William Jennings Choyce was born about 1954 and was raised in Oakland by his mother and father with a brother and a sister.
He killed three women across nine years. Victoria Bell was from Oakland and was killed in 1988. Lawanda Beck and Gwendolyn Lee were both from Stockton, killed in 1997; Beck’s body was found on the morning of August 11 that year, in an uninhabited industrial area, shot in the back of the head. All three were described at trial as working as prostitutes. He picked them up, raped them, shot them, and left their bodies in sexual poses. The ballistics evidence tied the bullet fragments recovered from Lee and Beck to the same revolver, and DNA identified him as the major contributor of foreign material found on Lee.
The killings went unsolved for years. Local agencies were working with the forensic technology of the time, and the victims were women on late-night streets whose disappearances attracted little attention.
He was in state prison for the rape of two women in Oakland when, in 2002, DNA linked him to the three murder scenes.
At trial three further women gave evidence that he had raped them at gunpoint. The defence sought life rather than death, arguing that he had been psychologically damaged by an abusive mother. The jury convicted him in 2008.
He was sentenced to death on December 5, 2008 in San Joaquin County Superior Court, together with sentences totalling eighty-one years to life on the non-capital counts, and sent to death row at San Quentin. His automatic appeal was decided on July 21, 2025, when the California Supreme Court affirmed the judgment in its entirety, rejecting his claims of instructional error, prosecutorial misconduct and constitutional challenges to the death penalty and the special circumstances found against him.
Authorities have said they believe there were other victims beyond the three proved in court. No further conviction followed, and no execution date has been set.
The Murderpedia entry for this case is misfiled under North Carolina. Every source consulted places the killings, the trial and the sentence in California.