TX - 'Lori Ruff', Longview, WhtFem UP9863, *General Discussion and Theories* #3

[milkymama]

Has anyone on here ever seen the actual police report from the police department that investigated her death? If this is not allowed to be discussed publicly on here, please message me. I have no idea of all the rules on here (other than common sense ones , so please let me know if I post anything that is not allowed.

I know I would like to see it. I would love to see if there was a documented thought process for why the police thought she planned to kill the Ruffs (yes there were issues and she was unstable, but that doesn't necessarily correlate to murder - there have been no reports in any articles where she was actually violent that I recall, just "difficult" to get along with), then changed her mind when she found they weren't home (even though they were home, so we don't really know if/why she thought they were home or not), and at some point after making this impulsive decision to kill herself in their driveway, then took the time to write an 11 page letter to Blake plus another separate one (length unstated) to her daughter before pulling the trigger. I guess its possible but without the original report, it makes me wonder because lengthy suicide letters seem more to correlate with someone who had planned to do this to themselves all along, not someone who was upset because she may have felt she was being denied visitation or something perhaps and was angry at someone else.

 

[LaLaw2000]

WS wisdom...................gun control is a very sticky issue and I hope we do not get into a debate over it. It is not critical to our discussion anyway.

BIG JMO

 

[LaLaw2000]

Lol, we're not going to solve gun control here, so tactfully redirecting convo to FLEK...

Thank you..........I saw your post after having written mine.

 

[CoverMeCagney]

Lol, we're not going to solve gun control here, so tactfully redirecting convo to FLEK...

Good idea!

Anyone heard any rumblings of the rumoured announcement? I've not looked at the FB page today, any new news?

 

[HerStory]

The general public was asked for assistance, back in the 2013 Seattle article. MANY of us have rose to the request and dedicated our knowledge, skills and time to helping. I wouldn't doubt that even some of us have utilized finances via subscriptions, access fees, stamps, gas, etc in the pursuit of identifying this woman. I sincerely hope that the investigators and family have enough respect to 'reward' us with some morsel of insight as to who she is.

 

[CoverMeCagney]

The general public was asked for assistance, back in the 2013 Seattle article. MANY of us have rose to the request and dedicated our knowledge, skills and time to helping. I wouldn't doubt that even some of us have utilized finances via subscriptions, access fees, stamps, gas, etc in the pursuit of identifying this woman. I sincerely hope that the investigators and family have enough respect to 'reward' us with some morsel of insight as to who she is.

I agree. When families beg for help and then the mystery gets solved and they clam up, it's pretty annoying. However, in this case the family have definitely not asked for help and I guess they'll have the final say on whether info is revealed. We can only hope they tell all to make everyone stop going on about it!

 

[ALTCMT]

Would her true identity be included in the final/follow up report regarding the social security fraud investigation?

 

[CoverMeCagney]

Would her true identity be included in the final/follow up report regarding the social security fraud investigation?

I don't know, but you'd think if there was any kind of criminal investigation something would be revealed. Or a Namus profile will get removed, but I don't think Lori is on any missing lists. Our best bet is the family allowing a press release.

Did anyone get involved in the Daisy Suzanna Hamilton aka Mystique thread? We spent weeks and months on that, her mom was very active on the thread giving us loads of info, ideas were bounced all over and some members went way beyond to help. And then all of a sudden we heard on the grapevine that Mystique was found, her mom never posted again and the thread got removed (presumably at the moms request).

A thank you would have been nice, just sayin'.

 

[sunnynz]

How easy would it have been for a teenager/young adult to travel from the East Coast to CA and/or WA in the late 1980's? I mean, were buses and so on expensive? Would she have needed a lot of money to make it that far? It just seems like a heck of a long way to go to get a new identity.

I know that maybe she wasn't actually based there and maybe (based on latest info) her family just lives on the East Coast now. Although interestingly her wikipedia page now says that she herself was from PA "On March 16th, 2016, rumors circulated that she had been identified by means of a DNA comparison to a missing person from the Pennsylvania area, who was eighteen years old at the time of her disappearance, and on March 17th, 2016, sources appeared to confirm this."

 

[MalloryPike]

How easy would it have been for a teenager/young adult to travel from the East Coast to CA and/or WA in the late 1980's? I mean, were buses and so on expensive? Would she have needed a lot of money to make it that far? It just seems like a heck of a long way to go to get a new identity.

I know that maybe she wasn't actually based there and maybe (based on latest info) her family just lives on the East Coast now. Although interestingly her wikipedia page now says that she herself was from PA "On March 16th, 2016, rumors circulated that she had been identified by means of a DNA comparison to a missing person from the Pennsylvania area, who was eighteen years old at the time of her disappearance, and on March 17th, 2016, sources appeared to confirm this."

I wouldn't put much stock in the wiki page. Anyone can edit it to say anything. Likely, it was someone reading along here or elsewhere that edited it (without a reliable source to cite the edit) .

 

[milkymama]

How easy would it have been for a teenager/young adult to travel from the East Coast to CA and/or WA in the late 1980's? I mean, were buses and so on expensive? Would she have needed a lot of money to make it that far? It just seems like a heck of a long way to go to get a new identity.

I know that maybe she wasn't actually based there and maybe (based on latest info) her family just lives on the East Coast now. Although interestingly her wikipedia page now says that she herself was from PA "On March 16th, 2016, rumors circulated that she had been identified by means of a DNA comparison to a missing person from the Pennsylvania area, who was eighteen years old at the time of her disappearance, and on March 17th, 2016, sources appeared to confirm this."

Pretty easy. I know a few people who moved from VA to CA around 1990. IIRC the bus ticket was around 65 bucks.

 

[reasonableguess]

How easy would it have been for a teenager/young adult to travel from the East Coast to CA and/or WA in the late 1980's? I mean, were buses and so on expensive? Would she have needed a lot of money to make it that far? It just seems like a heck of a long way to go to get a new identity.

I know that maybe she wasn't actually based there and maybe (based on latest info) her family just lives on the East Coast now. Although interestingly her wikipedia page now says that she herself was from PA "On March 16th, 2016, rumors circulated that she had been identified by means of a DNA comparison to a missing person from the Pennsylvania area, who was eighteen years old at the time of her disappearance, and on March 17th, 2016, sources appeared to confirm this."

Really easy. I rode the bus in the 80s as a very young teen by myself across the entire country alone, including changing in major bus stations w/ overnights due to bus breakdowns, etc. Nobody blinked an eye. I had no ID b/c I wasn't old enough to drive. Nobody ever asked me why I was traveling alone or anything. Greyhound. I was not a runaway, just going to visit family for the summer.

 

[zieroh]

Disclaimer: This post doesn't really advance the mystery of who LEK might have been. However, I have had this nagging feeling ever since I first read about this case that I had seen LEK somewhere before. It doesn't help that I was living in Dallas just a few years before LEK showed up there, and I even went to the same university (UTA) back in the 80s. I'm virtually certain we weren't there at the same time, but still, the pictures (and the passport photo in particular) have always caused random neurons to fire in my head for no apparent reason. She's actually quite attractive in that photo, but it seemed more... familiar.

Sometimes, the random neurons (or maybe just the voices in my head, hah) whisper "Romancing the Stone" when I think she resembles a celebrity. But that can't be right -- RtS had Kathleen Turner as the female lead, and Kathleen Turner looks nothing like LEK. Maybe the "Becky Sue Turner" and "Kathleen Turner" neurons are adjacent in my head, and it's all crosstalk.

So maybe not "Romancing the Stone", but how about a movie from only a few years earlier? Maybe "Raiders of the Lost Ark"?

Bingo. I think I finally know which neurons were firing in my head. Granted, it's not a great match, but I haven't seen the movie in decades, and I couldn't even have told you who the lead actress was all these years later. I think, for me, the nagging in my head was a vague resemblance to Karen Allen, who played Marion Ravenwood in Raiders way back in 1981.

So maybe I can let that rest now, and go back to thinking about this case with logic instead of nagging remembrances.

 

[trixandhoney]

I asked about the gun and whether or not it was registered to her because I think it's relevant to the case in many ways. For example, when did she buy it? If she bought it recently, was it specifically intended for suicide? If she'd had it for a long time, did she buy it because she worried for her safety? Did Blake know she had it? If she purchased it illegally, how did she find the seller? We know she was resourceful so I just think the gun purchase is significant.

 

[tarheelslim]

I would love to see if there was a documented thought process for why the police thought she planned to kill the Ruffs (yes there were issues and she was unstable, but that doesn't necessarily correlate to murder - there have been no reports in any articles where she was actually violent that I recall, just "difficult" to get along with), then changed her mind when she found they weren't home (even though they were home, so we don't really know if/why she thought they were home or not), and at some point after making this impulsive decision to kill herself in their driveway, then took the time to write an 11 page letter to Blake plus another separate one (length unstated) to her daughter before pulling the trigger. I guess its possible but without the original report, it makes me wonder because lengthy suicide letters seem more to correlate with someone who had planned to do this to themselves all along, not someone who was upset because she may have felt she was being denied visitation or something perhaps and was angry at someone else.

My assumption was that they suspected she intended to kill the Ruffs and then herself. I could be wrong, but that's how these things usually happen (plus she did seem to be prepared to kill herself, if we assume the notes were already written).

 

[falseedsonbaker]

When the family found her and the police did their reports, it was not known that she was living under a false identity. I've always wondered if the "ramblings of a clearly disturbed person" in the letters would have made more sense to the police in context. From the Seattle Times article, it sounded to me like Velling and O'Hagan never saw the letters. Only the police report that said there was nothing of value in them. I fear that there was valuable information in the letters that didn't make sense at the time and they are now gone. I would love to get the full police file from the Longview PD.

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[tarheelslim]

When the family found her and the police did their reports, it was not known that she was living under a false identity. I've always wondered if the "ramblings of a clearly disturbed person" in the letters would have made more sense to the police in context. From the Seattle Times article, it sounded to me like Velling and O'Hagan never saw the letters. Only the police report that said there was nothing of value in them. I fear that there was valuable information in the letters that didn't make sense at the time and they are now gone. I would love to get the full police file from the Longview PD.

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I keep seeing a lot of people asking about the letters she left, so I was finally compelled to go back and look at Velling's response regarding this in the Seattle Times Q&A. He wrote:

"The family opened the letter to the daughter and shared the letter with me. There was talk of wanting her to remember her mother and tea parties in the future but nothing about her past."

 

[georgiagirl]

I demand to see the letters!


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[falseedsonbaker]

I keep seeing a lot of people asking about the letters she left, so I was finally compelled to go back and look at Velling's response regarding this in the Seattle Times Q&A. He wrote:

"The family opened the letter to the daughter and shared the letter with me. There was talk of wanting her to remember her mother and tea parties in the future but nothing about her past."

Ah, I guess I need to go back and read the Q&A. Thanks for pointing that out.

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[falseedsonbaker]

Ah, I guess I need to go back and read the Q&A. Thanks for pointing that out.

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Re-read it. So frustrating. It says he saw the letter to the daughter. No mention of the one to Blake. I'm beginning to doubt that we will ever know the end to this.

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