TX - Longview, WhtFem (UP 9863), 41-50, Suicide - Assumed Identity, Dec'10

[fred&edna]

snipped by me-saving space

Websleuths lead on Cynthia perry mentioned, they are following up on promising leads and WS called a "vibrant community!"

Story will be featured on NPR this weekend when asked if the story has been publicized. It is on the AP wire...

Property owner of Boise home is being tracked down.....

We are rather vibrant

Any ideas on which NPR program will be running this story?

Now, why wasn't the Boise property owner contacted before??

 

[Sulamith]

I didn't get my question posted either!

I asked it the bankruptcy docs had any "clues" in them She seemed pretty young to file bankruptcy so young. I wonder if those docs would have questions about employment history, previous addresses, next of kin??

 

[nickynoodles]

One thing I find strange, which was repeated in the web chat, is that her family said she had no discernible accent.

Everybody has an accent. When people say they or someone else has 'no' accent they often mean 'they have an accent like mine'.

Presumably the Ruff family have Texas accents. If she didn't have a Southern States / Texas accent would they not say "she didn't sound like she was a local" or that she sounded like she was the from the West, East or Mid-West.

It would be interesting to get comments from others that knew her as LK on what type of accent they thought she had. Some people are good at picking up subtleties, some not.

Funny thing with accents is that they get 'burned' into your neural pathways during your formative years. That's why people can live in different countries as adults for 30+ years and still sound mostly like a native of the country they grew up in.

 

[reasonableguess]

I'd look for high school volleyball teams, too.

Also, her "off-center" nose doesn't look like one from bad surgery to me. It looks like a lot of girls I went to school with who played volleyball & basketball and got their noses broken playing.

 

[buffetoflies]

In the chat:

We did recover application for Federal Student Aid. She worked some but most of her college appears to be paid for through student loans. I will note on one application she reported her father graduated from H.S. but her mother's education was unknown.

Does that match up with the Turners?

 

[AzPistonsGirl]

I just want to say that this community is amazing. I have been following and reading along (and learning a lot) with nothing to add, just my awe at everyone's determination. I'd want you all on my team.

 

[annemc2]

One thing I find strange, which was repeated in the web chat, is that her family said she had no discernible accent.

Everybody has an accent. When people say they or someone else has 'no' accent they often mean 'they have an accent like mine'.

Presumably the Ruff family have Texas accents. If she didn't have a Southern States / Texas accent would they not say "she didn't sound like she was a local" or that she sounded like she was the from the West, East or Mid-West.

It would be interesting to get comments from others that knew her as LK on what type of accent they thought she had. Some people are good at picking up subtleties, some not.

Funny thing with accents is that they get 'burned' into your neural pathways during your formative years. That's why people can live in different countries as adults for 30+ years and still sound mostly like a native of the country they grew up in.

I'm going to comment b/c I grew up in Texas (D/FW area - starting at age 2) and now live in the PNW. I never had a "Texas" accent and people sometimes commented on the lack of it. I did, however, use "ya'll" for the plural "you" and "Coke" for any kind of soft drink.

I've finally transitioned to the "you guys" and "soda" after 10 years in the PNW. I never noticed people from the west coast having any type of "accent" as opposed to those from New England, Minnesota, etc. People that I know/have met from Texas have varying degrees of "Texas" accents. I do think that LEK would have stood out in *east* Texas with her lack of Tx accent.

I think that by "lack of accent" the investigators are referring to anything glaring, such as a native language other than English or...say a Bostonian accent, perhaps.

 

[Magnum P.E.]

I'd look for high school volleyball teams, too.

Also, her "off-center" nose doesn't look like one from bad surgery to me. It looks like a lot of girls I went to school with who played volleyball & basketball and got their noses broken playing.

Tall with a broken nose. The volleyball/basketball possibility was discussed WAAY up thread. Is there an assoiation of women's volleyball/basketball/ coaches? The 1988 pic should go in their newsletter.

She was not a criminal or her prints would have matched. My guess is she was escaping an embarrassing/unsavory past. Domestic abuse is second on my list.

Ben Jenkins was important enough that his name and number were in her strongbox, but he didn't know her? My ******** detector just went off.

 

[buffetoflies]

This comment is made by the reporter in the article comments:

Reporter Maureen O'Hagan here. Thanks for all the tips! We're following the most promising leads. Answering a reader's question, Lori did mention some things about her childhood: she said her parents were wealthy, that she had nannies and they traveled in limos and belonged to country clubs in Scottsdale. I'm dubious any of that is true, though.

Her claims should be easy to tell if they were true. Aren't the Ruff's fairly 'well to do'? They would have known if she was from a similar lifestyle in her childhood based on if she 'knew how to act' like high-society, Right? If I am wrong about this, please let me know!

Slightly OT yet still kinda related, there is another uid case (in cali) here that *might* be a girl named Andrea who spent some time in the Seattle area... she made similar claims.. that her family was well off...
Starts getting interesting after the 100th post: CA CA - Huntington Beach - WhtFem 40UFCA, 18-30, Maybe named Andrea, Apr'90 - Websleuths Crime Sleuthing Community

 

[Magnum P.E.]

I'm going to comment b/c I grew up in Texas (D/FW area - starting at age 2) and now live in the PNW. I never had a "Texas" accent and people sometimes commented on the lack of it. I did, however, use "ya'll" for the plural "you" and "Coke" for any kind of soft drink.

I've finally transitioned to the "you guys" and "soda" after 10 years in the PNW. I never noticed people from the west coast having any type of "accent" as opposed to those from New England, Minnesota, etc. People that I know/have met from Texas have varying degrees of "Texas" accents. I do think that LEK would have stood out in *east* Texas with her lack of Tx accent.

I think that by "lack of accent" the investigators are referring to anything glaring, such as a native language other than English or...say a Bostonian accent, perhaps.

FWIW, I met a man from Vancouver BC in the Bahamas last fall. I could not detect any distinctive regional accent, he sounded like anyone from the Mid Atlantic to Midwestern US.
Maybe that is what they mean.
Wonder if there are recordings of her voice?

 

[SideKick]

She and her husband have exactly the same mouth...!

 

[ClaireNC]

OK, theory time. If you go with the path of least resistance and the most likely scenario that ties up all the known stuff

• If she did the ID change all herself, it's likely she lived within 50 miles of the grave of Becky Sue Turner and knew the graveyard previously. It's such an oddly specific place to choose at random.
• She starts her journey in the Tacoma area, where she's from
• To get an ID she needed to leave her home state as her photo was probably linked in several ways to her real identity.
• To get an ID in person (as the web chat confirmed) you need to travel to a state capital
• Boise is the nearest other state capital to Seattle
• Once in Idaho she travels to the next state South, Nevada, and sets up a mail forwarding box to an address she's arranged in Texas
• From Nevada she travels to California (Hollywood related numbers in the notes).
• From California she travels to Arizona (pages from the phone book mentioned in the ST article)
• From Arizona she travels to Texas

The journey only fits well if she's from the Seattle area. All of the segments apart from the last are <10 hours, i.e. a day of travelling.

Good list, but some of the assumptions are incorrect or just don't fit with the time frame of the 1980's.
-first point, She could have used an "information broker" of sorts. She did not need to be there in person. There was an underground network of people who shared this kind of information in the 1980's just like there are hackers and such on the internet today.
-your third point: There was no need to leave home state because of photos being linked. Photography was not digital at that time. There was no photo recognition software. Besides if she was in her teens or even 20's there would only be a few occasions where she would need her official photo taken, like renewing your drivers license every 3 to 5 years.
-your 4th point: No, not the State capital...but maybe the county seat or main town in the county. Big difference, since many county seats are really just small towns. Also in the 1980's many small towns had DMV offices that were manned by just one or two people.
-My comments above discount the need to actually leave the state to complete the identity change. Of course there would be more risk of her being seen and recognized by somebody, but technically, she did not need to leave the state. This was before the internet and online tracking and getting a driver's license was just showing your birth certificate and taking a test. No proof of address, no other pictures. In fact, in some states the driver's licenses did not even have pictures.

 

[Laughing]

Speculation, but I think she met someone who told her the story of the Turner sisters.

 

[kdsmith21]

gap in unemployment: waitresses I have known work under the table. Also cleaning people.

Or stripping... cash work.. already mentioned she was a stripper, not sure how or where that info came about in the Seattle story... I would be curious to know how they found that tidbit out.. I don't think it was brought up at lunch with the in-laws, ya know... or tea with the daughter, etc...

 

[kdsmith21]

Speculation, but I think she met someone who told her the story of the Turner sisters.

I think she bought the Turner info (with stripping money?), as well as the rest of the info on going to different states, what to do, how to do it, and legally changing your name, etc... she was still fairly young to figure all this out by herself and find the "right" juvenile ID by herself to steal their identity, she was smart, but I don't think she was that smart. I think she had help and paid for it, not sure if the attorney was involved, but possibly he advised her on the name change to Lori Erica Kennedy... or even the rest of the false identity stuff or to a person that could help her.

Wonder if she was stripping or working in Nevada maybe even as a prostitute that never got arrested or Hollywood? The new *advertiser censored* would come in handy for the stripping. But *advertiser censored* aint cheap, wonder if she stripped to get the money to buy the *advertiser censored*? Or what year she got the *advertiser censored*... that would be nice to know and where, what state?

 

[T4Tide]

Speculation, but I think she met someone who told her the story of the Turner sisters.

The Turners resided in Bakersfield when BST was born, and his family members still lived there at the time of her death. I would certainly be aware of someone around me who experienced such a tragedy, even if I wasn't close to them. There is always the possibility that LEK knew of the tragedy, and didn't even have to walk through a graveyard.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I537 using Tapatalk 2

 

[branwynbreeze]

Or stripping... cash work.. already mentioned she was a stripper, not sure how or where that info came about in the Seattle story... I would be curious to know how they found that tidbit out.. I don't think it was brought up at lunch with the in-laws, ya know... or tea with the daughter, etc...

To me, that would make a lot of sense. The average teen/young adult probably would not have been savvy enough to pull it off. Dealing with "the dark side" she would have a better chance of how to do it and do it quickly.

 

[kdsmith21]

I didn't get my question posted either!

I asked it the bankruptcy docs had any "clues" in them She seemed pretty young to file bankruptcy so young. I wonder if those docs would have questions about employment history, previous addresses, next of kin??

I was thinking the same thing, she was very young to file bankruptcy... and very young to have much of a past (as they said in Steel Magnolias)... why would you not run up all that debt under your name and before you change your identity? Once you change your identity her debt would be wiped clean... another odd Lori twist...
I think Cynthia Perry is a good lead, since she was called Lori.. I wonder if Lori was her real name or nick name is why she chose to legally change her first name to that.. then if she DID run into someone who knew her before, and they called her LORI in front of her NEW family and friends, no red lights would go off! On the other hand if her real name was Jane before and her husband and everyone knew her as LORI, and someone came up insisting she was Jane while she was with her "new" family and friends it would be rather awkward.... thoughts???
I have ran into people from my area of Jacksonville Fl when I have been on vacation before... the world is smaller than you think...

 

[theforgotten]

I've spent half my night catching up on this case. I found the chat to be very interesting. This poor woman went to such great lengths to hide her identity. I really want to know what she was running from.

What I wonder is if she could have done all this identity changing on her own or do you think she had help? Was it common knowledge on how to steal one back in the day?

 

[Magnum P.E.]

Yes. It was in a commonly available book long since disavowed by the author, who became a minister. The Anarchist Cookbook.