Lori Ruff Identified as Kimberly McLean of PA

[mrseeker]

Some of those dates I found are wildly wrong though! The Devon one said 1987-1998 which we know can't be true since she was already LEK by 1998.

I think it is also possible she used a friends address back home while living out west. I am not sure which page you are looking at, but I have often seen mistakes. I had a friend who worked outside the country and his list of places include friends who he used their address for local mailing I think. He never lived there but it might look like it. I know she might have had some mental health issues, so what we expect might not be accurate, but I still think at least initially, she went west with a friend or to hook up with a friend who had left before her. Perhaps we will hear about boyfriends or maybe a friend she talk about who lived out west. For her family its probably moot. For me I am just nosy.

 

[KLCD620]

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

Thank you for encourage me with positive messages. You're right about keep trying with her on my own. My wife (her bio-Mom) won't do it by telling her to contact, connect or even embrace with me when I asked her that. I gave her more than her own living Dad. I guess that I has to be patient by her space. Time will tell me as she getting older (now 20 yr old & out of state college student).

 

[Gardener1850]

Some of those dates I found are wildly wrong though! The Devon one said 1987-1998 which we know can't be true since she was already LEK by 1998.

The dates on "public record" can be wrong. That could just mean she never forwarded her mail and the address didn't get updated. I only saw the year 1987 on ancestry. She could have moved from that address anytime after that.

 

[CoverMeCagney]

I can't get used to calling her Kimberly, she'll always be Lori to me!

On a separate note apparently someone made a FB profile in Lori's name. While searching for it I discovered no less than 14 Lori Erica Ruff's (or variations of) living in Leonard, Texas. Are they really common names over there?! I just ran a check through some UK systems and it seems there isn't a single Lori Ruff in my whole country of 60 million, so it seems odd there are 14 in a town of 2000. No doubt some are copies, but even so... I have never met anyone named Lori, Erica or Ruff - weird!!

 

[Gardener1850]

The biggest question is why Kimberly was not reported missing? Was it because she was 18 and could legally do what she wanted?

Of course we must remember that things were totally different back then. If a child of legal age said she was leaving, I do not think the parents would go running to the police department to file a missing persons report. JMO?

The article said she called her family to say she was leaving. IMO it's really sad she wasn't reported missing. It's possible a trafficker made her make that call.

 

[Gardener1850]

I can't get used to calling her Kimberly, she'll always be Lori to me!

On a separate note apparently someone made a FB profile in Lori's name. While searching for it I discovered no less than 14 Lori Erica Ruff's (or variations of) living in Leonard, Texas. Are they really common names over there?! I just ran a check through some UK systems and it seems there isn't a single Lori Ruff in my whole country of 60 million, so it seems odd there are 14 in a town of 2000. No doubt some are copies, but even so... I have never met anyone named Lori, Erica or Ruff - weird!!

Yes someone noticed those profiles a few weeks ago. Most of them are fake, IMO. If you look closely at them they all have one thing in common. IMO someone (or several someones) noticed "Lori Ruff" was a commonly searched name and started using it for their, ahem, "business" pages. There are one or two real people with the name.

 

[SavetheQueen]

Heard from FoxNews this morning. Yes, I blacked out her contact info.
Just FYI.

*All statements are that of my own opinion unless otherwise specified. *

 

[llywrch]

Thank you for the clarification! I just wanted to quote to make sure people saw this and didn't get carried away. I did a little sleuthing but I think I might just let it go now. For those curious, however, there are not really 2 missing years of Kim's life. In 1986 she lived alone in King of Prussia, PA just as the ST article said. I found her address in 1987 and she was still in PA, living in an apt alone. She lived in Devon only 1.5 miles from the Strafford library that she had the phone number for on the notes page. It seems she never used her name again when she left PA in 1987 or 1988. The time frame for when she did this was very short--I would guess less than a year. A lot can happen in just a few months, however.

Now her "missing years" become a bit more mysterious. I say this because I would expect her to leave PA, drift a while until she tired of that lifestyle, then start the process that ended with her recreating herself as LEK. If she'd been living as an "urban nomad" (as I heard one person who lived that way describe it), she'd have picked up the knack for finding someone to crash with -- which appears to have been how she was living in Idaho & at first in Dallas.

Or what Kafkette suggested in post #1118 in the thread "TX - 'Lori Ruff', Longview, WhtFem UP9863, *General Discussion and Theories* #5", that KM had become part of the L.A. model/actress scene for a while, & when it turned toxic -- Kafkette mentions the Wonderland Murders -- KM fled. (Kafkette points out that KM could have been at the very edge of all this.) Stories of young people running away to find fame & fortune in Hollywood, only to discover the ugly truth are so common as to be a tired cliche.

But you are right about the short time frame for her "missing years". If she was 18 when she broke all contact, that would have been late 1986; according to S/S1988, she was in Dallas by spring of 1988. I don't know your source for placing her in Devon in 1987; if it was a phone book, its date does not indicate when she was living at that address, but a few months before. (At the time, it took that long for phone books to go from compiling the entries to being printed. In 1987, I had a temp job proofing ads for US West, so I know a little about that process.) So she period might be as short as 9 months, or as long as 18.

But to understand this blank spot in her life, I'd start with any memories of her former classmates in PA, & information there. Maybe KM was a promising student who fell apart under the presence of a step father; maybe she'd always been a bit odd; or more likely, something I haven't considered.

 

[SavetheQueen]

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.

(Sorry, I'm playing catch up this afternoon.)

OT:

I've always felt that when a child is born, DNA should be taken. DNA, fingerprints, and blood type. All entered into a database of some sort.

Think of the crimes having that information would solve and the manpower hours saved? The worry and hurt? Missing persons/UID, violent crimes, etc.

People have said that the public would never go for it because that's too much of Big Brother watching us. Well, aren't they already?

*All statements are that of my own opinion unless otherwise specified. *

 

[rats]

Awesome that there's going to be a FOX news article!

Maybe she just wanted to reinvent herself? When I was 18 I constantly wanted to change my name, move away, and become a whole new person "living off the radar" (even though there's nothing wrong with my family).

 

[Gardener1850]

Now her "missing years" become a bit more mysterious. I say this because I would expect her to leave PA, drift a while until she tired of that lifestyle, then start the process that ended with her recreating herself as LEK. If she'd been living as an "urban nomad" (as I heard one person who lived that way describe it), she'd have picked up the knack for finding someone to crash with -- which appears to have been how she was living in Idaho & at first in Dallas.

Or what Kafkette suggested in post #1118 in the thread "TX - 'Lori Ruff', Longview, WhtFem UP9863, *General Discussion and Theories* #5", that KM had become part of the L.A. model/actress scene for a while, & when it turned toxic -- Kafkette mentions the Wonderland Murders -- KM fled. (Kafkette points out that KM could have been at the very edge of all this.) Stories of young people running away to find fame & fortune in Hollywood, only to discover the ugly truth are so common as to be a tired cliche.

But you are right about the short time frame for her "missing years". If she was 18 when she broke all contact, that would have been late 1986; according to S/S1988, she was in Dallas by spring of 1988. I don't know your source for placing her in Devon in 1987; if it was a phone book, its date does not indicate when she was living at that address, but a few months before. (At the time, it took that long for phone books to go from compiling the entries to being printed. In 1987, I had a temp job proofing ads for US West, so I know a little about that process.) So she period might be as short as 9 months, or as long as 18.

But to understand this blank spot in her life, I'd start with any memories of her former classmates in PA, & information there. Maybe KM was a promising student who fell apart under the presence of a step father; maybe she'd always been a bit odd; or more likely, something I haven't considered.

My source is Ancestry and it comes from their "U. S. Public Records Index 1950-1993"
There is a phone number associated, so it very well could have come from a phone book listing. There is no DOB associated but no others by her name are in the area in the decade (that I found) and the address is associated with another address her mom, step father and sister lived at in Ambler, PA. So very likely it is her address.
It was an Apartment. I looked it up by address on Ancestry and only 8 other people listed that exact apartment in public records and none of them are listed as living there in 1987.
It's possible she had a roommate or boyfriend living with her that was unlisted but so far it look like she moved into the apt alone in 1987.
I hope we hear more from someone who knew her in 1987.

 

[tarheelslim]

For those who keep insisting the family should've reported her missing: as I said before, I'm not sure given the circumstances the police would have anything to investigate. But even if they did track her down, the most they could tell the family is "she's fine, she wishes to have no contact" - that is legally all they could tell the family. How would that have changed anything?

 

[SavetheQueen]

I can't get used to calling her Kimberly, she'll always be Lori to me!

On a separate note apparently someone made a FB profile in Lori's name. While searching for it I discovered no less than 14 Lori Erica Ruff's (or variations of) living in Leonard, Texas. Are they really common names over there?! I just ran a check through some UK systems and it seems there isn't a single Lori Ruff in my whole country of 60 million, so it seems odd there are 14 in a town of 2000. No doubt some are copies, but even so... I have never met anyone named Lori, Erica or Ruff - weird!!

I have looked before, too. Those are all fake profiles. Why someone would do that is beyond me.

*All statements are that of my own opinion unless otherwise specified. *

 

[thelesis]

Wonder if this ability to locate family of a DNA donor could be used to locate unidentified criminals? I guess none of us would want the call, we think one of your cousins is a serial killer..can you give us a list of their names? So signing up with one of these ancestry dna sites, might now have new privacy concerns. the crimes solving part of me says go for it. the privacy rights part of me says whoa.

So it's not quite the same, but part of the case against Dennis Rader/BTK involved getting DNA evidence. They suspected it was him, but couldn't find a way to get his DNA. However, his daughter had a pap smear and the courts permitted sampling DNA from that which led to a familial match and enough evidence to take him in. Source

I wonder if there are any cases where they get a hit on DNA from the criminal database but can rule out the particular person who matched (in prison at the time, deceased, etc.) and then start looking at family members?

 

[SavetheQueen]

For those who keep insisting the family should've reported her missing: as I said before, I'm not sure given the circumstances the police would have anything to investigate. But even if they did track her down, the most they could tell the family is "she's fine, she wishes to have no contact" - that is legally all they could tell the family. How would that have changed anything?

Unfortunately, if there's no foul play involved, it's not against the law to disappear. In my state, if there are reasons for concern, an alert can be issued that basically says if LE spots this person, make contact with them and be sure that they're OK. I forget what it's called. But that's all you can do.

*All statements are that of my own opinion unless otherwise specified. *

 

[CoverMeCagney]

(Sorry, I'm playing catch up this afternoon.)

OT:

I've always felt that when a child is born, DNA should be taken. DNA, fingerprints, and blood type. All entered into a database of some sort.

Think of the crimes having that information would solve and the manpower hours saved? The worry and hurt? Missing persons/UID, violent crimes, etc.

People have said that the public would never go for it because that's too much of Big Brother watching us. Well, aren't they already?

I know people will cry "human rights" but I'm inclined to agree, more so since having spent time on this site!! I'd go a step further and have all kids microchipped / GPS'd until they're 16. Half joking, but only half...

 

[tarheelslim]

I have looked before, too. Those are all fake profiles. Why someone would do that is beyond me.

They can see that name getting googled a lot so they create profiles that you will find when you google it.

How they profit from you looking at the page - that I don't know.

 

[Gardener1850]

For those who keep insisting the family should've reported her missing: as I said before, I'm not sure given the circumstances the police would have anything to investigate. But even if they did track her down, the most they could tell the family is "she's fine, she wishes to have no contact" - that is legally all they could tell the family. How would that have changed anything?

It would have at least been confirmation that she was not in a dangerous situation and being isolated from her family by a trafficker. And it also would have shown her they loved her and she could come home no matter what. It is a very common tactic for traffickers to try to isolate their victims. They will tell them no one misses them and no one is looking for them. If that doesn't work they will tell them they will hurt their family if the girl doesn't do what they want. A lot of trafficked victims fear returning home because they don't want to bring danger to their family.

That said, I don't blame the family for not pushing to get her reported missing. She called and told them she wanted to leave. I had a similar situation in my family with an adult who left like that. He moved away and used a pen-name (though he didn't change his ID). My family found out he died several years after the fact. They were racked with guilt for not trying to find him sooner. I hope Kim's family will not feel any guilt. She made it pretty much impossible to find her after 1988.

 

[CoverMeCagney]

Unfortunately, if there's no foul play involved, it's not against the law to disappear. In my state, if there are reasons for concern, an alert can be issued that basically says if LE spots this person, make contact with them and be sure that they're OK. I forget what it's called. But that's all you can do.

I just think families should have the option to submit DNA to compare against deceased unidentified bodies. The moral of that story is: if your kid stomps off saying they never wanna see you again, keep their toothbrush forever.

 

[SavetheQueen]

I know people will cry "human rights" but I'm inclined to agree, more so since having spent time on this site!! I'd go a step further and have all kids microchipped / GPS'd until they're 16. Half joking, but only half...

I have a teenage daughter. Don't think she's not GPSed at every turn. Her safety is #1. Mama knows what this evil world is like. She has biologicals in file as well.

*All statements are that of my own opinion unless otherwise specified. *