Good Neighbor Podcast: Tri-Cities
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Good Neighbor Podcast: Tri-Cities
EP 211: From Courtroom to Crisis: Attorney William Auman's Journey Through Law and Loss
What makes William Auman a good neighbor?
What happens when three decades of legal experience meets a passion for historical exploration and storytelling? William Auman answers this question through his remarkable journey from public defender to private practice attorney to author.
Auman's legal career began at just 24 years old, when he dedicated himself to providing quality representation to those who couldn't afford it in Asheville, North Carolina. For thirteen years, he served as a public defender before establishing his own practice in 1999. While he tried over 250 cases throughout his career, Auman's perspective on the legal profession stands apart from stereotypes. "A lawyer's duty is to make peace between parties," he explains, challenging the win-at-all-costs mentality that sometimes pervades the profession. For the past nine years, he's focused on post-conviction appeals, helping those who may be serving sentences they shouldn't be due to legal errors or misconduct.
Beyond the courtroom, Auman has developed a unique niche combining his love of kayaking with historical research. He maintains a database of approximately 400 bodies of water he's explored, documenting their historical significance. This passion led to his first book, "Pioneer Paddling, Colonial Carolina," and his current project expanding to the broader Colonial South. His most compelling work may be "If Trees Could Testify," a fictionalized account of the real-life 1983 Gahagan murders that remained unsolved for 18 years. The case's connections to biker gangs and organized crime nearly attracted Hollywood attention before unexpected developments changed its course.
Recently, Auman faced his greatest personal challenge when Hurricane Helene destroyed his home of 35 years on the French Broad River. The community's overwhelming response has been a powerful reminder of human kindness amid disaster. "First it was one hour at a time, then it became one day at a time, and now it's more like a week at a time," he reflects on his recovery journey. Despite this setback, Auman continues practicing law while transitioning toward more writing, embodying the resilience he's witnessed throughout his career representing those who need a second chance at justice.
To learn more about William Auman Law Offices go to:
https://wdauman.wixsite.com/auman-law/attorneys
William Auman
This is the Good Neighbor Podcast, the place where local businesses and neighbors come together. Here's your host, Skip Monty.
Speaker 2:Hello everyone and welcome to the Good Neighbor Podcast. So today I am super excited to have a very interesting guest in our studio, and I'm sure you will be as well, because today I have the pleasure of introducing your good neighbor, mr William Allman, who is the owner operator of Allman Law as well, as he is an author as well, so we're thrilled to have you, william. Welcome to the show.
Speaker 3:Well, thank you for having me. I'm not sure who nominated me, but I would like to thank them too. I always enjoy talking about things. As my wife says, I love having captive audiences, and running my mouth is how she puts it.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Well, you'll have an opportunity today.
Speaker 2:That's okay. So, like I said, we're super excited to learn all about you and the different things you're doing. So if you don't mind, why don't you kick us off by telling us what you do?
Speaker 3:Well, I was a baby lawyer out of law school at age 24 and I came to Asheville, north Carolina, to work as a public defender defending poor people who, you know, could not afford quality representation. I felt like public interest work was very important, so I started my career that way and I did that for 13 years and and in 1999, I left to form my own practice and I have had my own practice ever since. I did 30 years roughly of trial work as my wife again would say, people used to pay me to talk and then the last nine years I have been doing primarily post-conviction and appeals in the legal realm, and what that basically means is there are people who didn't get represented correctly. There were mistakes made, maybe by their lawyer, maybe by the judge, maybe by the district attorney, and sometimes people are serving sentences they should not be serving and every now and then somebody is in custody that should not be so. For the last nine years, that's how I have focused my practices representing those individuals.
Speaker 2:Wow, fascinating. So how exactly did you get on the journey to law practice?
Speaker 3:Well, my uncle was a judge. He actually had the Jim Baker PTL case back in the day and I always looked up to him. My wife's father was a district attorney who was very instrumental in pushing me towards law school. I wanted to be a tennis pro. In fact I was certified to teach tennis by Dennis Vandermeer back in the day, and I was also a basketball coach for a while. So I tell people, I kind of went from one court to another court to another court, but now I always had an interest in law. I majored in political science when I went to NC State and I got a master's degree in public affairs at Western Carolina as well, Basically so I could teach. I have taught for 25 years as an adjunct professor at both Mars Hill University and UNC, Asheville.
Speaker 2:Wow, when do you sleep?
Speaker 3:That's a good question. I'm doing more of that now, since things have kind of slowed down. I think I mentioned to you we lost our primary home in the hurricane back in the fall and so, even though things have slowed down legally, for me it's been crazy otherwise.
Speaker 2:So even though things have slowed down legally, for me it's been crazy otherwise. Well, you mentioned losing your home. Are you rebuilding?
Speaker 3:We can't rebuild where our house was because it was on the French Broad River, and the French Broad River has now taken the land that the house sat on pretty much. There's some left, but really not enough to rebuild, and we were there for 35 years. Left, but really not enough to rebuild. And we were there for 35 years. We thought we had survived everything when we had the hurricanes hit back in 2004, francis and Ivan, and we were fine then. But this last one, as you well know, was biblical proportions Absolutely, absolutely.
Speaker 3:I still give out my office in Asheville and I'm still practicing, at least through the end of this year. I'm not sure what next year is going to hold, because I'm really transitioning into doing more writing.
Speaker 2:Very good, very good. Well, what in the law business? What are some myths or misconceptions that people have?
Speaker 3:Well, first of all, a lot of guilty people don't get off on technicalities. A lot of guilty people don't get off on technicalities. In my world, you know criminal defense a lot of people seem to have that perception and I get asked questions well, how can you defend somebody who you know may have done something? Well, a lot of times, as Mahatma Gandhi said back in the day, it's a lawyer's duty to make peace between parties and to help people. He was a lawyer too. A lot of people don't know that, and so a lot of times my job is really being more of a social worker and trying to mitigate and get someone assistance for their drug problem or whatever it may be. But again, the Sixth Amendment says everybody has a right to an attorney and the Constitution is very important in protecting our system of justice. So everybody has to follow the rules in order for it to work, and sometimes the rules aren't followed and on those occasions people need to be held accountable for it.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. Well, I may know the answer to this question, but outside of work, what do you like to do for fun?
Speaker 3:I'm a big kayaker and I paddle pretty much any place I can find, whether I'm, you know, in the mountains of North Carolina or somewhere else. My wife and I both enjoy that. I've got a database of roughly 400 different bodies of water I keep up with, and I'm a history buff too, so I make notes with respect to where we paddled and what the historical significance of that area might be. And the first book I wrote was called Pioneer Paddling, colonial Carolina, which was focused on historical kayak canoe areas in North Carolina, and the one I'm currently working on is Pioneer Paddles of the Colonial South, which is going to include your, your, tennessee, as well as Virginia, georgia, south Carolina, florida and North Carolina, and that that's a that's pretty big undertaking. I'm in the middle of that one right now oh wow.
Speaker 2:So you like uh uh across any water that the the uh over Mountain Men did you got it.
Speaker 3:Sycamore shoals, uh is, you know where the treaty was signed and, yeah, the watauga river is going to be in the book. A lot of the you know daniel boone trail sites, the davy crockett, nola, chucky area, douglas lake near newport is is a favorite of ours, so there'll be. Tennessee is going to be more of an excursion uh chapter because I, yeah, for example, in north carolina I probably have 200 bodies of water, in Florida I've got over a hundred. Tennessee is more like 20 to choose from, so I can't be everywhere and I'm focused on where I am most often. But Tennessee is a beautiful state and Eastern Tennessee will be included in this next book.
Speaker 2:Awesome. I live actually on the Noblichucky River, which unfortunately, I kayak a lot on it, or did. Uh, there's a lot of debris now with the flooding we lost several bridges on the noble chucky, but uh, but it's a beautiful place to kayak. When you know I've not been brave enough to get back out there. Well, tell us more about your your. You obviously write. You enjoy writing. What, uh, other books have you written?
Speaker 3:well, I kind of keep going back and forth to different genres, because my most recent book is called If Trees Could Testify and it is based on a historical murder case in Madison County. You know, just over the border from you guys, there was a, an elderly couple. Of course they weren't that. I'm in my 60s now. They were in their 70s. I don't really want to call them elderly couple, of course they weren't that. I'm in my 60s now. They were in their 70s. I don't really want to call them elderly anymore. I'm getting close to that myself. Yeah, they were. They were siblings and they were murdered badly, a very bad case, back in 1983. And it was a cold case for 18 years.
Speaker 3:And 2001 rolls around and our new sheriff arrested, who later became my client and charged him with the murders, and it's a really interesting story. It included, you know, interaction with various biker gangs and elements of organized crime that were operating, ironically, close to Newport, tennessee. There was a fencing operation where some of the property that was taken from the siblings' home had been sold, and it really involved a very intense investigation with a lot of twists and turns that made for a very interesting story. In fact, the publisher of our local newspaper in the Marshall area at the time, told me that a Hollywood production crew was going to film the trial, had it occurred. I can't give away the ending and tell you why it didn't happen, but unfortunately it didn't, of course I told him. I said well, I want Kevin Costner to play. No. First I said I want to play myself. He said no, kevin Costner is going to play you. Well, now I've decided I'd rather have Matthew McConaughey play me if I get that phone call.
Speaker 2:There you go, there you go. Wow, if trees could talk, was that? What If trees could?
Speaker 3:testify If trees could testify. It's been out since 2021, but an audio book version is coming out this year. I have an agent that works for a production company that's handling that. I have an agent that works for a production company that's handling that Very good.
Speaker 2:Well, we will definitely keep our eyes open for that.
Speaker 1:And our ears open.
Speaker 2:Actually Audio book there you go yeah. So let's switch gears for just a second. Can you describe a hardship or life challenge you've overcome and how it made you stronger in the end?
Speaker 3:in the end. Well, I think right now is one of the hardest of the hardships that I've ever had to deal with, because we lost our primary home of 35 years during Hurricane Helene and we have had such an outpouring of support from family and friends and some friends that didn't really know us very well offered us shelter and offered us assistance, and it's just amazing I almost tear up when I think about it how the community has come together in support of not only us but so many others who really we have resources At least. You know we were able to at least have some footing to land on, even though we're certainly in a completely different realm than we were beforehand. But there are so many individuals and so many sad stories out there. I lost a friend. You just have to be resilient and you just have to try and take things as I tell people. First of all it was one hour at a time, then it became one day at a time and now it's more like a week at a time. But we're making progress slowly.
Speaker 2:Very good. Well, that's awesome, and you know it's. It has been amazing to me what folks. I was just in Asheville yesterday and you know there's signs everywhere saying we can do this together and you know, you know team Asheville and, and you know it's just been amazing at the outpouring of folks that were fortunate. Like me, my neighborhood was pretty devastated, but I'm I live on a really big Hill, so my house was spared and we did have a roof damage but no flooding, and I have neighbors that just got hammered, so, wow, so anyway, uh, well, I'm glad that it seems like you're moving in the right direction and getting past that.
Speaker 2:Slowly, but surely, slowly, but surely Well, if, uh, if, william, if, if, uh, you could think of one thing that you would like our listeners to remember about you, almond Law and your books. What would that be?
Speaker 3:Well, that's a tough one. As far as the legal profession goes. Lawyers don't always get thought of, should I say, in the right way. In my opinion, and to some degree, that's probably justifiable because there are good hearted people out there that are in this profession. To at least, the motivation for me and for many others that I know and associate with, was to to help people who needed help, and that's what we're supposed to do and that's what we were ethically required to do, and it's too bad that not not everyone shares in that dream.
Speaker 3:Some people have basically financial goals and nothing else, and I've never been one of those. So, again, as I said earlier, I think the duty of an attorney is to try and make peace between parties when you have an adversarial situation, and sometimes that's not possible and when it's not possible, I enjoyed trying cases as much as the next person, but that was for me. That was the last resort, it wasn't the first choice, and I tried over 250 cases in my career and I do miss that because I gave up my trial work so as I could gradually spend more time writing.
Speaker 2:Wow, very good. Well, that's a lot to remember, but good stuff, that's all right. Well, if anyone's interested in learning more about you, about your books, about your law practice um, how, how can they do that, all they?
Speaker 3:have to do is is Google me. If you Google William Allman or Bill Allman and it's A-U-M-A-N, a lot of people misspell my name. The Allman brothers kind of thing gets. Gets said a lot. Uh, and they are the same family. If you go back far enough, you're going to see me, but you'll also probably see my son, who is a basketball coach. He comes up too, but my book is on Amazon. It's all over the internet. The case is all over the internet. It's the Gahagan murder case. It was based on a true story, even though I did fictionalize the book for a number of reasons. I'm out there, unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on how you look at it. If you Google me, you'll probably find out more than you ever would want to know.
Speaker 2:Very good. Well, that's convenient for our listeners. Well, bill, if I can call you Bill, Certainly I really appreciate you taking time out of your obviously busy schedule and to talk to us and our listeners about you and your books and your practice, and we wish you and your family and your business all the best, moving forward Well.
Speaker 3:I appreciate that. Thank you very much for having me. I've enjoyed it.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, and maybe we can have you back sometime. That would be great, all right, all right. Thanks so much, bill. You back sometime? That would be great, all right, all right, thanks so much, bill. Thank you.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening to the Good Neighbor Podcast. To nominate your favorite local businesses to be featured on the show, go to gnptry-citiescom. That's gnptry-citiescom, or call 423-719-5873.