Original subtitles

I'm here to tell the story

about how I was looking for Prince

Charming and that journey that took me

into darkness.

The evil that he left behind, it's never

going to leave us.

We have nightmares. We still do. And

in our nightmares, we dream.

that he's back in the house with us

living like nothing ever happened.

I really didn't know the person that I

married. It was a

sociopath. He was

terror just waiting to happen.

But I didn't know that.

I pursued a fairy tale. It happened

upon a nightmare.

I look back, there are so many signs that

I could put together that would culminate

in him becoming the monster that he was.

But my greatest mistake was judging a

book by its cover. I saw what I wanted to

see.

I believe William is evil.

I think forgiveness should be granted to

those people who show remorse. William

never showed any remorse.

I will never make peace with William. I

will never forgive William for what he

did.

well I really had my eye on William.

William was very handsome. He was very

well-groomed with the red sweater, with

the nice pants, with the crease

just perfect. I

had a little something in my heart for

him, a little puppy love, maybe.

This is the innocent Alice Swofford.

My impression of William was that he was

a gentleman. The Choices

were one of the few families that owned

their own home. They had two cars.

Their kids went to private school.

I automatically assumed he's smarter,

he's well-spoken. He's got to be a good

person. I

looked for the Prince Charming, and

I gave him that status. I

wanted the fairy tale life.

It was Mother's Day, and everybody was

over there to honor his mother.

Everything was going good. People were

happy, eating good food and making good

conversation. Hey, Mom.

You got something sweet over there?

William, don't even try to touch these

cookies. You can wait for everyone else.

Come on, Mom. You know I got a sweet

tooth. William, you can just wait.

And then William reached to go hug and

kiss his mother. And it's

like, in an instant, the whole atmosphere

changed because she said, get away from

me, boy. If

you ever touch me again. And I was

like, what is that about?

Something is going on.

Sorry, ma. So there were a couple of

things swirling in my head. Had he

said something to her?Had he been

inappropriate in the way he touched his

mother?I I couldn't figure it out.

And he didn't offer any answers.

His mystery just-- even though it

got deeper and and weird,There

was just something about him that I felt

like I needed to figure out.

One day, he just showed up and wanted to

take me for a ride. Okay, where are

we going?

You aren't going to be able to guess. I

said, Well, where are we going?He said,

We're going somewhere special. And I

mean, like, we're-- how special?He said,

You'll see. Well, I do like surprises.

Oh, you're in for a surprise. It's like

magic. And the thoughts are running in my

head, like, where's this man taking me?

And so when he stops the car, we get out.

We're walking, and these men are, like,

barking. Come in and see the naked

ladies. Come on in, have a drink.

And I look around, and there's all these

tables. And there's women on stage

dancing and gyrating.

I just wanted to just shrink inside

myself, and, like, what had I gotten

myself into?And then I

grabbed William's hand at the table, and

I said, Let's go. He said, We can't go.

We just got in here.

He was watching the women like

it was something he did every day.

And to me, that said that William had

been here before and that he was very

comfortable, that he was, in fact, in his

element. It was almost like

I wasn't there at all.

This is not what a man

does to a woman. It bothered me,

and I probably cried myself to sleep.

Like, why?But

somehow I convinced myself thatI

could pardon this one transgression.

Hey, boo. I got you something.

William, thank you so much. Come on,

babe, open it up. William was a very

giving person. He loved to buy

me new clothes. Some of them I liked, but

one time he bought these knee-high boots

that came up above my knee, and they were

very tight, they were very high-heeled.

And I looked at him. I said, What are you

trying to dress me like?He said, What do

you mean?I said, This is stuff a

prostitute would wear. I'm not a

prostitute.

It was also important to him that

every morning when I woke up, I get up

and put on red lipstick. Even

before I combed my hair or took a bath or

anything, he wanted me with red

lipstick on. And, Please paint your

nails red. And he... told

me that you need to go get this done

every two weeks. I thought I was doing

something for the both of us, if that

pleased him. That was good.

And he looked and he said, They're my

friends. I said, What do you mean they're

your friends?He said, Well, they're human

like anybody else, and they can be

friends. I said, Well, that doesn't make

sense. You can't just talk to those women

and expect me to stand there. Babe,

they're just people. They're prostitutes,

William. Why would you want to socialize

with prostitutes?And he said, oh, you're

just putting too much on it. You need to

treat me with respect.

If I would have put that situation

together about him saying the prostitutes

were friends, him taking me to the strip

club, I should have. just

chalked him up as somebody that was

unsalvageable. But I

didn't.

I usually called on my break to

to check how everything was. And when I

called, the phone went off the hook, and

I could hear people talking in the back,

and I heard a woman. And I'm like, That

doesn't sound right. What's going on?

I decided to take a break and drive

home. And

my bedroom door was closed, and I

tried to open it, and it was locked.

William! William, are you in there?He

didn't say anything. William!

Finally, he came to the door, and he kind

of, you know, held it back where I could

just barely see inside.

Why are you here?Just relax. Why was the

door locked?And then I pushed the door

in, and here's this woman in my bed.

William, move. Who is this,

William?What is that?When I saw the woman

in my bed, I knew she was a woman of the

street. And I said, what's

going on?And he said, nothing. It's not

what you think. I know it seems bad. I

was livid. I just saw red. And

instinctively, I went to the closet

because I knew there was a gun in there.

Please, I know it seems-- what are you--

what are you doing?Took it down and

pointed it at the woman. And she started

screaming.

I knew that there was a gun in our

closet. I reached up

in the closet, got the gun, which I

believe was just a broken gun, and

pointed it at the woman.

I was livid. Listen, you're going to hurt

somebody. Put that down. I am so sorry.

People like you are never sorry. She

started screaming. William had this look

of shock and horror in his face.

And she ran out of the house. And

he was terrified, because when I was

holding the gun, he said, Hey, boo, put

that down. Put it down.

Then he started crying, like, I'm so

sorry. I only love you and Crystal. I

only want to be with you and Crystal. I'm

so sorry. I'm I'm so sorry. I hope you

forgive me.

This picture is of Crystal and her

dad, and he wanted me to take a picture

of him and his daughter. And

Crystal seems really happy to be there,

and he's happy. After

all of this, you still married him. I

still married him. I

believe that I wanted more

than anything for Crystal to be raised

with her father.

Whatever it cost, I had to make him right

for me. That if I had to go

through some bad times with William, I

just felt like it was worth

trying to figure it out. I was

very forgiving. I was

very intent on

not abandoning something like

I had felt abandoned when my dad left.

And for me, a relationship meant

fidelity. It meant forgiveness.

It meant understanding.

And I forgave him more than I should have

because I felt like

there were moments where I

could catch a glimmer of his kindness,

of his sweetness, and I believed

that it would pass. So you were

gonna take him flawed and all?Yes.

flaws and all, for better or for

worse. And that's my story, for better or

for worse.

He'd had this compulsion to

buy or rent videos that were

X-rated, but I didn't look at it

as something that was...

That was so bizarre, because at the time,

a lot of men were doing it.

One time, he invited me to come in and

see something. And I relented and

said, OK. And I went in, and I saw this

video that just made me want to be sick

to my stomach.

What are you watching, babe?This

little something spice things

up.

It was horrible. It was

something like I had never seen it. And

she was just screaming.

Knowing he had a wife and he had a

daughter, how could you watch a woman,

I'm thinking, be violated like that?

You're sick, William. You're

disgusting.

William asked me once, he said, Honey

Boo, would you let me put these handcuffs

on you?And he had some handcuffs that

looked legitimate, just like the

handcuffs that police put on people

they're taking into custody. And I said,

no way you're going to put those

handcuffs on me.

What I realized in retrospect

is there was nothing I could do to

satisfy William. I would have to go to

the extreme.

sexually, to come out of my comfort zone,

to be in this weird zone that he seemed

to be in.

Babe. Yeah, babe. Can I

tell you

something?Sure.

Yeah. We share

everything. Come on. He said,

I always wondered what it would be like

to have sex with my mother.

He said, Well, no, no I'm not saying

that. He tried to take it back. He said,

Oh, I'm just talking. I was just thinking

that don't take it serious. Don't put too

much on it. Forget I said

anything. I was just dreaming.

What I realized is I really didn't know

the person that I married.

He developed this routine for going out

at night, and as soon as the sun went

down and it was dark outside, he would

put on his overcoat, even if it was

summertime, and a hat.

And he would just be gone.

And I knew he took the gun with him.

This was every single night.

William going out at night became a

secret that I couldn't penetrate. I

just thought it was some other woman. But

after asking so many times and getting

the same response of, it's really not

your business, then I stopped asking.

As his behavior grew more strange,

Crystal and I were glad that he was gone.

It was Easter weekend. He walked

out the door that Friday at 7:00, and

I... Just expected that I would see him

back that night when I returned. Sunday

morning came. William was still not at

home.

I just stayed home all day waiting for

the phone to ring, and there was no ring.

Late in the evening on Sunday, he

comes through the door.

And I'm sitting in the living room, and

I'm, like, looking. William!

What?

His eyes were wild, and he seemed

to be more nervous than I had ever seen

him before. And I said,

well, where were you?He said, I was in

Reno. I drove up to Reno for the weekend.

I know it was-- he was lying. And he

said, are you through?

That was it.

I just screamed. I was just, like, in

terror. Like, just-- it was just the

sickest thing I ever saw.

How do you feel today?I'm nervous.

Talking about it, digging back into the

past. So...

I was just so scared of him.

I spent a lot of time with my dad, and

for me, he was just a monster.

The first time I began to fear my father,

my mom was at work, and my

cousin spent the night with me.

He told us to, you know, go in the

bathroom, go wash your face, gave us both

different towels. And

we accidentally ended up mixing up our

face towels. I think I washed my face

with my cousin's towel by accident.

Get up. And then he got

really angry, started calling me

stupid, and then just slapped me so

hard that I literally hit the floor

and just stood over me yelling.

Get up. My mouth was

cut, and I just was

crying hysterically. Don't

disrespect me like that again, girl.

I just kept looking down at the ground,

and I just couldn't believe that

He slapped me that hard. I couldn't even

believe he put his hands on me that hard

over something that was an accident.

It could just be anything. It could be

the way I'm eating something. It could be

the way I'm walking. You know,

like you're on pins and needles all the

time. I was justscared.

Just hiding from him, basically, trying

to stay out of his way as much as Icould.

When I was 11, I was learning to play the

piano, and my

dad was really strict on me when it

came to my piano lessons, very harsh.

Again.

I remember one day there was a particular

song that I was practicing, and I

couldn't get it right. I kept getting

this one note wrong, and it was just

out of sheer, you know, just nervousness.

My hands were shaking. I was, you know,

really scared.

So finally, when I hit the wrong key,

he yanked my hands up and just

kind of grabbed me by my shoulders and

threw me to the floor.

And just stood over me yelling about how

dumb I was. You make me sick.

Disgust me.

There is an incident with my dad where

I had my favorite doll that my mother

bought for me. Her name was

Molly, and this doll went everywhere

with me, slept in the bed with me. Like,

this was, like, my little sister.

Can I stop?OK. I'm about to cry. I don't

want to cry on camera. OK.

I'm

ready. He took the

doll one time and while I was

sleeping and

hung the doll with a belt around herneck.

And so when I woke up, the first

thing I see when I sit up is Molly

hanging from the bookshelf with

the belt around her neck.

I just screamed. I was just like in

terror, like just. It was just the

sickest thing I ever saw.

Just kept saying, you know, your doll is

dead, and I killed your

doll, and now, now you-- what are you

going to do now?You have a dead doll.

Molly is dead.

And he was just laughing. Like, he made

sure he was in the room when I woke up

screaming, and he was just laughing.

I would tell Molly, you know, I hate my

dad. I hope he dies. I hope someone kills

him. At least I know

if I told the doll it wasn't going to get

out. I would sit there

for hours and just stare out the window,

just praying to God, you know, to get my

mom home safe. Because if something

happened to her, then I would be stuck

with him the rest of my life by myself.

But I just always

felt like I was in the dark. trapped

in a hell I couldn't get out of, and I

had no control over that.

We had this big Victorian. It was three

stories. And we had this big

picture window. It was, like, right

across from the window in our neighbor's

house. One day, when I was

coming out of my room, I noticed William

just captivated looking into this

window. At the time,

it was a single lady living over there.

And when I said, What are you looking at?

He was startled. Stop creeping

around. It's my business.

I had a pager at all times and my

daughter was told you can contact me

anytime. So I get

a beep from my daughter and I called her

back right away because it said 911.

Well, 911 means it's an emergency. Hello,

Crystal. And so when I called her back, I

said, well, what's going on, Crystal?She

said, Mom, Daddy didn't let me go to

school today and he's acting very weird.

I said, what do you mean weird?She said,

well, he's pacing up and down the stairs.

And he had a mask on. You just stay in

your room, OK?OKCall

me if you need anything else, OK, baby?

OK, Mom. At

this point, I was just terrified because

I didn't know what was going on.

She called my pager again, and it said

911. And my

heart was beating. And I went and I

called her back, and she said, Mommy, the

police are outside. What do you mean

outside?Where?She said in front of our

house. She said the lady next door jumped

out the window. I said the lady-- she

jumped out the window. What?

William, what happened today?Nothing

really. I said, what do you mean nothing?

Crystal said that the lady next door

jumped out the window. He said, oh, she

did. She jumped out the window. They said

that maybe it was a burglar or something,

but I don't know anything about it. I

said, did the police come and ask you

anything?And he said, no, the police

didn't ask anything. And Crystal told me

you're walking around the house with a

mask on. Yeah, I was.

And he said, oh, I was cleaning up some

trees and some leaves and I didn't want

the dust to get in my face. All right,

I'm going to put the tools back away.

My mom was like, do you see the mask?And

I said, yeah. She said, can you show me?

I took her to the side of the closet, and

I pointed to the exact shoe box where it

was. OK, baby, go on

downstairs, OK?My mom told me,

OK, to go, you know, leave out the room.

I wanted to ask him more about it, but he

didn't want to talk about it. He was

adamant. He did not want to talk about

it. And he would get very angry, like I

didn't have the right to ask. So I felt

like if I fight back, this is really

going to get ugly.

One night,William came home after he had

been out on his ritual walk with the gun

and the coat. He came and he's

like, Where's the food?I said, There is

no food. Crystal and I had the last of

the leftovers. I didn't know you were

gonna be home tonight.

Then he lashed out, grabbed me by my

collar. You better learn to respect

me! And he starts screaming, I'm the man

at the house. You don't tell me what to

do. This is my house! He's

dragging me from room to room like a

ragdoll. I just went limp because

I was numb, for one, and I didn't want to

provoke him anymore. I

was terrorized.

What's wrong with you?

I didn't even recognize him. Even his

voice had a growly kind of tone

to it, like-- like he was another

person. Like,

he just pulled up some evil

personality from within him

and was showing it to me

for the first time. Please, stop.

Please.

This was the moment that

I knew there was no turning back.

I needed to get me and my daughter out of

the house.

I walked towards the closet to get my

shoes. I mean, he was sitting on the bed.

Over his hands, on his lap, he had a

white towel, but I could see that there

was a gun sticking out from under the

towel. And he didn't even acknowledge

that I was there, he did not look, he

just stared straight ahead.

I was shaking. It flashed in my mind,

he's going to kill us. He's got that gun

because he's going to kill us.

And I just remember just being scared and

just really thinking he was really going

to kill us. Crystal, go

get your back.

He's staring straight at the wall like

he's in a trance. I did not

sense that he looked at me, that he

flickered, that he moved or anything. I

did not say one word to William. I just

quietly got my shoes and I left.

I

just remember being so happy that we

could really go, but I remember saying I

wanted to go fast because I didn't want

anything else to happen, you know, to

stop us.

Oh, my God.

This is the face I saw

when William was dragging me around the

house, screaming.

This is the face of anger of somebody who

is deeply, deeply

infected with evil.

Deeply infected with evil.

But his eyes...

His eyes are just-- they look

like they belong to another person.

It's scary.

My daughter, Crystal, said, Mommy, this

house is just cursed. I thought

the house was just-- I just thought it

was evil. I used to call it the

house of horror.

I didn't know that when he was sitting on

the bed with the gun that he had already

killed somebody with that gun.

We have nightmares, we still do. And

in our nightmares, we dream.

that he's back in the house with us

living like nothing ever happened.

And so I'm always connected to this

person, and no matter what I

do, even if I change my last name or if I

don't talk to him, I'm still very much

reminded he is my father.

Mom, there's something I need to tell

you. Do you know what's happened to Dad?

No, I haven't heard from him in years.

She said he's in jail for raping some

women, and he's going to be there for 11

years.

I was like, numb. I could not

believe it. And I know my daughter

doesn't joke. I don't understand,

Crystal. We learned that

he had rigged up a van, and

He would entice women to the van, and

then he would torture them and

make them do sexual things to him,

and then threaten that if they didn't do

it, he was going to kill them.

It made sense that

he led a secret life,

but the extent and the darkness of that

secrecy just-- itsuddenly came to light

that all this time he

was, while he was out,

he was preying on women.

The San Joaquin County Coroner's Office

left a card under my door and wanted me

to contact them. Hello.

Yes, hi. My name is Tim Brownstone. I'm

with the coroner's office. I contacted

you a couple days ago in regards to your

husband. Yes. He's already in

jail for rape, and now the coroner is

calling me. My first thought was that

he was dead. If you have a few minutes,

I'd like to come in and maybe we can

talk. Yes.

Yes, please come in. Thank you. And he

said, We're investigating your former

spouse. for three murders.

And I wanted to speak, but the

only thing that came up from my throat

was just a very loud gasp.

This-- This can't be. My heart was

broken.

My heart was broken because

II wish that I had known that he was

capable of this. I wish that I had the

foresight or the insight to see

that he was a

budding serial killer.

I wish there was something that I could

do that might have changed the way

history folded out. And I feel guilty

that I hadn't seen this coming.

I really feel guilty. I

cried a lot about it for, like, months on

end. It makes me feel like I have--

like I'm a part of that too, like I'm a

part of that evil. And it's never going

to end. I

can't shake that side of me.

This is Victoria Bell.

How unassuming she had to be

to not know who she was.

bringing herself into the proximity of a

murderer. That's the worst kind

of monster. It's the

kind that present themselves as something

that is benign,

harmless,

welcoming, and yet

he can get her in the car and torture her

and murder her, ultimately murder her.

She was murdered that Easter. That

Easter. When

they told me that he murdered somebody in

1988, his attorney, I said, Was

it in April?She said, Yes, how do you

know?And I said, I know because this is

one of the strangest

times in our lives when William actually

was gone for a whole weekend and I had no

insight about his whereabouts.

She's very young. She

looks so innocent,

like she could be my daughter.

Her lips are red, just like mine. Her

complexion is almost the same color as

mine. I wonder if

William saw some of me in her.

Maybe in some kind of way he was killing

me too. and then going back to his

new family and acting like nothing ever

happened.

Never in a thousand years could I have

imagined that I would be in a

relationship with somebody who is now on

death row for killing and raping women.

A lot of people felt like

I should have knownthat my husband was a

rapist and a murderer, that how could I

be so oblivious as not to see that this

man was doing horrible things?

It's just hard to forgive myself for not

looking closer.

It's really hard to live with that. To

the victims, I would say,

I'm so sorry. I am

so sorry.

These women had children. Their children

will have children, and this will be

their legacy, that somebody took

their mother away from them, had no

regard for their life.

That looks like my life in retrospect.

It was good, and there was bad, and there

was horror, there was sadness,

there was pain.

There's murder. And it's not

something that I expected

that would

represent the life that I wanted to live.

Very shocking. And there's not a day

that goes by. I can deny and say

I can put William behind me,

but from time to time he comes back in my

dreams. He comes in my daughter's dreams.

It's just something that. we will never

be able to put

away. There's no closure.

You can only just resign yourself to keep

moving, and even for me, I

have to forgive myself for

not having the skill

or the insight of the maturity to say,

This should have never happened.

but I can't really live the past. It

is the judgment and sentence of this

court that for the crime of murder in the

first degree shall be put to death within

the walls of the California State Prison

at St. Quentin

in the manner prescribed by law

upon a day to be fixed by this court

in any war of execution.

I think forgiveness should be granted to

those people who show remorse. William

never showed any remorse. I

felt like he deserved

the ultimate punishment to take what he

had taken. It would be like

somebody killed my father.

Even though he's bad, I don't think I

want to see him suffer like that.

And I can't help it. I can't help but

feel that way, but that would just be

devastating.

I feel that evil didn't win because

I didn't turn out like my dad.

Even when I was a little girl, I would

always say, when I have a little kid, I'm

going to be a loving mom. I'm going to

raise my child differently. I'm going to

protect them. And I did.

And for whoever sees this, Crystal and I

together on this program will know that

there is nothing that a mother and

daughter can't do together. There's

nothing we can't overcome and conquer

because we have each other.