As police continue to investigate the weekend homicide of beloved Chicago charter boat captain Nabil Abzal, his wife said Tuesday the man others knew simply as “Captain Bill” overcame early challenges in life and always put his family first.
“He loved being ‘Captain Bill,’” Laura Abzal told the Tribune. “But he was so much more than that. (He) was a humble man who would be a bit embarrassed by all the attention he is receiving.”
Divers recovered the body of Nabil Abzal from Lake Michigan near DuSable Harbor early Saturday. The 63-year-old Plainfield man died from drowning but the manner of his suspicious death was ruled a homicide, according to the Cook County medical examiner’ office.
Chicago police confirmed Tuesday Area 3 detectives are investigating Abzal’s death as a homicide and do not have a suspect in custody.
Laura Abzal said she and her husband would have celebrated their 40th anniversary this January. They met “the old-fashioned way,” she joked, “in a bar.”
Or so they initially thought.
The couple soon realized they actually met about two years earlier late one night when Nabil helped a stranded motorist get her 1969 Volkswagen Beetle out of a snowy Oak Park alley.
“I got stuck in a snowpile and this scrawny little guy comes out of nowhere totally inappropriately dressed for the weather and pushed me out,” she said. “We realized later he was that person. … We always said it was kind of meant to be.”
Laura Abzal said her husband immigrated to the United States because “his parents wanted him to get away from the violence of the Middle East” in the early 1980s when he was about 20. He lived with a cousin, attended school and eventually met his wife.
The couple share a daughter, three granddaughters and a great-grandson, who called him “Grand Poo” and “Poo Poo.” His wife said Abzal adored his family. He wasn’t a big sports fan but enjoyed the Blackhawks when “they were at their best.” He was also a Christmas enthusiast, always spending hours meticulously setting up a village of houses and three trees, making their home resemble “a Marshall Field’s window.”
She said Abzal worked several years as a truck driver but, tired of the long road trips away from home, he switched jobs and eventually became a licensed captain chartering boats on Lake Michigan. His death stunned his fellow boaters who dock in the same harbor.
A makeshift memorial grew there over the weekend.
“(He) was kind of like the mayor of the dock. He would be here every day, because he was doing charters pretty much every day during the summer,” Alan Dutkiewicz told WLS-Ch. 7. “He knew everybody, always a smile on his face, up early, well-groomed all the time for a boat captain. He took a lot of pride in his appearance. You know if you were doing something, he would always lend a hand.”
Laura Abzal said she last spoke to her husband Friday morning. Given the busy holiday weekend, with several booked charters, she said he planned to sleep on the boat to avoid traffic between the city and his suburban home. She didn’t think much of it at first Saturday when she hadn’t received his normal daily call checking in. She said he had a 9 a.m. charter planned that morning.
But, after an unanswered phone call, she had a friend with a boat on the dock go check on him and soon learned his fate.
“I thought, in my mind, it must have been a heart attack or something, but this?” she said. “There are no words. … I just want whoever did this not to be able to put another family through what we are going through. We are all completely devastated.”
His family buried him Sunday in a private service.
