TX - 'Lori Ruff', Longview, WhtFem UP9863, *General Discussion and Theories* #5

[BigCityAccountant]

So you're saying that there was a letter floating around in the late 1980s used by people who wanted to hide their past? Did your friend happen to mention where he/she got it? (I'm guessing it was most likely taken from one of those sketchy "How to become a different person" books that used to be advertised in the back of sleazy magazines & have been mentioned in this forum over the years -- but it might have been shared in a loose-knit group of people.)

This is an unexpected fact...

I wish I had the answer to that question...I vaguely remember a book she had mentioned. She never mentioned where she got the letter of reference. Unfortunately, I haven't spoken to her in 9 years. She wanted to leave her husband for a guy who was a friend of his and I told her not to. She supported me when I left, so we had a disagreement and we don't talk anymore. My sister's friend saw her at a church gathering not long ago~~said she would get a phone number. I told her not to bother as my number had not changed and if she wanted to call me she could. She was my best friend growing up, so it was very hard for me. Her mother got married when we were in freshman year and moved away. I met her halfway (she lived far away) and we went back to our old neighborhood. She ran away that night. I didn't know where she was for years, then one day I called her mom. She had contacted her mom after she turned 18. We spoke for a few years then disconnected, then reconnected a few years later and now don't talk again anymore. You can say we are on again off again friends...LOL.

There are so many similarities between her and FLEK that if I didn't know any better I would say they were the same person. From the letter, working in a gentlemen's club, etc. I guess that is what is so intriguing to me about FLEK's story.

If I ever talk to her again, I will ask her where she got the letter.

What I do remember very well is she said that you choose a very common name like White or something similar so that is it so common it can be easily confused with another person. Oh, also use a number that you can remember when choosing an address or phone number. For instance, she might have used my phone number but changed the area code or something like that. Address could be last 4 numbers of a phone number or vise versa.

 

[BigCityAccountant]

IMHO, she doesn't look much like LEK, but you might still be onto something: although a small group, there were more people in the Branch Davidians than appear in published photographs. It's a line of research (aka a rabbit hole ;-) worth investigating.

As for the SDA, I learned about their connection to the Branch Davidians (which most 7th-day Adventists would rather forget) thru Maritn Gardner's book, Urantia: The Great Cult Mystery: many of the people connected with that odd & lengthy book had SDA backgrounds. And the Urantia Foundation (which published the Urantia Book for years) is a very mysterious & litigious group. Not to say LEK had anything to do with the Urantia people, & if she had it would only be replacing one mystery with another.

I mention all of this just to point out that if you believe LEK was a refugee from some cult, there are many possible candidates besides LDS splinter groups mentioned here & in related threads. And many more who have no connection to the SDA, either: as long as one is not at the center of some scandal or crime, it can exist for decades without ever attracting publicity. Yeah, it's sort of an embarrassment of riches.

So, both of you are not the only ones thinking Branch Davidians...I did too...LOL

 

[Gardener1850]

I can try but it may be a long post, and unfortunately real life demands I leave in 15 minutes and I'm not ready yet (ack!). So will have to come back later, do the research and answer your question.

No hurry. I had to run out for a lunch meeting myself right after I posted. I don't need a lengthy post. Just give me an address they had in common. Actually, don't post the whole address (for privacy reasons). Post the street and city and I can research from there. I'll look around ancestry a bit to see if I can figure out a connection, but it really sounds like the DS from that yearbook photo got married and is on social media. If she was the one involved in the trial she is not hiding (and obviously not FLEK).

 

[Gardener1850]

IMHO, she doesn't look much like LEK, but you might still be onto something: although a small group, there were more people in the Branch Davidians than appear in published photographs. It's a line of research (aka a rabbit hole ;-) worth investigating.

As for the SDA, I learned about their connection to the Branch Davidians (which most 7th-day Adventists would rather forget) thru Maritn Gardner's book, Urantia: The Great Cult Mystery: many of the people connected with that odd & lengthy book had SDA backgrounds. And the Urantia Foundation (which published the Urantia Book for years) is a very mysterious & litigious group. Not to say LEK had anything to do with the Urantia people, & if she had it would only be replacing one mystery with another.

I mention all of this just to point out that if you believe LEK was a refugee from some cult, there are many possible candidates besides LDS splinter groups mentioned here & in related threads. And many more who have no connection to the SDA, either: as long as one is not at the center of some scandal or crime, it can exist for decades without ever attracting publicity. Yeah, it's sort of an embarrassment of riches.

Thanks! I don't think I'll be looking into it much unless someone gives me more to go on. Those cults are so secretive that if she got out with her entire family no one would want to mention it. If she left before the majority of her family died in the fire in 1993 then no one is alive to recognize her. If she was a cult escapee I doubt we will find out short of another cult escapee recognizing her and deciding to tell her story. The Branch Davidians had many tall members who could have been her parents. The president before David Koresh was a tall lady named Lois Roden: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lois_Roden She had 6 children but only 1 son was heavily involved in the cult. I could see her being FLEK's grandmother, but I agree there are probably many members who were never in the press. The only thing Lori really has in common with the BD's is vegetarianism. That's not enough of a lead for me to invest time in looking at those people right now. It's an interesting rabbit hole though and someone else might have more interest in looking

 

[Gardener1850]

So, both of you are not the only ones thinking Branch Davidians...I did too...LOL

Great minds... BCA. I thought of it but I didn't want to mention it before this, LOL.

 

[Gardener1850]

I apologize for posting three times in a row, but I'm going to throw out an idea I just had while writing my last post. It might already have been mentioned in a thread here before. Or it might be just a coincidence.

* At one point, LEK described her father as an "failed stockbroker"

* LEK first recorded existence is in 1988

* 19 October 1987, stock markets around the world suffered a major crash. The Dow lost over 22% of its value, so this was a significant financial event.

I wonder if LEK's father had lost his job in the 1987 market crash, & as a result (either direct -- e.g. he & her mother/stepmother committed suicide -- or indirect) she changed her identity. If nothing else, it could explain why she picked 1988 (out of all possible years) to change her identity.

In the early threads people actually looked for failed stockbrokers from Scottsdale, AZ. It's a good thought but like many details about FLEK it depends on whether she told the truth about that or just made it up because it was easy to remember. There were also many 1980's movies about stockbrokers that she could have taken her idea from: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0094291/

 

[sloane7777]

Your use of "crazy" in d. covers a lot of ground, ranging from serious psychiatric issues (e.g. schizophrenia or sociopathy) to simple lack of social skills. And those would suggest entirely different scenarios -- if LEK had serious psychiatric issues her life pre-1988 might be entirely unrecoverable, whereas if she simply didn't know how to interact successfully with other people her backstory might be knowable. As I suggested elsewhere, she might have carried out a threat to "vanish" just to see if anyone in her life noticed she was gone, only to find no one had.

Otherwise, you've provided a complete list of all of the reasonable theories why LEK changed her identity.

wow ya'll have been busy! ( and by crazy, you hit it on the head I DID mean a range of crazy it could be as simple as you said or downright me (the clinical kind that requires major intervention) ok I'm going to play catch up now

 

[nerosleuth]

Checking the local phone books for 1988-2004 would be another big help. When I had more time for investigating, I did determine that the Dallas Public Library has complete runs of the local phone books for that time, so that is where I would go. The only problem might be that single women will not list their number under their full name (e.g., "L.E. Kennedy"), &/or their address -- but we won't know that's the case unless someone looks.

Or single women will have an unlisted telephone number and their name, address, and telephone number won’t be listed at all in the local telephone directory.

In addition to local telephone books, a public library will also have the local city directory as well.

One thing I should point out about city directories is that when looking for an address, sometimes the address you’re looking for can be listed as vacant, no response, or someone else under a different name is living at that address.

What I do remember very well is she said that you choose a very common name like White or something similar so that is it so common it can be easily confused with another person.

Not only would you use a very common last name, you could also use a first name such as Chris or Kelly to easily create more confusion.

 

[Laughing]

Or single women will have an unlisted telephone number and their name, address, and telephone number won’t be listed at all in the local telephone directory.

You didn't have to pay the Unlisted Number fee for an effectively unlisted number. In the mid-80's a friend neatly filled out the directory listing form with the name:

Pants, S. Marty

and her number was listed after that name in the phone book.

:seeya:

 

[llywrch]

Or single women will have an unlisted telephone number and their name, address, and telephone number won’t be listed at all in the local telephone directory.

In addition to local telephone books, a public library will also have the local city directory as well.

One thing I should point out about city directories is that when looking for an address, sometimes the address you’re looking for can be listed as vacant, no response, or someone else under a different name is living at that address.

Well, doing a search thru phone books for LEK's address might not turn up anything. Or, she might have listed her phone in her name; I just checked with my wife & when she was single she listed her phone number in her name. (She didn't know she could do it any other way.)

One idea raised recently -- & which I am partial to -- is that although she changed her identity, LEK might have hoped that someone would come looking for her. So maybe she listed her phone number & address in her name. We won't know until someone looks.

But in any case, the priority for checking this drops a bit. Finding out information from her bankruptcy would be the top priority.

But since you mentioned city directories, I had a thought: what if looking thru the directories, certain names reappear as her neighbors? What if we uncover a friend or an acquaintance of hers? That possibility is a good reason to keep this project on the list of things to do.

 

[BigCityAccountant]

I must have been doing things wrong in the 80's... I paid for an unlisted number...lol maybe it's regional. Not wanting her engagement in the paper would mean to me she was regional to the area. Certainly in the 80's someone wasn't going to get the Dallas news in another state, unless of course they had mail forwarded. Maybe she was from Branch Dividians and with all the news coverage thought someone would recognize her. I think we need to explore that avenue more...

When she said "WE don't do things like that" I can see that referring to her extended BD family. If I recall correctly they we not much for publicity. Tried to keep a low profile until the government got involved.

 

[BigCityAccountant]

http://time.com/3879612/short-creek-raid-photos-arizona-polygamy-mormon/
Short Creek Raid in Arizona in 1953...

Maybe FLEK was from AZ???

 

[Linda9681]

Good luck with the FLDS rabbit hole. I spent nearly a year researching it mostly the LeBaron clan. They are all connected either by crime or marriage. There are so many undocumented children who are married off at a very early age that it is impossible to figure out family trees. They do not cooperate with questioning unless they have broken off from the pack and they don't remember specific people usually. Lots of " same" names too, which is super confusing. I honestly can tell you no leads will come of researching this kind of thing.


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[BigCityAccountant]

Lynne remarried to Kurt Kennedy....

http://politicsrusprinciple.tumblr.com/post/101616672274/mormonhair-linda-kelsch-with-her-mother-and

 

[EmiLove832]

Yes, unfortunately this is a puzzle piece on the table that (for me) just sits there, as it has no connections to the 'family unit' I've found (such as it is). It's the problem with Radaris and Spokeo - they list residential names, and often times they throw in names of co-habitors, (and sometimes multiple name variations for a single person), but there are no associated relational records to build upon. When I do a search on this couple (and I did, on two sites) nothing shows up--no marriage record, no parents' names. So, for all I know, these could be one or two people who were adopted or legally changed their names by the time they got married, with no connection surname-wise to their family of origin, or they may even be two people in a common-law marriage, with no legal record of their names, births, or parentage. Which is fine, but it doesn't give me record tools to make more family connections with - like when I do a directory search for a person on ancestry, and it meshes with a yearbook searches (city/date) and/or addresses that other family members also have on their timelines for that year.

In any case, the DJS I am tracking never lived in NY or in Tarzana, CA, that I have found, yet--and the DJS (Shepherd) I did find who lived in Canyon County [formerly called Tarzana] has birthdates alternately listed as 1957, and Sep 1949...but not 1959...

Also, just now, I found the DS in Tacoma to have the middle initial "L" and she was b. Apr 1958.

And, the Oakey Blvd, Las Vegas, DS has "A" for a middle initial, b. 1965.


Going cross-eyed, now... Off to bed. fftobed:

PoirotryInMotion,

Respectfully I'm totally confused when reading and trying to follow your post.

The screen grab I posted the other day was just a super quick google search. I haven't had a chance to come back to the thread since so I checked this morning and read through your replies but I found myself super confused. I sat down at the computer determined to figure out if the DJS/S in the screen grab I posted is the woman you're following.

This is what I found in the last 30 minutes.

DJS/S from my screen grab was born May 25, 1959. I found her birth record which matches the date of birth on a public record with relatives listed the same as the screen grab I posted. Mother's name is listed as Newman. A birth year of 1959, would have made her 26 years old at the time of the trial in 1985. So that's a match.

Also, the address history for her is all in or around Van Nuys and several addresses in Tarzana. I did not find one address that was more than 10 miles from Van Nuys.

I also cross checked some of the listed family members, so far everyone has address history in or around Van Nuys.

I checked classmates to confirm yearbooks are still there, I found her photo in the 1975 and 1976 yearbooks. In didn't see a striking resemblance to FLEK, especially not in the 1976 photo.

Interesting that there is someone on Classmates connected to that 1975 photo. That would be the married person I mentioned upthread who has a different birthdate than my DJS, daughter of RS. The 1985 article posted yesterday mentioned that "26 year old" DJS was testifying. http://articles.latimes.com/1985-08-07/local/me-3831_1_execution-style-murders

That's a match to my DJS b. May 1959. Not sure if it's a match to the married DS, as her birthdates have been alternately found (last night) to be 1949 and 1957.

So the DJS you're following does have the 1959 birth date? I didn't see any birth years differing. I thought you the screen grab I posted was disputed in an early post due to the age. Now I'm even more confused! :thinking:

 

[Gardener1850]

PoirotryInMotion,

Respectfully I'm totally confused when reading and trying to follow your post.

The screen grab I posted the other day was just a super quick google search. I haven't had a chance to come back to the thread since so I checked this morning and read through your replies but I found myself super confused. I sat down at the computer determined to figure out if the DJS/S in the screen grab I posted is the woman you're following.

This is what I found in the last 30 minutes.

DJS/S from my screen grab was born May 25, 1959. I found her birth record which matches the date of birth on a public record with relatives listed the same as the screen grab I posted. Mother's name is listed as Newman. A birth year of 1959, would have made her 26 years old at the time of the trial in 1985. So that's a match.

Also, the address history for her is all in or around Van Nuys and several addresses in Tarzana. I did not find one address that was more than 10 miles from Van Nuys.

I also cross checked some of the listed family members, so far everyone has address history in or around Van Nuys.

I checked classmates to confirm yearbooks are still there, I found her photo in the 1975 and 1976 yearbooks. In didn't see a striking resemblance to FLEK, especially not in the 1976 photo.




I'm even more confused, so the DJS you're following does have the 1959 birth date? I didn't see any birth years differing. I thought you the screen grab I posted was disputed in an early post due to the age. Now I'm even more confused! :thinking:

I got super confused too, but I found pretty much the same thing as you EmiLove.
It seems PIM is grabbing various records for other DS's and assuming they are all the same woman who changed her DOB a bunch of times. But that doesn't make any sense at all. There are multiple people born with the given name DS and a few who have the S surname from marriage. IMO, it looks like we have located the DS from the trial and she is alive and well. We have no way of knowing for sure she is the one who testified (unless someone wants to ask her) but her location history and DOB matches the news clippings. Therefore, she cannot be FLEK. MOO.

 

[Gardener1850]

Lynne remarried to Kurt Kennedy....

http://politicsrusprinciple.tumblr.com/post/101616672274/mormonhair-linda-kelsch-with-her-mother-and

Why does FLEK look like every woman in that picture??? It's maddening how much she looks like so many people. In 1953 she would not have been born yet but that picture could easily be her relatives. I really don't want to go down the FLDS rabbit hole...

 

[Gardener1850]

Regarding the polygamous cult angle, has anyone reached out to former cult members like the stars of this tv show? http://www.aetv.com/shows/escaping-polygamy
I don't know how real their show is or anything about it, but if they are legit former polygamists maybe they know the families or have resources for researching those families that we don't have access to with just internet searching. They may be able to show FLEK's pictures around to escaped family members who otherwise would never see her picture. Also, perhaps former cult members would volunteer to have their DNA tested against FLEK's to find out if she had any familial connection to them?

 

[EmiLove832]

Someone posted recently that they thought when or if we find out who Lori was, the photo will look exactly like her. I couldn't agree more.

Think of Grateful Doe / Jason Callahan. All of the proposed, reported missing individuals that were suggested before looked kind of similar but when Jason's identity was discovered and the photos were posted online, there was no doubt it was him.

I don't think Lori was ever reported missing. I'm not convinced she was "missing".

As much as I would love to see this case solved, we may never know who she really was.

 

[Linda9681]

Regarding the polygamous cult angle, has anyone reached out to former cult members like the stars of this tv show? http://www.aetv.com/shows/escaping-polygamy
I don't know how real their show is or anything about it, but if they are legit former polygamists maybe they know the families or have resources for researching those families that we don't have access to with just internet searching. They may be able to show FLEK's pictures around to escaped family members who otherwise would never see her picture. Also, perhaps former cult members would volunteer to have their DNA tested against FLEK's to find out if she had any familial connection to them?

Yes. I reached out to two who wrote books about their life/escape and one daughter of a very high profile one in the LeBaron clan. They circulated FLEKs pic amongst their circles and nobody said they knew her.


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