Lori Erica Ruff

Case background and investigation

On Christmas Eve 2010, a 42-year-old woman known as Lori Erica Ruff shot and killed herself in the driveway of her in-laws' home in Longview, Texas. She had recently separated from her husband, Blake Ruff, and was in a custody dispute over their young daughter. After her death, her in-laws found a lockbox containing documents that revealed her identity was fabricated.

The lockbox contained a birth certificate for a deceased Idaho girl named Becky Sue Turner, who had died in a house fire as a toddler in 1971. Lori had apparently used this deceased child's identity to obtain a new Social Security card and then legally changed her name to 'Lori Erica Kennedy' before marrying Blake Ruff. She had created an entirely new person, complete with a GED, college attendance, and a social history—all under a false identity.

Lori had been secretive and controlling throughout her marriage, refusing to discuss her past and cutting off contact with anyone from before her marriage. She told various conflicting stories about her childhood and family. Her in-laws described her as increasingly paranoid and emotionally unstable. After her death, investigators tried for years to determine who she really was, but her fingerprints and DNA were not in any law enforcement database.

In 2016, genetic genealogy researchers used DNA from Lori's remains to identify her as Kimberly McLean, born in 1968 in the Philadelphia area. She had run away from her family as a teenager in the late 1980s and reinvented herself completely. Her biological family in Pennsylvania was located and confirmed the identification. The case became a landmark example of genetic genealogy's power to solve identity mysteries.