Last leap , we brought you8 Mysterious People Without a past tense , a list of individuals who seemed to have had much of their other cosmos wipe from history .
We now need to retool that list to seven , since one of those mysteries has now been solved . Lori Erica Ruff , a Texan who committed suicide in 2010 and left behind a series of puzzling documents hinting that she was n’t who her family thought she was , has now been identified . She was n’t Lori Erica Ruff — she was a Pennsylvania charwoman named Kimberly McLean .
According to theSeattle Times , a crew - sourced probe into Ruff ’s background began after the paper run a story on her in 2013 . Papers belonging to Ruff , who had been married with a minor , surfaced after her suicide indicating she had once been known as Lori Kennedy , and prior to that , as Becky Sue Turner , the name of a young girl who had buy the farm in a Washington state fervidness in 1971 .
Ruff ’s patent personal identity stealing pulled in former Social Security Administration investigator Joe Velling , who hoped that publicity from theTimespiece would urge amateur sleuths to provide some lead . It did . deep in 2015 , Velling received a call from a former nuclear physicist and forensic genealogist refer Colleen Fitzpatrick , who had been following the typesetter’s case online . establish on her own research , and a desoxyribonucleic acid sampling the Ruff family submitted that indicate Lori had a first first cousin named Michael Cassidy , Fitzpatrick evoke Velling liaison the Cassidy kinsperson in Philadelphia .
Velling traveled to the city and approached a phallus of the Cassidy household , who saw Lori ’s number one wood ’s license photo . The response ? " My God , that ’s Kimberly ! ” The family member confirmed Ruff was really Kimberly McLean , daughter of Deanne Cassidy and James McLean , who had consort away from home in Pennsylvania at the age of 18 .
According to Deanne ’s brother , Tom , Kimberly grow irate after her female parent and male parent separate in the 1980s . Dismayed by have to move and attend a newfangled school day , she separate Deanne she ’d be leaving for good . McLean acquire a series of alias before hook up with Blake Ruff in 2004 and settling down — impart no tincture of Kimberly McLean , at least until Fitzpatrick began researching her family tree . Although questions about the case remain , Lori Ruff ’s name has now been removed from the Union government ’s database for lacking and unnamed person .
[ h / tSeattle Times ]
