William Justice Sitterson was born in Washington County, North Carolina, on July 23, 1872. Sitterson enlisted in the United States army around 1897 and seems to have served up through 1913. He married Martha Fay Beasley in Hertford County, North Carolina, in October 1913. They had one child, who died of rickets in 1914.

In February 1915, a jury found Sitterson guilty of second degree murder and sentenced him to twenty years in the state penitentiary. Sitterson was paroled in January 1926, after serving only eleven years of his original sentence. He later married Sarah Martha Baird (1896-1982), with whom he had one son, Edward Sitterson (1921-1944). Sitterson died at Mountain Home in Tennessee on February 9, 1945.