On November 7, 2011, Ashley Marie Billasano stayed home from school so she could kill herself.
Photos courtesy of Ayan
Ashley was very good at putting on a happy face.
Photo illustration by Monica Fuentes
Ashley's friends say she wanted the world to know she wasn't lying. Click to enlarge.
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The 18-year-old Rosenberg high school senior told her closest friend, who drove her to school every morning, that she wasn't feeling well. Then, from 6:44 a.m. to 2:08 p.m., she issued 144 tweets, many of which alleged years of sexual abuse at the hands of her father John Billasano, when she lived with him in Round Rock and Pflugerville.
At the urging of friends, Ashley had reluctantly told a teacher about the alleged abuse in spring 2011. The teacher notified Child Protective Services. The investigation would prove inconclusive. At 1:37 p.m. the day of her death, Ashley tweeted about a call she had received from a CPS caseworker: "Weeks passed then I got the call. They said, 'Sorry, but there isn't enough evidence.' I hung up. That's when I changed. I didn't care anymore."
In addition to her tweets, Ashley left behind a four-page suicide note that her mother, Tiffany Ruiz-Leskinen, has not shared with Ashley's friends. Her closest friend read redacted excerpts at the funeral. According to friends, Tiffany shared the note with the church minister, who excised the profanity — there was apparently quite a bit. After all, God's house was no place for cuss words.
But the entire content appears to be one big middle finger to the world. In the note, Ashley thanked YouTube and Wikipedia for giving her the tools to fashion her suicide kit: a pressurized tank of helium and a plastic bag.
Ashley's body was barely cold before her mother rushed in front of every camera she could to blame authorities for leaving her daughter without hope. CNN. The Houston FOX affiliate. The Today Show (although it never aired). Her father, who was barred from Ashley's funeral and never saw his daughter's body before she was cremated, responded with absolute silence.
The story of Ashley's final tweets struck a nerve worldwide. On a Facebook memorial page created by her friends and mother, people who never knew Ashley have shared their stories of abuse and despair. (Despite the fact that Ashley very publicly, and very deliberately, posted the awful allegations in what her friends say was an attempt not only to warn others of a sexual predator but to prove that she was not lying, the Fort Bend County Attorney's Office has sought to block the release of records pertaining to her death based in part on potentially "intimate and embarrassing details.")
The investigation into Ashley's alleged sexual abuse is still open, according to Travis County assistant district attorney Melissa Douma. Neither she nor prosecutor Dayna Blazey, who previously led the investigation, would comment further, so it's unclear how an investigation that apparently went nowhere in the seven months while the complaining witness was alive can effectively remain open. John Billasano has never been charged with a crime in these events, and in the eyes of the law is presumed innocent.
Tiffany and her mother, Ema Cook, have worked hard to control Ashley's story. Initially, Tiffany didn't tell interviewers that Ashley had been sexually abused once before, at age six, by her stepfather, who is nearing the end of an 11-year prison term. And according to Cook, interviewers agreed to refrain from mentioning Tiffany's own five-year stint in prison, which is how Ashley went to live with her father in the first place.
In her 18 years, Ashley suffered a pain she simply could not handle. She was determined to stop her suffering the only way she knew how; a suicide attempt two months before did nothing to take the idea out of her mind.
Her excruciating tweets, half-told in rhymes, seem calculated at least in part to inflict some of that pain on people who loved her. "Hummm wish somebody would text me," she wrote at 9:46 a.m., followed a minute later by "Kinda lonely right now."
Two hours and 19 minutes pass after a tweet at 10:42 a.m. Two hours and 19 minutes in which she could have called her mom, gone to a school counselor, called a friend, called a hotline.
Then, at 1:47, there was a 21-minute gap before her final tweet. Twenty-one minutes to check the pressure in the tank and the seal on the bag, to get down to the actual business of suicide.
At 2:08 p.m., she tweeted: "Take two. Hope I get this right."
Unfortunately, she did.
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In addition to her media blitz, Tiffany Ruiz-Leskinen launched a Web site called the Ashley Marie Just Breathe foundation 11 days after her daughter's death.
She sold wristbands for $3 and T-shirts for $20, in her daughter's memory. The money allegedly went to cover funeral costs and then into a fund to help give a lifeline to other girls in Ashley's situation.
Tiffany has applied for nonprofit status and is seeking licensed therapists willing to volunteer their services, which is why it's confusing that the "foundation" also has an e-mail contact for "individual and corporate sponsorship." The foundation's vague mission statement is "to make a positive impact in the lives of children, teens, and young adults."
Yet there is little in Tiffany's background to suggest that she is qualified to make a positive impact on anyone's life.
