Bucks Co. Child Rapist Lived In Perverted House Of Horrors: DA

If ever there was a house of horrors, it was inside of William Thomas' Falls Township trailer.

When authorities arrived there last November, they found walls covered with photographs and drawings of prepubescent girls. There were journals and notes detailing sexual assaults on children, abundant sex toys and sex dolls, and an estimated 1,000 pairs of little girls' underwear, some affixed to the bedroom ceiling. One pair was even found rolled up, tucked behind his genitals the day he was arrested, prosecutors say.

Now, the 59-year Bucks County handyman who authorities say befriended neighbors and customers then raped their young daughters over the past 27 years will die in state prison.

Thomas, a Levittown native, on Monday pleaded no contest to charges of rape and indecent assault on at least six victims. He was sentenced to 60 to 120 years for those crimes. He also pleaded guilty to multiple child pornography charges in which a seventh victim was identified, and was sentenced to a concurrent 40 to 100 years.

Thomas had a “deviant obsession," prosecutors said in court Monday.

To exhibit that, prosecutors displayed a dozen sketches Thomas made of his victims being assaulted, as well as large sex dolls, various sex toys, little girls’ underwear, and the sheet of plywood that ultimately exposed his crimes.

“Your depravity is without limitation.”

For the past 10 years, Thomas lived at the Midway Village Trailer Park. He worked as a handyman. It was in this capacity that he gained the trust of neighbors and clients. He became friends with them, would share meals with them, and was even left alone with their children.

They called him Billy or Willy.

“He seemed like a genuine guy trying to help out a single mother so she could work and support her children,” said one victim, a 27-year-old mother of two who, along with her younger sister, was raped over a two-year period in the 1990s.

But when her mother wasn't home he assaulted them, authorities said. They were 7 and 4 when it began.

“In that year and a half to two years of Billy watching us, he did things to us that no young child should know anything about,” the victim said, “knowing he could get away with it because he gained our trust so we had no idea they were wrong at the time.”

Another victim who was assaulted multiple times, including on Christmas Eve in 2014, explained in a letter to the judge that she knew what he was doing was wrong, but she was too afraid to tell anyone.

“Willie is a bad person. We wish we had told our parents what happened to us, but we were very, very scared," the girl, now 10, said.

“Your depravity is without limitation," Bucks County Judge Wallace H. Bateman Jr. said.

The telltale plywood

On Nov. 11, 2016, the manager of the Midway Village Trailer Park called the police.

The owner of a unit that Thomas recently had renovated made a disturbing discovery: A piece of plywood with "graphic, handwritten" details of sexual assaults on two girls. It was inscribed with the names of the victims, their parents, and the date of one assault: Christmas, 2014, authorities said.

Falls Township detectives used the information on the plywood and were able to track down the family, who had moved from the trailer park in 2015.

Then more clues began to surface.

A shed behind a house where Thomas once lived contained written descriptions of assaults on two young sisters he had babysat in the 1990s.

The owner of a house Thomas had once lived in found a homemade, life-sized sex doll in an attic crawl space. He also told police he found a handwritten description of a child sex assault on a wall behind a shelf, and photos of a naked Thomas sitting beside a pool with a group of children, also naked.

Thomas’s mobile home was searched, uncovering the perverse decorations and "a room full of nightmares, bad dreams, and broken children," as described by the judge.

Haunted by memories

Not all of the victims can remember the assaults in detail. But many have fuzzy memories they believe they subconsciously tried to suppress.

In a statement read in court by her mother, one victim said that she had “completely pushed down my emotions and the things that happened to me concerning Willy” until police contacted her last summer.

“I immediately recognized Willy when the mug shot was slid in my direction. I told myself I could be strong and not let what happened affect me,” the victim wrote. “Instead of being mentally strong in this moment in time, I continued to turn to drugs and isolation to make me feel better.”

The victim recently dropped out of college due to mental health issues and suicidal thoughts, her mother told the judge. After writing her statement, she attempted suicide at home last Saturday by cutting her wrists in the shower.

Thomas sat silent with a bowed head for most of the hearing, according to descriptions provided by prosecutors.

He offered an apology, saying “I tried my best to keep it in my head and not touch another person. In my head, I never thought I hurt nobody. I’m sorry.”

But the judge said his victims will be haunted by memories for the rest of their lives, and that Thomas is a monster.

“It’s hard to know that my daughters’ virginity was taken by a 60-year-old man,” the mother of two victims told the judge. “Please let me go home and say to my children, 'This animal will be kept in his cage for the rest of his lying life.’”

PHOTO: Bucks County District Attorney