White Devil. Bob Halloran
“May they be well, happy, and peaceful,” he said over and over.
John was so entranced by his meditative state, so singularly focused on his purpose, that he was able to achieve a serenity that stood in stark contrast to his surroundings. John Willis was quietly celebrating his forty-second birthday in jail. He would certainly celebrate his forty-third, and there could be as many as eighteen birthdays after that spent behind bars.
Before rising from the floor, John took a moment to recognize the circuitous nature of his life’s journey. Sitting on the cold jail floor, alone and praying, was notably similar to when John was fifteen years old and convinced he would die on his kitchen floor. He was cold, hungry, and alone then, too.
“I wasn’t looking to do anything other than survive as a kid,” John says. “I went from surviving to basically taking everything I wanted. The way I look at it, there’s a lot taken for granted in this country. You go home, you shut your door, you’re inside, you have heat, you eat food, and you live there. But what happens when I’m a kid and my mom dies? There’s no more food, there’s no more heat. Now there’s a need to survive. I wanted to actually make something of my life. In the beginning, I was angry at the world, very angry that my mother had passed away and I was in a situation with no money. No nothing. I didn’t have family, because my sisters were caught up in drugs. I was basically taken in by a family who was Chinese. I grew up just a whole different species than what was around me. I found myself in a society that didn’t trust anybody, never mind somebody white, somebody American. And then to be given duty, honor, and respect—to me that was something I cherished, and to this day I do.”
What John offers there is a stripped-down summary of his life that attempts to explain why he chose an amoral, greedy, and violent path, but never broaches why he rejected an infinite number of alternate routes. His circumstances, dire as they were, taught him lessons that some would affirm and others would renounce. But from the time he was a boy, John Willis was convinced he knew what it meant to be a man. He was taught that a man is a soldier. And nothing more.
Willis didn’t fight on a traditional battlefield. He fought in the streets, and the enemy was constantly changing. Willis’ enemies were from rival gangs or the local police. Both were out to get him. There were the businessmen he robbed, and the victims he bludgeoned. All sought vengeance. There were prostitutes and gamblers, drug dealers and drug users, and countless others who would have loved to see John Willis taken down or taken out. But Willis survived it all. And what’s the point of surviving, if you’re not going to live a little? That’s why, despite his own best advice and against his own self-interest, he bought a Porsche, a Bentley, and a multimillion-dollar home. Those purchases were self-destructive, but they made him feel good. He knew the police took notice of a gangster flashing lots of cash, but like an addict, Willis needed to feel good, if only temporarily. Those purchases were not only his drug; they were evidence of his righteous pursuits. He was winning the war, so God must be on his side.
“I believe that God loves me,” Willis says with conviction, but anticipates his faith may be met with doubt, and adds, “You might say, ‘How could God love me?’ Well, if he doesn’t love me, he doesn’t give me anything. Some people he puts to the test. I’m all about the test. I really do think God loves me, and I love people. I’m not a monster. I love people, and I have a value for each and every person. But I also believe if you’re a person deserving of what you get, that’s what you get. That’s how it goes.”
And in John Willis’ world, he decides what a person deserves. For instance, the man in the Chinese restaurant who once brazenly told John to “shut the fuck up” deserved to be struck with an open hand and hit over the head with a Glock pistol. So, John did those things.
“And then I stuck the gun in his eye,” John continues. “He’s bleeding. People are looking at me and they’re scared. They took the guy into the bathroom and cleaned him up. For me it was nothing. He was no one. I turned, and had a drink with everybody. I thank God the man left, because I might have gone back in the alley and shot him. When I go back to the bar, I’m not shaking. I’m thinking—where do I want this to go? Did I go too far, or did I not go far enough?”
Such is the mentality of a street soldier. John is convinced now more than ever that a man fights every day for his own survival. A man is a self-centered creature who recognizes that contentment, like true happiness, is not only unattainable; it is the foolish pursuit of the embattled and desperate losers of the war. John Willis is a man. He lives these principles unwaveringly. He is a soldier who believes he is fighting the good fight, and that he is winning the war. Shedding his white skin, adopting a culture he was not born into, and surviving into his forties is proof of that, and surviving remains the greatest accomplishment of the man his enemies call the White Devil.
JOHN WILLIS was born May 11, 1971, at Boston City Hospital. He was brought home to a three-family house at 37 South Munroe Terrace in Dorchester. His father, an ex-con who worked as a carpenter, was a large, angry man who drank too much and beat his wife, Francine. When he ultimately ran afoul of the Irish Mob, he escaped to an Indian reservation in the mountains of South Carolina. It was better for everyone that he left, but John, who was only three years old at the time, grew to hate a father he never really knew.
So, John was raised by his mother, Francine, and her three much older children from a previous marriage. John’s brother, Richie, who owned the home and lived on the second floor with his wife and three daughters, took on paternal responsibilities. He helped with the bills and administered strict discipline. Richie was a hardworking man who built a successful carpet business. He had two passions: fishing on his large boat, and drugs. John says Richie did a line of cocaine every night when he came home from work.
John’s last memory of his brother is when Richie forcefully threw him down the stairs.
“I wish you were dead!” John cried out.
Two days later, Richie died of a heart attack brought on by his cocaine addiction. He was thirty-four years old.
“That really messed me up,” John recalls now.
Richie’s death caused Francine to go into a yearlong depression. She continued to do the best she could to make John happy. In fact, she spoiled John. Making good money as an executive at the Stride Rite shoe factory in nearby Roxbury, Francine lavished John with the best of everything. He had the finest shoes and clothes, the latest toys, and his hockey equipment was the envy of his blue-collar neighborhood friends. Suddenly, it all went away.
Perhaps if Francine had complained sooner about the pain in her calves and thighs, things would have been different, but a year after Richie’s death, Francine suffered complications from her diabetes.
“She went in for open heart surgery, and they took her legs,” John’s cousin Debbie recalls. “Gangrene had set in. She was a very, very pretty woman. A beautiful mix of Italian and Indian. She looked like Liz Taylor. But when they took her legs, that’s when everything went downhill.”
Francine’s depression grew worse. Her self-image was shattered. She was given big, heavy prosthetic legs that she lacked the strength to maneuver. She was an invalid left in the care of a fourteen-year-old boy.
“I think it was at this point that my life and my view of it changed,” John considers aloud. “I was mad at God and the whole world for bringing so much pain to my life.”
John’s sisters, Sandra and Linda, who were eighteen and sixteen years older than John, respectively, were busy with their own growing families. They thought Richie’s widow, Sonny, who still lived upstairs, was helping to take care of things, and she thought the sisters were, but it all fell upon John’s shoulders. He was left alone to cook, to clean, to shop, to give his mother her insulin shots, and to get her to the bathroom for showers and all other purposes. It was humiliating for both of them.
John loved his mother and did his best for her, but he was helpless when it came to her weakening heart and her overwhelming sorrow. Those things took her independence, her will, and ultimately