It must be Tuesday, July 31st, when Deanna Ballman’s mother, Lori Ballman, last talked to her daughter on her cell phone. Deanna was doing a cleaning job for some unnamed client. Well, I say unnamed client, but I do believe the authorities know who this client of hers is.
It’s very difficult to sort through these disturbing facts; a haunting picture emerges of tragedy and foul play put upon a very nice young woman, Deanna Ballman, who didn’t deserve it one iota.
August has turned its scorching pages 19 times since that leery Tuesday when Deanna had mentioned to her mother she was feeling rather dizzy. Lori loses a connection with her daughter, but just before that hears some strange, ineffable ambience of commotion through the cell phone speaker.
As I watched news footage of the discovery of Deanna Ballman’s body in the back seat of her Taurus (which was left abandoned under a grove of trees off a rural road [Bevelheimer Road in Harlem Township], outside of Columbus, Ohio), a bad feeling came over me. Okay, so that’s putting it mildly! I was mortified by what I witnessed on my monitor screen!
The staging of this crime scene in just the way it was set up (by a very clever perpetrator) is one of sickest and creepiest affairs I’ve ever encountered (in the five years since I’ve been doing this in ernest).
Aerial shots of the lone gold Taurus with tinted windows, pitched in the secluded thicket of trees, left there for no clear reason (other than to cover up a most bizarre crime), sends a wave of painful chills rippling down my spine!
I’m only viewing it from my I-Mac screen; one can’t even imagine how Dave Wilcox took this in, who had been the one to discover the obtrusive vehicle on his property the next day (after Deanna last spoke with her mother), at 10:45 PM that Wednesday, August 1st. As you know, Deanna was well into a pregnancy (9 months), so that would make this as a double homicide.
Another feature of Deanna Ballman’s (who was only 23 and has two other children) case that makes it utterly unique, is that it’s not obvious as to the cause of death. I mean, there weren’t any injuries to her body.
This makes us highly suspicious that she must have been drugged, somehow. And it must be noted, toxicology reports can take up to 3 months to come back. I should think, at this point, they can’t even say for certain she died as a result of being murdered.
But we can readily embrace a modicum of certitude that homicide is the real mode of her death. Yet, why did someone do this to her? Well, I don’t have to tell you about this unnamed doctor (since it’s been all over the news), who is the object of so much suspicion, that Delaware County Sheriff’s Office have ransacked his home twice already, confiscating everything in sight there (except the kitchen sink) as potential evidence.
Is this doctor the one who placed the Craigslist’s ad for housecleaning, that Deanna answered, desperate as she was for money to take care of her children? This has been verified, but I’m not exactly sure just how they did so.
I understand (also) the doctor’s house is not too terribly far from the location of Deanna’s discarded, misplaced Taurus. Another disturbing piece to this most troubling of cases is the MO of this doctor.
The police have had to go to his house 11 times, since these incidents involved compromises he was making on other women, who also were supposedly there (merely) to clean his house.
Yet another item that gets under my skin a great deal, is that Deanna had just left her (not so good) life behind in Colorado two weeks before coming to Columbus, apparently to get away from her abusive husband.
What I ascertain from this extremely unpleasant scenario, is she was escaping one bad situation only to hap upon an even worse one. It’s hard to fathom how Deanna Ballman’s luck could have been any worse.
Obviously, it couldn’t have turned out any graver. If this unnamed doctor did this, I only hope and pray they have gathered enough evidence together to convict him. We need this sicko off the streets (if he’s the one)!
More Craigslist Links Found In Colo. Mother’s Death Probe – Denver News Story – KMGH Denver
