Not much is revealed about Bill's early life, other than that he claims to have never felt loved and wanted someone to love, and that he had a fondness for butterflies. Apparently attracted to teenage girls, Bill attempted to abduct a 14-year-old girl by luring her to his studio under the pretense that he would make her a model. When he started making sexual advances, she escaped. It is unspecified if he served any time in prison. The moment Bill first laid eyes on eight-year-old Hope Kingston at a gas station one night in 2004, he instantly became obsessed with her. He thought she was perfect, and he decided that he had to have her, even though she was too young for his liking at the time. Bill followed Hope and her mother Monica to their home in Manassas, Virginia, and after stalking Hope for some time, he used a ruse to abduct Hope from the front yard while she was playing with her friend Heather Wilson. Bill also left a note of thanks on Heather Wilson's bike. Monica frantically put all of her resources into searching for Hope, and as a result, her mortgage took a back seat, and she was forced to move out of THE HOUSE. Not wanting to move too far away from the home she raised Hope in, Monica moved into an apartment located near the house.
Bill kept Hope in a ROOM on the top floor of one of his two houses for a few years, apparently only allowing her downstairs for meals and special occasions. During the first few years, he had to keep her chained to a chair whenever she was in the kitchen, and then Hope got into her teens, which Bill thought was a more desirable age than she was when he abducted her. Bill started sexually abusing Hope. After many forced years of abuse he got her pregnant, which was most likely the final straw for Hope. As a last resort of freedom from Bill, she committed suicide by slashing her wrists. Before she bled out, she wrote on the wall "Why Me?". Bill tried to help her when he found her on the floor, but it was too late. Her suicide completely derailed his plans for his delusional family. He kept Hope's body on the bed in that room, and it mummified. Bill desperately wanted to recreate what he lost when Hope committed suicide. As part of a deluded plan to "recreate" Hope, Bill entered Garcia's support group, knowing that Monica was in the group, and he began stalking her, without her being aware of it. In group meetings, Bill talked about Hope's suicide, but, in order to cover up the fact that he was talking about Hope, Bill merely said that he had a pregnant wife who killed herself.