Bill Comeau gave his wife a mother's ring on the couple's first wedding anniversary almost 15 years ago.

The stones in the ring represented Leslie Comeau's three daughters, but it also had four stones for four children Leslie had never met -- Comeau's children from his first marriage.

"I made a promise to them in my mind that I'd never give up, I'd never quit looking for them," he said, adding that after 18 years of searching for his son and three daughters, it was no consolation to find out recently his family had been indoctrinated into polygamist Thomas Sliwinski's way of life.

According to Comeau, he was at his home in Bakersfield, Calif., three weeks ago when he accidentally typed the name of his daughter, Leah Comeau, instead of the name of the search engine he wanted to use, into the address area on the Internet page at his computer.

He said the slip of his fingers called up sites relating to polygamy, and he originally dismissed it, moving on to the search engine he originally wanted to visit.

But later, his curiosity got the best of him and he returned to the link, which led him to articles published by the Independent Record last November about Leah Comeau and her struggles to leave the polygamist lifestyle into which she, her two sisters and her brother had been absorbed when they were young children.

"It made me sick," said Comeau from his daughter, Leah's, living room Monday evening. "I cried. I even threw up."

But then he picked up the phone and started making the calls that ultimately brought the two back together after almost two decades apart.

Comeau said he was devastated when his first wife, Brenda, informed him that she had met someone else -- Sliwinski -- and that she wanted a divorce.

But that blow was nothing compared with how he felt when a complicated court battle over the custody of the children erupted with his by then ex-wife, and the children were placed with his ex-wife's mother while the case worked its way through the justice system.

Unbeknownst to Comeau, Brenda and Sliwinski took the children from her mother's home and embarked on a journey that extended from one side of the country to the other, ultimately ending up in Lewis and Clark County.

According to court documents filed in Helena District Court in connection with a child custody case between Sliwinski and Brenda, the pair leveled allegations of child molestation against Comeau and relied on those claims -- which ultimately were proven to be unfounded -- as a reason to keep moving their blended family from state to state, staying one step ahead of anyone who might be looking for them.

Comeau said he was searching for his children all the while, and came close to finding them on a couple of occasions.

Once, Comeau flew to New York after receiving information that Brenda and the children were there -- Brenda and Sliwinski slipped away, but Comeau did find their broken-down vehicle in which several pages from the family photo album had been abandoned.

Comeau still has those pages. Time and constant use have left the edges of the pages ragged and the paper yellow and brittle.

He said his current wife's daughters know all the photographs that appear on those pages, and can identify each child who appears in them from beginning to end.

According to Comeau, he has continued to search for Leah and her siblings through various organizations, services and on the Internet over the years, to no avail.

"Imagine how you would feel not knowing where your children are for five minutes," he said this week. "Now, multiply that by 18 years."

For as discouraging as his lack of success in finding Leah and her siblings was, Comeau said he held on to the hope that they would one day be reunited -- that hope helped him to survive several heart attacks.

"I wasn't ready to give up," he said, adding that he hung stockings for his children every Christmas, and he never forgot one of their birthdays.

Leah and her brother and sisters, on the other hand, didn't know anyone was looking for them.

"We were always told he didn't care, he was abusive, he left us and this is our life now," Leah said, recalling the words of her mother and Sliwinski.

According to Leah, the only time she ever looked for her father was after she left the home she shared with her stepfather/husband in November 2002.

She said she wanted to tell him how angry she was at him for leaving her and her siblings to live out Sliwinski's dreams of a polygamist lifestyle, governed by the teachings of Sliwinski's brand of religion.

Comeau said his reaction to the IR's series, "The House of Thomas," was complicated.

It sickened him to know that his ex-wife had left his children alone with Sliwinski when the situation became too difficult for her to handle.

As a result, his daughters became wives and mothers before they had the opportunity to enjoy their own childhoods, Comeau said.

"I wanted to find them," he said of his children. "But I didn't want (the women depicted in the articles) to be them, if that makes any sense."

That reality hit hard for Comeau on Monday as he watched his daughters, Leah and Heather, pitted against one another, testifying for the prosecution and the defense respectively, at Sliwinski's trial for tampering with evidence.

Sliwinski was charged with tampering with evidence last year when he allegedly told a sheriff's deputy that he hid evidence in a statutory rape case against him for having sexual relations with Leah's sister before her 16th birthday.

He pleaded guilty to the downgraded charge of criminal endangerment in the rape case and was sentenced to 10 years suspended.

This week's court proceeding relating to the tampering case was a bench trial and the judge has not yet made his decision on that charge.

Comeau sat with Leah outside of the courtroom while she waited to testify against her ex-husband, and offered moral support from the front row of the gallery as she took the stand.

"It was an honor," he said of being there for Leah.

Comeau said he wishes he had been able to meet his other daughter, Heather, under different circumstances, not outside the courtroom as Leah waited to testify against the husband that both the girls once shared.

He said that when he introduced himself to Heather in the foyer, she told him she didn't want to speak to him.

"I was just hoping if (Heather) saw me with Leah, it would change her mind," Comeau said of Heather's determination to stand by Sliwinski. "Hopefully it's in her mind that I'd be there for her, too."

Comeau added that it was no easy feat for him to stay seated in the courtroom as his eldest daughter recounted portions of her life with Sliwinski.

"I wanted (Sliwinski) to look me in the eye," Comeau said after the court proceeding. "He wouldn't do that."

Neither Comeau, nor Leah, thinks that rekindling their father/daughter relationship will be easy.

Comeau said Leah lived in his mind all these years as an 8-year-old girl roaring around his acreage in California on her mini-bike. The woman who met him at the airport after he contacted her was all grown up, six children in tow.

"You don't picture them grown up, as a mama, a young woman," he said.

However, he said he has been amazed by the poise exhibited by his daughter on a daily basis.

Leah said she probably has had more emotions to reconcile in her mind than her father has in relation to their reunion.

"My whole life, I was told he didn't care," she said, adding that she also has had to wrestle with her anger over the lies her mother told her. "I loved him (when she first saw him) ... but the bond wasn't there."

Leah says she's confident she and her father will be able to build on their past, especially considering that her children gravitated to Comeau and his new family immediately.

"I've always said that hearing 'dad' is one of the greatest feelings in the world," said Comeau. "But 'grandpa' is pretty good, too."

Since finding Leah, Comeau has had the opportunity to speak with Leah's brother and her youngest sister, beginning the same process of becoming reacquainted that he has started with Leah.

He hopes that one day he will have the opportunity to do the same with Heather.

If Heather ever finds that strength within herself, Comeau said he knows she will emerge from that lifestyle with the same self-confidence as her older sister.

Although Comeau said he would have done anything to spare his children the pain he believes Sliwinski inflicted upon them, he also knows it helped to shape the people they have become --and Leah agrees.

"I am like this -- who I am today -- because of that horrible life I had," she said. "I am the mom that I am, the responsible adult, the woman, because of it."

Leah told her father the hardships only made her dream bigger.

"I'm not going to let anything stand in my way," she said. "I'm going to live the life I dreamed."