Conquering Darkness Memoir of the Serial Killer's Wife Read online

  Copyright © 2011 Alice M. Swafford

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN: 1463797303

  isbn-13: 9781463797300

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-61916-858-9

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  This book is not a work of fiction. The recollection of the facts and the events as they occurred were achieved through painstaking reflections that are braided together by honesty and an intense desire, on the part of both authors, to arrive at the truth. For privacy reasons, some of the names have been changed.

  Cover and eBook Designed by: Create Space

  For information contact: womenswriteselfpub.com

  Version 2011 8 16

  Acknowledgements

  We would like to thank Ronaldo Ali and Paityn Ali Lige for their patience, love and support during our life-altering experience.

  [Thanks to Roberta L. Miller, our sister, auntie, and friend.

  Thank you, Herbert B. Wood for all your love and support.

  Karen L. Harris, thank you so much for “being there” for us.]

  Thanks to Recordnet.com and Scott Smith for chronicling the State of California’s prosecution of William Jennings Choyce for crimes against the community of women.

  …and then there was this old woman,

  A sturdy climber, who

  Reached up towards the rapist’s eyes,

  To pull down,

  With lofty satisfaction-

  Two more dirty marbles

  For her heavy, heavy sack.

  Table of Contents

  COPYRIGHT PAGE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  TITLE PAGE

  EPIGRAM

  1: Day One of Closing Arguments

  2: How Could This be?

  3: 2002—Santa Rita County Jail Facility

  4: Proper Introductions— Alice

  5: Proper Introductions— William

  6: Early

  7: About the Times

  8: First Date with the Boy from the “Good Family”

  9: True Love so Fast

  10: A Sign- 1973

  11: The Mystery at Fort Ord

  12: It Was never About Making Love

  13: The Sweetest Desire

  14: Home Again, 1976

  15: Early Betrayal, 1977

  16: Who in the Hell Did I Marry? 1978

  17: When Times Were Normal

  18: The Loss of His Beloved

  19: The Guns & Drugs

  20: Starting with the Pornography

  21: A Revelatory Note

  22: War of the Choyce’s

  23: Mr. “Baby, Baby, Please”

  24: Mama’s Boy

  25: Darkness Everywhere

  26: Voices & Madness & the Long Period of Upheaval

  27: The Lady Next Door Jumped Out of Her Window…

  28: West Oakland, William Staked His Claim

  29: Fine China

  30: My Volunteer Service at BAWAR (Bay Area Women Against Rape)

  31: Monster’s Home

  32: Self-Doubt, the Other Monster in My Life

  33: After Separating from William, the 2nd & Final Time

  34: “Crazy as a Bessie Bug”

  35: A Coward at Heart

  36: One More Chance for Daddy

  37: “I’m Not Scared of You Anymore!”

  38: DEEPER

  39: The Making of a Serial Killer

  40: A silent Cry for Help?

  41: New Day- a Reflection

  42: The Touch of Evil CAME DOWN On Me

  43: Please, No More Suffering!

  44: A Good Man for Alice

  45: Everything Black

  46: Mirror, Mirror

  47: SNAP!!!

  48: Keeping My Depression in Check

  49: Livin’ in the Light

  50: Finally, the Trial & My Testimony

  51: Closing Arguments, Part II

  52: What I Learned

  53: Guilty

  54: The Aftermath

  55: Youtube.com

  56: Last Note

  1

  Day One of Closing Arguments, Part I

  It was August 7, 2008.

  I remember walking up the cement stairs to the courthouse where my former spouse was being tried for THREE counts of capital murder and FOUR counts of rape. It was the first day of closing arguments in the guilt phase of the trial, and the weight of that reality sent a ripple of tremors through my body. I didn’t know if I could hold myself up long enough to make it to the top. It seemed to take forever.

  Finally, I made it to the area where everyone entering the courthouse was being screened for anything metal, especially guns. Damn, I thought, this is some serious shit! But I was ready for the first stage of my journey. Before I left home, I emptied my purse of everything except my driver’s license, some mints and a pack of Kleenex. I also took off all my jewelry so that I could I pass though the detectors without a beep.

  Mission accomplished!

  After I made it to the court room, my legs felt a little lighter. I had been to this courthouse one other time when I was summoned to testify for the prosecution near the beginning of William’s trial. But that little bit of familiarity did nothing to calm the new set of nerves that were afire beneath my skin. I braced myself when I saw the back of my former spouse’s head. He was completely bald. His head was perfectly round and smooth like a caramel globe with a medium stem at the tip. He looked gentle from behind. Real gentle. Funny, but I had no memory of how William looked when I testified earlier. Was he bald then?

  I sat down very, very softly.

  The court clerk, who was sitting at her desk when I entered the courtroom, quietly rose to formally announce the entrance of Judge Judy Lofthus. She was presiding over her first capital murder trial: the case of the People of the State of California vs. William Jennings Choyce. Everyone stood up and remained standing until instructed to sit back down. Much respect. Silence cast a spell over the entire courtroom as the judge studied the documents on her desk. I wished I could read her mind. From what I had read in various news articles, the judge had worked very hard to ensure that William would indeed get a fair trial. What’s fair?

  I wanted to know what was on my former spouse’s mind too. I wondered whether he could feel my presence, or whether he would look around at the perfect moment to catch my eye. Would his heart skip a beat? And then I wondered whether he had dreamed that we were a family again. This was the dream that haunted me and Crystal, the daughter I share with William.

  Before entering the courtroom, I made up my mind to sit on the defense’s side of the room. I hoped the families of William’s alleged victims (he had not been convicted at this point) would not think that I was making any statement other than I wanted to respect their space. I looked over at them once I sat down; there was such irrevocable loss written all over their faces. And even if they were scattered all over the courtroom, or in the hallways, I would have been able to pick them out one by one.

  I prayed for them. Heavenly Father, keep them sound in their minds as they endure what no one should ever endure. Give them their justice as is your will. Amen.

  And even though I am usually selfless when I say my prayers, I asked God to bless me too, because at times it felt like I was waning in and out of consciousness. When I finally accepted that my reality was static, and that God would keep me, I started thinking…

  2

  How Could this Be?<
br />
  How on the good Earth could this be happening to me?!

  The words shouted out against the panoramic walls in my mind, time and time again. Never in a gazillion years would I have imagined myself, an all-African-American woman, sitting in the San Joaquin County, California Superior courthouse, or anybody’s court for that matter, during the capital murder and rape trial of my former spouse. I had absolutely no desire to attend; necessity, such as it was, had forced my hand.

  But, there I sat. I was demure by my own assessment and quietly uncertain of my ability to contain the terror and angst that worked on me. Mentally, I cautioned myself to take long, deep breaths whenever I felt that my nerves might exhaust me, or unhinge my mind and spirit from my body.

  My seat was less than fifteen feet behind my former spouse, the Defendant, who, well-groomed and seemingly peacefully poised, looked straight ahead as the prosecutor, Thomas Testa, threw down a summary gauntlet of incriminating evidence against him in a case where the death penalty was being vigorously sought. For a significant moment, I entertained that I had stepped into a Stephen King movie or perhaps worse.

  As the charges kept echoing in my head, so too did the old adage: YOU CAN’T JUDGE A BOOK BY ITS COVER.

  At first, I vehemently refused to believe that a man, who I had known since we were teenagers, could morph back and forth between a modern day Jekyll and Mr. Hyde— from the hood. But it was likely he had done just that; he was a family man in the morning and a menace to a circle of selected women at night. Like Jack the Ripper, William was suspected of killing his share of prostitutes.

  In the moments after learning that I had lived a significant part of my life with a serial rapist and maybe a killer as well, my little brain started creating a multi-textured collage of raw images. It was like an invasion. The visions were sometimes constant, then sometimes variant; but they were always psychedelically painful. I would see my husband on top of his victims; he was pawing, tearing and breathing like a greedy monster. Still, the women were perfect models—the symbols of how beauty can still exist in the death of an innocent. But there was nothing beautiful about what had happened to these women who could have been my sisters, or my kin in one way or another.

  And in the backdrop of everything that was in my head, there was darkness.

  I knew it was inevitable that someone would ask me— How come you didn’t know your husband were a rapist and a murder? I dreaded the thought and the implications therein. People would indict me by association and talk behind my back at the same time— ‘Well if she didn’t know what that fool was doing, huh, she should’ve.’ That I was even on the other side of such an innuendo was drama in its most obscene form.

  And more than fearing the curiosity of others who might look askance at me, the former spouse of a serial killer, I absolutely feared that I might never be able to comprehend the true realities of life. I feared that if I didn’t investigate how I could live so deep inside a lie with William, I might never be able to climb into the light with any man.

  Of course, there were times (before and in the beginning of the trial) that I thought my world was going to cave the hell in. Something in my head kept telling me to run and keep running, but I didn’t. For many days and nights, I would get violently sick to my stomach as I tried to imagine whether William had lain next to me soon after raping and shooting his first victim in the head. I wondered what was going through his mind. Why did he steal her shoes and then pose her body in the most demeaning way? What sick statement was he trying to make that no one except he could understand?

  In my weakest hours, I experienced unbelievable guilt. And sometimes I found it absolutely necessary to take whimsical jumps around my past and my present, particularly as I examined my mental state of being and how it had evolved. However, I soon discovered that there was no clear or linear path to the place I hoped would secure some semblance of sanity for myself as I tried to move past the nightmare William had created. It was the darkness of his nightmare which I believed pursued me in the most gruesome way.

  All I wanted was to move forward in my life and have peace.

  I started digging. I learned that going backwards is sometimes the first step in going forward.

  So, I went back to what seemed to be the beginning of my nightmare.

  3

  2002 - Santa Rita County Jail Facility

  This visit between William and I took place in 2002. This was prior to the time that two (2) different counties filed a total of four (4) additional charges of rape and three (3) charges of capital murder against my former spouse.

  —

  William was in the custody of Alameda County Correctional Department; he was awaiting transfer to a state prison after accepting a plea deal to serve eleven (11) years for two rapes. These charges also included a long and ugly list of aggravating circumstances. A trial and subsequent conviction by a jury of his peers could have resulted in three life sentences.

  This was my former spouse’s second arrest for the charge of rape. The first charge was filed against him in 1994. He raped a woman in the home he shared with his “would be” common-law wife and their two children. The case was later dismissed by a San Joaquin County District Attorney, whose decision not to prosecute, freed William to perpetuate more rapes and two additional (back to back) murders in 1997. All this happened before he ever came under the suspicion of law enforcement as being a serial rapist and a serial murderer.

  I only learned of my former spouse’s incarceration right before he was to be transferred to a state prison where he’d serve the terms of the plea deal reached in 2002. In an instant, it became imperative that I see him, not only to discuss the significant turn of events in his life, but to validate my own shock and horror. It seemed such an impossible reality to digest.

  When the day came for me to visit William at Santa Rita, I left work super early, hoping that I would have time to calm my nerves. It was just after noon when I arrived at the parking lot of the county jail. There were a number of times when I thought it would be best for me to just try and forget what was going on in my ex-husband’s life. But no matter how rational it all sounded in my head— that his drama wasn’t necessarily my drama—the pain in my heart and the turmoil in my gut compelled me to go ahead as planned.

  As I approached the county facility entrance, I could easily see that there was a long line of mostly women. My thoughts raced from the front of my head to the back with no way out, except that— I should scream. But I couldn’t. I truly hoped that my Celexa, my depression medication, would continue to stabilize me. I walked up to where the line ended and took my place without yielding to the impulse to turn my body around and walk in the opposite direction—back to my car.

  It seemed that I had been waiting in the inmate visitor line for hours outside the Santa Rita jail facility in Dublin, California before it moved. The complete surrealism of the facts surrounding the whole reason I found myself in a place where I never imagined I would be began to overwhelm me all at once. I thought I was going to pass out. I leaned against the railing leading up to the entrance, and I was able to compose myself.

  Why are you doing this to yourself? I tried to answer this repeating question but I couldn’t. As it were, eight years had passed since William and I had had any substantial contact with one another, and nearly twelve years had passed since our divorce in 1990. The answer should have been easy to snatch out of my head. But I couldn’t reach it.

  Most of the women in the line ahead of me were much younger than me, and if my enthusiasm were laid side by side with theirs, it would certainly present antithesis at its best. They were eager as little puppies. They were gabbing incessantly, almost joyfully about something I couldn’t figure out…‘ma nigga this and ma baby daddy that…’

  What in the hell are they talking about?

  This was all new to me. As far as I could tell, I stood alone in my fear, which may have only been founded on my ignorance of “jail visitor etiquette”. IDK
! Maybe I was the only one who had never gone to see someone in jail. Be patient girl! I cautioned myself.

  I looked down again at the requisite forms all visitors had to fill out in order to be properly processed to see an inmate housed in an Alameda County jail facility. Just filling them out seemed like a commitment that I wasn’t ready for. Visitor: Alice Marie Swafford. OTHER NAMES: Alice Marie Choyce. INMATE’S NAME: William Jennings Choyce. CDC#: XXXXX. RELATIONSHIP: Former Spouse. HAVE YOU BEEN in Custody of the Alameda County Jail the Last Six Months? No.

  And if there was a space for me to indicate my state of mind, the response would have unequivocally been: I can’t believe this madness is happening to me!

  A voice tumbled towards the front of the line. “Please remove all metal and place it in the plastic bins provided, including jewelry, belts and hairpins.” A tall, ghost-faced officer gave the orders to all of us who were standing in place at the final point of formal processing. I almost felt like a criminal.

  There was some clinking and clanking of costume jewelry, loose change and keys. After that, a breeze of relief seemed to filter through the small crowd. Silence and stillness prevailed among the number of womenfolk as their eyes sat down quietly upon the robot-like authority figure. He kept talking— I think, but I stopped hearing.

  My mind drifted backwards.

  I started thinking about what had landed me in the line with so many strangers who seemed to have disposed of whatever good diction they might have had. And, it wasn’t long before I could hear my daughter’s voice echoing from the recent past.

  …

  “Daddy is in jail for eleven years, mommy.” Crystal’s words crept out.

  Silence drew a dotted line between us. We both stood motionless, but I could feel myself spinning inside. I tried to focus my eyes on my baby’s lips because I thought my ears were deceiving me.

  “…mommy, did you hear—?!”

  “Huh, baby…what? Yeah. Your daddy is in jail for…—?” My words stuck again. “…for what, baby?”