Alice's Pirate

My recent visit to see Alice, my lifelong childhood friend, afforded us a number of opportunities to reminisce. Predictably, the conversation eventually meandered to our memories of the summer day a few years back, when the El Dorado County sheriff raided my property in full riot gear, with dogs and assault weapons at the ready.

Alice, her husband William, and Jeff and I were all in shorts and even possibly underwear (having never gotten dressed on a hot September weekday when I was working in my home office and they were newly arrived guests who’d just driven ‘round the US on a late summer vacation to get here).

I was in my separate office, a building I’d crafted with love as my sole and separate space where I could work undisturbed. My wonderful, barn-like office building was flooded with filtered light and views of my beach and the American River beyond. I detected movement on the hillside looking away from the beach, and the motion was moving in the direction of the vacant second home on the property. Without registering the law enforcement officer was being almost dragged up the scrubby hillside by a panting, salivating German Shepard, and was wielding what later looked to my untrained eye like a semi-automatic weapon, I abruptly yelled out the open window at him, “Hey! What do you think you’re doing?”

Alice & William at their
home in Florida

But, I’m getting ahead of myself. This was probably about 2014, and Alison, my lifelong friend from childhood, had lived mostly in the panhandle of Florida since we were about 21 years old. She’d been hard to keep tabs on because life had not been kind to her. But, since her first husband passed away and she had met William, things had gotten a little easier. In the summers, they were able to take a road trip around the country, riding roller coasters—Alice’s passion—wherever a famous one could be found. And, each year, as they meandered up the east coast, laughing and posting photos of the day’s excitement, they would share their plans for the coming days, or week, and talk about where they’d be enjoying their next adventure.


And each summer, as the trip unfolded, Alice and William would make a loop up to the north side of the Washington coast and spend a few days with her parents on Deer Lake, on Whidbey Island. 

Their farthest outbound point on the trip, the departure from Whidbey Island always signaled a homeward bound journey. Down the west coast they’d come, arriving often the same day they departed Washington, at my doorstep. And Alice and I would catch up and laugh, and drink wine and we would all BBQ and feel as though a small “stay-cation” had been gifted to us.

Nikki & William at
Nikki's home in Lotus

Alice and William usually stayed four days or so, but once or twice stayed a little longer. We had so much lost time to make up, I never wanted Alice to leave, but eventually, the remaining southerly-located coasters beckoned, and off they’d be.

William was almost an enigma. He had amazing credentials as a human being, but he was also very difficult to be around at times. William had been a soldier in the US Army; ultimately achieving green beret status. Absent of other plans outside the Army, and having found respect and credibility in the Army, William re-upped for multiple tours.

Eventually, his drive to be “all that he could be” put him into the crosshairs, and an IED exploded near his head, gravely wounding him. When rescue arrived, he was determined to be dead, and he was placed into a body bag, headed for the morgue. Fatefully, one soldier noticed the body bag moving, and they discovered he had survived a horrific injury.

William’s injury forced him to retire and he was classified as 100% disabled. Learning to speak again; to walk again; all of these were now his daily effort. The time between this and when Alice met are a bit fuzzy to me, as they seem to be to Alice, and perhaps that is because they were fuzzy even to William himself.

William at Universal Studios

At some point after this, Alice, a recent widow, and William, met online. They were  located in the same state, but at quite a distance from each other.  They were both lonely, and wanting somebody to trust and to love, and be loved by. As I understand it, William eventually took it on himself to make his way to north Florida in hopes that he and Alison would meet. Not being able to drive, he rode a bicycle across the state, after having been living in southerly city.  Without means to find housing, he stayed in a homeless camp there until he met and began courting Alice.

When they did finally meet, Alice felt seen. She felt loved, and cared for, in spite of his challenges, which were, in actuality mostly brain-centric. He had developed a seizure disorder, among other things. But, it was a fit for Alison, and they married, which if my memory serves me might have been 2012 or thereabouts. Over the years, William’s physical challenges worsened. Some days, he could not move. But, even with the difficulties they worked through, they continued to visit and to make their annual roller coaster pilgrimages.

For me, when they were with me, I found that William told a lot of stories from his time in the Army, and they were engrossing. The first time. But, perhaps out of his own need to be seen and not overlooked in his diminished state, the stories were repeated, and I noticed they were embellished. Often, greatly from the original version. Out of respect for a 100% disabled war veteran, we all tended to defer to him and let him speak, in spite of the stories becoming harder to believe (he began mentioning Area 51 and having met “Roger” the alien). We loved William, and we loved that Alice and he had each other.

The reason I say William was an enigma is that he had a very hard time functioning, in those last years. He had funny, odd, kind of cute quirks. For example, he grew his dark brown hair out, and began wearing a pirate hat he got at one of the amusement parks the two visited. He braided locks of his hair and added beads and ambulated, and at that point, looked very much like Johnny Depp in his “Pirates” roles. And this continued for many months. Or, it appeared to. If it ceased when they were home, I was unaware of that, but certainly, when they visited, he was in pirate mode each time.  He created a FaceBook profile in the name of Jymmi Wilson, to preserve his privacy, and occasionally posted rather profound comments.  Other times, he simply reminded us all that he and DeNiro were 'brothers from another mother.'

Also, while he struggled to even talk at times, (and not at all at other times), he could walk up to a piano and begin playing anything. Classical? Yup. Concertos? Mmm hmmm. So, he was, truly, an individual who always left an impression, everywhere he went.  [NOTE:  To see some of the videos of William playing at random places where he discovered a keyboard, click here.]

So, on that hot, sticky, September day in 2014, as I yelled out to the trespassing deputy with the dog and the big gun, the absolute last thing I would have ever guessed was that they were looking for William. Our dear, funny, quirky, rather incapacitated, William. And in response (thank you, deputy, for keeping your cool with me in that moment), he answered with, “We're looking for William Abosso!” And I actually didn’t even register for a few moments because I never called William by his last name, and because William was at that moment sitting on the front porch of our home, and the deputy had walked right past him to get onto the hill he was sneaking up.

I expressed as much, and he went to the front of my home as I ran to the back. I sprinted in and got Jeff, who himself was an off-duty police officer, and explained that something was not right and to go out and talk to the deputies. I got Alison, and by the time I stepped onto my front porch, they were handcuffing William and placing him in a police vehicle. There were law enforcement vehicles simply spilling out onto our road; probably ten of them, and deputies everywhere. For William. What could they be thinking?

He sat quietly in the vehicle, and waited while they—what? They were there most of an hour. None of us even knew why he’d been grabbed. No charges were expressed. Finally, as the car with William pulled away on its way to the jail, one deputy told my husband, Jeff: bank robbery. They claimed he had robbed a bank.

Of course the speed of everything accelerated immediately as Alice began making plans to call a bail bondsman and to gather info. She still knew nothing. Two hours later the bondsman had gotten the details: a bank in south Florida had been robbed, and the facial recognition software had used William’s driver license to “identify” him as the person of interest. Based on this, Florida had issued a warrant for his arrest and—thanks to their annual summer trip—they also were trying to charge him with fleeing and evading and crossing state lines.

William ended up in a cell where, coincidentally, he met the arsonist who was arrested for starting the infamous King Fire that very same day. Apparently, they were placed in the same cell. And Alice was told by the bail bondsman that the State of Florida was not allowing any bail, and planned to extradite William. By then, we had some more details, as the bank robbery image captures were made public 18 months or so before when the bank was first robbed. We felt confident that once the state saw that he was a 100% disabled veteran who couldn’t drive and could never have gotten himself 500 miles away to the bank in question and then back, that he would be absolved.

So, after about a day and a half, and, having exhausted all other options, Alice had one more visit with William, and packed up her car, and high-tailed it back to Florida. They had been at my home for only about 14 hours before this had all transpired. Although they had planned to enjoy meandering all over the Southwest on their way home, Alice made a beeline, and arrived home in a couple of days.

Her plan had been to be there before they extradited William, so she could post bail there, and keep him as comfortable as possible while they sorted out the mess. But, when she arrived home and tried to call him at the jail, she was told he was now in Marshall Hospital. They said he’d had a stroke. He was no longer in custody, and they didn’t want him back, and they were taking no responsibility for him. She was now in Florida, and he, in California, in the ICU, and the separation of the two of them had been at great cost.

Alice and the BMW at the time of their wedding

Because she didn’t know William’s condition, Alice doesn’t want to take time to drive back, so she bought a one-way ticket and flew back. I picked her up and we went straight to Marshall Medical, in Placerville, to see him.

About five days later, William is finally released, and they returned to my home to stay while he recuperated so that he could fly. The string of events left them with most of their financial resources exhausted. William’s recovery coincided with their monthly check so they were finally able to fly home.

Upon arrival home, they were forced to retain a criminal defense attorney. Alice sold the BMW that William had given her as a wedding gift, as it was the one thing they really could sell quickly. 

The prosecution of William Abosso never flinched. They never backed down. Why would they? They had somebody who couldn’t defend himself. He was forced to accept a plea and make restitution for a crime he didn’t commit.

William, Alice, and my mom Annie at our Auburn home during the last visit.

Alice and William visited together only once again. It was wonderful to see them, and yet bittersweet, too.  William was declining.  Not long after the case against him settled, William died in his home; his body finally gave out. The pain of his physical trauma and the string of compounding losses appeared to have gotten to be too much.

Alice called me the morning he passed. We were together at my home, and the news left us in tears. He passed without much recognition of what he gave to his country, and the struggles he was left with for having done so. I was left with unrequited anger at a system that steamrolls over human beings because they can’t defend themselves, or because somebody bigger wants it to be so.

This is my recollection of William, as I experienced him in his last years. Funny. Creative. Unflinchingly himself. And, a bit of a miracle. I might have some details a bit wonky here and there, but for all intents and purposes, this is an accurate and factual account. Rest easy William. I know--we all know--you never robbed a bank.

William Abosso