Down the Darkest Road

64

It wasn’t truly over for months. It took that long for the investigators to go through Roland Ballencoa’s journals and contact the girls and women he had stalked, and to identify and locate all the girls whose photographs he had filed away in boxes in the small shed at the back of his property. Photographs of unsuspecting potential victims and of actual victims as well.

In addition to photographs, they had found container after container of women’s lingerie—all very neatly organized by date with painstaking care to note the name of the woman it had belonged to, and her address, and her page number in the corresponding journal.

In many cases Ballencoa had also photographed himself modeling the feminine articles of clothing.

Many of the victims found were unaware Ballencoa had ever had an interest in them. Some had known and liked him. Others met the news of his demise with relief.

Seven were never found at all.

Seven young women listed in his journals, seven young women Roland Ballencoa had photographed from northern California to San Diego County, had simply disappeared, never to be seen or heard from again. Ballencoa had never been considered a person of interest in six of those cases.

Detectives Mendez and Tanner would head the joint task force and organize a central clearing house for the cases. Their efforts would receive national attention, and serve as a model for future multijurisdictional investigations across the country.

My focus in those months was divided between healing and helping. Healing physically had been the easy part. Both Leah and I had managed that within weeks of our ordeal. We help each other with the rest. I have a remarkable daughter, alive and with me. And I now can focus on being a mother to that precious child I have while I say good-bye to the daughter I lost.

Photographs of Leslie had been found along with those of the other victims. I never saw them. A part of me thought I should look at them, that as her mother, I should have to see what she had been put through, that I should have to suffer as Leslie had suffered. But to what end? We had all suffered enough. Nothing would bring Leslie back. I choose to remember Leslie as I knew her—a beautiful vibrant girl, a gift born of love.

Life is about choices, good and bad, and the consequences of those choices. Roland Ballencoa and Greg Hewitt chose evil. I chose revenge. Now I choose a second chance for Leah and me, for the two of us to be a family and to move forward with our lives.

As Winston Churchill said, “If you’re going through hell, keep going.” I know from hard experience that can be the longest journey down the darkest road. And I have learned that sometimes the shortest distance isn’t forward, but up.

As Danni Tanner told me, you put one foot on the ladder and climb to the next rung. Then you do it again . . . and again . . . and again . . .

My daughter and I try every day to climb another rung on the ladder. Some days we make it. Some days we don’t. The most important thing is that we don’t look down. The important thing is to climb.

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