TX - 'Lori Ruff', Longview, WhtFem UP9863, *General Discussion and Theories* #2

[LucyOso]

No, the family apparently opened the letter and the believe it has no clues to her identity. Pretty much a plea for her daughter to think of tea times, etc....if I recall correctly.

Just a couple of things stand out to me…I mentioned this before... LEK was big on tea and cuban food. Tea time, unless she was an dedicated anglophile, is pretty standard in many countries EXCEPT America. This habit, preference could be a carryover from her "real life". This is a big deal IMOO. I don't think a trip to Europe on her passport would leave such an ingrained habit or something she would feel the need to tell her daughter about in a letter.

Also, it is noted she was fond of Cuban food. This is a strange one. In the areas where she claims to have lived (NV, AZ, ID, WA, CA), there are very few Cuban communities and populations and restaurants, especially during that time. (Unless she was married to a Cuban?). Americans are banned from being tourists in Cuba, and vice versa. It is very common for those from UK and Europe to vacation in Cuba though. This is a big clue IMOO. How did she get exposed to Cuban food?

Plus, loving cuban food is interesting as most cuban food is NOT vegetarian. http://www.forbes.com/sites/ericgol...getarians-and-that-wont-change-any-time-soon/

Interesting, with the religion there is some biblical reference to vegetarianism. Mainly, "thou shall not kill." I wonder if LEK stopped eating meat as it reminded her of a murder or something she witnessed? Here is a bit more Christian vegetarianism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I think those little preferences and habits might be bigger clues to her identity. I also wonder if some of her preferences such as religion and vegetarianism are the extreme opposite of who she was in her prior life...

 

[Linda9681]

Earlier someone asked if BST and her sis had death certificates with sequential numbers. Per ancestry.com the answer is yes.

 

[socrates2006]

I asked about that earlier. I am wondering if you on ancestry.com or other website are able to actually see the other sibling's death certificates side-by-side to compare fonts and handwriting. Something seems off to me that they put Wn. rather than WA. Afaik WA would be the legal way of condensing Washington state. Is there anyway to see a death certificate of someone unrelated to this case but filled out by the same M.E. or M.D.? Maybe that's just how that person abbreviates things or maybe it's not.

 

[HerStory]

I just noticed another death certificate discrepancy. Notice the two different shades of typing? A portion of the details are as though bolded, while the actual death particulars are much lighter....as though they were added after the fact.

 

[HerStory]

Also, does anyone know how long the 'Boise Behavioral Health Hospital' has been in existence? Particularly, a few blocks away from El Caballo Dr?

 

[HerStory]

And to even further put things into perspective, how cool is this????

http://youtu.be/ypM2aOrl-YE

 

[Pink Panther]

I just noticed another death certificate discrepancy. Notice the two different shades of typing? A portion of the details are as though bolded, while the actual death particulars are much lighter....as though they were added after the fact.

I noticed that too and assumed that the death info. was filled out by one person and that the coroner's info was filled out later by another person. The exception is the word Washington in the upper half; it's darker. So many discrepancies on that death certificate:

Her name is spelt "Beckie" vs "Becky" on the Birth Certificate
Becky's birthday is listed as July 15, 1971 vs. July 18, 1971 on BC
And the "Wh" instead of "WA".

It would be interesting to see the Death Certificates for the other two siblings to see if similar mistakes were made. I found the wrong birthday to be particularly strange and even wondered if perhaps, the death had been faked!

ETA - One other little tidbit. One of the newspaper articles about the fire has the fireman stating that the fire started around 4 am. but the coroner lists the time of death as 2 am.? And why are there no subsequent articles to be found? Nothing. How the fire started? The damage to the building? TJT gives the same address as his mailing address so one must assume that the whole building didn't go down? Lots and lots of questions about the fire...

 

[Sherwood Park]

I just noticed another death certificate discrepancy. Notice the two different shades of typing? A portion of the details are as though bolded, while the actual death particulars are much lighter....as though they were added after the fact.

Yeah, I noticed that, but after looking online at various death certificates from various decades, it seems (to me) that it was common, one part of death certificates seem to be typed and then the specifics about the death are then hand written or the typing (font ?) is different, and this is going back to early 1900s.

Who knows, I could be wrong as I only looked at a handful of DC's.

http://www.johnbrassfield.com/John_Wilson_Brassfield.html

http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~schuckwj/cd_orphlfa.jpg

I also noticed that there was no consistency in how they wrote or abbreviated the state of Washington, sometimes even on the same DC! Strange, but maybe policies have since improved , because where I live, you are only allowed to use specific abbreviations for Provinces and States on government issued documents.

 

[Linda9681]

I noticed the behavioral health bldg also .... Chalked it up to prob a new place lol still amazed that a nancy ruff lived a couple of houses down from that address.

 

[SherlockKittyCat]

I asked about that earlier. I am wondering if you on ancestry.com or other website are able to actually see the other sibling's death certificates side-by-side to compare fonts and handwriting. Something seems off to me that they put Wn. rather than WA. Afaik WA would be the legal way of condensing Washington state. Is there anyway to see a death certificate of someone unrelated to this case but filled out by the same M.E. or M.D.? Maybe that's just how that person abbreviates things or maybe it's not.

While I agree it's weird that they put "Wn" instead of "WA" on the death certificate, I do remember that while the USPS changed the state abbreviations in 1963, it took a good decade or longer to get everyone on board. Back then it wasn't like now. We adapt easily to change these days, but back then, not-so-much. I remember learning the "new" codes in elementary school in the 70s. Many people still used the old abbreviations such as "Wash." then, not WA, and this was a decade later. (Some people weren't even using zip codes, and that's the big deal USPS was trying to get everyone to use!) People were still confusing the two letter abbreviations. Like, "IO" for "IA" or "ID," for instance. Maybe someone just assumed a two-letter abbrev. for Washington was "WN," and wrote it "Wn" because he or she was used to using both uppercase and lowercase for the state, as in" "Wash." Just my :twocents: and a personal historical perspective.

Oh, and CHEERS for everyone for their hard work on this case! I'm amazed by all of your tenacity in trying to solve this one. I am soooo intrigued by it. :loveyou:

 

[Owutatangledweb]

I asked about that earlier. I am wondering if you on ancestry.com or other website are able to actually see the other sibling's death certificates side-by-side to compare fonts and handwriting. Something seems off to me that they put Wn. rather than WA. Afaik WA would be the legal way of condensing Washington state. Is there anyway to see a death certificate of someone unrelated to this case but filled out by the same M.E. or M.D.? Maybe that's just how that person abbreviates things or maybe it's not.

Did the sisters use WN or WA on theirs.

 

[Owutatangledweb]

I just noticed another death certificate discrepancy. Notice the two different shades of typing? A portion of the details are as though bolded, while the actual death particulars are much lighter....as though they were added after the fact.

I noticed this too a couple of weeks ago and dismissed it in my own mind, but if you noticed it too, I'm thinking there might be something to this.

 

[sloane7777]

No. When I have testified no one took my fingerprints. You are open and have mad skills....if anyone can connect the dots it is you! Give it a try

ha! To make this even worse I googled DS and got all these really nice older teapots Sadler teapots!

 

[Pink Panther]

Did the sisters use WN or WA on theirs.

Ancestry doesn't show the originals. So, unless someone requests a copy, we won't know.

 

[Froglady]

Be great if they could just do that dna test that gives you surnames to what familys the dna matches closely to...

 

[HerStory]

Lately, my mind is zeroing around her first known photo. She seems so 'chipper'. Could her foray into becoming LEK been started rather innocently? She almost seems like the cat-who-swallowed-the-canary. Maybe she just got some fake ID to do something she was wishing to do....get a job, be older/younger than she really was for an opportunity, travel alone, etc. The day that she was issued this photo ID was a Thursday....weren't those common paydays? It also appears as though she is wearing some sort of uniform. Maybe she just left work with her pay, got her ID and was now enroute to Texas. Once there, rather than just use the ID for a single purpose, she absorbs her old self in light of a new opportunity.

But the name change process speaks volumes to me. Would she not have had to file an explanation of why she chose 'Kennedy'? I thought that is part of a name change process. Also, would she not have had to live in Texas, or Idaho, for more than 30 days to initiate either process? To get the Idaho card, she would have had to show some mail or other documents to substantiate residency. I am convinced that the Barker family knew of her in some capacity.

I also played with another theory. Didn't she say that her parents were a failed stock broker and his wife? Maybe that was her non-custodial parent. Maybe she was raised by her mom and a step-dad and part of getting away from something unpleasant there, she not only 'erases' them, she did her best to erase herself and create a new future.

 

[Linda9681]

Lately, my mind is zeroing around her first known photo. She seems so 'chipper'. Could her foray into becoming LEK been started rather innocently? She almost seems like the cat-who-swallowed-the-canary. Maybe she just got some fake ID to do something she was wishing to do....get a job, be older/younger than she really was for an opportunity, travel alone, etc. The day that she was issued this photo ID was a Thursday....weren't those common paydays? It also appears as though she is wearing some sort of uniform. Maybe she just left work with her pay, got her ID and was now enroute to Texas. Once there, rather than just use the ID for a single purpose, she absorbs her old self in light of a new opportunity.

But the name change process speaks volumes to me. Would she not have had to file an explanation of why she chose 'Kennedy'? I thought that is part of a name change process. Also, would she not have had to live in Texas, or Idaho, for more than 30 days to initiate either process? To get the Idaho card, she would have had to show some mail or other documents to substantiate residency. I am convinced that the Barker family knew of her in some capacity.

I also played with another theory. Didn't she say that her parents were a failed stock broker and his wife? Maybe that was her non-custodial parent. Maybe she was raised by her mom and a step-dad and part of getting away from something unpleasant there, she not only 'erases' them, she did her best to erase herself and create a new future.

HerSTory yes to this! I always felt she looked over the moon in this pic. It's hard to fake that kind of happy.

Another thought.. She stayed in school for a very long time. Bet she lived off student loans! They offer WAY more than you ever need...
It crossed my mind maybe she had done the same in her old life too

 

[im1096]

I remember that when I was very young that the states had different abbreviations and that sometimes people used their own abbreviations. The google chart that I found shows different abbreviations over the years.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._state_abbreviations

 

[im1096]

Revisiting Lori's mystery shopping - Some years ago I searched for legitimate mystery shopping opportunities. I chose several high paying jobs - car lots and such. The downside of this job is that you have to wait 30-45 days to be paid. When mom retired she was so bored that I taught her how to do it and she was quite successful - bringing in $1000 -2000 a month. Those were the types of shops one does in person. Additionally, there are people who work for the mystery shopping companies who are on salary to ensure the jobs are done correctly, review paperwork and to schedule shoppers. These employees spend a lot of time on paperwork and on the phone. I wonder if this might be the type of mystery shopping work that Lori did to avoid working with the general public.

 

[SherlockKittyCat]

I remember that when I was very young that the states had different abbreviations and that sometimes people used their own abbreviations. The google chart that I found shows different abbreviations over the years.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._state_abbreviations

Aha! It's interesting that the USCG (Coast Guard) is WN for Washington. Maybe the person who worked on the certificate had been in the CG.