American homicide; the killer of two men on a subway train and perpetrator of more than 200 robberies, along with 25 stabbings by the time he was 15.
A short, slender black male, Willie was considered highly intelligent. His dad, whom Willie never met, had been killed while trying to escape a prison hospital. His dad had earned his Phi Beta Kappa from prison with a B.A. in Sociology and Computer Science but Willie had little education, having spent most of his life in institutions.
Willie grew up in Harlem. By age nine, he had been sexually abused by his grandfather. He carried a knife and seldom went to school. By this time, he had set a man on fire and was stealing cars.
When the skinny black kid was put in a school for boys, he stole a van and escaped. Caught, he was transferred to one facility after the other, not one of which could control him. Paroled, Willie was back on the streets, robbing people in the subways. A poster boy for juvenile crime, he was sentenced to only five years for stabbing the two men on a subway in 1978.
The guards referred to him as Hannibal Lecter for his sheer viciousness. The front of his cell was shielded to prevent him from throwing excrement at the guards. For interviews, he spoke through tiny holes punched into the Plexiglas window that separated him from the author of his biography. The electrical outlets were removed from his cell because of his tendency to eat light bulbs. At age 25 he stabbed a prison guard while being interviewed in a common reception room for no apparent reason. He boasted that he had committed some 2,000 crimes and was finally sentenced to Woodbourne State Prison in the Catskills.