It’s been two years since beloved dancer Stephen ‘tWitch’ Boss died by suicide at the age of 40. His death was deeply tragic and met with many tributes and messages from Dancing With The Stars vets, his long-time colleague Ellen DeGeneres, and more. His wife, Allison Holker, has also candidly posted and spoken about this devastating loss. Now, as she prepares to release a memoir, This Far, she opened up about what happened after she learned about her partner’s death.
Boss died in December 2022, and he was found in a hotel room after he shot himself. In the lead-up to learning this, Holker didn’t know where he had gone, and she thought he had checked into rehab, because of his marijuana use. However, when the cops showed up to tell her what happened, it was incomprehensible, as she wrote in her book, which People published an excerpt of:
About 20 minutes later, the two cops out in front were joined by a third officer. He was older, very sweet. He came to the door, trailed by the others. The new arrival looked at me with such compassion in his eyes. He asked me to sit down, and my heart sank. They don’t ask you to sit unless what they’re about to tell you is very, very bad. I couldn’t bring myself to sit down. If I didn’t sit, then maybe whatever he was about to tell me wouldn’t be real. A dark energy settled over the room as I stood frozen in place. ‘Your husband has been found,’ he said. ‘He’s not in rehab.’ He sat down at the kitchen table. I stayed where I was. ‘Your husband was found in a hotel. He was found by the maid. He shot himself.’ No. No. No. No.
Prior to explaining this, Holker noted that before learning about her husband’s death she knew she was looking for something, but didn’t know what that was. She wrote that she found a letter from Boss that he had written two weeks earlier as “a commitment to wean himself off weed.” She also noted that she filed a missing person report and called police as soon as she could.
Security footage of her home showed the dancer leaving to get in an Uber with a black backpack. Cops also discovered that the gun Boss had purchased in 2020 was missing. Holker wrote that at the time, “the likely ramifications of this absence went completely over [her] head.” She didn’t realize what that could mean.
Also, she had been calling rehab centers looking for him. While no one could tell her if he was there due to privacy laws, one asked if she’d like to leave a message for him in case he was here, and Holker took that as confirmation.
When they found his body, she couldn’t believe it was him, but his tattoos and ID quickly confirmed that it was:
I told them they had found a Black man, but it didn’t mean they had found my man. Stephen would never do what this officer was suggesting. Ever-so-gently, the officer explained Stephen had left a letter and his ID. He had been identified by his tattoos, including that one below his elbow: I am . . . I have . . . I deserve . . . My stomach clenched.
She explained that tWitch had gotten that tattoo on a trip to New Zealand. He had intentions of returning to expand the piece so it included all their children. However, they never got to do that, as she wrote that this tattoo was “reduced to a macabre identifying mark.”
Like Holker, it was hard for many to believe that tWitch was gone. His friend and colleague Ellen DeGeneres paid tribute by writing that he was “pure love and light,” and that sentiment was true in many of the tributes from others. Holker’s view on her husband’s life and legacy has held that message too.
So, when he was suddenly gone it was unexpected and unfathomable, as Holker wrote:
I raced down the hallway, shrieking. The sound that escaped from my throat was feral. I’d never heard the likes of it before. I collapsed onto the floor in a fetal position, where I would stay for several minutes, keening as one of our assistants held me tight. Nothing made any sense. I was so scared. I felt so alone even as I was in another’s embrace. The world went black. The walls closed in on me until I thought I was going to suffocate. Until that moment, I had never understood the phrase ‘It’s like the world stopped.’ That’s exactly how it felt: as if time froze. I literally couldn’t believe that Stephen was dead.
Holker wasn’t aware of Boss’s drug addiction before his death. It was later revealed that he was struggling with childhood trauma too.
In the two years since his passing, Holker has kept his legacy alive and she consistently posts about working through grief, life updates and how much she adores Boss.
Now, her book, This Far: My Story of Love, Loss and Embracing the Light, is set to come out on February 4. It’s a memoir about Holker’s life as well as her relationship with Stephen “tWitch” Boss, and according to the book’s description, it “reveals how she has navigated the emotional and financial aftermath of Stephen’s choice” and how she and her family moved forward into a new chapter of their lives.
