Dark Downeast - The Survival Story of Kayleigh Ballantyne (Massachusetts)

Episode Date: March 15, 2021

SOUTH BOSTON, 2013: On the night of July 23, 2013, 21-year old Mainer Kayleigh Ballantyne was randomly attacked as she walked into her apartment in Southie. As her attacker made clear his plans, Kayleigh told herself she was going to survive.A survivor of a random act of violence, Kayleigh is sharing her journey through recovery, how she’s using her trauma for advocacy, and why her story is forever connected to the story of another woman, Amy Lord, who lost her life by the hands of the same attacker.This is Kayleigh Ballantyne’s story, told by Kayleigh Ballantyne herself. View source material and photos for this episode at darkdowneast.com/kayleighFollow @darkdowneast on Instagram, Facebook, and TikTokTo suggest a case visit darkdowneast.com/submit-caseDark Downeast is an audiochuck and Kylie Media production hosted by Kylie Low.

You're not going to die. And I remember saying that to myself, like in my head, like, you're going to do what Kaylee Ballantyne was getting a taste of city life and living on her own terms. Working at night, an internship during the day, and living with her best friends in Boston before her demanding Division I field hockey schedule started back up for her final season. On the night of July 23rd, 2013, Kaylee's routine walk home from the tee to her apartment would change the course of her life forever, and forever connect her to the story of another woman. This is the story of Kaylee Ballantyne, told by Kaylee Ballantyne. I grew up in southern Maine, a town called Gorham. I was fortunate to have a really good childhood and two parents who really cared about my brothers, my two older brothers and I, and instilled a lot of good values in us.

Kaylee and I have relatives in common, and we've met once or twice at family get-togethers and things like that. She's kind, funny, beautiful, and tough. Growing up as a little sister of two older brothers played a big part in that. I wanted to be with them all the time. I know that their presence in my life caused me to not really back down and kind of have this chip on my shoulder. They taught me to never let someone push me around. With that being said, I wouldn't be where I am if it wasn't for my older brother. So I think in the grand scheme of things with experiences, I've just kind of taken them as they come, but I haven't really been, haven't really been afraid of what that is. And I have them to thank for that. And my mom and my dad, they were, my mom is kind of a

bull in a china shop to like get things done with whatever it takes. So that's kind of how I was brought up and what was instilled in me from a wicked young age. Yeah. Wicked young age. Yeah, wicked. The main way. The main way. Yeah. When Kaylee was just 11 years old, her active, adventurous childhood took a hard left when a freak accident before basketball practice put her in a coma. She was lowering a hoop and a backboard with a manual crank, not realizing the hoop didn't have a safety lock. The backboard fell on top of her, knocking Kaylee unconscious. I was rushed to the hospital in a coma for a couple weeks and, yeah, had a traumatic brain injury, had to relearn a lot of different stuff, was out of school for a while. My head was shaved because I had a big surgery, of course. And yeah,

that changed my childhood quickly to being very abnormal from your average 11, 12 year old. My anxiety kind of started at that age. And I had this, I just had this thought moving forward in life, like anything can happen to anyone. I was frustrated still developing who I was. And my friends were all doing all the cool things. And I couldn't really do that. So after, you know, as I went into high school, and I went through this experience, it was like, you know, you have to drive yourself, you have to make goals for yourself to be able to keep going. And if you don't do that, you're not going to keep going. So at a really young age, I had this traumatic experience that kind of led me to believe if you don't keep going, you're going to get stuck and you're going to fall behind. And what does that mean? Who knows? But I wanted to succeed. I wanted to go to college. I wanted to keep living that

quote unquote normal life. But at the same time, it was unconventional for myself because I had all these obstacles I had to jump through. But that's kind of where I've continued to kind of just be this person of the experiences that I've gone through has shaped me into who I am. So even though they've been so traumatic, they've also shown me and taught me so much more that I feel like I wouldn't know at 29 years old. Kaylee graduated from Gorham High School in 2010 and set her sights on college, playing field hockey at Bryant University in Rhode Island. The life of a Division I collegiate athlete is all-consuming and rigid with structure. As she approached her senior year of college, Kaylee felt the pull of adventure and new experiences. As a main girl who watched her brothers experience city life, Kaylee wanted a taste of that too. Like many college students between spring and fall semesters, Kaylee would move home with her parents for summer break, but she wanted something different for the summer of 2013, and the perfect opportunity to get that city experience she craved presented itself as a room in her friend's apartment in South Boston, more commonly known as Southie.

And while her mother Jean and father Bruce ultimately supported her plans to spend the summer in Southie, like any parent, especially Maine parents, they had their concerns. My mom was a little hesitant. My dad, I didn't think it was that good of an idea just because I'm the youngest, I'm the only girl, and I've already had a traumatic thing like happen to me. So they were a little like reluctant. When I even remember telling my dad when he didn't want me to move to Boston, I was like, Dad, I'm gonna be fine. Nothing's gonna happen to me. It's cool. Everything's cool. And so you just don't think that it could anything tragic or traumatic or life altering can happen to you. You don't want to think that in general, but then, especially when you grow up in such a quiet, you know, rural place like Maine, it's like nothing can happen to me, you know?

I grew up with that same perception, and maybe you can relate. Bad things don't happen here in Maine, but if bad things do happen, they won't happen to me. We're in a bubble here, right? And being from Maine, it kind of just has this aura of like, oh, everything's great and safe and happy. I think both of my parents have been experienced in travel and living in a bunch of different places. So they kind of knew what that meant. Moving to Boston is like, wow, she's going to have an eye-opening experience. She was 21 years old and ready to make the decision for herself. So the summer of 2013, Kaylee moved in with her friend Julie and another roommate on Gate Street in Southie. She worked a hostessing job at night, an unpaid internship

during the day. And for the first time in her life, Kaylee was living on her own terms. Growing up, it was always like getting my parents' approval, and I think other people can probably relate to that. You want your parents to be proud of you, or whoever that might be in your life that's someone who you look up to. You want them to be proud of you, and for me, that was my parents. And so I'd always lived at that time in my life lived for their approval. And the fact that they were giving me this opportunity to be independent, I was like, man, this is my opportunity to like do me, you know, like be able to go out with my friends in the city, be able to come home whenever I want, not have to answer to them

all the time. Yeah, it was just great being able to be independent. Yeah. The restaurant where Kaylee was a hostess was located in Cambridge, about 35 minutes away from her apartment in Southie. On the night of Tuesday, July 23rd, 2013, just like any other night after work, Kaylee took the T, the MBTA subway system, from Cambridge to the South Broadway station. From there, it was about a mile walk back to her apartment, and by 11.45 p.m., she was only a block away. Kaylee noticed a man walking on the opposite side of the street. So I crossed the street and crossed over to his side that he was on because that's the side my apartment was on. And he continued crossing the street, going the direction he was going in. As I walked down to my apartment and punched the code in, I got it wrong.

It was like a keypad to get into the apartment. And I had done it so many times. And I'm like, man, why? I don't know if I was hyper aware or what was going on, but I think I was like nervous. So as I did it the second time, I got it right, opened the door. And as I opened the door, the guy who I had just passed was standing behind me with a knife in his hand and was holding it up to my head. And I remember just thinking to myself, holy shit, Kay, you're about to get stabbed, but you're not going to die.

And I remember saying that to myself, like in my head, like you're going to do what you can to fight for your life because right now is not the time that life is over. As I saw like the knife turned around my chest and his chest were like, you know, bumping each other. And he pushed me down. When he pushed me down, the door was still open. My back was laying on the bottom two stairs and he was straddling me and just started stabbing me. I remember

yelling and screaming like help, but it was super late at night and it was in the dead of summer too. So everyone's AC was on. And so I was kicking and screaming and yelling. And I just remember the knife going into my arm and like witnessing that and seeing that. And he was trying to rip my left arm away from my body. And he was stabbing me in like my side, my left side. So I'm like, damn, like, he's gonna kill me. You know, so I was trying to protect my organs, like my heart and whatever else. So I was trying to keep my arm over my chest. I eventually got him I was kicking him this whole time and he eventually like fell back. And so when he fell back, I was like, take whatever you want my purse, my phone, like whatever, take it and he just like stared at me and ran away. So he never talked to me the

whole time that and it was like a 30 second time span that this occurred over. So he vanished. And I was like, what the fuck just happened. So I slammed the door so he couldn't get back in. And I stood up to walk down like the little corridor to our door. And I like fell down. And I was like, okay, is my adrenaline super high, which obviously it was, or am I like, I couldn't really breathe. So I was like, am I dying? Like, but I was still conscious.

So I opened the apartment door. I crawled down to the apartment door, opened the apartment door. And I went to my first roommate's bedroom door and I opened it and I was like, Kelly, I've just been stabbed. And I can't even imagine. I think about what I've been through, but I can't imagine what that was like for her, you know? And she was like, where is he? What's going on? I was like, everything's fine. Like he's gone. The doors are closed, but you need to call 911 immediately. I don't know if I'm going to like make it. And then my other roommate got up and she, I was like, get whatever you need to like

suture the wounds, like blankets, towels, whatever. And I was just like bleeding, you know, like there was like a puddle of blood around me. I remember telling Kelly, my first roommate, I woke up, I was like, you need to tell them to get here ASAP. For reasons Kaylee would learn later, the first responders were able to get there fast. In the midst of administering life-saving treatment for her multiple stab wounds, the detective asked Kaylee if she could help them with any identifying information about her attacker. She focused on her memory of the man she saw walking down the street. He was wearing shorts and Jordan sneakers.

A low-brim baseball cap concealed most of his face during the attack, but she could tell he had a buzz cut, or not much hair at all, and she believed that he might be Hispanic. It all happened quickly. Kaylee was loaded into an ambulance and on her way to Mass General Hospital, their primary hospital for trauma and emergency. I remember hearing over the radio that they were full. So I had to go to Tufts. They transferred me to Tufts like on the way to Mass General.

And while I was in the emergency room, they were like started immediately suturing my stab wounds. I have a stab wound under my left breast and then on my left torso, which collapsed my stab wounds. I have a stab wound under my left breast and then on my left torso, which collapsed my left lung. So they had to put in a chest tube. I have two stab wounds on my face. So they like put this shield over my face and was doing like surgery. And I was like, I'm going to barf. Like I can't see. And so just like a lot of chaotic stuff was happening. I didn't really have a second to even be like, okay, I just got stabbed. Even when the attack was happening, I didn't even feel myself getting stabbed because my adrenaline was so high.

And so I was kind of just in fight mode. The way I was raised in my childhood and being a fighter and having a chip on my shoulder and having two older brothers. When I was put in this situation, it was kind of like, yeah, no, like this isn't going to happen. Like I'm a fighter. And I feel very fortunate to be that way because not everyone is and not everyone's shaped like that. And so when I was in the hospital and after they were able to kind of contain everything that was going on. And I, you know, I remember saying to the doctor after I was sitting there for a second, I was like, am I going to live? And he was like, you're going to make it. And then kind of told me like you have six stab wounds in your arm, two on your torso, one under your left breast, one on your on the side of your torso, two on your face.

And then I had a big slit across my neck that was surface. one on your torso, one under your left breast, one on the side of your torso, two on your face. And then I had a big slit across my neck that was surface. As doctors continued treating Kaylee's wounds from the attack, another patient walked into Tufts Medical Center. With a t-shirt wrapped around his hand, the man claimed he'd been stabbed. The hospital went on lockdown because the man with the apparent stab wound matched the exact description that Kaylee gave of her attacker. I heard people being like, is that him? Is he here? People coming into my room, shutting the door. What Kaylee didn't realize was that during her struggle with her attacker, she kicked him and kicked the knife he was using on her, which caused the man to stab himself. After fleeing the foyer of her apartment building, he walked to a gas station and asked the clerk to call a cab.

The cab brought him to Tufts. They take him, as the hospital does, into a room because his hand was stabbed and they start questioning him immediately. And they took him into custody. All in the course of one night, the trajectory of Kaylee's life was altered. She was randomly, viciously attacked. She fought her attacker, the result of which wounded him enough that he sought medical attention and then, bizarre fate, put him at the same hospital where she was receiving treatment. Kaylee's mom, dad, and brothers arrived at the hospital from Maine sometime in the early morning hours of July 24th, 2013. And finally, with her biggest support system around her, Kaylee rested. Meanwhile, investigators were beginning to understand that this attack on Kaylee

was not an isolated incident. In fact, the man that Kaylee had fought off was responsible for a 24-hour spree of attacks around the city of Boston that ended the life of one woman. Around 6 a.m. on July 23rd, 2013, 24-year-old Amy Lord was just a few feet from her apartment on Dorchester Street when she was abducted. Amy's abductor forced her to drive around to ATMs in her own black Jeep Cherokee, withdrawing money from five different banks. Just after 8.30 a.m. that morning, police responded to a call of a car on fire at 26 Logan Way in South Boston. The car was a black Jeep Cherokee.

By 11 a.m., Amy was reported missing when she didn't meet her friend to go to the gym. At 4.21 that afternoon, a cyclist discovered Amy's body in a secluded area of Hyde Park. She had been strangled and, like Kaylee, suffered multiple stab wounds. Amy Lord's grandfather told the Boston Globe, quote, she was everything you would want your daughter to be, unquote. Amy was a graduate of Bentley University and worked as a media analyst for a digital marketing firm. She was intelligent. She excelled at everything she tried. She was vibrant.

Amy Lord lived less than a quarter of a mile from Kaylee in Southie. Kaylee's attack and Amy's murder occurred on the same day, and both had been stabbed. But there was more than circumstantial evidence to link one suspect to both women. The shoes he was wearing. The attacker never changed his shoes. Forensic DNA evidence, blood on those shoes, linked it all together. Detective Bobby Flynn, along with Kaylee's family, knew the connection between the cases before Kaylee did, and they knew that the information would come with a heavy impact on Kaylee. I was starting to, like, get my bearings, and they knew I was starting to get my bearings, and they were like, well, she's either going to find out from someone texting her

or the media so we're going to tell her now and so the detective who I worked on my case and with all the other detectives of course was like we need to tell her so he told me and I just like

lost it who am I to even feel anything right now because she can't feel anything And I just like lost it. Who am I to even feel anything right now? Cause she can't feel anything. She's gone. I lived and here I am like proud of myself and like, man, I fought back and I did this and I did that. And I'm ultimately, you know, it was me and him and me fighting back where, you know, he cut himself. And so that brought him to the hospital. And so it leads to me like I'm the one who caught him and like pride.

And then I'm like, what? I feeling worthy and feeling guilty of like surviving. And I think that's one of the biggest things I still till this day deal with. Kaylee was released from the hospital five days later and returned to her parents' home in Gorham, Maine, where she began her journey of recovery, both mental and physical. Life doesn't just pause after a traumatic experience. Kaylee had not only her recovery to consider, but a multitude of decisions to make about what would be next. I was supposed to go back to campus on August 5th and start preseason. And our game started before school even started. And so it was, I was like trying to prioritize the decisions I had to make. Am I going to go back to school? Am I going to play

field hockey? Which was like kind of on the back burner. First was, am I going to go back to school? Because this just happened to me and I don't know if I can be out in the public. Knowing what you know about Kaylee now, the fight within her instilled from a very young age, it might not come as a complete surprise that she did return to school. But the reality of her experiences did not make it easy. It was just really hard navigating, like, how other people were going to feel towards me. And so I, like I said, I just jumped into it. Like, I went back to college. I didn't play field hockey because I wasn't cleared until, like, October.

But I went to practices, and I was still a part of the team and I was the sole captain. But I was super overwhelmed in class. Like I remember leaving practice and like the end of October being like, I'm done. Like I called my mom, went to the locker room in the middle of practice and I was like, come pick me up. And she was like, no, you gotta stay in finish. Like you can. And she was like, no, you can't do this. And I'm like, I can't do this. But Kaylee didn't leave school. She started therapy and she learned methods to manage anxiety, PTSD, survivor guilt, and the other very real and very challenging aspects of surviving a traumatic experience. I graduated on time, which is like, I don't even know how I did it because I'm not a good student in the first place, by the way. Like, I hate school.

I hate school so much. Not until after college was I like, I'm doing my own thing. My whole life, I've lived for my parents and my family and people around me. And I need to be selfish and I need to live for myself because tomorrow is not guaranteed. And be happy. What's life worth not being happy? So she stayed in Rhode Island and she was a nanny for some time. And she continued with her therapy to help her cope with the trauma. But Kaylee was still having to relive the attack every few months as the state built their case against the man responsible.

I had to wait like two years of this gap of like trying to heal. And I was still going to my therapist in Providence. So I was trying to heal right and do these techniques with her, but it was a struggle because I was having to go relive it every so every few months and meet with district attorneys and our lawyers. Then at the same time, you're also dealing with, I wasn't just attacked. Another girl was murdered. So I'm dealing with those feelings too. And the guilt that I have, the survivor guilt, what does that mean? And is my attacker going to be in prison forever? There was just so many different emotions,

like so many that it's so hard to, it's hard, it was very challenging to navigate. It was overwhelming and that affected my everyday, everyday who I was. The trial of Edwin Alimany began two years later, in the summer of 2015. Kaylee was a key witness at the trial, along with another survivor, a woman named Alexandra Cruz. She too was attacked by the same man on the morning of July 23rd, 2013. In her testimony, she told the jury that the man punched and strangled her and dragged her down the road. She told him he could have anything he wanted, but the man wasn't robbing her. He said he planned to kill her. But then suddenly he stopped.

The man told Alexandra he was looking for someone else and fled. And that was the start of his 24-hour spree of violence. As Kaylee prepared to give her testimony, she knew that her account of what happened carried incredible weight. Man, my anxiety through that process was super high and anxious, but I was also trying to be calm, cool, and collective. And I actually wasn't able to go into the courtroom before I testified. So I also felt like I was the key kind of witness in this because I survived. Right. And I had this intimate interaction with this person that was super traumatic, but very intimate.

This is my truth. Like, I'm not lying up on the stand. I'm not all these things that I have to say is what this gentleman did to me. So I'm not on the defense side. Right. I'm like, yeah, ask me. I'll tell you the truth. And the truth was, what happened? The defense did not contest the testimony of Kaylee Ballantyne or Alexandra Cruz. Instead, they sought an insanity defense for their client. He had a long history of mental illness, and his mother, who took the stand for the defense, said that he did not have access to the treatment he needed.

On Monday, June 5, 2015, the jury delivered their verdict after days of deliberation. Edwin Alimany, guilty of first-degree murder. The jury rejected the insanity defense. This verdict meant they found the crime to be premeditated and committed with extreme atrocity and cruelty. He was also convicted of kidnapping, armed carjacking, two counts of armed robbery, and assault and battery. At his sentencing, Kaylee delivered an impact statement addressing her attacker surrounded by her family. Seeing him in person was super intense.

I kind of wanted him to look at me because of what he did, and I wanted him to know, I won and you lost. And I kind of wanted him to see that in my face. Like, I'm up here and you're sitting there with cuffs on your hand. Kaylee's story is inextricably tied to the story of Amy Lord. Throughout the trial, Kaylee and Amy's family forged a close bond. Kaylee often spoke about Amy as her guardian angel. I still just struggle with the fact that he took Amy's life and she grew up in a small town in Massachusetts with two other sisters, two great parents who taught them great values.

And so we kind of have a similar upbringing. And I just, a lot of monumental things that happen in my life are hard for me to go through because I think of her and I think of how she's not going to be able to go through them. And I also live each day with her in my thoughts and feeling like I have this obligation to live my life for her also, just because we have that special connection. And that's a lot of pressure on myself. I put a lot of pressure on myself because of that. It's really important for me to do the right thing. I try and put everyone first. I try and help everyone, whatever I can do to help. I want to help in any way, whatever that is. Part of helping is sharing her story.

And though it wasn't immediate, Kaylee found that speaking about her trauma, educating on random acts of violence, and encouraging others to fight, it was all an important part of her own healing. I knew that the only way that I was going to progress and be a better person and learn from this experience in a positive way was if I was able to share my story. And for a while, and it didn't happen overnight that I thought that, for a while I was like, why would I share my story of getting stabbed? Like what positive is going to come out of that? And ultimately there's a positive that can come out of anything. So to me, it was like, well, you fought back, you know, and trying to put my survivor guilt to the side. It was like, again, share your experience with this. Kaylee speaks at high schools when she can, and she even shared her story in a few documentaries for TV. Her message, through adversity, unlock empowerment,

it speaks to more than what she survived that night of July 23rd, 2013. It's a reflection of her childhood obstacles, a lifetime of proving her power, and helping others find that courage and power within themselves. It could have gone either way. Like, I could have fought back, which I did, and I could have still lost. But at least, at least I'm doing everything I can in my power to not let that happen. I made that decision because if I didn't, then I would have lost.

Like it's a given I would have lost. So at least I can, I can try and fight and do what I can. And I, I lucked out. I came, I came out on the other side and it's hard for me to kind of like encourage people to be like, fight back, do it, do it. Cause it's a decision. But at the same time, if I can show people an experience and like a story that's real, once we are put in that situation and you do make that

decision to fight back or to, you know, do the hard thing, even though it's hard, it's usually the right thing. And you have way more strength than you even know you have. You have so much power. Kaylee, what are you most excited about looking ahead to your future? I really wish I had a more straightforward answer for you because I'd like to say that I'm most excited for, you know, having a family someday and having a white picket fence with a garden and kids and my family surrounding me. And I live my life. I try my hardest to live my life in the present and day to day. And I don't know what the future holds.

What's real is today. And now I am most excited about continuing to live life for me and to be happy and to travel. But what's really most important to me is today and establishing and retaining the really close relationships I have with people today and trying to help people day to day with whatever I'm feeling. You know, I'm curious. I've never had the opportunity to ask someone this. How do you feel about true crime, stories like yours, becoming a form of entertainment? Yeah, that's a really good question, Kylie. It's hard because you have this battle with yourself trying to help. How can my message help? But at the same time, you're thinking people watch this for entertainment.

It's fun for people. It a mystery it's it's entertaining I've been I've been on two documentaries on investigation discovery the first documentary unfortunately the story was exploited which is terrible because viewers don't they don't care they don't have any attachment to us or our story. It's hard. It is a hard battle with myself. But I have to. I did tell myself, you know, this is helping other people.

There's other survivors out there who struggle and can't probably get out of bed every day. And how can I help them? And how can I also help people like we've done today? Like be aware of random acts of violence, know that they happen and know that you're strong, you're stronger than you think you are. And any of us can get through these types of things, but we have to be able to believe in ourselves. So I, it is hard, you know, being on national TV when it's about, you know, such a negative experience and a negative time in your life. But I, this is my story. And I choose not to look at my story like that. You know, it shaped

who I am. It was an experience that you don't wish happens to anyone, but it did. And it happened to me. And I choose to use it to the best I can in order to help other people. Because if I don't, then what am I doing with it? What has it been? Almost eight years. This summer, it will be eight years. And it still feels like yesterday and I still do a lot of work to cope with my anxiety and the issues that still stem from that attack but

I've done a lot of work for myself with my personal experience with this. I've forgiven my attacker. I've written him letters and that's strictly on my experience with this. I've forgiven my attacker. I've written him letters and that's strictly on my experience with him. I don't forgive him for what he did to Amy or Alexandra Cruz. If I can continue educating people with my experiences, my traumatic experiences, the stabbing, my mental health, then I'm going to continue doing that. And that ultimately makes me the happiest when I can help other people through what I've gone through. Kaylee, thank you so much for joining me on the Dark Downies podcast. And I know our listeners are going to share in my sentiment that this was just a special learning opportunity to hear your story. And I really appreciate how fearless you are in sharing

it. Oh, yeah, you're welcome. Whenever, wherever I tend to help, I am willing to do so. Thank you. Thank you for listening to Dark Down East. Sources for this case and others, including links to all individual articles, are listed in the show notes at darkdowneast.com. Subscribing and reviewing Dark Down East is free, and it not only supports the show, it really is the best way to ensure that you never miss an episode of Maine and New England True Crime Stories. If you have a story or a case I should cover, I'd love to hear from you at hello at darkdowneast.com. Thank you for supporting this show and allowing me to do what I do. I'm honored to use this platform for the families and friends who have lost their loved ones, for those who are still searching for answers, and to share it with people like Kaylee Ballantyne. These stories matter, and I'm not

about to let them get lost with time. I'm Kylie Lowe, and this is Dark Down East.