Lori Erica Ruff

Lori Erica Ruff
2001 photo of Ruff
Born	Kimberly McLean October 16, 1968 Pennsylvania
Died	December 24, 2010(2010-12-24) (aged 42) Longview, Texas
Cause of death	Suicide by gunshot
Other names	Lori Erica Kennedy, Becky Sue Turner
Known for	Formerly unidentified identity thief
Height	5 ft 10 in (178 cm)
Weight	160 lb (73 kg)
Spouse(s)	Blake Ruff (m. 2004; div. 2010)
Children	1 daughter (b. 2008)

Lori Erica Ruff (October 16, 1968 – December 24, 2010) was the alias of an identity thief who remained unidentified for nearly six years after her death. Ruff was eventually identified as Kimberly McLean, a native of the Philadelphia area who moved away from her Wyncote home in fall of 1986 and later vanished after struggling to adapt to her parents' divorce. Within the next two years, she obtained the birth certificate of Becky Sue Turner, who had died in a fire in Fife, Washington near Tacoma at the age of 2. Ruff used the certificate to get an Idaho identification card, then moved to Texas and changed her name to Lori Erica Kennedy.

Ruff gradually acquired more documents in that name, including a new Social Security number. After earning a college degree, she married and had a child. Due to some of her unusual behavior and her unwillingness to speak of her past, she clashed with her in-laws and the marriage collapsed. She ended her own life at her father-in-law's home in Longview on Christmas Eve 2010.

After her death, her husband and his family found the evidence of her falsified identity in a lock box in her closet. Her true origins remained a mystery until 2016, when a combination of Social Security Administration records and forensic genealogy based on her daughter's DNA led investigators to the McLean family, still living outside Philadelphia.

Ruff's earliest known activity dates back to May 1988, when she requested the birth certificate of Becky Sue Turner, a two-year-old girl who was killed, with two of her siblings, in a house fire in Fife, Washington, in 1971. The request was made in Bakersfield, California. She then traveled to Idaho, where she obtained a state ID card on June 16 using the girl's birth certificate.