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

[Gardener1850]

Her daughter would be about 18 now. I wonder what she has been told and if she is trying to find out who her mother was? It would bother me really bad not knowing.

No, her daughter was born in 2008. She was 2 when her mother died in 2010.

 

[Gardener1850]

Hold the press...there appears to be 2 Lori E Ruff's from Longview. One is married to an Er!c Ruff.

Yep, it's not OUR Lori. The other Lori, who is still alive, has the same middle initial but a different middle E name.

 

[OBrunhilde!]

Oh drat. Because I just found a record that linked to both AZ and investment broker. It was fun while it lasted!

 

[hopeandglory]

Don't know if this has been looked into or not, but do we think there's a significance to her daughter's name?

 

[sunnynz]

Don't know if this has been looked into or not, but do we think there's a significance to her daughter's name?

I always wonder that too and include her daughter's name and middle name whenever I'm doing random searching of forums etc

 

[TomPatty]

I am bumping this forward as we are talking about what is needed to get a copy of a birth cert. again.

We definitely have conflicting information here.

Of course I can't know for sure, but to me it seems more likely that the employee who was kind enough to provide those answers to SunnyNZ (Well Done, SunnyNZ!) made a mistake in earnest, rather than a whole report about identity fraud by a government agency is incorrect.

So, how can we find out for sure? Would a reference librarian be willing and able to look up state laws/codes to see for sure when/if that law changed?

I believe the clerk was either confused or misinformed. Legislation to restrict access to birth certificates in California wasn't introduced until 2001 and didn't go into effect until 2003. The committee report notes that "Existing law requires the State Registrar, local registrar, or county recorder, upon request and payment of the required fee, to supply to any applicant a certified copy of the record of any birth, fetal death, death, marriage, or marriage dissolution registered with the official" (emphasis added). The author of the bill further noted "I can get your birth certificate without presenting any form of identification to the issuing authority (county or state). California is the only state in the nation that does not require ID when requesting a birth certificate."

Regulations requiring a death to be noted on the birth certificate and for subsequent copies of the birth certificate to be stamped "DECEASED" did not go into effect until 1978 and 1984, respectively. Even if BST's death in Washington had been reported to California, in 1972 there was no procedure in place to update the records.

 

[mrseeker]

Do we know for certain the BC was obtained in person in Bakersfield or could it have been obtained by mail. Not sure if the receipt means in person only or not. Then I am still trying to understand why Boise next. So she gets the BC and now she thinks she needs, or wants, an ID. Did she target Boise because it was neither CA or WA and yet a third state? Or was she already in Idaho? Why not NV? In 3 weeks time from the ID she is in Dallas swearing to a judge she is from Dallas County. Did she need some proof of ID for those 3 weeks to travel? or to pull a scam? or did she just want it in case she needed it along the way?

 

[bradfordsleuth]

Deleted

 

[bradfordsleuth]

I will admit I haven't read every page of this thread. But I've followed the case for a while. Like all of you I've spent some time looking at all the paperwork, the phone numbers, the addresses, etc. However, I think this all comes down to some basics.

1. Why did she pick that little girl from 1971? More to the point, how did LEK even know that girl died? I can conceive of only two ways in the pre-Internet age of 1988. The first choice: Either LEK knew the little girl died because LEK lived in Bakersfield where BST was originally born and saw it in the papers as a little girl when the news spread back to that area OR LEK lived near Fife, WA when the fire happened and heard about it in the same way there. Because, frankly, a little girl dying in a fire isn't exactly national news. And let's say LEK was 8 years old at the time. How many 8 years old follow news? However, an 8 year old might hear something that adults are talking about, especially if it's local story OR the story is about a family who used to live in the area. And LEK might've remembered that story in 1988 when she decided to change identities.
The second choice: As an adult, LEK decided she wanted to change identities and spent HOURS going to a library, scanning microfiche for an appropriate identity she could steal. Now, if she was trying to "run away" from something or someone due to fear, at some point wouldn't the other person get a little suspicious that LEK was spending a lot of time at the library or in some unknown place? An abusive husband. A pimp. A drug dealer. It just stretches the imagination a bit.
Granted, I realize the possibility of an "identity broker" has been mentioned. But this reveals the same problem. An identity broker doesn't have anymore knowledge about deaths in the USA than the average person. This broker would have to do the same amount of searching to find an appropriate identity to steal. And somehow this broker finds a story that's 17 years old from an obscure town in WA that had a population of 1500 at the time? To make it easy, wouldn't a broker simply look in the big newspapers--NY Times, LA Times, Wash Post, etc. for the death of a baby or youngster? I can't imagine the death of the real Becky Sue Turner made news in any big newspaper anywhere.
Thus, my bet is that LEK knew about the death of the real BST because she heard the story firsthand as a child, either being in Bakersfield or near Fife at the time. Her lack of an accent would support the theory.

2. I'm wondering why she kept that paperwork. Let me get this right: LEK goes through great pains to avoid talking about her past, even ticking off her husband and in-laws in the process. BUT, her identity theft evidence was only a locked drawer away with the orders to NEVER try to open it? The way I am, that would've only made me want to open the drawer more. But in any case, her behavior seems inconsistent. Why not burn everything if her past needed to remain a mystery forever? It's hard to understand. I'm wondering . . . was she planning to change her identity back to Becky Sue Turner at some point? Maybe even more accurately, was she going to use that old paperwork to change her identity again to something new--thinking she might have complications if she used her Lori Erica Ruff identity? I wonder.

3. As far as all the phone numbers, addresses, etc., that nobody has gotten anywhere with it after a few years tells me that it's probably just the scribblings of a woman who was losing her mind. None of the people at those phone numbers or addresses recognize her or knew her. None of the info can be connected to each other. In fact, can we even be sure that LEK wrote all the words and numbers on that page? I'm sure a handwriting expert has already checked it but still . . . many of those letters and numbers look different from word to word to me. Likewise, there is stuff from Denver, LA, AZ, Dallas, and wherever else--all on one piece of paper. Who keeps one piece of paper for all that? Was it all done in one day or over the course of a week? A month? A year? Well, nobody knows. Or even what year it would be. Was it before she changed identities or after? It all feels like a wild goose chase to me. That it's all so jumbled together with phone numbers and words running into other numbers and words tells me that this was done at a time when her mind was starting to leave her, once again putting the helpfulness of any of it in doubt.

4. I'd like to know what her interests were. Yes, people can hide their past but nobody has a strong enough mind to cover up everything. Did she root for any professional teams? What kind of music did she like? She may have had no accent but certain words are particular to certain areas of the USA. Soda or pop? Hoagie or sub? Where I'm originally from, people used the term "red up" to mean "make a room neat." Did her husband notice she had some talents for which there was no explanation? Gardening? Painting? A musical instrument? What kind of food did she like to cook? All of these things can tell A LOT about a person because they are so subconscious that we don't even think about them. LEK would've been the same way.

5. One peculiar thing is how her teeth got so separated as she got older. My eyes tell me she had braces as a kid or had some extensive cosmetic dental work done before she became Becky Sue Turner in 1988. And her teeth were pretty good for a long time. Then that one picture with the hat . . . her teeth are separated as if she never had straight teeth at all. I'm wondering if there is some disease that would cause that. Me? I never had braces or work done and my teeth have remained the same way for the last 30 years. Not LEK's. Is there some nationality or ethnicity that is more susceptible to some kind of disease that changes the configuration of a person's jaw? Is there a genetic makeup that's more prone to that? That might also be helpful in narrowing done her nationality. Also, maybe someone should pony up a couple bucks for her DNA to be traced to find out what her ancestry is. Has that been done yet?

6. As far as her losing her mind, I've convinced myself that happened because a person can only keep secrets for so long before the wiring starts going bad. Thus, I don't believe she's some kind of escaped insane asylum patient.

So many great points and observations in this post! Thank you.

 

[concernedmother]

Lori Erica sounds like 2 first names. I wonder if her real name was Erica?

 

[concernedmother]

I think she had a bad home life and ran away as soon as she was old enough. She was probaby never reported missing and wanted nothing more to do with those people.

 

[OBrunhilde!]

Don't know if this has been looked into or not, but do we think there's a significance to her daughter's name?

Good question! I certainly wonder. I am the same age as FLEK, and I share her daughter's name. I know, I know-- you probably thought my name was really Brunhilde in Seattle, I didn't go to school with a single other Jessica. Not one. I could count the number of Jessicas I met, of any age, on one hand until the mid to late 80s. And I was nearly always called ERICA or Jennifer, which were both extremely common names-- as was Lori. In the back of my mind I have always thought of FLEK as a Jennifer-- and I base that on absolutely nothing factual.

By 2008, it seems like the name was past its prime, so I have often wondered why she would choose it. Anonymity? It seems unlikely that FLEK would have many associations with the name if she really was from the PNW. It occurs to me that there were probably a bunch of little Jessicas in the Chelsea tea shop around the time FLEK was hanging out there. Maybe the name really imprinted on her. Lots of cute little Jessicas having a fun, special outing with their moms...I can see that making a big impression on someone college aged, looking to the future...

 

[Gardener1850]

The thing is, we don't know for sure that Lori chose her daughter's name all on her own. It may have been Blake's favorite name or it may have been a compromise name they could both agree on. That said, it is interesting to look up name popularity by year. I like the "voyager" graphs at http://www.babynamewizard.com/voyager#prefix=&sw=both&exact=false

Enter Lori--and we see that Lori peaked as a name choice in the 1950's and 1960's. She chose a name that was very common for her generation.
Enter Erica--and notice that Erica was not very common at all int he 1950's or 1960's. Erica started to gain popularity in the 1970's and peaked in the 1980's.

What does this mean? It's open to interpretation.
I tend to think she did not choose to use any part of her birth name in her new identity. It would be too risky, IMO. I think she thought about names of people she grew up with that she knew multiple people by that name and chose a common name she liked for her first name. Any of us can do this no matter the generation we grew up in--think of your classmates and what names were duplicates in your town. Next for her middle name, I suspect she felt she could get away with a less common middle name. Most middle names are either really common names (Anne, Marie, etc) OR not as common as the first name. However most people I know with uncommon-for-their-generation middle names have the less common middle name because it's a family name-- either a surname used for a middle name or the name of a grandmother. The middle name, when not common in that generation, is usually from a prior generation. But FLEK did the OPPOSITE when choosing Erica. Erica doesn't even start to show up on the name ranking until the 1950's. And it's popularity in the 1970's and 1980's makes me think she chose a name she wanted to name one of her children or possibly it was the name of her niece (a niece would be a generation younger and the right age to be FLEK's name-inspiration). I remember playing a game with my friends where we would list the names we wanted to name our future kids so that's why I think she chose Erica for a middle name--it was a name people were just starting to use when she was growing up but NOT a name that was as common as Lori for someone her age. She knew she had to have a common name to hide better.

BTW, both of the names chosen for Lori's daughter peaked in popularity in the 1980's as well. They have a similar style as Erica. I suspect those names are either names of family members she had or also favorites from when she was growing up. That is, if Blake had no part in choosing his daughter's name.

 

[WyomingSkyAngel]

5. One peculiar thing is how her teeth got so separated as she got older. My eyes tell me she had braces as a kid or had some extensive cosmetic dental work done before she became Becky Sue Turner in 1988. And her teeth were pretty good for a long time. Then that one picture with the hat . . . her teeth are separated as if she never had straight teeth at all. I'm wondering if there is some disease that would cause that. Me? I never had braces or work done and my teeth have remained the same way for the last 30 years. Not LEK's. Is there some nationality or ethnicity that is more susceptible to some kind of disease that changes the configuration of a person's jaw? Is there a genetic makeup that's more prone to that? That might also be helpful in narrowing done her nationality. Also, maybe someone should pony up a couple bucks for her DNA to be traced to find out what her ancestry is. Has that been done yet?

I wrote a long response to this but my computer ate it. Extracted molars could be the cause for shifting teeth. This is why dentists push people to save molars instead of yanking them.

 

[llywrch]

Lori Erica sounds like 2 first names. I wonder if her real name was Erica?

I saw an article the other day I've been meaning to share with you all: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/so-y...iIaaLYQ&fromEmail=fromEmail&ut=0lcZqC6owGTDo1 Although not exactly on-topic, it does raise some practical issues that LEK must have been forced to deal with. What most caught my attention was this paragraph:

Do keep near enough the truth: John Darwin, whose name is synonymous with “pseudocide” in the UK, staged a kayaking accident in 2002 to shirk heavy debt he’d acquired in shady real estate deals. With the help of his wife, he returned to live in an adjacent guesthouse next door to his own home while his two adult sons grieved. He managed to get a real UK passport in the name of John Jones, a person who was born the same year as him but died in infancy. He traveled to a dozen countries when he was “dead” before turning himself in at a London police station in 2008. Darwin told me the secret to his success: “Keep near enough the truth,” he says. “Use your first name. That’s a must. A disguise is vital. I grew a beard, I wore glasses. I never used to wear a hat, so I put on a hat. I wore a different sort of coat then I normally wear. Then I had a walking stick, a stoop, and a limp. If you can think logically, anything is easy.”

So it would be reasonable to presume the first name LEK received at birth was "Lori" (or a variant spelling of that) or "Erica" (or a variant spelling of that). I don't know if that gets us any closer to identifying her, but I figure someone might make use of that.

 

[llywrch]

This calls into question something, though: Lori HAD to have picked the birth certificate up in person, then since she had to show an ID.

Which leads to an interesting scenario. While we've all agreed that the steps for stealing another person's identity was fairly common knowledge back in 1980s, one implication has been overlooked: the county records departments were also aware of that procedure. And it stands to reason that the county clerks would occasionally challenge people who sought birth certificates who seemed suspicious. (e.g., "So Ingrid Berkovitz, why are you requesting the birth certificate of one BST?") And LEK doesn't strike me as someone who could manage to get past this speedbump with a bit of what has been called "social engineering". (e.g, "Oh, this is for my sister-in-law, & I'm picking it up for her as a favor. She's applying for a passport so she can visit Europe next summer.")

What I'm implying from this scenario is either she possessed ID with BST's name on it -- not necessarily the BST who died in a house fire in December 1971, since investigations have uncovered a number of women with the same name -- or had a name on the check close enough to BST that it did not raise any suspicions from the clerk who issued her the bc. Say the name was something like "Becky Smith", so the clerk would assume LEK (or whoever picked up the bc, let's just call her LEK for convenience) was married, & that was why the last names did not match.

Or maybe I'm adding unneeded complexity to this mystery, & about to suffer a cut from Occam's Razor...

Am I incorrect in thinking that the story has been told that it was mailed?

Someone suggested it as a possibility because the birth certificate was printed one day (20 May 1988), & paid for on another day (23 May 1988); that poster inferred that LEK ordered the bc one day over the phone, then paid for it the next. But SunnyNZ's research shows that birth certificates could not be ordered over the phone; & a detail I noticed on the receipt strongly suggests that the person who paid for the certificate hadn't driven from, say, LA to Bakersfield that morning to get it.

Which in itself indicates very strongly that the person who obtained the bc spent a few days in the county seat; if LEK had traveled all the way from LA to get it, only to be told she would need to come back for it a few days later, I doubt she'd drive all that way back just to make the same trip three days later. Especially if that person didn't drive, or owned a beater car of questionable reliability.

Now IMHO, this is a bit of required complexity to this mystery. It's not unusual for it to take a business day for a county records office to produce a birth certificate: in days before widespread computerization, it could easily take a complete working day for someone to search thru the county records to find & make a copy of a given birth certificate. And a bit of research shows 20 May 1988 was a Friday & 23 May was a Monday; if I read the bottom of the receipt correctly, the bc was picked up at 7:49 am on Monday. Had LEK driven from, say, LA to Bakersfield to pick it up, according to Google it would take a little under two hours to drive there, & required LEK to leave home no later than 5:45 that morning -- which IMHO, is highly unlikely. (Who would get up so early on a Monday to get a document that will be there all day? Why not wait until at least 7:00 am to leave, & pick it up around 9:00 am? And even if LEK was fitting this around a work schedule, she wouldn't be back in LA until 10 am at the earliest; she'll be missing the entire morning either way.)

However, this timeline indicates that LEK might not have known it would take a business day to process the request, was forced to spend the weekend in Bakersfield, & picked up the bc first thing Monday morning so she could return to wherever home was.

A professional identity broker would know this, & would avoid requesting one on a Friday -- well, unless she/he lived in Bakersfield. (A surprising coincidence!) Someone who had never requested a birth certificate before would likely make that mistake, but if she lived in Bakersfield would likely pick it up at some other time than first thing on a Monday morning. (Showing up first thing on a Monday morning would be remarkable enough that someone might remember it, even decades later, so even a crafty professional broker would avoid doing this.)

However, all of this armchair sleuthing tells us only (1) the birth certificate was obtained by an amateur (& likely LEK), & (2) LEK was not living in Bakersfield, CA in May 1988. While eliminating some possibilities, this information doesn't eliminate enough to really help. But at this point IMHO any help, no matter how small, is something.

 

[SavetheQueen]

Respectfully snipped for making a specific point:

.....And it stands to reason that the county clerks would occasionally challenge people who sought birth certificates who seemed suspicious. (e.g., "So Ingrid Berkovitz, why are you requesting the birth certificate of one BST?") And LEK doesn't strike me as someone who could manage to get past this speedbump with a bit of what has been called "social engineering". (e.g, "Oh, this is for my sister-in-law, & I'm picking it up for her as a favor. She's applying for a passport so she can visit Europe next summer.").....

You bring up another excellent point here. If she's going to be living a lie (for lack of a better term), why not take it all the way through? For instance, when the Ruffs questioned her on where she went to school, etc, instead of telling them it was none of their business, why not make something up? To live this life, you have to have a certain amount of schmooze and charm, and the skills to wing things on the fly.

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

 

[jslk]

The records office was open by 7:49am?! Are these usual hours for these places (I'm UK and it's 9-5 for those places here...).

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[SavetheQueen]

The records office was open by 7:49am?! Are these usual hours for these places (I'm UK and it's 9-5 for those places here...).

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Usually 8-5 here in the States. Still odd.

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

 

[jslk]

Usually 8-5 here in the States. Still odd.

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

Although, thinking about it... a till clock could be out by a few minutes as probably not linked online in 1988... OR some kind of daylight savings adjustment that hadn't been made to its clock?

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