'Uncle Billy' like part of family

He was homeless, not friendless. Pals say he deserves a headstone.

By CHANDRA BROADWATER
Published July 2, 2007

BROOKSVILLE - Sitting by himself in a lawn chair on the front porch of an abandoned house, he died when his heart gave out.

Now he lies in an unmarked grave.

Another homeless roommate called 911 that April day, as morning light began to filter through the trees overhead. The investigator from the Medical Examiner's Office walked up to find him slumped over in the chair, bent at the waist with his head between his knees.

The old white house sits back about 70 feet from the two-lane road, surrounded by overgrown brush and those old, tall Brooksville trees with Spanish moss hanging off their branches, looking frozen in time.

No police officers came to the lonely scene. It was pretty clear the man had died of natural causes, set into motion by years of drinking and smoking, the autopsy would later reveal.

In his wallet, the medical examiner found five different Social Security numbers. There was a picture in there, too, of a little girl.

But that was it. No other clues.

Who was he? It would take weeks to find out.

* * *

Johnny and Ella Caltagirone met Billy Lacase about eight years ago, when they moved into a home on Fort Dade Avenue.

One day, he came walking up the street and introduced himself. Soon their four children called him Uncle Billy.

The 57-year-old Lacase was about 6 feet tall, with a lean but muscular build. He had long salt-and-pepper hair that he usually wore in a ponytail or a braid. He liked to cover the top of his head with an old straw hat.

He always wore a denim shirt, blue jeans and brown boots. Sometimes he had a beard and mustache, or he might trim it to a goatee and let the hair grow out again.

The Caltagirones picked him up when it got cold outside, or during the holidays when no one should be alone. He came over on the weekends for barbecued chicken and games of horseshoes in the back yard.

Sometimes they didn't see him for a while, but Lacase would always show up just as they started to wonder about him.

Johnny Caltagirone said he and Lacase were like brothers. They'd crank up the radio and listened to Lynyrd Skynyrd or George Thorogood when they pitched for ringers and drank beer until the sun went down.

"He'd give you the shirt off his back, " Caltagirone said. "If he had a sandwich, he might not give you the whole thing, but definitely a half."

He was a smart guy who liked to read. Ella Caltagirone, who studies business administration at Pasco-Hernando Community College, said Lacase would read her English composition books and then talk about the writings with her.

"I always understood it better after we talked, " she said.

Uncle Billy was close with their kids - a girl and three boys, all teenagers now. He was the first to show up at the hospital when son J.C. had appendicitis a few years ago. He carried around a picture of Danyel' in his wallet.

At Christmas or on birthdays, he always made sure to have a few spare bucks to give her sons pocketknives. Or he might write a sweet note to her daughter - always gifts from the heart.

When he felt good enough, Lacase worked whatever jobs he could find through Labor Finders, even though he had a hard time breathing because of emphysema.

The last time they saw him was the weekend before he died, about April 15, Ella Caltagirone said.

During the next three weeks, as Mickey Moran, an investigator with the 5th District Medical Examiner's Office, tried to figure out who the man in the morgue was, the Caltagirones talked about going to pick him up and bringing him over for dinner.

They decided to get him on a Sunday, when Johnny didn't have to work.

But on that morning, the first weekend in May, Moran pulled in front of their home on Gordon Loop. They were sitting outside, chatting away the morning in front of the mobile home. Moran introduced himself and told them why he was there.

Ella felt dread. Johnny stared at Moran, who pulled out the wallet he had taken from the abandoned house and opened it up.

There was Danyel's picture.

* * *

The Caltagirones still can't figure out why Uncle Billy had five different Social Security numbers. They never knew he went by William Young or sometimes spelled his last name as "Lecase." Or that he wrote that he had different birth dates.

The county Department of Health and Human Services, in charge of arranging Lacase's indigent burial, and the Medical Examiner's Office had a difficult time making sense of his background, too. After a visit to the county jail, Moran finally got in touch with a probation officer who knew Lacase, and knew about his friendship with the Caltagirones.

State records show that Lacase was arrested 23 times, mostly down south in Monroe County and a few times in Hernando County. Misdemeanor and felony charges included aggravated assault with a weapon, burglary and probation violation. Hernando County sheriff's deputies last arrested him for shoplifting last July.

Moran also tried to pin down Lacase's background by going through the Veterans Administration in Tampa. But the agency had no record of him.

When Moran flashed Lacase's booking photo, most people knew his face, but not his name or history.

"He chose to stay hidden in his life, " Moran said.

Ella Caltagirone said Lacase didn't talk much about his past, except for stories about Key West and the motorcycle he used to have. Every once in a while, he'd let out a story about being a paratrooper during the Vietnam War.

But whenever that subject came up in conversation, he got upset. He hated that war.

One of the many tattoos on his arms, chest and back commemorated dead comrades.

Some days, Lacase was just depressed. The Caltagirones didn't push for him to talk; they just let him be.

Uncle Billy drank beer just about every day - Busch if he could get it, but usually Natural Light or whatever was around. And with the beers he smoked Marlboros or Buglers, the kind you roll yourself.

Ella thinks he was one of those veterans who changed his name when he got back to the United States.

"You know, so he could start over and not be who he used to be, " she said. "It doesn't really matter to us. You don't have to be blood to be family."

That's why she and Johnny hope to figure out some way to buy Uncle Billy a tombstone. They can't let him go unnoticed in the Brooksville Cemetery, where so many others have commemorated loved ones for so long.

"Maybe we can do some sort of fundraiser, " Ella said. "We go from paycheck to paycheck ourselves, and can't afford something like that. But even if it takes five years, we'll make sure something is there - somehow, some way."

Times researchers Carolyn Edds and Caryn Baird contributed to this report.

[Last modified July 1, 2007, 20:41:44]