Lori Ruff Identified as Kimberly McLean of PA

[Claudius]

I'm so pleased and surprised that this case has been solved. It has intrigued me for a while now, and the sleuthing done by the members of this forum has impressed me SO much. It must be quite a shock for her daughter to learn of her relatives in PA... I wish them all happiness, and answers.

 

[Froglady]

OMG I have been away for nearly two weeks as my mother's health failed. She passed yesterday and I have been a wreck. I thought of coming here tonight for a distraction. THANK YOU!!!! Wow.

Sorry to hear about your mum I am glad you came to see though because I remember how much effort you put in on this case back when I was also around good it's solved isn't it

 

[bessie]

No sleuthing KM's family, nor posting names, addresses, telephone nos., etc.

Thank you :tyou:

 

[Vivette]

I wish they'd shown us a pic of Kimberly from before this whole mess started. I also hope we can learn more about her life and those missing 2 years. I just feel there has to be more to the story than 'couldn't cope with moving and new rules'.

Can you imagine how alone she must have felt?

 

[U2forever]

Hot diggity dog! :woohoo:

:thud: I cannot wait to read the article, I have to peel myself off the floor first.

 

[ezuke]

Wow, I thought she's out smart everyone long before advance technology exists and never get identified. But it was genealogy expert and DNA solved this mystery woman. I'm glad it's closure for the Ruff, Cassidy, McLean families and Kimberly's only child that deserved to know her name. It's sad to find out that Kim did it in extremely ways due to unhappy with her stepdad, new life, start over in new school, house rules and so forth. I'm stepfather myself and have stepdaughter that wanted no part of me. I worried that she might be estranged from me in the future if her bio family sides are gone before me.

All you can do is keep trying with her.
My step dad kept chugging along; supporting me, being there day to day, which is more than I can say for my biological father, and I came around.
He passed two years ago and I miss him every day, so it can happen. Just keep trying.
Good luck

 

[LadyN]

Wow, What news to wake up to this morning!
This was one of the first cases that piqued my interest on Websleuths - and I must admit I didn't think it would ever be solved, (how many hours did I spend studying the scribbled notes on scraps of paper?!).

I am particularly interested with the way in which the investigator solved this case - using DNA and family trees.

 

[NancyHogan]

My daughter has Schizophrenia, a mental disorder characterized by abnormal social behavior and failure to understand what is real. She is an unbelievable writer and had an editorial job in a magazine, and one day packed up and moved, leaving her high paying job, everyone and everything thing, she was 24, but had shown tendencies of mental illness, some serious, from age 15 on. Common symptoms include false beliefs, unclear or confused thinking, hearing voices, reduced social engagement and odd emotional expression. She also says she hallucinates. Many of these behaviors were attributed to Lori. They are inclined to anxiety disorders and major depressive illness. The symptoms typically come on gradually, begin in young adulthood, and last a lifetime. I have always had the belief that "Lori" was schizo because of her behavior and my experiences with my daughter. The false beliefs take over..... My daughter has made up a childhood of depravity and pain, including a horrible hovel we lived in. But several years later she and a friend went to see this "hovel" and it turned out to be a large, beautiful home, which we had custom built and moved in, when she was six. She called me all upset, the evidence was irrefutable and she couldn't reconcile her horrible memories and that house. I mailed her photographs (6 albums) showing her the childhood she lived (only child and very loved and large extended family) but I'm guessing she has an explaination for why her life and memories don't match. She is now 44 years old, lives eight hundred miles away and has nothing to do with me, and her father hadn't seen her in five years, last time I talked to him. Just like Lori's mom, I would not know if she was missing or not. And even if she did go missing, what's to say that it's just another start over, like Lori?

 

[U2forever]

Godspeed Kimberly McLean

I think she looks like a Kimberly too.

 

[NancyHogan]

I know.... amazing huh? I bet thousands and thousands of hours have been spent on this case here and on the Facebook group (over 500 of us) Who was Lori Erica Kennedy Ruff? I'm so happy to see a match.............. I've got a couple thousand hours invested in all different missing cases.... hoping on hope that they will all get back home.... and/or RIP.

 

[sunnynz]

No sleuthing KM's family, nor posting names, addresses, telephone nos., etc.

Thank you :tyou:

Thanks for clarifying this - are we allowed to keep sleuthing on KM and how she ended up with the BST ID and so on, or is it kind of case closed from a websleuths perspective? This is the first case I've followed on here that's been solved so I'm not sure how it works.

 

[bessie]

Thanks for clarifying this - are we allowed to keep sleuthing on KM and how she ended up with the BST ID and so on, or is it kind of case closed from a websleuths perspective? This is the first case I've followed on here that's been solved so I'm not sure how it works.

Hi, Sunny. I wouldn't say it's "case closed" just yet. Many questions have been left unanswered, particularly with regard to the missing two years. I suggest further sleuthing be limited to tracing KM's footsteps during that period of time, when she was away from her family.

Naturally, we're all a bit curious about why she left in the first place. But it's practically impossible to explore that question without violating TOS. So we'll have to pass on that one, I'm afraid.

ETA: MSM reports covering KM's home life, should there be any, can be discussed.

 

[sunnynz]

Hi, Sunny. I wouldn't say it's "case closed" just yet. Many questions have been left unanswered, particularly with regard to the missing two years. I suggest further sleuthing be limited to tracing KM's footsteps during that period of time, when she was away from her family.

Naturally, we're all a bit curious about why she left in the first place. But it's practically impossible to explore that question without violating TOS. So we'll have to pass on that one, I'm afraid.

ETA: MSM reports covering her home life, should there be any, can be discussed.

Thank you!

 

[bessie]

Wow, What news to wake up to this morning!
This was one of the first cases that piqued my interest on Websleuths - and I must admit I didn't think it would ever be solved, (how many hours did I spend studying the scribbled notes on scraps of paper?!).

I am particularly interested with the way in which the investigator solved this case - using DNA and family trees.

So am I! In fact, I think it would make a great thread topic. If anyone would like to kick one off -- perhaps do a little research on the subject to share with the rest of us -- I know the effort would be appreciated.

 

[U2forever]

OMG I have been away for nearly two weeks as my mother's health failed. She passed yesterday and I have been a wreck. I thought of coming here tonight for a distraction. THANK YOU!!!! Wow.

HerStory, I'm sorry. :hug: :candle:

 

[killerqueen1389]

I'm so amazed. I have been so busy reading since last night about Kimberly/Lori's previous life. At least her mother knows what happened to her and Kim's daughter has even more family. Wow.

 

[Skully]

I just read about this on FB on Todd's NAMUS page. Wow, this is awesome.

 

[itsmegan]

I’m glad that she has been identified. I’m also glad that her daughter is not in any kind of danger and that she will know her mother’s real identity.

I will say that it was a good thing that the funeral home collected the DNA. It was her saved DNA that later made it possible for a positive identification be made thru a DNA match.

The important thing to remember is that during the time when Kimberly was BST, LEK, and LER, she never had been arrested, booked, and fingerprinted. That’s why her fingerprints never showed up in any criminal fingerprint databases.

There is one thing of interest that I want to point out. Look at Jeung in her scribbled notes. Now drop the ng and you have Jeu.

And when I googled Jeu, I found out that Jeu is a French word. Jeu means game in French. And my dictionary at home also says it means diversion.

I’m left wondering if the notes were intended to be a game or a diversion so that her real identity wouldn’t ever be found out by anyone.

What are you talking about?
"When Fitzpatrick read the story about Lori, she immediately thought about DNA. Lori and her husband, Blake Ruff, had a daughter in 2008 and that daughter shared Lori’s DNA. If the daughter provided a DNA sample, there was a way to subtract Blake’s DNA profile from the daughter’s, leaving what is essentially Lori’s.

The Ruff family sent a saliva sample to 23andMe and Ancestry.com, companies that analyze DNA and provide tools to help people trace their family histories online. The family figured that the girl would one day want to know about her mother."

 

[astridxx]

A part of me feels like this cases resolution leaves me helpless and powerless. We've seen at least three cases in the last year that featured "runaways" - Tammy Jo Alexander (Caledonia Doe), Jason Callahan (Grateful Doe) and now Kim McLean (Lori Ruff/Becky Sue)... in each of these cases we've seen their parents helpless. "I tried to file a report but because they left on their own accord..." It makes me feel like a great number of the cases we see here, the unidentified ones, are born of kids leaving home and just never looking back. And that makes me feel helpless. If their parents can't or don't report them as missing, how would they ever know? I suppose, at the end of the day, our efforts are not in vain, as at least we're getting these cases into the public eye. And I suppose without that, they'd still be Does.

 

[Roselvr]

A part of me feels like this cases resolution leaves me helpless and powerless. We've seen at least three cases in the last year that featured "runaways" - Tammy Jo Alexander (Caledonia Doe), Jason Callahan (Grateful Doe) and now Kim McLean (Lori Ruff/Becky Sue)... in each of these cases we've seen their parents helpless. "I tried to file a report but because they left on their own accord..." It makes me feel like a great number of the cases we see here, the unidentified ones, are born of kids leaving home and just never looking back. And that makes me feel helpless. If their parents can't or don't report them as missing, how would they ever know? I suppose, at the end of the day, our efforts are not in vain, as at least we're getting these cases into the public eye. And I suppose without that, they'd still be Does.

Tammy's report was lost, I'm confident there was one, she was on probation when she went missing, there had to be record of it. Hernando police can deny it all they want, it's them that look like fools.
I think a lot of our Doe's are MP's that family do not know are missing or there was a paper report that hasn't been digitized or got lost, they thought there was a report.