Tied Together By a Tragic Bond

Billy had called because he had lost his wallet, his latest misfortune. Three weeks earlier, an electrical fire started in the room Billy shared with freshman place kicker David Abdul and burned down the apartment where they lived with five teammates. A priest named Henry Krawczyk, whom Billy had met the previous summer, offered him and his six teammates rooms in the convent at St. Anne Church.

Immediately, Augustine said, "Billy felt uncomfortable in the church." It was cold and scary. Dirty Venetian blinds covered the windows. The behavior of the 50-year-old priest bothered Billy most.

Court records say Krawczyk watched pornography in his quarters. He bragged about the hot tub he was going to install. He kept a bar fully stocked, owned a mixed drink manual and insisted the players imbibe the drinks he poured. Billy felt strange and wrong about it, Augustine and Abdul said, but also obliged. Krawczyk, after all, was letting him stay there for $50 a month.

Krawczyk offered Billy and Abdul a bottle of liquor on June 17 when they arrived home from a workout, Abdul said. They called their five former roommates and had a cookout and a night of free drinks.

Around 2 a.m., after they had both gotten drunk, Billy and Abdul climbed through a window to the roof of St. Anne, which offered a view of Pittsburgh's waterfront. They stood on the roof for a few moments, then wormed back inside and entered a crawl space. Abdul turned left to explore the attic over the church, crawling on planks of 2-by-4s, and Billy followed.

Abdul shouted to Billy that he was going to turn around. When he did, Billy was gone, replaced by light beaming up from below. Abdul looked down into the sanctuary below. Blood poured from the back of Billy's head. Abdul yelled, "Call an ambulance!"

Abdul bolted downstairs as fast as he could. He held Billy's head, blood drenching his hands. He peeled open Billy's eyelids and screamed his name. Billy wasn't breathing.

Bill later found comfort in his belief that Billy felt no pain when his head snapped against the pew. Doctors declared Billy dead at 11 p.m. A priest Bill and Kim never had met walked into Billy's hospital room and asked them if he could administer last rites, and Bill waved him in. It was Krawczyk.

Kim walked from Billy's room, Bill following. "He didn't make it," she announced to those in the waiting room. More than 100 people, from Pittsburgh and Maryland, had held hands and prayed together for hours. Now they sobbed in stillness and silence.

Only Nick Gaines stood. He marched down the hall, kicked open a pair of swinging doors, punched them and screamed. Part of him believed Billy still would be all right, that he would drive back to Maryland with them the next day, good as new.

"A lot" raced through his head, he said later. "Too much."

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