Hi everyone - I'm yet another person inspired to join by the Seattle Times story. I was sucked in and wound up reading the whole thread.
My own observations:
- Whoever LEK was before the BST/LEK reinvention, she knew what she was doing when she took on her new identity. I actually owned the Loompanics catalog, which I bought at a bookstore on Haight Street in San Francisco. It could also be found at the Anarchist's Book Fair. Zines, BBS's - they all had "How to disappear" instructions. If LEK didn't hire a broker, she had some way to get hold of this kind of information (which, again, could be as easy as going to the Anarchist Book Fair or walking into a leftie bookstore) and the sophistication to use it effectively. Which leads me to:
- Her age. Others in the thread have mentioned it, the detective on the case mentioned it, and I agree, that LEK was older than she claimed. She may have just aged poorly and rapidly towards the end of her life, but I have a surmise (I think you call it "mustarding," but forgive me) that she was born around 1963. A very famous Kennedy event - the JFK assassination - occurred then. Also, the name "Lori" with that spelling reached its peak of popularity in 1963 (it was #8). It had lost considerable ground by 1968/9. The website behindthename.com allows you to search names by popularity.
- Regardless of whether "Lori" was close to her real name, she would have wanted a name that wasn't too unique, I would think. It might have been chosen for its generic-ness, shortness and ease of spelling. For all I know, "Lori Kennedy" might have been made up out of popular first name in peer group + notable event in birth year (and thus easy to remember?)
- Cuban food. I was reading that and thought that would be an unusual food preference for someone not from New York or Miami. But then I remembered the Versailles chain of Cuban restaurants that opened up in the LA area in the 1980's:
Versailles Cuban restaurants in California - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Could this be a connection with Los Angeles? LEK liked Cuban food because she ate at the Versailles restaurants? If the "Cuban food" isn't a red herring, then this might be a place she developed a taste for it; Cuban food isn't that popular on the West coast compared to Mexican food or food from Central or South American countries.
- Her hands and feet. Someone noted way back in the thread that her
hands might be the most likely way to track her. You can get plastic surgery on your face and body, you can cut/dye/perm your hair but you can't really do anything about your hands and feet. To judge from the Texas Women in Business pics, LEK had
notably large hands and feet. She'd be the kind of person who would have a lot of trouble finding shoes to fit her in the pre-online-shopping era. She'd be complaining to her friends about finding shoes, and probably wouldn't be able to borrow or share shoes with her friends or fellow dancers. In her case, I would want to know if there was a long-missing woman who might have had unusual difficulty finding shoes to fit!
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