William Jennings Choyce was convicted in 2008 of murdering three women in Northern California: Victoria Bell, found in Oakland in April 1988, and Gwendolyn Lee and Lawanda Beck, found in San Joaquin County in July and August 1997. A San Joaquin County jury also convicted him of raping a woman in Stockton in December 1994, a crime she survived. DNA connected him to all three killings, and a firearms examiner testified that the bullets recovered in the two 1997 cases came from the same gun. Jurors returned a verdict of death on each murder count.
In closing argument a San Joaquin County prosecutor called the deaths "joy killing," the Associated Press reported, and the television station ABC10 later listed him among Stockton's best-known cases as the "Joy Killer." The California Supreme Court reviewed the case on automatic appeal and affirmed the judgment in July 2025.
Choyce's childhood came before the jury mainly through experts his lawyers called to testify. A psychologist, Dr. Gretchen White, built a history of his life up to the age of 12 from interviews and school records. She described his mother as brutal and controlling. According to her testimony, his mother beat him and his younger brother often, at times every week. White told the jury that he grew up with "a great deal of rage towards women" and that his capacity to form attachments to other people was "tremendously impaired." His brother and his sister also testified. Both said they loved him, and both said their mother had whipped them as well.
As an adult he married, and he and his first wife owned a handgun together, which he kept after they divorced. He later lived in Stockton with a partner, whom he began dating in 1988, and her children. The two of them owned a Mazda pickup truck together.
His record with the police went back at least to October 22, 1985, when an officer found a loaded handgun in the car he was in and arrested him for having a loaded weapon in a vehicle. The court's account of that arrest does not say how the case ended.
Victoria Bell was the mother of a daughter who was two years old when she died. That daughter later testified that she had grown up without her mother and had needed counseling. A brother-in-law also testified for the family at the penalty phase.
Victoria Bell was found in Oakland on April 3, 1988. She had been shot. Years later, DNA testing matched Choyce to biological samples recovered in her case. The Oakland killing was later tried together with the two San Joaquin County cases.
On December 14, 1994, a woman in Stockton was kidnapped and raped.
On December 22, 1994, police searched a house in Stockton where Choyce was then living with his partner and her children. He was not there. Officers found a handgun and papers showing that he lived at the house. The court's opinion does not say that this gun was tested against any of the later killings, and it records that police later returned it to his partner.
Choyce was not tried for the December 1994 attack until the murder trial, more than a decade later. The jury convicted him of rape and of sexual penetration with a foreign object, and it found true the allegations that the crime involved kidnapping and that he used a firearm. The woman testified at the penalty phase as well, and the Supreme Court later described her account to the jury as "powerful" firsthand testimony.
Gwendolyn Lee was a daughter, a sister, a wife and a mother. Eight members of her family testified about her at the penalty phase: her mother, three of her sisters, her husband, her two daughters and a niece. One sister said her death had left a "void that could never be filled." Another said the loss damaged her own career and hurt the whole family. Her mother told the jury the killing still hurt years afterward. Her husband said that after her death he "gave up" on life and that his career went "down the drain." One daughter was 16 when her mother was killed; she fainted when she was told, the court recorded, and was deeply affected for years afterward. Her other daughter said she felt lost and confused and went to counseling. Her niece called Lee her favorite aunt and said she would always feel the loss.
Gwendolyn Lee was found in San Joaquin County on July 2, 1997. She had been shot. DNA testing later identified Choyce as the major contributor of foreign DNA on a sample recovered in her case.
The Supreme Court's opinion spells her first name two ways, "Gwendolyn" in its introduction and "Gwyndolyn" in its account of the evidence.
Lawanda Beck had a son who was eight when she died. His father told the jury that the boy went from earning straight A's to failing in school after his mother was killed, and the son testified that he had missed being close to her and had grown up without her. Her sister-in-law said the two women had been like sisters and that the killing devastated the family. A niece said Beck had been like a mother to her. Her foster mother testified to how deeply the death affected her, and the father of Beck's children said he had been stunned.
Lawanda Beck was found in San Joaquin County on August 11, 1997. She had been shot. DNA testing later showed Choyce to be the source of biological evidence recovered in her case.
A witness had seen a pickup truck late on the night before Beck was found and described it as resembling an early 1990s Ford Ranger. A Ford dealership employee testified that a Mazda B-series pickup from those years could easily be taken for a Ranger, which mattered because Choyce and his partner co-owned a Mazda pickup.
Dean DeYoung, a criminalist and firearms examiner, testified that the bullets recovered in the Lee and Beck cases were fired from the same gun. The court's opinion does not say that the gun itself was ever found.
The DNA evidence went further. At trial Choyce conceded that his DNA matched the samples recovered from all three women. The Supreme Court's opinion does not describe when or how the matches were first made. The Associated Press reported that he was serving a state prison sentence for raping two women in Oakland when DNA evidence connected him to the murders.
The 2001 Oakland cases formed part of the prosecution's case for death. The parties agreed, by stipulation, that on April 4, 2002, Choyce was convicted in Alameda County Superior Court of raping a woman in Oakland by force or violence. A second Oakland woman testified at the penalty phase that he had sexually assaulted her in 2001, and she identified him from a photographic lineup. The opinion describes that second case as uncharged conduct offered in aggravation; it refers to a presentence report prepared in that case but does not give its outcome. The AP's description of two Oakland rape convictions and the court's description of one conviction and one uncharged assault do not fully match.
Choyce was tried in San Joaquin County Superior Court. The defense called no witnesses at the guilt phase. With the DNA matches conceded, his lawyers argued that the sexual contact with the women had been consensual, that jurors could find no rape had taken place, and that he was not guilty of murder in any degree. They asked the court to instruct the jury on voluntary manslaughter on a heat of passion theory. The trial judge refused, finding no evidence to support it.
The jury convicted Choyce of the first degree murders of Gwendolyn Lee, Lawanda Beck and Victoria Bell. It found true that he personally used a firearm in each murder, and it found two special circumstances: that the murders were committed during the commission of rape, and that he had committed multiple murders. It also convicted him of the rape and sexual penetration with a foreign object of the woman attacked in Stockton in 1994. ABC10 reported that the guilty verdicts came in 2008. The AP reported that Choyce was 54 and lived in Stockton at the time of the trial.
In the penalty phase the prosecution offered evidence of other conduct. It presented the 1985 weapon arrest; a December 1998 domestic altercation after which his partner applied for a restraining order, though she testified that he had never physically harmed her; and the two 2001 Oakland assaults, along with a police search of his van. Fifteen relatives of the three murdered women testified about their losses, and so did the woman attacked in 1994 and her daughter.
The defense asked the jury to spare his life. Dr. White testified about the abuse in his childhood home. A forensic psychiatrist, Dr. Douglas Tucker, examined Choyce and diagnosed sexual sadism, which he traced to that abuse; he told the jury the beatings had left Choyce with a tendency to conflate "rage and sexuality" and to regard women as untrustworthy. Tucker said Choyce told him he had paid for sex once or twice a week for decades. As Tucker understood it, Choyce rationalized the killings as a response to women who would not submit to his dominance, and the killings were his "final way of asserting" control. David Vasquez, a former warden of San Quentin State Prison working as a consultant, testified that Choyce would "pose no additional problems" if he were sentenced to life without parole.
The prosecution answered in rebuttal. Probation officer Maureen Garrett testified that Choyce showed no remorse when he talked to her about the two 2001 Oakland cases and that he denied that one of them had been a rape at all. San Joaquin County Sheriff's Lieutenant Joseph Herrera testified that Choyce denied having had sex with any of the three murdered women and denied killing them. Robert Borg, a prison classification expert, disputed parts of Vasquez's testimony, pointing to escape rates from maximum-security institutions and to differences in security between prisons.
The way the prosecutor questioned Dr. White became an issue on appeal. He asked whether her testimony was an attempt to "blame the family," whether she was the expert "to go to" when a capital defendant wanted to blame his parents, and whether she "almost always" found a way to do so. He asked about her fees, including whether she had spent "50 grand" building the history and was paid "handsomely," and whether she was "trying to hide the ball" by not writing a report. He cut off her answers often enough that the judge told him to let her finish and to change his tone, and several objections were sustained, including one to a question about one of the killings as argumentative. He also repeatedly called her "Ms. White" rather than "Dr. White." The trial judge agreed that the defense objection to that was well taken, and the prosecutor acknowledged that he had raised his voice "probably inappropriately."
On the first day of penalty deliberations the jurors sent the judge a note. It asked: "If the defendant gets life without the possibility of parole, is there any chance that he would ever get out (be paroled) released for any reason[?]" The defense wanted the court to answer plainly that he would never be released. The judge instead pointed the jury to a modified version of a standard instruction telling jurors to assume that whichever penalty they chose, death or life without parole, would be carried out.
The jury returned a verdict of death on each of the three murder counts. The court entered a judgment of death and imposed a further term of 81 years to life for the other offenses and enhancements. In his appeal Choyce gave December 15, 2008, as the date from which he had been under sentence of death.
Every death judgment in California goes directly to the state Supreme Court. Choyce's appeal was handled by William Hassler, appointed by the court; Deputy Attorney General Jamie A. Scheidegger argued for the state. On July 21, 2025, the court affirmed the judgment in a unanimous opinion by Justice Evans, joined by Chief Justice Guerrero and Justices Corrigan, Liu, Kruger, Groban and Jenkins.
Choyce argued first that the judge should have instructed the jury on voluntary manslaughter. The court disagreed. It found no evidence that any of the women had provoked him or that he had acted in the heat of passion, and it rejected the argument that the 1994 survivor's survival implied that the other women had fought him. It added that any error would have been harmless in any case, because the jury's findings on the rape-murder special circumstances showed it had found the killings were committed during rapes, a finding that does not depend on malice.
He argued next that the jury should have been told that the rape-murder special circumstance required the victim to be alive at the time of the rape. The court held that he had forfeited the point by not raising it at trial, and rejected it on the merits as well: it found no substantial evidence that any of the women had died before the assaults, held that the instructions as given implicitly required the victims to be alive, and declined to reconsider its earlier decisions on the issue.
He also challenged the standard instruction on the presumption of innocence and reasonable doubt, and argued that the felony-murder and multiple-murder special circumstances failed to narrow the class of people eligible for death as the Constitution requires. The court rejected both claims, the second by following its own settled precedent.
On the prosecutor's treatment of Dr. White, the court held that most of the complaints were forfeited because defense counsel had not objected at the time or asked the judge to admonish the jury. It also rejected them on the merits and found no prejudice. The court described the repeated use of "Ms. White" as improper but held that this complaint, too, was forfeited because no admonition had been requested.
The court found two instructional errors and held both harmless. After telling the jurors at the penalty phase to disregard the guilt-phase instructions, the trial judge did not define reasonable doubt again for them; the Attorney General conceded the error, but the court found no reason to think the jurors believed the standard had changed. The answer to the jury's note was also wrong, because the court had disapproved that instruction in an earlier case, People v. Letner. But the jurors had already been told that a life sentence meant no parole, and nothing suggested that a commutation was likely, so the error did not affect the verdict.
Choyce argued that carrying out an execution after more than 16 years under sentence of death would be cruel and unusual punishment. The court rejected the claim, as it has in earlier cases, holding that the delay that comes with appellate review is not cruel and unusual punishment.
On the victim impact evidence, the court held that there is no fixed limit on how many relatives may testify, that the witnesses need not have been present at the crime, and that the effects they describe need not have been known to the defendant. The relatives' testimony properly described their relationships with the women and the effect of the killings on their families. The testimony of the 1994 survivor's daughter was possibly improper, the court said, because she was not herself a victim of a crime being sentenced, but any error was harmless given her mother's own testimony and the rest of the evidence. The court also turned aside a set of routine challenges to California's death penalty law, including claims about the burden of proof, juror unanimity, comparison with sentences in other cases, and international law.
The trial court had imposed only one-third of the term for the firearm enhancements under section 12022.5, subdivision (a), on counts three through five, the three murder counts, as though they were subordinate terms. The Supreme Court ordered the abstract of judgment amended to impose the full four-year term on each of those enhancements and otherwise affirmed the judgment in full.
When the California Supreme Court ruled in July 2025, Choyce remained under a judgment of death. In March 2019 Governor Gavin Newsom announced an executive order granting a reprieve to every condemned inmate in California, halting executions for at least as long as he remained governor, and said he was closing the execution chamber at San Quentin, ABC7 News reported at the time.
Accounts differ on the dates. The Supreme Court's introduction describes three murders and a rape committed in Stockton and Oakland between 1988 and 1998, while its account of the evidence gives April 1988, July 1997 and August 1997 as the dates on which the three women were found and December 1994 as the date of the rape. ABC10's retrospective places all three killings in Stockton in a single year between 1997 and 1998, which does not match the court's record that Bell was found in Oakland in 1988.
The record also differs on the Oakland convictions. The Associated Press reported that Choyce was in prison for raping two Oakland women; the Supreme Court records one stipulated rape conviction from April 2002 and treats the second 2001 assault as uncharged conduct.
Whether Choyce ever admitted the killings is not clear from the record. Dr. Tucker described how Choyce rationalized the murders, but the opinion does not say that Choyce confessed to him, and Lieutenant Herrera testified that Choyce denied both the sexual contact and the killings.
October 22, 1985: Choyce is arrested after an officer finds a loaded handgun in the car he is in.
1988: He begins dating the woman he later lives with in Stockton.
April 3, 1988: Victoria Bell is found in Oakland; she had been shot.
December 14, 1994: A woman is kidnapped and raped in Stockton; she survives.
December 22, 1994: Police search the Stockton house where Choyce lives and find a handgun; he is not there.
July 2, 1997: Gwendolyn Lee is found in San Joaquin County; she had been shot.
August 11, 1997: Lawanda Beck is found in San Joaquin County; she had been shot. A firearms examiner later links the bullets in the Lee and Beck cases to one gun.
December 1998: A domestic altercation leads his partner to apply for a restraining order.
2001: Offenses against two women in Oakland, later presented at the penalty phase.
April 4, 2002: He is convicted in Alameda County of the forcible rape of one of them.
2008: Tried in San Joaquin County Superior Court, he is convicted of three first degree murders with special circumstances and of the 1994 rape; the jury returns death verdicts.
December 15, 2008: Date given in his appeal as the start of his time under sentence of death.
March 13, 2019: Governor Newsom announces a reprieve for everyone on California's death row.
July 21, 2025: The California Supreme Court affirms the judgment, correcting the firearm enhancement terms.