today's video is brought to you by hunt to killer now judging by the fact that my channel is basically dedicated to discussing all kinds of mysteries today's sponsor is really a natural fit for this channel and that's hunterkiller which is a subscription service that gives you everything you need to solve a new and interesting mystery every month with each box you'll go through piles of documents evidence audio recordings you'll learn the details of a story a crime suspects and the many complicated details that weave them together and you can sort of think of it like a personal escape room delivered to your norm you can play with family friends or if you're like me and you're not the most sociable of the bunch you can also play solo and it's a good excuse to do something different besides scrolling endlessly on your phone each night and with certain boxes as low as 25 bucks it's a great deal for the amount of entertainment as opposed to spending money going out and with part of the proceeds for every box going to the cold case foundation your fun you have playing hunta killer will also contribute to solving real world cases as well so ultimately you'll have a fun game night it'll contribute to a good cause and thanks to the folks over at hunterkiller today you'll get an even better price just head to huntakiller. com and slash sociable and use code sociable to save 20 percent once again that's huntakiller. com sociable and use code sociable so they know i sent you thanks again to hunterkiller for sponsoring today's video [Music] [Music] um [Music] so [Music] [Music] the year is 2003 a woman by the name of lori erica kennedy had just met a man by the name of blake ruff at a bible study in the eastern part of texas shortly after they hit it off start dating and that relationship would eventually lead to a marriage while they were excited to take their relationship to the next level when push came to shove lori made one thing clear she did not want a wedding or even an announcement in the paper instead electing to quietly elope with only a pastor present while this seemed a bit weird to blake it wasn't enough to stop him from proceeding after all blake noticed that lori was a secretive person not willing to comment much on her past life as well as often filling in the blanks vaguely in regards to her previous experiences she had once told blake that she had a rough childhood burning all of her photos from that time she claimed her father was a failed stockbroker and that she did not have any siblings blake being a matter of fact and trusting person seemed to take her at face value and presume nothing of it however as time would progress lori's secretive nature seemed to weigh on the relationship after marriage their immediate goal was to have a child which after multiple attempts at having children they had not been successful while eventually laurie was ultimately able to have a child in vitro in 2008 shortly after it's reported that her mental state seemed to decay she seemed to be incredibly overprotective of her daughter not allowing her in-laws to even hold the baby and despite her being incredibly secretive about her past she would apparently go to great lengths to track down every detail regarding the ruff's family going as far as to research specific things like family recipes but on the other hand she took absolutely no interest in talking to the family at family gatherings eventually laurie cut all contact between the child and her in-laws her inability to blend with her in-laws caused strain in the marriage in conjunction with her secretive past which ultimately caused blake to file for divorce in 2010.
laurie retained full custody of her daughter and blake moved back in with his family subsequently during the months after her breakup lori's condition seemed to worsen she began harassing the ruffs sending threatening emails stalking them and she stole a pair of their house keys and a neighbor of lorries had reported seeing her rambling to herself pacing back and forth outside of her home reportedly laurie's daughter looked thin in an attempt to console lori about the situation denny a neighbor of hers had offered to take her to church for counseling and according to an article from the seattle times it would state she was frantic about to the point of incoherence he said from that point on i never saw her focus again denny suggested laurie come to counselling at the church where he served as a pastor she brought in notebooks in which she rambled about quote what was wrong with her and how she could get him back he said as laurie sent out a talk denny couldn't help but notice her hands they were quote the longest hands i'd ever seen on a person he said and they were always moving she'd fidget with her hair or hold her hand out and gaze at it then she'd turn it over gaze some more and finally put it back in her lap her hands were important to her for some reason he said lori spoke in circles covering the same ground over and over she'd say quote this is what's going on with blake and me and the next sentence was quote this is what's going on with blake and me it would go on like that for an hour when she had a particular thought her mind was stuck on it he said to him to him it seemed like an obsessive-compulsive disorder blake said he remembered her taking medication for adhd or tourette syndrome blake came in for counseling sessions too and brought along his brother david it was strange denny said david did most of the talking as if he was translating for blake in the end the counseling could not repair the marriage this entire situation came to a head on december 24th 2010. laurie had reportedly taken the drive on christmas eve morning from her home in leonard texas she had traveled a whole 125 miles to the ruff's home in longview texas when blake's father had opened the garage that morning he reportedly found her car idling where she had apparently passed away as a result of her own doing the cause of death was an apparent single self-inflicted shot from here they found two notes an 11 page one to her husband and one for her daughter for her to open when she turned 18. the police opened both notes and while they have never been released publicly they noted that they were clearly from someone who was mentally disturbed hereafter the family apparently wanted to know more about laurie's past and after her funeral the family would take a trip to laurie's home and they found the contents of her entire house in disarray papers were scattered trash was stacked laundry was thrown out countless dirty dishes remained and hidden inside her house was a single lock box after the lock box was eventually pried open with tools it would reveal various documents pertaining to lori's past as it would turn out she had gone under multiple different names and inside the box was the birth certificate of one becky sue turner a two-year-old infant who had passed away in a house fire they found various scribblings on her notes such as things like 402 months which was believed to be the length of a possible jail sentence they found the contact information for a disbarred attorney by the name of ben perkins in california he said he had no memory of ever meeting lori as they sift further they found a letter of recommendation from one roger steinbeck printed on stationery from a five-star hotel in thailand this letter of recommendation was completely fabricated now the family quickly sought help from various individuals including one individual from the social security administration nearly every lead was a dead end however but they indeed figure out a couple of things investigators learned that laurie had requested a copy of the birth certificate of becky sue turner in 1988 and that same year it was used to obtain a state id in idaho three weeks after that becky sue turner appeared before a judge in dallas and had her name legally changed to lori erica kennedy after changing her name she then applied for her social security card subsequently she'd then get her ged and go on to college until she'd file for bankruptcy and then graduate someone who knew her around these years had claimed that she had worked as an exotic dancer to pay for college she had apparently graduated the university of texas with a degree in business administration and now as stated previously investigators had hit a dead end at every turn and in an attempt to aid the investigation the social security administration had worked with the seattle times to publish a story to get help from the public the story was republished again and again until some breakthrough could be made and while lori's story became an online sensation among mystery aficionados over this time many theories ranged far and wide was she a spy was she someone who had done something terrible or was she running from someone it wouldn't be until 2016 that we would get an answer that's when colleen fitzpatrick a nuclear physicist turned a forensic genealogist would read an article about laurie's mystery in the seattle times and reached out to her family to help piece the puzzle together even though they did not have access to lori's dna at the time they had the next best thing lori's daughter's dna colleen submitted laurie's daughter's dna sample to 23andme and conducted a genealogical family search the website's results stated that a man by the name of michael cassidy was probably laurie's first cousin colleen reached out to michael through 23andme.
com's messaging service but he never replied years later another close match was made on lori's dna that also connected to michael cassidy after spending months building a family tree of the cassidies she speculated that laurie's mother was one of michael cassidy's aunts this revealed the true identity of laurie erica roth her real name was kimberly maclean and shortly after her mother would take a dna test to confirm but it's worth pointing out that after this occurred she declined to comment about the reason that kimberly had left kimberly's uncle was willing to talk a bit more though and he stated that between the homemade family dinners each night and vacations that she had a relatively normal suburban childhood though by the time her parents divorced in 1986 kimberly's mother remarried shortly after where she went on to live with her new stepdad in a different town in pennsylvania this is reportedly when the troubles started to happen with kimberly within a year apparently she couldn't adjust to the new house in school and close to her 18th birthday she had simply left and told her parents to not look for her and ensured them that they would never find her as a result of her changing her name twice now it's worth considering that this story about her leaving home in 1986 is just what the uncle had to say from his point of view and while this case was technically solved it's still incredibly difficult to say exactly what motivated her to change her name keep in mind it was two years after kimberly ran away that she would actually get the name becky sue turner furthermore naturally you have to ask how does a 18 year old girl leave home and suddenly have expertise on how to dodge the guise of big brother not showing up in any kind of database leaving no paper trail and not to mention the implications of requiring resources to travel the united states to put this new identity into play i think it's safe to say that we're missing some crucial details about this story this begs the question was laurie acting alone did she run off with someone that remains unclear it's hard to get a full picture of what went on without any kind of evidence beyond stealing an identity lori doesn't appear to have committed any serious crimes aside from that the theories have ranged far and wide about laurie kimberly during that two-year period had she committed some heinous crime under another identity or was it possible that she was running away from someone or something that she was frightened of if you recall lori was adamant of no public announcement being made about her marriage meaning that her changing her last name would have fallen just slightly farther under the radar i think it may also be worth considering if the story we're being told by the press is actually the truth or if the rough family was actually being truthful about the actual reasons for the breakup because one very interesting detail seriously begs that question on the other hand what nobody seems to have pointed out is that there are some inconsistencies according to the freedom of information act request papers pertaining to this social security investigation they appear to have caught the seattle times author in a lie and i want to remind you that the seattle times was essentially doing this story for the social security investigation longview police department believed that jane doe was prepared to harm her in-laws but when she discovered that they were not home she took her own life assuming that the roughs were not home on christmas eve morning the entire timeline of events that were given in this seattle times article is completely off additionally when this was brought up to the author of the seattle times article who has definitely seen the police report they would flat-out deny this particular detail but i digress because while lori's case is interesting it's actually not unique and while there was some speculation with the original seattle times article that kimberly may have solicited the services of an identity broker it's only until you look at other stories similar to this one that you start to notice a trend july 30th 2002 65 year old joseph newton chandler had been found dead by suicide in the bathroom of his tiny apartment his body wasn't found for over a week and by which point it was so badly decomposed police were unable to obtain fingerprints and they could not find any kind of fingerprint on anything else in his house three months before he had passed away chandler had purchased a firearm at a nearby store he had also just been recently diagnosed with colon cancer perhaps choosing to go on his own terms but 82 thousand dollars was left in chandler's bank account he did not leave any kind of well checking through the emergency contact to find any kind of kin it landed to his sister mary but the emergency contact led to an address that was an empty parking lot investigators had searched for chandler's next of kin and it soon discovered that the man wasn't who he claimed to be and it's also worth noting that chandler had kept a packed suitcase seeming to indicate that he was ready to go at a moment's notice he had stolen the identity of an eight-year-old boy who had passed away in a car crash on christmas day in 1945. in a similar turn of events the story would make it out to the press and internet would theorize about who chandler really was but in spite of this the case went cold for over a decade by 2014 when u.
