Book Description

Conquering Darkness, Memoir of the Serial Killer's Wife (Revised Edition) is a painfully candid account of the lives of two people who grew up together in West Oakland, California. Their story, would, in a few aspects, mirror the simple plot of "boy meets girl." Everybody knows that story-right? Boy meets girl; they fall in love and live happily ever after. However, the lives of Alice and William were woven together by threads of early parental abandonment and gross parental abuse that came creeping in from their pasts. Alice's father abandoned her at the delicate age of five. That early experience filled her with insecurity she could not shake; this, in turn, gave birth to a fragile and emotional state of mind, which made Alice desperate to find a man to replace her father and the love he had given to her. William on the other hand, grew up with both his parents in the home, but his mother verbally and physically abused him. He desperately struggled to love and please her-but to no avail. William's misguided search for love would take him on an ill-fated journey with all kinds of dark psychological twist and turns that ruptured his childhood and split his adult mind down the middle; one side was good, and one side was pure evil. This journey started, unbeknownst to Alice, long before she joined William in marriage. But how would the young Alice know whom she was really dealing with? It took decades for her to truly understand that question. More importantly, how would Alice ever understand who she was then or who she is now? This memoir, written by Alice Swafford and her daughter, Crystal Choyce-Lige, provides an up close and honest retrospective account of what life was like with a budding serial rapist and serial murderer, who flew under the radar of his family and law enforcement for decades. How? He was very, very clever and cunning, playing the part of husband and father, while luring and preying upon the most vulnerable people in our society. The essential questions asked and then answered are: How and why could this nightmare happen and then last for so long? Why couldn't Alice see what was right in front of her? The answers will enlighten as well as surprise those who embark upon the riveting adventure of reading this book.