Lori Erica Ruff

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 bathroom.[8] She would also obsessively track the Ruffs' family history and try to find out their family recipes, but she still refused to talk about her own past.[6]

Eventually, Ruff did not want her in-laws to have any contact with her daughter; as a result, the Ruffs began encouraging Blake to get out of the marriage. After some failed marriage therapy sessions, Blake Ruff moved back to his parents' house in Longview and filed for divorce, leaving Lori with their daughter in Leonard.[8]

In the months between the separation and Lori's suicide, she behaved very erratically. A neighbor 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 just before Lori's death.[6]

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 note addressed to "my wonderful husband" and another addressed to her daughter, to be opened on her 18th birthday.[6] The Ruffs opened and read the letter, but it contained only "ramblings from a clearly disturbed person" and no details about Lori's past.[9][6]

After Lori's funeral, some of the Ruffs drove to Leonard to see if they could find out more about her in her house. The house was discovered in disarray, with piles of dirty dishes, laundry, and trash stacked up around the house, as well as shredded documents and papers with incoherent scribblings on them. They then discovered the lock box in a closet, pried it open with a screwdriver, and discovered the documentation of Ruff's past. Also found in the lock box was a paper with several seemingly random scribblings.[6]

The suicide notes were quickly determined to be incoherent ramblings that offered no clues to Ruff's identity.[8] Other papers included the birth certificate of Becky Sue Turner and a judge's ruling granting a name change to Lori Erica Kennedy. A friend of the family verified that Becky Sue Turner had died in a house fire at the age of 2.

The writings on the paper found in the lock box included the scribblings "North Hollywood police," "402 months," and "Ben Perkins." The nature of these scribblings led some followers of the case to believe that Ruff was trying to avoid prison time, due to the references to police, a possible jail-term length, and the name of Ben Perkins, a Los Angeles attorney. When contacted, however, Perkins stated that he had never heard of Becky Sue Turner or Lori Kennedy. (Perkins, who was black and who marketed his legal services to LA's African-American community, had never taken on a white client during his career.) In addition, there were no matches for the woman in any existing fingerprint and facial recognition databases.[6] The fact that Ruff was able to cover up her identity so well in a time before the Internet has led to speculation that she had enlisted the services of a so-called identity broker.[6]

In September 2011 the Ruff family, with the help of a congressional aide, sought the help of Joe Velling, an investigator for the Social Security Administration (SSA). Velling agreed to help identify her as a case of identify theft. After following numerous leads he was stumped, and sought the help of the general public to identify her through an article published June 22, 2013, in The Seattle Times.[6] The article was subsequently republished in numerous newspapers around the world.

School portrait of McLean, circa 1984

Colleen Fitzpatrick, a former nuclear physicist who pioneered in the field of forensic genealogy, learned of Lori Ruff in 2013 and began work on the case.[1][10] Fitzpatrick had Ruff's husband and daughter tested by a direct-to-consumer testing company, through which she was able to obtain Ruff's DNA results using genetic genealogy phasing techniques, which essentially subtracted Blake Ruff's DNA from their daughter's. Ruff had a first cousin named Cassidy on her list of matches; however, the name was very common and the cousin was not responsive.[1] After two years, Fitzpatrick finally identified Ruff when she discovered a third cousin match who was related to the Cassidys. Knowing the identity of the third cousin led her to Ruff's identity.[1]

Fitzpatrick informed Joe Velling, who had in the meantime retired from the SSA.[1] He flew to Pennsylvania to meet the potential family.[1] Velling approached a relative, who immediately identified the deceased Lori Ruff as Kimberly McLean.[1]