That’s why his emotional followers up in Section 219 — especially his surrogate mom, Amy Eakle-Davidson, her son Clay, who is Billy’s best pal, and the rest of their extended family — were both tearing up and cheering “ Billy! ... Billy! ... Way to go Billy!”
Just as the diploma is a symbol of improbable, unexpected gain, that old photo — etched onto a dog tag he wore around his neck until the chain finally wore out — is a reminder of terrible, unfathomable loss.
As joyous as Saturday was for 19-year-old Billie — he had a small graduation party in the afternoon and that was followed by a pair of baseball games in Troy with the Dayton Classics, the select baseball team for which he plays second base — that September night in 2000 was as deadly and sorrowful.
“It was horrific,” Amy said.
Although he ended up right in the center of that incident 12 years ago, Billy said he remembers very little of it. That’s understandable, not only because he was just 7 years old, but because it can’t be healthy to relive many of the few snapshots he may be able to recall.
“Billy doesn’t let everybody in,” Amy, an administrator with the University of Dayton Research Institute, said quietly, but with a palpable sense of protection. “Once he does, though, he is loyal to a fault. But he’s not one of those kids who walks around wearing his heart on his sleeve for all to see.”
“He never talks about it,” Clay said.
Then again, it is almost too hard, too painful for anyone close to the situation to talk about and that, off base as it is, may be why some blood relatives have drifted into the distance in his life.
The fading picture on that dog tag is of Martha Madewell, Billy’s mom. A Vandalia bus driver and Huber Heights cafeteria worker, she was active in the lives of her four children, especially the involvement of her two boys in the youth football and baseball programs in Huber Heights and her two girls’ participation in the drill teams.
Larry James Gapen, a Federal Express Ground driver who was 15 years older than Martha, was a longtime coach and a board member with the Huber Heights Youth Football Club. He coached kids’ baseball, too, and in 1997 he became Martha’s fourth husband.
The marriage was often rocky. Police were called to several domestic spats over the next three years and during the summer of 2000 the relationship deteriorated enough that the couple separated and Martha filed for a dissolution of the marriage, which was granted Sept. 14.
Just past midnight on Sept. 18, Gapen slipped back into Martha’s condo on Pheasant Hill Road and found her asleep on a downstairs couch with Nathan Marshall, who had been her first husband.
Gapen, who had brought along a maul, an axe-like tool used for splitting logs, bludgeoned his 37-year-old wife to death, hitting her at least 10 times in the face and head. He killed Marshall, a Delphi worker, with 18 chopping blows to the head and upper body. He then raped his wife.
After that he went upstairs and battered Martha’s 13-year-old daughter Jesica, hitting her at least 32 times with the maul. She would die at Miami Valley Hospital.
He spared Martha’s three other children, telling 17-year-old Daniel who was awakened by the screams to go back to bed. He then took 8-year-old Brooke and Billy, put them in his car and drove off. He spent the night driving around Dayton, stopping once to discard his bloody clothes along I-75 and ended up in Vandalia, where he lived with his daughter.
“I didn’t know where he was taking us, I just remember the cops finally swarmed us,” Billy said. “I had no idea what had happened to my mom or my sister. From what I hear — and I don’t remember much — he had pretty much been my dad. He was the one I thought of as dad. He was always there. He was my coach. ... I liked him ... and then ... everything happened.”
‘My heart just dropped’
Richie Davidson — a Dayton police detective who back then was married to Amy — remembers the day “everything happened.”
“We knew something was going on, but I wasn’t needed, so I went straight to work,” he said. “I got a call from Amy and she said ‘I wonder if that was Brooke and Billy’s mom?’ I was thinking ‘Why would it be?’ and literally, at that moment, I turned to the right of my desk and there was a detective with Billy and he says, ‘Hey, this little guy needs to talk to you.’
“I almost threw up on my desk. I coached the Little League team Billy and my son Clay were on. The boys were good friends. I can say now I’ve never had to compose myself more in my whole career than I did that day. My heart just dropped when I saw Billy. I just grabbed him and held him.”
Richie had known Martha, too. In fact, she once gave him an in-your-face scolding.
“One day we had the unfair task of picking a team out of 65 kids and while we’re doing it, Billy never got mentioned,” Richie remembered with a faint smile Saturday afternoon. “Well, next thing I know she is tapping me on the shoulder saying ‘My son didn’t get a chance to show what he can do.’
“I had to wait and tell her that he was better than the other kids and he already was on the team. Once I did, she was OK with it, but she was always there to see her kids practice and play and to stand up for them.”
And then all of a sudden she was killed and the guy who did it was someone Billy had looked up to as his dad.
Gapen was found guilty of 12 counts of aggravated murder and sentenced to death. While he claimed his murders were crimes of passion, the bludgeoning of Jesica — whom he said “always disrespected him” — was deemed to be calculated and his appeals were denied by the Ohio Supreme Court. He now sits on Death Row.
As he had been led out of the courtroom following his initial convictions, Gapen announced he “loved Billy just like he loved his mom.”
With everyone gone, Billy and Brooke went to live with their biological dad, who hadn’t had an active role in their lives before that. The decade that followed left a lot to be desired for the kids, but the community stepped in whenever it could, whether it was paying fees for teams and uniforms or giving them another place to stay.
No one was there more than Amy, whose son Clay looked out for Billy as much as he could.
“Early on I didn’t handle things well,” Billy admitted. “I was angry and mad. I didn’t know how to relax and cope with things. I had tons of people trying to help me, but mostly I pushed a lot of them away and didn’t want to be helped. As I got a little older I hung out with different kids and didn’t go to school and got in trouble. I was just a heathen.”
He did play baseball his freshman year at Wayne, but then ended up in the Youth Connections program at the Miami Valley Career Technology Center. And when he turned 18, Billy found himself on his own with no place to live. He planned to drop out of school, but following a few conversations with Amy — including one in which she learned he had gotten nothing for that Christmas in 2010 — that all changed.
“That was the last straw,” she said. “I told him ‘You’re coming to live with us.’ I went to pick him up and there he stood with a garbage bag filled with his clothing and belongings. That’s all he had.”
Not so easy
When Amy brought Billy to the Miamisburg apartment she shares with Clay and daughter Jessie, she said she asked him what he wanted to do: “He said, ‘I want to go to school and play baseball and after that I want to go to college.’ ”
But she soon found out that was easier said than done. As she tried to get his transcript from Wayne and get him enrolled at Miamisburg, she said she initially was told by some administrators at both schools that Billy had missed so many classes, his best bet was just to try getting a GED.
She refused to listen and her longtime boyfriend, Mike Colleary, eventually found a sympathetic ear in Miamisburg guidance counselor Sandra Sweetnick, who set up a vigorous course of study that included full summer school sessions — all of which Billy embraced without hesitation.
After that Amy sought to get him playing baseball, though the Ohio High School Athletic Association treated him as a simple transfer at first and said he had to sit out a year.
She fought that ruling for four months and eventually was able to make her point using the McKinney-Vento Act, which guarantees educational opportunities for youngsters who find themselves homeless.
She made several trips to the OHSAA to plead her case and was assisted by Miamisburg coaches Jake Long, Tim Henry and Dan Mote, as well as by Dayton Classics coach Greg Beemer.
“We tried to stress that there are times when baseball and the team aspect offers kids something they can’t get anywhere else,” Beemer said.
Finally she said OHSAA Commissioner Dan Ross saw her point and helped push Billy’s case forward so he could play a year of baseball for the Vikings.
He didn’t play this season — his four years of prep eligibility had passed — but he’s the starting second baseman for the Dayton Classics and thanks to Beemer and his staff, he has a few junior colleges making overtures to him for next season and at least one four-year school showing interest after that.
‘Strongest kid I know’
As Billy’s party got started Saturday afternoon, Richie Davidson looked across the room at Billy and said softly: “I’ve never been more proud of anyone in my life.”
He admitted as soon as the graduation ceremony had ended that he had hustled in front of his wife Missy and everyone else to get to Billy for a private moment: “I didn’t want everyone to see me crying.”
As for Amy, that wasn’t an option. “She was crying already before the thing started,” Mike smiled.
To that, she shrugged: “I just love him like he was my own. He’s just a real good kid.”
Beemer summed it up best at the Classics’ practice the other night. “This is a story of redemption and hard work and sacrifice. There are a lot of heroes in the deal: Amy for everything that she’s done, Clay for sharing his family, and, of course, Billy himself.
“Most people don’t come back from what he has gone through — especially when there’s no one around to put their arms around them, physically and figuratively, and give them structure and guidance and someone to lean on.”
Clay sees that as well: “I know there’s times he misses his mom. I can tell sometimes when it bothers him and I don’t know how he does it. ... He’s the strongest kid I know.”
Billy, though, shakes his head at such superlatives: “I don’t want to sit back and say I had a bad life — one that was so much worse than someone else — because you can’t dwell on things you can’t control anymore. From it though I have learned I don’t want to hurt anybody because I’ve been hurt and I’ve I felt pain and heartache.
“I just want to be real with everyone. I’ve learned you can’t just sit back and wait for someone to help you, you have to do it on your own first and when you do, other people will be willing to help you, too. And they have. That’s why I consider myself real lucky.”
As he listens to Billy now, Richie is sure of one thing: “His mom would be proud of him today. This would have been an absolute huge day for her.”
The woman who once had wanted to be sure her son got a chance to show what he could do, would have seen just what happened when he finally did get the chance.
And in a way Saturday, Martha Madewell was up there on the stage with her boy.
Beneath his blue graduation gown — in the pocket of his dress pants — Billy was carrying that Baby Bible and the faded photo of his mom.
Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2156 or tarchdeacon@ DaytonDailyNews.com.
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