When Blake Ruff’s family opened the lockbox, they found a dead child’s birth certificate, a legal name change, and proof that the woman they knew as Lori Erica Ruff had built her adult life under someone else’s name. She had died on Christmas Eve in 2010. The documents explained how she had become Lori. They did not say who she had been before.
The Lori Erica Ruff case began as an identity mystery inside a grieving family. A husband had lost his wife; their daughter had lost her mother. Then the paperwork made even the most basic biographical questions uncertain. The name would eventually be recovered. Understanding why she had kept it hidden proved much harder.
The Box That Split the Story in Two
Lori guarded details about her childhood. In Maureen O’Hagan’s original reporting, Blake’s relatives recalled her saying that she had no surviving family and declining a newspaper wedding announcement. These were their recollections, not a complete account of her inner life. She married Blake, and they had a daughter in 2008.
By 2010, the marriage had broken down. On December 24, she died by suicide outside her in-laws’ home in Longview, Texas. Afterward, the family searched for answers among the belongings she had kept private.
The lockbox was opened with a screwdriver. Among its contents was the record of a name change from Becky Sue Turner to Lori Erica Kennedy. That looked, briefly, like a route backward. But the real Becky Sue Turner had been a two-year-old child who died in a Washington house fire in 1971. Finding that name had exposed another identity, not the woman’s original one.
Timeline of Events
- 1986: According to her family’s later account, 18-year-old Kimberly McLean leaves Pennsylvania and cuts off contact.
- 1988: She uses Becky Sue Turner’s birth record to establish identification and legally changes her name to Lori Erica Kennedy.
- 2008: Their daughter is born.
- December 24, 2010: Lori dies. Documents discovered afterward reveal the identity theft.
- 2013: The Seattle Times publicizes the mystery; forensic genealogist Colleen Fitzpatrick begins pursuing the family connection.
- 2016: Photographic recognition and a DNA comparison with Kimberly’s mother confirm the identification, reported publicly that September.
How She Disappeared Inside Ordinary Life
She vanished into paperwork, routine, and suburban normalcy. Once she had the documents she needed, she got an education, formed relationships, and built a life in Texas. She became a wife and a mother. The false identity did not mean those relationships were fictitious; it meant the people in them did not know where her life had started.
On paper, the transformation had steps. A birth certificate led to an Idaho identification card. A legal name change created Lori Erica Kennedy. The evidence gave investigators a sequence to follow, but each record pointed to the same constructed beginning.
The distinction mattered. An official document could be genuine while the identity used to obtain it was false. Collecting more records in the name of Lori Kennedy did not necessarily bring investigators any closer to Kimberly McLean.
The Investigation Reaches Beyond the Box
Social Security Administration investigator Joe Velling took up the identity problem. He could establish that Lori was not Becky Sue Turner. Discovering who she actually was proved much more difficult.
In a June 2013 On the Media interview, O’Hagan explained the decision to publish photographs and documents and ask readers for help. The newspaper offered a private route for tips as well as public discussion. A familiar face in a photograph might connect the woman in Texas to an earlier life.
There was also another way to search. Family relationships could survive a change of name even when the documentary trail did not.
The Evidence That Changed Everything
Fitzpatrick and Reg Brown later described the identification work in an American Academy of Forensic Sciences conference abstract. Lori had been cremated and her DNA was unavailable for their research. Her daughter and husband were tested instead. Comparing their results allowed the researchers to distinguish DNA inherited from the mother and look for her relatives.
The problem was no longer simply a missing name. Some genetic matches were anonymous, adopted, or unresponsive. The researchers combined DNA relationships with family history and geographical connections to narrow the search. A relative’s match was a lead to investigate, not an identification by itself.
The work led to a Philadelphia-area family. Velling brought photographs to a relative, who recognized Lori as Kimberly McLean. A later DNA test involving Kimberly’s mother confirmed the connection. The paper trail had stopped at an assumed identity; the family trail reached the woman who had existed before it.
What Doesn’t Add Up — The Gaps That Remain
The identity question is solved. These remaining questions concern the incomplete account of her life, not evidence of a hidden crime.
- What happened between leaving home and assuming a new identity? The reported departure was in 1986; the documented transformation followed in 1988. Those intervening years matter because they contain the transition the later records cannot explain.
- Why was separation from her family made permanent? Her uncle described difficulties following her parents’ divorce and her mother’s remarriage. That is a relative’s account of family circumstances, not proof of everything Kimberly experienced or why she chose identity theft.
- Why keep the documents? The box preserved the evidence that eventually exposed her aliases. Its survival does not establish whether she intended anyone to find it.
A Name Returned to Two Families
The evidence supports that Kimberly McLean left her early life, adopted a dead child’s identity, and built the long-term alias that became Lori Erica Kennedy and later Lori Erica Ruff. It does not justify supplying the private motive she never publicly explained. Secrecy alone cannot establish a diagnosis, an abusive relationship, or an undiscovered offense.
The consequence of the identification was more concrete than those theories. Her daughter could finally be connected to her mother’s birth family. The people in Pennsylvania who had lost Kimberly and the people in Texas who had known Lori were no longer searching for two different women.
The lockbox had shown the Ruffs that a history was missing. The investigation gave their daughter a way back into it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who was Lori Erica Ruff?
She was Kimberly McLean, who left Pennsylvania as a young adult and later lived in Texas under an assumed identity.
How was Lori Erica Ruff identified?
Genetic genealogy led investigators to her family. A relative recognized photographs, and her mother’s DNA confirmed the relationship.
Why did she steal another identity?
No complete explanation is established. Family recollections help describe her departure, but they cannot fully explain her later decisions.
Is the case solved?
Her identity was confirmed in 2016. The missing portions of her life and her reasons for concealing her origins remain separate questions.
What did the lockbox establish?
It contained documents connecting the Becky Sue Turner identity to Lori Erica Kennedy. It exposed the aliases without revealing her birth name.
Research Sources
The following resources were consulted to verify and update this article.
- On the Media: Help Solve a Mystery (June 28, 2013) — Interview with reporter Maureen O’Hagan about the lockbox, identity documents, investigator Joe Velling and public appeal.
- The Philadelphia Inquirer: Scientist solves 1986 disappearance of Wynnewood girl (September 23, 2016) — O’Hagan’s follow-up reporting on Kimberly McLean, family recollections, photographic recognition and maternal DNA confirmation.
- Fitzpatrick and Brown: The Mysterious Case of Lori Ruff — Solved! (AAFS 2017 proceedings, PDF page 1331) — The researchers’ account of reconstructing maternal DNA relationships using tests of Ruff’s daughter and husband.
- The Chronicle: The Mystery of a Woman Who Took Her Secret to the Grave (June 25, 2013, page 11) — Previously listed republication of O’Hagan’s reporting on the family and investigation. The full PDF could not be reopened for this review; the accessible references above support this verification.
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