief.
“Why I gotta be crazy?” William shouted back at me.
“Cause sane people just don’t do stuff like that.” I paused. “What’s the point?” I asked because I really wanted to know if my husband was serious about locking my hands up so that I couldn’t move. But it took me all of five seconds to not give a damn one way or the other about what he wanted. Besides, I had so much other stuff on my mind.
Before I could get comfortable with the minor but lingering discomfort that developed in the final questions from the prosecutor, it was William’s defense team’s turn. I already knew that they were going to ask me some basic questions, and I was sure that Lorna Patton Brown, a very astute attorney, wasn’t going to open up any questions about William’s past that would give the prosecution the advantage of learning, or exploring events, or circumstances that might inadvertently help the PEOPLE’S case. So, Lorna’s questions to me were benign and routine, as promised.
And even before I took the witness stand, that single day that I appeared before William’s tribunal in San Joaquin County, California, I anticipated that his team might try to somehow wrap me up in his funky and criminal melodrama. And the answer is, YES— I probably didn’t fully trust his team with my individual well-being. They were not my attorneys and although I hadn’t told them anything that would implicate me in William’s crimes, I had watched too many Law and Order episodes to discard the reality that they would just conjure up some facts to create even a pinch of reasonable doubt in William’s case. I remembered OJ and kooky Kato. So, I kept my defenses up. I hadn’t felt the need to do that with the prosecution.
Once I was officially excused by Judge Lofthus, I stepped slowly down from my witness chair. I stood brave and turned to look at William sitting quietly next to his attorney. He looked as though he didn’t have a care in the world. He did not look up at me. I wondered what he was thinking as I was testifying in his case.
Had he tried to imagine what I looked like the last time he saw me when he was a free man?
Did he remember that I had come to see him when he was in Santa Rita before the cases of murder had been filed against him?
Had he remembered telling me that the Devil had made him do what he did? Was he referring to the rapes for which he had already plea-bargained to eleven years, or was he referring to other crimes only he knew about and perhaps prayed that no one else would ever discover?
There were a million questions stuck inside my head.
I took one last look over at the jury. The defense had made the fact known, that like me, a number of the jurors were also educators. I was sure that even if some of us (the jurors and I) shared the same background, this commonality alone should have had no bearing on the facts of the case before them. I think the defense was trying to imply some connection between me and the jurors. Really! Just because I was an educator didn’t mean that they had to believe everything I said. After all, I lived with a rapist and murderer and I didn’t even know it. How incredulous was that?!
I walked slowly out of the courtroom. Before then, it felt like I had been in another world and that I, like William, was shut off from the realities of freedom. The rigidness which must have taken over my body without my full knowledge began to relax with each step I took toward the doors in the back of the courtroom.
I could not shout “Freedom” because I wasn’t free from the drama that had taken over a whole courtroom and that had taken over me and m
y daughter’s lives since the first time we heard of the capital murder charges against the once so called “head” of our household.
…
“What happened, Mommy,” Crystal asked when I got into the car with her and my granddaughter after testifying.
I didn’t want to talk but I knew I needed to for my daughter’s sake. “They just asked me a few question.”
“Are you okay, Mommy?”
“Yes, baby, I’m okay.”
Although I was in no way ready to drive the hour it would take us to go back home, I asked my daughter whether she wanted me to take the wheel because on our way to Stockton, she began to hyperventilate as we were going over a bridge. That scared the hell out of me. I knew that I had developed a phobia about crossing bridges after the Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989. But I was totally unaware that Crystal had a fear of bridges as well.
“No, Mommy,” she answered. “You just rest.”
But I couldn’t rest. “I’m not really tired.”
“Then…you want to go and look at the houses for sale in Mountain House?”
Mountain House is in an unincorporated area in San Joaquin County. The houses there had been a subject of the out of control real estate boom that had artificially inflated the value of houses in an area, which under normal economic conditions, would not have been considered as desirable as it was for a certain period of time.
“Why not? Let’s do it!”
Conquering Darkness Memoir of the Serial Killer's Wife Page 20