TX - 'Lori Ruff', Longview, WhtFem UP9863, *General Discussion and Theories* #1

[Froglady]

Not that it helped him much but would help with last names :/ ?

 

[Owutatangledweb]

And then, there is this guy. I guess you could say he is a "failed" stockbroker. Just don't know yet when he started his endeavors. The early 90's period is mentioned in one article. I remembered seeing a TV show about him. LEK could have just as easily become mixed up in this scene as any other. Will have to look further and see when this guy started his enterprise.


http://www.vice.com/read/i-gave-up-stocks-to-throw-raves-and-sell-drugs

 

[AstroKitty]

I have NO idea why this didn't cross my mind earlier:
Cuban food
Florida (Miami specific)
Cocaine
The 80's
Changing your name and identity because you were "caught up" and the people you associated with were being watched by DEA or competition.

I'm not one for far out guesses but for all we know she was one of the model chicks that hung around the big coke dealers in Miami in the 80's (who were often dancers & some changed their identity).

 

[ALadInsane]

I am new to the forum :blushing:


She did the buckeye parachute training at http://www.flyppc.com/index.htm
Three instructors with the same last name work there (http://parachutepilot.com/States/texas_instructors.htm ). One of them, R.E. was her instructor.

I doubt the buckeye pilot certificate is of any use to find connections to her past. And it is not certain that it was in the box.
The certificate may be useful to find people that knew her in 1996. She may have done the flight during holidays with friends or acquaintances. It is unlikely that she had a personal connection with the instructor. The witness may or may not have been someone she knew. I read the name as “Christin Shave”. Some other user here said it looks as “Christian Shaver”. I can’t find any person by the name Christin Shave in Texas. I only find someone by that name in Wisconsin (a bit far away!).

I find it odd that after several newspapers and sites had published her case not a single person came forward to say that he/she knew her. Either as LEK or other ID – No friends, no co-workers, no neighbours, no clients, no colleagues. This could have helped at least to understand her personality or if she was mentally stable or not.

 

[ClaireNC]

Welcome ALadInsane! :welcome6:

Unfortunately, the article was really only published in a few newspapers. It needs national coverage and local coverage in Texas, California, Nevada and Arizona.

 

[AstroKitty]

I am new to the forum :blushing:


She did the buckeye parachute training at http://www.flyppc.com/index.htm
Three instructors with the same last name work there (http://parachutepilot.com/States/texas_instructors.htm ). One of them, R.E. was her instructor.

I doubt the buckeye pilot certificate is of any use to find connections to her past. And it is not certain that it was in the box.
The certificate may be useful to find people that knew her in 1996. She may have done the flight during holidays with friends or acquaintances. It is unlikely that she had a personal connection with the instructor. The witness may or may not have been someone she knew. I read the name as “Christin Shave”. Some other user here said it looks as “Christian Shaver”. I can’t find any person by the name Christin Shave in Texas. I only find someone by that name in Wisconsin (a bit far away!).

I find it odd that after several newspapers and sites had published her case not a single person came forward to say that he/she knew her. Either as LEK or other ID – No friends, no co-workers, no neighbours, no clients, no colleagues. This could have helped at least to understand her personality or if she was mentally stable or not.

Love the name I'm a Bowie fan myself.

As far as the name, I changed it to Christopher Shaver and there's both an MD and someone at Berkley that is damn near genius level in computer science and engineering. A Christopher Shaffer (just playing with the word) is a singer with a band that had a moment of popularity in the 90's.

Then there's a Christian Shaffer (plug in Vanderbilt after) that's a science writer.

With Christian Shaver you can pull up a DR in orthopedics and it also comes back to someone at Vanderbilt Uni. Weird.

 

[ClaireNC]

This is changing the subject a bit, but I want to through out the start of the theory. It has been touched on before, but we never really discuss it. If you were going to change your identity, where would you go?

If I lived in New York City for most of my life, I might choose LA, or Chicago. if I liked city life, it would most likely be another large city located a good distance from NY that I could disappear in, but are far enough away to not expect to run into somebody I knew.

If I lived in Boise, Idaho, in the 1980's I might choose a smaller city at that time. Maybe Tuscon, AZ, or Raleigh, NC, or some place like Orlando, FL that was just growing.

I am just giving these as examples or as thought starters, since I have limited time to write this post just now.

If I decided to run away from my old life, I would probably choose someplace that offered a similar lifestyle but was geography far enough away. If I lived on the West Coast I might go East. If I lived North, I would probably go South.

Has anybody else thought about this?

 

[fred&edna]

I am new to the forum :blushing:


She did the buckeye parachute training at http://www.flyppc.com/index.htm
Three instructors with the same last name work there (http://parachutepilot.com/States/texas_instructors.htm ). One of them, R.E. was her instructor.

I doubt the buckeye pilot certificate is of any use to find connections to her past. And it is not certain that it was in the box.
The certificate may be useful to find people that knew her in 1996. She may have done the flight during holidays with friends or acquaintances. It is unlikely that she had a personal connection with the instructor. The witness may or may not have been someone she knew. I read the name as “Christin Shave”. Some other user here said it looks as “Christian Shaver”. I can’t find any person by the name Christin Shave in Texas. I only find someone by that name in Wisconsin (a bit far away!).

I find it odd that after several newspapers and sites had published her case not a single person came forward to say that he/she knew her. Either as LEK or other ID – No friends, no co-workers, no neighbours, no clients, no colleagues. This could have helped at least to understand her personality or if she was mentally stable or not.

I think I was wrong. HerStory suggested "Christine Shaver" which I believe is correct.
jmo

 

[Bsublime]

I was thinking it was Christina Shaver. If you search on that and Texas or Dallas you come up which a bunch of names. Just to show that the world is full of coincidences, one of the first hits I found for Dallas and Shaver was a the link:

http://www.skydivedallas.com/SiteTemp/archvids.php

Which has the videos of everyone who paid for a video of them skydiving at Sky Dive Dallas in 1999.

I always wonder how much these "coincidences" are really just Google sifting through the mass of information and making connections for me. For example I just did a bunch of searches for parachuting in Texas and now I am search in a name so it made the connection for me.

 

[AstroKitty]

This is changing the subject a bit, but I want to through out the start of the theory. It has been touched on before, but we never really discuss it. If you were going to change your identity, where would you go?

If I lived in New York City for most of my life, I might choose LA, or Chicago. if I liked city life, it would most likely be another large city located a good distance from NY that I could disappear in, but are far enough away to not expect to run into somebody I knew.

If I lived in Boise, Idaho, in the 1980's I might choose a smaller city at that time. Maybe Tuscon, AZ, or Raleigh, NC, or some place like Orlando, FL that was just growing.

I am just giving these as examples or as thought starters, since I have limited time to write this post just now.

If I decided to run away from my old life, I would probably choose someplace that offered a similar lifestyle but was geography far enough away. If I lived on the West Coast I might go East. If I lived North, I would probably go South.

Has anybody else thought about this?

I have but here's the thing - I have lived a lifestyle kinda shady and different and if I were to go missing, I wouldn't fit into "normality" of where someone would expect me to go / do.

I grew up in NYC, moved to Indiana (and not a major city), then moved to Phoenix, Los Angeles, Back to NYC - back to Indiana and then to Chicago. When you're from a large city and you want to escape your former life, you move to nowhere. Indiana is pretty much no where. You can't disappear as easily as some might think in a large city. We all have vices or habits (even if it's certain food), so we'll always run into someone that knows someone from your past. It's damn near inevitable. Now, if you stayed to yourself and moved to NYC / Chicago/ LA - you could, I suppose - disappear. But people are nosy on who their neighbors are and what they do for a living, period. more so in larger cities. People in larger cities are ALWAYS on the go and always looking to network. More so back then in "person" than now.

My grandfather born in another country, who was part of an outfit - moved to Boston, Chicago (had a family, changed his identity completely.. then ran off) moved to NYC and finally to LA where he worked for Warner brothers ..under a different name. Finally people kept finding him, so he moved to Ohio. People who live on the fringe tend to view smaller towns in the midwest as a haven of sorts. It's quiet, you can get under the table jobs doing manual labor and be part of a community. I'm not trying to offend, but I view smaller town people more gullible which means I don't think they are that worldly and won't question too much in regards to what I share with them.

Im rambling a bit here lol but basically, I picture a person moving to some place like Idaho because they came from a large city.

 

[mrskeev]

Respectfully snipped by me.

People who live on the fringe tend to view smaller towns in the midwest as a haven of sorts. It's quiet, you can get under the table jobs doing manual labor and be part of a community. I'm not trying to offend, but I view smaller town people more gullible which means I don't think they are that worldly and won't question too much in regards to what I share with them.

Im rambling a bit here lol but basically, I picture a person moving to some place like Idaho because they came from a large city.

I'm not sure I can agree with you on that one. I have lived in both large cities and small towns. Having grown up in a small town I can tell you that in small towns when a new person shows up they become the "talk of the town". Everyone knows your business and IMO I would think if you were really trying to hide out you wouldn't choose a small town where you would become part of the beauty shop gossip. And I'm not just talking Mayberry size. My hubby grew up in a town of 60000 and it was the same there. People knew everything that happened in that town. From experience I know that If anyone gets just a hint of something funky in your story they are on it like a bloodhound.
Just because someone lives in a small town doesn't mean they aren't "worldly" and they certainly aren't anymore gullible than anyone else. People come to small towns from all over the place for many reasons. Sure there are some that have never seen the landscape outside of a 100 mile radius but for the most part people from small towns travel and can be just as worldly as those in cities and are just as likely to want to know about who you are as any person from a city.

 

[ClaireNC]

I didn't have time to expand on my though process before. First of all, coming from the mindset of somebody growing up in the US in the 1960's, 1970's, I suspect when she changed her identity in 1988, she was in her mid to late 20's.

The majority of the population did not move around as much at that time and, therefore, were generally not as "worldly".

I grew up in what was once a rural town, but developed into a suburb of NYC. If I had thought about "escaping" at that time, I probably would have gone to the west coast of Florida, like a suburb of Tampa or the Phoenix, AZ area that was just growing at that time. Those places would likely have the comforts I was used to and I would be able to blend in there, because they were growth areas, so the population was used to accepting newcomers. Someplace practical.

That's just a loosely described scenario of what I might have been on the east coast. If you grew up in California, or Idaho, your impression of a safe place would be very different.

As I traveled and had more experiences, my concept of where I would escape to changed and I would choose a place I found beautiful, like summer in Montana and winters in Tuscan, AZ. Or escape entirely and move to Costa Rico.

I'm just trying to see what other people think, here.

 

[neesaki]

Respectfully snipped by me.



I'm not sure I can agree with you on that one. I have lived in both large cities and small towns. Having grown up in a small town I can tell you that in small towns when a new person shows up they become the "talk of the town". Everyone knows your business and IMO I would think if you were really trying to hide out you wouldn't choose a small town where you would become part of the beauty shop gossip. And I'm not just talking Mayberry size. My hubby grew up in a town of 60000 and it was the same there. People knew everything that happened in that town. From experience I know that If anyone gets just a hint of something funky in your story they are on it like a bloodhound.
Just because someone lives in a small town doesn't mean they aren't "worldly" and they certainly aren't anymore gullible than anyone else. People come to small towns from all over the place for many reasons. Sure there are some that have never seen the landscape outside of a 100 mile radius but for the most part people from small towns travel and can be just as worldly as those in cities and are just as likely to want to know about who you are as any person from a city.

I agree with you. Now if it were me, I would go somewhere I had always wanted to go, somewhere I had always dreamed of. For me, in my late 20's or even 30 somethings, that would have been the Rocky mountains. I would have run away to the Colorado Rockies. Because I love nature, I love to hike in the mountains, and I love to snow ski. But that's just me.

So who is LEK? What did she want? I have to assume she chose where she ended up because for some reason she wanted to be there. Texas, imo, a very strange choice. Why I say that, because I live here, lol.

I think that what it comes down to is that everyone has their own motivations, wants, needs, and dreams. Who can guess, I can't even begin to, what hers were, or why.

 

[AstroKitty]

Respectfully snipped by me.



I'm not sure I can agree with you on that one. I have lived in both large cities and small towns. Having grown up in a small town I can tell you that in small towns when a new person shows up they become the "talk of the town". Everyone knows your business and IMO I would think if you were really trying to hide out you wouldn't choose a small town where you would become part of the beauty shop gossip. And I'm not just talking Mayberry size. My hubby grew up in a town of 60000 and it was the same there. People knew everything that happened in that town. From experience I know that If anyone gets just a hint of something funky in your story they are on it like a bloodhound.
Just because someone lives in a small town doesn't mean they aren't "worldly" and they certainly aren't anymore gullible than anyone else. People come to small towns from all over the place for many reasons. Sure there are some that have never seen the landscape outside of a 100 mile radius but for the most part people from small towns travel and can be just as worldly as those in cities and are just as likely to want to know about who you are as any person from a city.

I didn't expect anyone to agree, it was my opinion on how I view small towns when I move to them.

 

[AstroKitty]

Here's the thing: dreaming of "escaping" and having to assume an identity and RUN are two far different things. She wasn't "escaping" she was assuming identities (so that's a crime) and running from something. It's different. She was on the fringe not a wayward girl looking to live out a dream and do it the right way.

I think everyone is concentrating on anything I have said in this thread and my post upwards as if I'm coming from a civilian point of view. I'm not. I'm telling you from a criminal mindset.

 

[AngelaE8654]

I have but here's the thing - I have lived a lifestyle kinda shady and different and if I were to go missing, I wouldn't fit into "normality" of where someone would expect me to go / do.

I grew up in NYC, moved to Indiana (and not a major city), then moved to Phoenix, Los Angeles, Back to NYC - back to Indiana and then to Chicago. When you're from a large city and you want to escape your former life, you move to nowhere. Indiana is pretty much no where. You can't disappear as easily as some might think in a large city. We all have vices or habits (even if it's certain food), so we'll always run into someone that knows someone from your past. It's damn near inevitable. Now, if you stayed to yourself and moved to NYC / Chicago/ LA - you could, I suppose - disappear. But people are nosy on who their neighbors are and what they do for a living, period. more so in larger cities. People in larger cities are ALWAYS on the go and always looking to network. More so back then in "person" than now.

My grandfather born in another country, who was part of an outfit - moved to Boston, Chicago (had a family, changed his identity completely.. then ran off) moved to NYC and finally to LA where he worked for Warner brothers ..under a different name. Finally people kept finding him, so he moved to Ohio. People who live on the fringe tend to view smaller towns in the midwest as a haven of sorts. It's quiet, you can get under the table jobs doing manual labor and be part of a community. I'm not trying to offend, but I view smaller town people more gullible which means I don't think they are that worldly and won't question too much in regards to what I share with them.

Im rambling a bit here lol but basically, I picture a person moving to some place like Idaho because they came from a large city.

Your post reminded me of something. My grandpa is from Elizabeth, New Jersey but came to the West Coast after getting out of the service and changing his name...slightly. Same last name, slightly different spelling. He had two different wives and two sets of two children (both sets were one boy and one girl) back in New Jersey and met my grandma here and started another family. None of us knew anything at all about this until long after he was gone and my mom and grandma decided to do some genealogy. My mom is quite the detective about stuff like this and digs and digs and digs like a bulldog. She eventually found all of her siblings; two of whom had moved to Denmark back in the 1950s. The ONLY thing my mother ever knew before her search is one time and one time only my grandpa mentioned that she had a sister that she never knew. He later on denied saying it. His "changes" were slight, though. Slight spelling changes. I don't know that he ever ran into anyone from his past but he passed away in 1980, before the Internet really took off. He claimed to have been from New York City and had the accent of the area. We always thought he had been born in the Bronx.


Sometimes slight changes are every bit as effective as drastic ones.

 

[Linda9681]

I think FLEK did this with name changes too. I found some unclaimed property that is possibly her with a different middle initial. I think we could look for Lara lorrie lorie Laura or spell Erika like that, maybe canady for a last name.
I want to find Kim laciner. It looks like one of her aliases was Kim Johnson... Kennedy-Johnson ... Yes I am wondering if she really was FLEK.

 

[AngelaE8654]

I think FLEK did this with name changes too. I found some unclaimed property that is possibly her with a different middle initial. I think we could look for Lara lorrie lorie Laura or spell Erika like that, maybe canady for a last name.
I want to find Kim laciner. It looks like one of her aliases was Kim Johnson... Kennedy-Johnson ... Yes I am wondering if she really was FLEK.

Laurie is another way to spell the name "Lori", too. I knew some girls with this spelling. Same pronunciation. Perhaps her name had been Laurie.

 

[masootz]

Here's the thing: dreaming of "escaping" and having to assume an identity and RUN are two far different things. She wasn't "escaping" she was assuming identities (so that's a crime) and running from something. It's different. She was on the fringe not a wayward girl looking to live out a dream and do it the right way.

I think everyone is concentrating on anything I have said in this thread and my post upwards as if I'm coming from a civilian point of view. I'm not. I'm telling you from a criminal mindset.

exactly. she wasn't trying to start over she was trying to be a different person. i have a close friend who changed his name, legally, simply due to not wanting to be found by distant relatives. nothing illegal or shady about it, just simply changed from something hard to pronounce to something with a personal connection. for 90% of people trying to "start fresh" a legal name change like that would be more than enough.

lr illegally changed her name at least twice that we know of, and even got a ged arguably to avoid having her identity traced to wherever she actually went to grade school. that's head and shoulders above trying to escape one's past or trying to start fresh. that to me is indicative of someone having something to hide or someone to hide from.

 

[Linda9681]

I agree with you. Now if it were me, I would go somewhere I had always wanted to go, somewhere I had always dreamed of. For me, in my late 20's or even 30 somethings, that would have been the Rocky mountains. I would have run away to the Colorado Rockies. Because I love nature, I love to hike in the mountains, and I love to snow ski. But that's just me.

So who is LEK? What did she want? I have to assume she chose where she ended up because for some reason she wanted to be there. Texas, imo, a very strange choice. Why I say that, because I live here, lol.

I think that what it comes down to is that everyone has their own motivations, wants, needs, and dreams. Who can guess, I can't even begin to, what hers were, or why.

unless she already had ties to Texas, my best guess would be...crazy as it sounds...the show Dallas.
When I was a young girl growing up in a very small town in NC, I saw this show and said to myself, " now that's living. I want to move to Dallas, and marry into oil!" Not joking.
Funny thing is, I did marry a guy from Dallas. ( Not intentionally, lol..I mean, I married him on purpose, but not because he was from Texas!!) That show was very popular in the 80's. Never underestimate the power of TV fantasy on a young impressionable mind. TV sometimes leads me to great vacations!!