Stephen ‘tWitch’ Boss’ widow Allison reveals she found out a ‘triggering’ discovery just before his funeral

Allison Holker, the widow of Stephen ‘tWitch’ Boss, revealed how she discovered childhood sexual abuse led to his addiction before he took his own life in December 2022 at the age of 40.

The 36-year-old dancer – who recently turned Instagram official with new boyfriend Adam Edmunds – opened up about how she learned about her late husband’s drug addiction while preparing for his funeral.

Boss, best known as the DJ on The Ellen DeGeneres Show, was found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in a Los Angeles motel in 2022 at the age of 40.

She told me People magazine in an article published Tuesday, she said she discovered a “cornucopia” of drugs, including mushrooms, pills and “other substances I had to look up on my phone,” hidden in his shoeboxes.

Holker explained, “I was with one of my dear friends, and we were cleaning out the closet and picking out an outfit for him for the funeral.”

“It was a very triggering moment for me because there were a lot of things I discovered in our closet that I didn’t know existed. I found it very disturbing to hear that so much was happening that I had no idea about [about].

“It was a very scary moment in my life to find out, but it also helped me come to terms with the fact that he was going through so much and hiding so much, and there must have been a lot of shame in that.”

She then went through his diaries to find a sense of clarity and she found a very painful secret that she says was hidden even from those closest to him, when she read that he had hinted at sexual abuse by a male figure during his youth. in multiple entries.

Holker explained, “He was struggling with a lot inside himself, and he was trying to self-medicate and deal with all those feelings because he didn’t want to do it to anyone because he loved everyone so much.

“He didn’t want other people to take over his pain.”

The dancer said she initially felt betrayed by his secrets, but her perspective has changed over time.

She said: ‘Reading Stephen’s diaries, and even going back to the books he had read and the things he highlighted and listed, really gave me a better perspective on where he was in life and the kinds of things he was struggling with .

“It made me feel a lot of empathy for him and sadness for all the pain he was carrying.”

Holker and Boss share three children together: Weslie, 16, Maddox, 8, and Zaia, 5.

The morning he went missing, Boss had dropped off their eldest Weslie – who happened to be the last person to see him alive – at school and his last words to her were, “I wish I could be your Superman.”

Holker revealed that their child still attends the same school as she explained, “Having someone say their last words to you that you didn’t really consider wrong at the time… that’s really hard, especially as a teenager.

“She handles it with a lot more grace than she should. We took the steps to really help her and communicate with her and make her feel seen and heard.

‘I think she also sees those words as something beautiful, but also as ugly. It’s a battle she will always have with herself, but I know she can see it from both sides.’

Holker will also release her vulnerable new memoir, titled This Far: My Story Of Love, Loss, And Embracing The Light, which will be released on February 4.

This came months after she revealed what it felt like living in their marital home following his tragic suicide – and why she ultimately sold the property.

Holker watched her world fall into disarray as she found herself trying to pick up the pieces and raise their children alone.

Now she has bared her soul about the experience of living in their home after his death, which took place at a motel just a 15-minute walk away.

She described the house as a “security blanket,” but confessed that the “emotions” attached to it eventually “swallowed us up,” on the SoFi podcast. Richer lives.

“You know, that house was our security blanket for a long time. We loved that house. It always felt so safe to us,” she said.

“But it took a turn, and a lot of people don’t talk about that after grief, it’s like I was holding on to these emotions from the past, thinking it was saving me, but it started to consume us,” the professional dancer shared .

“And it was a very, very big decision to uproot my children. Right? Their lives had already changed so much. I thought, “Is it okay for me to do this to them?”

However, she found that leaving the house “was the best decision for us because when we moved, we bought a new house and that became our sanctuary. It was like the final step to our hearing, where now we could leave that in the past, and we could finally take a step forward for each other, and it became freedom.”

Allison revealed that their new home “became a place for us where we could find solace and create new memories, new beginnings and fresh starts, and everyone felt like a weight was lifted off our shoulders.”

She and tWitch bought the house in the Los Angeles suburb of Encino in 2019 for $2.7 million, and she sold it alone for $3.525 million in November 2023.

The home was built in 2018 and included six bedrooms and six and a half bathrooms, and was decorated by the couple in collaboration with Pottery Barn.

Allison’s latest revelations about her grieving process come after she announced last month that she will publish a memoir titled This Far in February.

Last month, she went public with her new boyfriend Adam Edmunds, the CEO of software-focused property management company Entrata.

They made their romantic red carpet official by posing together at the Alice + Olivia Spring 2025 show during New York Fashion Week.

She and Boss started dating in 2010 and married in 2013, a year before he got his job as the beloved DJ on The Ellen DeGeneres Show.

He adopted Holker’s daughter Weslie, now 16, from a previous relationship, and the couple also had two children of their own: Maddox, eight, and Zaia, four.

In December 2022, he checked into the Oak Tree Inn in the Los Angeles suburb of Encino — a 15-minute walk from his home — and shot himself.

His body was discovered the morning after he arrived at the motel by a shocked maid who found him in a pool of blood in the bath.

Boss’s shock suicide caused an outpouring of grief from fans around the world, and Holker was showered with sympathy.

Just weeks before his death, Boss and Holker had gone on The Jennifer Hudson Show and shared that they hoped to have another baby.

Last December, Holker uploaded a moving Instagram post about grief as she approached two milestones: what would have been her and Boss’s 10th wedding anniversary, and three days after that, his first anniversary of death.

“The sadness never ends…but every season of challenges has an expiration date. Keep the faith and keep dancing,” she wrote.

The following month, she revealed that she was open to the possibility of dating again, on an episode of Nick Viall’s podcast The Viall Files.

“It was very difficult for me to learn to love myself again and learn to love myself again… it’s a very complex situation that I found myself in,” she said.

‘It took me a long time to accept all those things and the complexity of everything. But at the end of the day, I love life.”

When the subject of a new man came up, she said, “Would I shy away from it? No. Am I looking for it? I don’t know, but I certainly won’t avoid it.’