My God, That's Kimberly

Lori Erica Kennedy Ruff died by suicide on Christmas Eve, 2010. For six years after she died, nobody had any idea who she really was. Lori had stolen the identity of a two-year-old who died in 1971. She used the child's birth certificate to change her name, and her true identity remained unknown even to her husband.

In May 1988, McLean obtained the birth certificate of Becky Sue Turner, a 2-year-old girl who was killed, with two of her siblings, in a house fire in Fife, Washington, in 1971. McLean requested the birth certificate in Bakersfield, California, Becky Sue Turner's birthplace. She then travelled to Idaho, where she used the document to obtain a state ID card on June 16.

McLean, posing as Becky Sue Turner, appeared before a judge in Dallas on July 5, 1988, and legally changed her name to Lori Erica Kennedy. A week later, she obtained a Social Security number, removing traces of her true identity. McLean also took a birth date of July 18, 1969. She received a Texas driver's license in 1989 and qualified for a GED the following year. She enrolled in Dallas County Community College, and in 1997, she graduated from the University of Texas at Arlington with a degree in business administration.

In 2003 McLean met Jon Blakely "Blake" Ruff, the son of a socially prominent family in East Texas, in a Bible study class. Ruff describes her as being incredibly secretive, particularly regarding her past. McLean had told him she was from Arizona, that both her parents were dead. McLean said she'd had an unhappy childhood and had no siblings; she also said her father was a failed stockbroker. The couple eloped in January 2004. They tried several times to have a child but had trouble conceiving and suffered multiple miscarriages. This led investigators to believe that Lorie was older than she claimed, though the difference turned out to be less than a year. She eventually gave birth to a baby girl via In vitro fertilization in 2008.

Lorie Kennedy Ruff was "extremely protective" of her daughter, often refusing to let anyone else hold her and even taking the baby with her to use the restroom. Eventually, Ruff did not want her in-laws to contact her daughter; thus, the Ruffs began encouraging Blake to get out of the marriage. After some failed marriage therapy sessions, Blake Ruff moved back to his parent's house in Longview and filed for divorce, leaving Lori with their daughter in Leonard.

In the months between the separation and Lori's suicide, she behaved very erratically. A neighbour recalled that she and her daughter appeared to be undernourished and that Lori would often ramble incoherently to herself while pacing back and forth outside. She also began sending harassing emails to the Ruffs, created a scene at a custody exchange, and stole a set of house keys from them. The harassment was so severe that the Ruffs filed a cease and desist order before Lori's death.

On December 24, 2010, Ruff's body was discovered in her car in the Ruffs' driveway, dead from a self-inflicted gunshot. In the car were two suicide notes: One 11‑page letter addressed to "my wonderful husband," and another addressed her daughter, instructed to be opened on her 18th birthday. The Ruffs opened and read the letter anyway, but it contained only "ramblings from a disturbed person" and no details about Lori's past.

The suicide notes were quickly determined to be incoherent ramblings that offered no clues to Ruff's identity. Other papers included the birth certificate of Becky Sue Turner and a judge's ruling granting a name change to Lori Erica Kennedy. A family friend verified that Becky Sue Turner had died in a house fire at two years of age.

Ruff's apparent identity theft pulled in former Social Security Administration investigator Joe Velling, who hoped that publicity from a written Times piece would urge amateur sleuths to provide some leads. It did. Late in 2015, Velling received a call from a former nuclear physicist and forensic genealogist named Colleen Fitzpatrick, who followed the case online. Based on her research and a DNA sample the Ruff family submitted that indicated Lori had a first cousin named Michael Cassidy, Fitzpatrick suggested Velling contact the Cassidy family in Philadelphia.

Velling travelled to the city and approached a member of the Cassidy family, who saw Lori's driver's license photo. The response? "My God, that's Kimberly!" The family member confirmed Ruff was Kimberly McLean, daughter of Deanne Cassidy and James McLean, who had run away from home in Pennsylvania at 18 years of age.

McLean assumed a series of aliases before marrying Blake Ruff in 2004 and settling down, leaving no trace of Kimberly McLean until Fitzpatrick began researching her family tree. Although questions about the case remain, Lori Ruff's name has now been removed from the federal government's database for missing and unidentified persons.

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Identity theft has always intrigued me as a crime. Why do people do identity theft, and how do they get away with it? The most common identity theft is to obtain credit or money. The second most common is immigration status. Kimberly Mclean used identity theft for neither of these common reasons. She just wanted to run away from home. Why identity theft? The mystery of this crime remains unknown.