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...
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.
