It just wasn't worth it, Loretta Weber says.

Her brother Billy loved fixing up old motorcycles and cars. But if someone was going to kill him over salvaged vehicles, it just wasn't worth it.

On Friday night, William "Billy" Weber was found on some property in North where he kept old cars. He had been shot in the chest and side.

"I wish he would have never went there. I wish he had never went there alone. I wish he had never gotten involved in salvaging and restoring trucks. It took too much of his time and it cost him his life," Loretta Weber said.

"I wish he would have taken time to relax and do for himself instead of everybody else," she said.

The people who know Billy Weber say the Cordova man worked constantly. When he wasn't working, he was restoring vehicles or riding his motorcycle. He'd help out anyone he saw in need.

Billy left home for work at about 5:25 a.m. Friday. What happened after that just isn't known. He never made it to work and no one heard from him all day.

His fiance and companion for the past nine years, Angel Pizzoferrato, says the family was planning to go to the movies that night. Dinner was cooked and they were waiting for him to come home.

"I said I'm not going to the movies until I talk to Billy," Angel said. Billy's 22-year-old daughter, Annette Weber, started crying because his phone kept going straight to voice mail each time they tried to reach him.

So Angel and her 19-year-old daughter, also called Angel, grabbed a bat and climbed into the car to drive to North.

"The first song on the radio when I got in the car was 'Freebird,' and that was his favorite song and I said, 'Billy's dead,'" the elder Angel said.

At the same time, about 9 p.m., Billy's brother Stanley Weber was searching for him on the North property. He found him on one corner of it and tried to perform mouth-to-mouth. But then he discovered blood on Billy's mouth. He was dead.

The case is being investigated as a homicide, Orangeburg County Sheriff's Office spokesman Thomas Brown said.

Family members say Billy's death was the culmination of two years of thefts at the North property. Last Labor Day, someone shot a bull and a donkey he kept on the property. Within two weeks, a dog was also killed.

For Christmas, they placed cables around the property to keep the thieves out.

They speculate that Billy went to check on the property Friday before he went to work.

"I think it's rotten the way people see something and figure it's a free-for-all. All he was trying to do was protect his own property, his own private property," Loretta said. "There was nothing there worth dying for."

Loretta thinks the death was premeditated, because "they didn't get a gun. They had one with them."

That's why she and her family are asking for donations to a fund a reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the person who killed Billy.

Loretta says she wants the person who killed him arrested, convicted and given the death penalty.

"He was only 47 years old. He was in perfect health, didn't take any medication, didn't drink, didn't smoke, he was in textbook health," she said.

Now he is being remembered as man who used to push his nephews around in a wheelbarrow and show them how to work in the shop. As the man who was followed around by his two-year-old grandson, Ron, blowing on his face gently when Ron asked for a kiss.

"He was very honest, hardworking and he had a passion for restoring motorcycles and old vehicles," Lorretta said. "He was a very hard worker; a best friend to my brother Bob; and he took good care of my brother."

Annette remembers his smile, his laugh, how he taught her to fish, and how he'd take her around on the motorcycle.

"He'd do anything for anybody," Annette said.

Fifteen-year-old John Terek hopes to become a welder like his stepfather.

"He was a good man. He taught me a lot of stuff. He gave me my first motorcycle," John said.

And Angel Terek, the younger Angel, said, "We may not have been blood, but that wouldn't have made us any closer." Billy "did more for me than any dad."

She just closes her eyes and she knows the spirit of the man who called her "Dodo Bird" is still riding in her heart, she said. "All the dreams he ever had for me, I'll make come true."

The elder Angel says Billy was a protector of his family and the smartest man she ever met.

"Sometimes, if it wasn't for him, I don't think I'd be here," she said.

They had plans to go to bike week, then Alaska and then to travel the world. Now, she must go to bed each night, and wake up every morning, without the man she has loved for the past nine years.

"That guy treated me better than my parents, better than anyone I ever met in my life," she said.

Anyone who wants to contribute to the reward to find the person who shot William "Billy" Weber should contact Culler-McAlhany Funeral Home in North at 803-247-2651.

T&D City Editor Gene Crider can be reached by e-mail at gcrider@timesanddemocrat.com or by phone at 803-533-5570.

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