Thinking Sideways: Who was Lori Erica Ruff

future episodes. But with that having been said, on with the show Thinking Sideways, I'm it stories of things we simply don't know the answer too. Hi there, and welcome to another episode of Thinking Sideways, the hard hitting Internet podcast. Yeah so I'm Joe, joined as always by my lovely co host and Steve. They're both very lovely. I feel very lovely today. Yeah, you look pretty lovely. We're going to mention it earlier. My new outfit. Yeah it's good. Yeah,

he plucked his eyebrows too. They needed it. Well. Okay, for those of you who are new to this podcast, there's probably still a few people who are. Well. We get together and we're just looking un solved mysteries, and of course we solved them, well, not very often, but occasionally I think I think we've based some good headway in a few of them. So today we're going to tackle get another unsolved mystery. So if you're all already yes, realized that was a request for response. I thought it

was rhetorical. I want to make sure you guys have to put the phones awaste up texting whatever, Okay, so just tweet. Also, I should mention this story was a listeners suggestion. It was suggested by Stephanie. Thank you, Stephanie. And I also want to give a shout out to Cindy.

Cindy as a newer listener. And the funny thing is is that I would had been doing some research on this very story because I was planning on doing it, and then I checked our email and there was an email from none other than Cindy suggesting this story, which I thought was kind of funny. That's a coincidence, but so thank you Cindy, Thank you Stephanie. Our story begins in UH two thousand and three when a guy named Blake Ruff who lived in Longview, Texas, met a girl

named Laurie Kennedy. Her full name was actually Laurie Erica Kennedy and they met at church in Dallas. Laurie had lived in Texas for about fifteen years. She'd moved there. She was originally from Arizona. So she told him she had a degree in business and it was a quote unquote marketing consultant. Shopper shopper, Yeah, I guess, yeah, that was basically all she did. Yeah, yeah, the mystery shopper so, uh, which is really apropos Yeah, I know. They So any way,

they started hanging out. They got married in two thousand and four, like a year after they met, right properly that Yeah, So Blake was very close to his family, and of course they being a very friendly bunch of Texas folks. Uh, they wanted to meet her right away, and they got together for launch and they started asking her about her family and where she was from. She was very secretive about the whole thing. She didn't want to talk about it at all, uh, and was kind

of put them off a little bit. She she didn't say as much as she said. Her parents were dead. Her father had apparently been a failed stock stockbroker, and the parents had both died, and she had no siblings, no living relatives. And she hadn't had a good past. Her childhood was rough apparently, and that's that's about all she would say. She also she told Blake that she had destroyed any evidence of her family past, family life,

like letters and photographs and things like that. And so when they started talking about marriage, Blake's mother, of course, wanted to put a wedding announcement in local paper like you do in Texas, like you do everywhere, you know, Yeah, and so Laurie was all against that. She said, we don't do things that way. So very strange, kind of

secretive person. So moving forward, they were married, they started trying to have a child, and they bought a house in Leonard, Texas, which is about a hundred twenty five miles from Longview, which is where the folks live. They were a two maker parcel and the neighbors didn't have much interaction with them. They said that Laurie especially was not sociable at all. One neighbor said that in the six years that they had lived there, she socialized just

once in the entire six years. Didn't I thought that There was the recounting of, you know, often seeing her in the evening hours walking around the property like eyes down, refusing to make eye contact with anyone, kind of antisocial disassociated behavior. Yeah, she was. She was a fairly antisocial person. Well, and my question when they say socializing with her is that they had a hey, how you doing? Oh good? Hey,

good to see drinks or barbecue? Barbecue. I'm not sure what he meant by socializing, And maybe that just meant they were all walking around and they just chatted about the weather for a minute. Yeah, but I didn't get the sense that there were any you know, hey, how are you good, how are you interactions outside of you know, the one time of socializing. Yeah. I mean I have neighbors like that. I've waved at him and say hi, and they waved back, and that's it. There are neighbors

like that. Yeah, it's not too remarkable. Although I don't have the sense that she would have even waved back. But sure, because she would have pretended not to see because she's staring straight to the ground. Yeah, possible. It sounds like her. Yeah, she was a little different anyway, I said, as I said, they were trying to have kids. Uh, And I've heard report said she had a miscarriage or

another report she had several, but I don't know. But she eventually had a successful pregnancy, gave gave birth to a baby girl in two thousand and eight, and apparently, according to the in laws, she was extremely overprotective towards

never really interacted with a baby before. Yeah, they felt that the way she handled the baby and everything, they felt like she was not familiar with baby at all whatsoever, which is okay, I'm not familiar with babies either, so I'm not going to judge her doing things like, you know, if the baby would start to chew on something, catch away, or uh, wouldn't let anybody else take care of this baby?

Even though her in laws this, I think it was like grand baby number nine exactly, the very overprotective, I don't know what to do, but nothing gets near my baby and it's safe, little bubble kind of mentality, which a lot of admittedly a lot of new parents do that. You can't hold that against her, but it's still a little strange because I have friends who were like that at first, and then we'd all say, uh, you know,

let the kid chew on the dog's tail. It's okay. Yeah, I think that, like there's a slight different you know that's there's a scope of normal over interaction for new parents, and I think particularly if you're a grandparent looking in and having had children who had children for the first time, there's that scope of like what's fairly normal for overprotective first time parents to be in that sort of way, and then there's going beyond that, And I would probably

trust their judgment in that they would be able to say, like it was, it was really even above and beyond that. Yeah, I know, and I don't disagree with that. It's very obvious. Yeah, Anyway, so things just sort of went downhill. Uh. Laurie and the family really didn't get along. She she felt like she was she would take every little thing they would say as a slight and she was always rarely against them to Blake, which upset Blake because he was close

to his family. And eventually got to the point where they wouldn't allow and she wouldn't allow any vegitation with the daughter very little, and this this behavior just got worse, and Yeah, she wouldn't leave the kid with the in laws in that room, like I can't go to the bathroom with the baby in this room with you. I'll take the baby with me kind of behavior. Yeah, just a lot of stuff like that, and so the riff

just got worse, and so they separated. In the summer of two thousand ten, Blake moved out, moved back in with his folks back in a long View five miles away, and filed for a divorce, and things kind of unraveled from there. Lourie Lorie apparently went sharply downhill after he moved out, and lost a lot of weight and was according to one neighbor who saw her, she was she and the daughter were both very thin, and uh, she

seemed kind of incoherent. So she started actually harassing the Rough family and Blake, supposedly sending them threatening emails and things like that, and breaking into Supposedly they noticed the key was missing, although that's you know, sometimes kids get lost. So I'm not gonna gonna discount that one. So yeah,

the so Lorie was not doing that well. Uh, and I also at this one, let me let me note that she was supposedly, according to Blake, taking medication for a d h D or O c D or Twourettes or something. He was gonna Yeah, there's a Blake apparently was not detail all right, and he really seems to be surprisingly I'm curious somebody. I think it was maybe

his cousin described him as having a startlingly small inner monologue. Yeah, yeah, which seems to be a very perfect description, because he didn't really make decisions on his own, and he didn't really take initiative on most things. I think it might be the same person who said, well, I went and bought a black tahoe. So he did it. Yeah, Like he just he kind of did what people told and he didn't question anything. If you said, you know, actually

the sky is green, he goes, huh, that's weird. Looks blue to me, Okay, and just would leave it at that. Yeah. Well, anyway, so Blake sounds like a nice guy. But I'm a little surprised he didn't know specifically what her issue was that she was taking medication for. Yeah. Another thing that he she had a lock box he kept in the bedroom closet. Did you guys have heard of the lock box before him? She told him never to touch it, and so he didn't. What should be like for me?

I mean, I, on the one an, you want to expect your wife's privacy. At the same time, if you know that there's some incredible secret in that box, then you know, wouldn't you have to go look at that box? Yeah? Yeah, I I I can't resist tearing through the house before Christmas looking for things. Let alone, if you say, hey, so I've got this box that I've locked up and it's in the bottom of the closet, I would be I would do everything in the sun to figure out

how to pick that thing we get in there. I don't think he I mean, you know A great example of this is again like Blake was the kind of man who, like she said, oh no, I burned all my family photos because I had it bad. And he wasn't like why was it bad? He was just like, Okay, that's what I mean, tell me about it, tell me, let's talk to let get over the trauma. Yeah. No, apparently he was just like okay, So I guess he was kind of the okay guy. Yeah. Anyway, back to Lorie.

Lorie was again going downhill and on December she's Christmas Eve. Oh I didn't I didn't even make the connection there Christmas joke. She pulled into the rough driveway and shot herself in the head and she was in a black Chevy Tahoe. Yeah, shot herself on the head way to wreck everybody's Christmas lorieu. In the car they found two letters. One was to Blake it was eleven pages long, and another was to their daughter, which was to be opened

on her eighteenth birthday. One of the things that I've seen some of the documents pertaining to this whole thing and the family, obviously they deserved their privacy, so they have to have opened up letter. I think they did and said it said that the letters were both in coherent, incoherent ramblings. Yeah, I think there couldn't have been at any useful clues in there. So so you know, they just chose not to publish them. Which side atmosphere well,

and it's you're absolutely right, they deserve their privacy. And this is a terrible tragedy. I mean, for you know, the two years after you have a child and you're starting to get divorced and then all of a sudden she just you know, goes around the bend I think is the phrase that that used and and kills herself. That. Yeah, you've got to you've got to respect it for these peoples. Now, granted we're four years later. But yeah, but maybe four

years isn't enough. Well, yeah, there's always that, is it too soon? And you've got to feel sad for Laura too, because she obviously had her inner demons. Yeah. A week or so after her suicide, after the funeral of Blake's brother, Miles, along with a few other family family members, drove to Leonard, Texas to search the house, and when they got there, they kind of place was a mess. She really had let herself go. Piles of dirty dishes, piles of dirty laundry,

trash bags full of shredded documents. Certainly the crib was like soiled, soiled, yeah, uh. And so Blake had told Miles about the forbidden lock box that was hidden in the closet that he wasn't allowed to touch, so naturally, he made a b line for the closet and dug around until he found the lockbox and pried it open with a screwdriver, and he found really used a screwdriver, that's what he said. He said, he used, that is a really good lock box. He said, yeah, I know,

it's probably the tin box. He used a flat blated screwdriver to break into it, and he found the following things. He found pages from an Arizona phone book, some scraps of paper with notes on them, some very random little notes. Also a birth certificate for a certain Becky Sue Turner who was born in nineteen sixty nine and Bakersfield, California and Idaho I d card in the same name with

Lori's photo on it. So it turns out that Lorie Kennedy Rough, her true name, was actually Becky Turner, except Becky Turner died in a house fire in nineteen seventy one at the age of two, so I know. So the Rough family hired a private investigator to try to find out who he really was. He did a little dig and he found out about Becky Sue Turner dying in five, Washington, which is where she was living at the time of her death, which is outside of Dacoma. Yes, yeah,

it is. And he managed to turn up a news clipping from a local newspaper that described the deaths of Becky and her two sisters, which, by the way, speaking of tragedy, could you imagine being the parents three three little girls who all died in the fire. Oh my god. Never mind finding out years and years later that somebody stole their identity. Yeah, somebody's reading is one of them, I know. But so this listed their ages and also

their place of birth, Bakersfield, California. This actually is apparently a very important detail, and she was perhaps as successful as she was in stealing the identity. Did you read about this? Yeah, because because since well, go ahead and well, it just turns out that it's way easier to steal somebody's identity if they were wet at that time, at least if they were born in one state and died in another, because the records often weren't actually cross reference.

Now one hand doesn't know what the other hand's doing. Yeah, And apparently also at that time, at least the in California, UM, they would just mail a birth certificate to anybody who requested it. Yeah, and I don't know. I still I'm assuming that we gotta call her from now on, Jane Doe. And Jane Doe requested that if she requested it by mail, and she truly wanted to get lost, then if your crest.

But if you're requested by mail, you're gonna leave a paper trail, right theoretically, Yeah, yeah, and it all depends, you know. See you don't know what's going to happen in a little bureaucracy at the other end. Well, okay, but here's the deal, right, is that if if just anybody can write in and request it, Like, what's to say that she used a real identity to request it? Right? I mean they probably just asked for some money and you just like get a money order or even just

send some cash. Could she could have read it a PO box? Rend a p O box you get, you know, put a wrong name on it and just have it delivered. But to rent a PO box you've got to provide identification. Okay, Here, here's a problem is that do we know I think I know where you're heading with this is do we know if the State of California has on record the address that they sent this document to. I don't know that. I'm really curious. Done it at wherever she was living

at the moment. If it's not actually recorded, we don't have to go to these great lengths of what you could have got a post office. She could have just sent it to her freaking an out. So as it turns out, she did. I know she did have one, but I'm just saying she didn't have to go to that link necessarily at that time, she might not have. But I think we're getting I think we're also mixing this up, and we're getting a little ahead of ourselves. I also don't know if in the seventies you really

did have to provide identification to get it. This was actually eighties, and I don't remember exactly what exactly was it that identity theft started becoming prevalent. Yeah, credit was being a bigger thing. Sorry, we're we're a little out over here. Back back to where we are we going? The private investigator turns up a news clipping from a local newspaper that described the desk of Becky, her two sisters, listed their ages, their place of birth. He dug up

more info. She found out found out that she had moved to Texas, and that she had legally changed her name to Laurie Erica Kennedy and then applied for and got a Social Security card. She got her g e D and then enrolled in college, and of course she didn't want to. I'm suspecting that she actually was older than she said she was, and then she probably prevent suspicion. Yeah, she she got her GD. She might have already had a college degree at this point in time, but it

was in the wrong name. So she had to start all over again and do the test out to get the g D and then go back to college again, and she got a degree in business administration. But that's about as far as the private investigator got in finding out who she was. So it turns out the Rough family was friendly with a Texas congressman who was at the time served on the House Intelligence Committee, and they were wondering about Becky or Becky Sue Jane Doe Lorie Ruff.

They were wonder if maybe she was a Soviet mole or something like that, and so they took their evidence to him that they had uncovered so far, and he took the information to a guy named Joseph Lling who was an investigator for the Social Security Administration's who specialized in fraud and identity theft and things like that. So this is this guy was a pretty good detective and he's actually spent he spent a couple of years trying to break this case and he hasn't been able to

do it. I mean, this is a and he's he's uncovered lots of stuff. He's the one who found out that she had had that she had a PO box in Boulder City, Nevada that she read in which border mail to her Dallas address. Uh, he found out when and she got Becky Turner's birth certificate. And again this is this is a little mysterious to me. So they kept a record of the fact that they had sent out her birth certificate to somebody, but they didn't keep a record of who they sent it to. That's bureaucracy

for you. Yeah, I know the form says was dis requested, yes or no. That's all I filled in. Yeah, No, it probably probably it's in a jacket and when when everybodybody touches it, they probably have a stamp with a date on it. They stamped the file or something like that, you know, And so that's probably how they knew that. Yeah, So he called some people that were referenced in her notes. Her notes. By the way, did you see the notes?

They're kind of they're kind of scrawling, incoherent. I checked the There's a bunch of different phone numbers in there, and almost every single one of them. The area coaches for setting for Los Angeles players, an attorney referenced in there, from Los Angeles. It turns out he was a bankruptcy attorney. And it turns out apparently he died a few years ago. So but he but Bevelling got ahold of him, and

he knew nothing about it. And so maybe she just got his name and she was thinking about declaring bankruptcy. I don't know. It turned out she had declared bankruptcy in Dallas back in the nineties. And by the way, she got breast implants to in she did and a job and a nose job. Yeah, he called so, he called the He called the attorney and some other people who were referenced in these in these incoherent notes of hers,

and he did more than that. He also got in touch with the Turners and they had no idea who she possibly could be. He ran photos every through facial recognition databases because this guy works with the government, so he can He's got access to a lot of resources, resources that even thinking Sideways podcast doesn't happen. Yeah, I know. He also said our fingerpists to the FBI. He compared her d n A to DNA database databases. And he was using I mean, he was using very some of

the resources. He was using were kind of mundane, like ancestry dot com. But if you look at the notes and by the way, polar link on the website folks, and you can take a look at these PDFs of some of her her notes she left behind, but her handwriting. Joe and I had this conversation before we started recording. I don't know that this is all handwriting by the

same person. I know. Joe said at one point, Well, you know, it could be just you know, write down a quick note, and so your handwriting is really sloppy, except I look at letters that are written in sentences or you know, blocks that don't look like they were written fast. And there are letters that don't pair up, like the s is or the ease or not the same in every in certain words. I understand there's a drift when hand with handwriting, but no, this is it

all looks kind of different. Yeah, it's almost as if somebody wrote part of it. She had that sheet of paper and then she was writing on top of that. There are some things like okay, so you know there's a lot of stuff on here, like Pacific bell A b M offices, there's some dollar amount right below it, and then Mountain bell three hours less. But in the top left hand corner upside down is written four or two months, which and then there's like three little lines

underneath it. I don't know why that is. So it's just peculiar, and you know what, and a little bit it looks like it's actually it says forty and then it says two months, forty years, two months or something right like that looks it doesn't look like it's actually all meant to be the over two months or something. Yeah, I mean it couldn't. It is quite possible. And actually we should talk about this because a lot of people reference that in the articles online. Four two months? What

was she hiding from? Okay, well, four two months is a huge amount of time. Oh yes it's there's there's actually a web page called months too years dot com. You can go and it will convert months two years. I'm just kidding thirty three and a half years. Yeah, thirty three and a half years. So but it could be something as simple as she had to pay somebody forty bucks over two months, something as simple as that. You know, it could have just been all run together

and she wasn't using dollars. I'm making examples of ways to interpret this, because this stuff is just so hard to figure out. Yeah, but but if you look at if you look at the writing to though the four or two months, it actually it looks to me like a forty and then the two is a lot smaller. The two is more more the size of the months that follow up, right, So it looks actually wrote two months and then wrote the forty later or the forty one and then two months later. So I don't think

that the four two months really means anything. Yeah, Yeah, I really discount these letters because they are just so out there and I almost you know what they give me, like a little bit that heb gbs, like as all of all of this stuff is, it's so like discombobulated, and it is so much of the handwriting is so different.

You know, like there's some of it that's very well constrained and like definitely meticulous, and then there's like the cursiff down in the bottom corner, and then there's you know, it's all different. Doesn't look like it comes from the same hand, Yeah No, I don't. Yeah anous Yeah, Like especially the cursive down the lower left hand corner that that looks much much different. So I don't know. It's just an interesting anomaly about this, right, Yeah, she had

some other random stuff. She had this set of this little set of jottings here, which are columns of numbers. There's three sets of numbers in there. Each set is two columns. They appear to be on the right hand side, escalating years, starting in one column in sixty seven, another one in ninety, another one nine. Although this is the big assumption on my part, people have speculated that these were this was her way of calculating her parents or

maybe Becky suit Turner's parents ages. But I don't see why she would be even interested in doing that. She didn't care about beckyc tournament as far as her own. She had dumped that identity, so who cares. Yeah, it might be maybe she had left behind two parents and a sibling and she was trying to, you know, keep track of her figure out how old it would be at this particular time. I don't know. I don't know why she couldn't have used simple arithmetical Yeah, that's exactly

what Joe and I talked about earlier. Down It is that. Okay, So what is the first set of numbers? In the upper left hand side forty eight nine. Okay, so we'll just say that somebody at forty eight years old. The other person is ninety simple edition thirty eight and eighty twenty eight and seventy, like you can just kind of

take in simple increments. So it's really strange that it's written out in such longhand it could be kind of an O C D sort of thing and maybe there's no rational purpose behind you very repetitive, yeah, but yeah, it's and a lot of people I think came up with the whole it's accolading mom and Dad's ages because there are present on the page. There's there's a very clear D and there's a very clear M. So mom, dad and so. But that's what the third call on

this for Maybe that's her age. I don't know, it's uh, you know, again, we're never gonna know, unless maybe it's some sort of strange cryptograph. There's actually you know, one of the things that's interesting is there's a there's a theory floating out around there. I know, we're not at the theories yet, um that maybe she had been an abducted child and that eight is when she was released or whatever. Got away or whatever and realized she had to assume any identity. But is it fairly far freshed?

But um, I guess you could kind of rationalize this sort of meticulous she It's possible that she was awful at math and couldn't actually do that arithmetic or whatever, or wanted to be able to just look at every single number, but you know whatever, that last bit better than I could say she was awful at math. Because she she was that awful at math, how did she get her g e d And a college degree? That's fair. Yeah,

So it's uh, I don't know. I mean, maybe it's a trick that she's using to try and calculate based on her assumed that she thinks she has aged what ages those people would be, or even to calculate backwards. I mean, you know, if she was an abductive child and she didn't know how old she was, if she found her parents or found somebody who she had a knew, you know, rationally, then she was trying to calculate her I don't know, it's hard to tell. It's really kind

of strange. Yeah, I don't I don't think she was abducted and hell to the the age of eighteen. Because unless unless her abductor actually took the time and trouble to tutor her and teacher and teacher things like, you know, how to read and write stuff like that. Well, I know we're going to talk about let's just let's put this. Yeah, we're almost of the theories. We are pretty close to that.

Joseph Elling, the investigator with the so Security Administration, had reached a dead end after about two years, so he took the story to the Seattle Times and reported anymore. You know, Haguan wrote a really good article about it. That's I recommend if you don't know if you guys read it or not, but yeah, how could you not. But that's where it all ends. It's still a mystery, I think. And what a Vellens vellings motivations was to get photographs of her out there to the public and

maybe somebody would recognize her. So far, that's you know that that came out in two thousand thirteen. That still hasn't happened. Been interesting. You know, there's there's all the you read the forums and it's like everybody's kind of like, oh no, you know, yeah, this is the Internet. Though somebody will come forward and identify her in no time. And you know these are posts from like April two thirteen, like yeah, okay, yeah and no time. But did he do did did we mention if he is running DNA

or fingerprints or yeah? And fingerprints and got nothing? Yeah, and the facial recognition didn't come back either. Sorry, it might have. You might have said that already. I was busy reading notes. That's okay, yeah, so so. But that's not remarkable. Is a lot of people haven't been fingerprinted. Although if she were, if she were a criminal, she would have been fingerprinted. If she was fleeing something huge,

she would have been. She had been, she could be, She could have been a criminal, but who had just not yet been arrested and booked. Yeah, you know that's always possible, that's true, although I don't know why changing her identity would help. So one of the things that really really intrigues me, and this might actually be the key to unlocking the mystery, although it means searching through a whole lot of haystacks for for a small needle. But the question is is how did Lori Kennedy know

about Becky Sue Turner's death? How did she find out about it. There's several different ways to do that, you know. And as a little aside, you know a lot of people are saying, wow, she must have gotten a professional identity broker or something like that that actually exists as a professional. Yeah, but go ahead and try to find one. I mean, do you do you know where you go to find one of those guys. The thing about it is is is I know how I know how to

get a fake I d set up. It's to these days that it used to be, but I knew how to do exactly what she did just for me to spine novels and stuff in crime novels and stuff like that. And so it's not everybody's thinking just like rocket science to get new to get a new fake idea, but especially in wasn't that is finding the right person who's

don need to assume right, That's the key. And so one way is to go through old newspapers looking at obituaries and that eventually it's gonna take some time, but eventually you're gonna stumble across that one person who died at two, and so you're gonna go out. You want somebody who died, you know it was very died very young. You want somebody that was born around the late sixties,

and so eventually you're gonna find some age. Yeah, yeah, And actually this was this is when I I sent a message to marieno hagan about this yesterday and having her back. I probably never will because I'm sure she gets inundated with crack pop messages, but I was thinking

that she might have actually gotten that. I don't know exactly where the column came from that news clipping, but the obituary probably appeared in the Seattle Times and Seattle Times of course has they have archives, and I'm sure

people are allowed to come in. And what my question for for Moreen O'Hagan was, when people come in to go through the archives, are they required to sign in or show I d And so I was kind of just so she found that if she pulled that burst cer tapic in that me and that meant she would have been spending time going through newspaper archives in in all the local areas, so in Tacoma, in Seattle. I'm not sure exactly which newspaper or newspapers she was going

through the archives, but that's one avenue. Again, that's a that's a that's a big haystack. Ex Actually, it's a several haystacks to go through. But if you're really determined to find her, that's one way to do it. Another way, you can find somebody who's a suitable identity that to steal is to one or two grave guards looking at gravestones,

and also another one. And I think this is a real stability is I think she might have known the Turner family when she was a kid, which meant she would have been living in five Maybe she was a neighbor, or maybe she was a schoolmate or playmate one of the kids. I'm guessing the oldest of the daughters who

died was eight years old. So for Becky, Becky, Sue, Jane, Doe, Lorie to be old enough to remember the family and the kids all dying in the fire, she would have had to have been friends with the oldest one, the eight year old. Well know, I wouldn't say that. She could have been in the middle one, the medal one was only three. Yeah, but as a neighbor, you don't have to be the same age as somebody to be friends and know them that. Oh yeah, I'd not say

she was precisely age. She might have been six or seven or Okay, she might have and she might not even really been friends, so they might have just lived a few houses down. And when the fire went up, it was a huge tragedy that stuck in her mind because why wouldn't it you know, you saw these people and now they're dead. Well, one of the children survived, didn't they one of the one of the kids survived

that fire. I thought they all died. One of them survived, Yeah, and his accounted for work, just to like, I mean, I thought, I thought three kids died in that fire. Kids, Okay, Okay, I missed that. Okay. So I guess it's also possible that that person became friends with Jane Doe later or

you know, I guess the story right. And I also think it's like highly possible for if a huge tragedy happens when you're three or four, you're gonna remember at least big parts of that and if the time comes for you to think, oh, gosh, I gotta I gotta steal on identity, and she would say, oh, there was that fire, and it would be yeah, you're being reminded constantly, so you're like your childhood, because every time your mom catches you, like like leaving the stove on, do you

want to be like the Turner family? And yeah, so you so it's it's so. I think it's most likely that she actually lived somewhere close to the Turners and that's how she knew about it. It's it's and the other ones that the other possibilities are strong too, But that just meant a whole hell of a lot more work for her to find the proper identity just to assume. Well, yeah, but then I mean, then of course we have the question of like why why, Well, that isn't expect big question,

which is why she wanted to do this? So well, so's a few theories here. One is that she was a spy, but but I know she was. She was too unstable, just a little bit too looney, uh, And she really didn't do anything to get into a sensitive position where she could actually do the Russians or anybody else any good. She lived in Texas and did a job, and I guess she Okay, let's go down the spy

novel route. She was a secret shopper, which means she could have been looking at stuff and doing investigation and doing all kinds of reconnaissance. But really I don't buy that you got a bet a sleeper agent. You know, she was left there to come up, you know, be activated at some point and go off in a killing spree without They didn't find any like guns and knives or anything like that in her house, just as a

gun she killed herself with. I didn't and I didn't actually find out if it was a Soviet Man fashioned gun or not. Probably not. Another theory that's out there that's a lot of people will find popular said she was fleeing a cult and she was like caught up in a cult and she had to get away from them. There's also the piggybacking on that theory is that I guess somehow that she was traced to Idaho. Yeah, yeah, she got well she was where she got That's where

she got her I d carry. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know if I want you all that stuff or not. I thought I did. But she after she got Becky Sue Turner's birth certificate, about a month or so later, she shows up in Boise, Idaho and gets an Idaho ID card, and then not long after that she shows up in Dallas, Texas, and right after she gets there, she files for a legal name change, and so she changed her name legally, and then she applied for her sole security number. Yeah, so she was in Idaho,

and I guess there's a lot of supremacy movement. Yes, probably, I think is that where you're headed. That's not where I was headed. I was headed down the like Mormon rabbit home. This is actually apparently a thing that's like happening or that's been happening in Idaho. That there's like a lot of like kind of almost like culti offshoots of the Mormon Church happening in Idaho. Um, that are happening in the late eighties. Yeah, that are like super

cultish and like you can't get out of. And there's you know, a bunch of other kind of church activities

not obviously sanctioned by the overarching church. I'm not trying to disparage any of the churches, but there are crazy people in every walks of life, and that that's apparently a fairly legitimate that like she grew up in that and escaped it and then found herself with no resources and somehow, you know, maybe through the Mormon Church, even because they keep really good ancestral records, found out about the Fife fire, grabbed that, just clung onto it and

took it from there. That's a fairly prevalent theory on the Internet as well. That's really interesting because you know, the other thing that I looked at is we have this obviously, we have this huge spade of time where we don't just don't know who she is, where she is. And one of the things that I looked up was the Roger Krishna's here in Oregon. And for anybody who doesn't know this is very boiled down version are you talking about Ronis? Thank you. I totally totally hacked that

name up. But the point is they it was a religious movement. They were in Oregon for a couple of years and then the raj nih She got in trouble and they left, but they had thousands upon thousands of followers were living on their compound. Okay, so let's say she's one of their followers, and some of their followers did get a lot of legal trouble because they did some weird stuff. I cannot remember the name of the

woman who was one of the leaders. Yeah, Sheila, and she she poisoned people, she had committed she she had contracts on people. She was off the d bed. But is it if you were involved in the upper echelons of that and you get out early enough before the hammer comes down, you probably would want to disappear. I don't know, just age wise, if that makes a whole lot of sense, but maybe, well, they they gotten that all of their legal troubles happened in eighty four to

eighty five. And then I just mean that, like, I don't know that Jane Doe would have been old enough to have been in the upper echelons of that stuff. And I don't think that she said she was eighteen, but she certainly wasn't older than thirty or than well. Yeah, and I don't know that age. I think your devotion got you round or not more than anything else. But yeah,

they are a whole another story to go into. But that's one of the things I thought, is what if they were part of that group and she was like, I gotta get out of here, and I never want to be associated with these people again, because holy Craft is went south to go south. Though the originations didn't give me the impression of being the kind of CULTI kind of people that would actually track down a desert or and kill them. They weren't really like that, but they did a lot of things that got a lot

of people in legal trouble. And you realize that troubles coming down the bend, you might just want to step to the side and completely disappear from it. Yeah, maybe, but why not? She lived by the way she engineered the first biological attack at us soil. She Yeah, they

did all sorts of incredible stuff, incredible, incredibly crazy. Yeah, But I mean, yeah, I think that that's it's a fair point that it's totally possible that she had either been born into got mixed up in some kind of cult or crazy movement, realized that that was some trouble involved, and and also she was pretty unbalanced. And not to say that people in that sort of situation are unbalanced, but obviously I put more stress on a person who was already like a little a little bit sort of

teetering on the edge. She's I mean, but I think about it is if you if you're fleeing, say abuse, or if you're fleeing a cult and you've got this nice, warm family of in laws who are asking about your past. Why don't you just say, look, I I got him mixed up with this cult and I had to I had to get out with my life, and I changed my name and I came here and started a new life.

And so you know, why not not just tell him that same Yeah, I guess maybe she's advanced about yeah, But at the same time, again, this is the thing about her that was a little perverse in my opinion, is that she really wanted to preserve her secret, her

secret past and everything. And she really should have just sat down and come up with the biography for herself, because she brought more suspicion upon herself by refusing to talk about anything then she would have if she just said, you know, you pick, you pick a large city like Los Angeles where you know and you say I'm from Los Angeles and say, oh, do you know John Doe and and you say, no, LA is a big place.

You don't want to pick a little small town. In other words, yeah, and you just go with that and just build yourself a false biography and and and go with that. I don't know why she didn't do that. So what do you think I also do just want to point out, not to say anything bad against the Ruffs, because I don't know them, but I do want to point out that it's pretty much them saying we were really nice to her, We were welcoming and wonderful and non judgmental and just opened up our arms, and she

was just a crazy person. Yeah, I suppose you're making

a good point, you know. I mean, I'm not going to say that they're not lovely people, because they probably are, but there's also there's so many weird nuances with family that like it is possible that maybe they thought they were being nice and warm and welcoming, and really she was truly interpreting it as they were being awful or they were nice and warm and welcoming if she were like a perfect Christian woman from the perfect background and otherwise you know, they would not you know, I just

do want to go ahead and stay just for the record that not to say that they are not, but we are kind of just they may be the Spanish Inquisition and not realize they're being the Spanish Inquisition. Maybe they do and they're happy to do. So that's that's that's a good point that we don't have Laurie's side of the story on the family relationship doing, nor do we have. I don't think I've heard anybody like any like family, friends or anything come up. It's all like

the family specifically. And part of that might be that she just sequestered herself so much away from them that nobody knew but Joe what. There's also this thing about her being oh gosh, what's this woman's name that they think she might have been? Jennifer Jennifer Jennifer. Yeah, what is the deal with this? Because I saw this and I couldn't track with it now. Yeah, so somebody posted something.

There's there's some stuff around the internet about that. Somebody said he did a Google image search on her on her photograph, on Lorie's photograph. You can do a reverse search on images, Yeah, you can, yea Google searches, Yeah, pull up matches to the images. It's not that reliable. But apparently some guy did a search and it actually pulled up some of her her photos, but also pulled up a photo of this Jennifer wicker chick? Was it?

Do I have a right as a wicker w I c t o R. So Jennifer worked there with a few notes I made. Yeah, so she disappeared, and so somebody disappeared. Let's be fair. She disappeared in May of nine. Yeah, so, Uh, there's some photographs that were out there. Some people have have concluded from comparing the photographs that if Lori or Jennifer had had a nose job, then there's a close match between the two. I see it. No, I don't.

You don't know, not at all. If you look at the two photographs, if you want to, I've got the two photographs in the file. Jennifer. Well, first off, their eyebrows. Their eyebrows are shaped very differently. Okay, but dude, yeah, dude, are you serious? Women pluck their eyebrows all the time and change the shape. That's true. But still, I mean, I I think that that's at least that's got to

be at one telling point. I'm gonna come with totally different eyebrows and see if you noticed, I'm gonna I'm with mine penciled on. Yeah, and see if he notices, well, I'm gonna come with false eyelashes. So but if the other thing about it is is uh, number one, if you look at their eyes, Loria's eyes are much larger than Jennifer's eyes. Also they spaced Loria's eyes are spaced further apart. I did. I did a quick thing I have.

I have photo software, so I got photos of both of them, did the overlay because other people did the overlaid, so I didn't do the overlay thing. But I have I have photo editing software that has one one it's got a shortcoming, but it's got one unique, nice little feature, and that is that it will tell you the precise location on the X and y, the X and y

plane where your cursor is any given time. So I drew a nice little one pixel line between the pupils of Lori's eyes, and I marked down and kept track of the X axis coordinate for those and then I drew a line from that line down to the end of other nose. And I calculated that you can't with the nose. I mean you can't not and that not no, not on Now, I know you're gonna say that these are photographs, they're not precise, and and there's slightly different angles.

But also had a nose job. But but you're you're not. It can't radically change the length of your nose. You're not your nose occupies a specific piece of real estate on your on your face. My issue with this is that the two photos of Lori that we're using here are from I D cards, which means that they were one inch by one inch at best images that are then blown up, so they're they're not going to because God knows, somebody may have stretched that phone photo when

they put it on or compress things. So my my point that I'm getting at is that I don't think that we can say this is an ironclad exact photo of her. If we had now there's photos of her that were available of her with her husband, that I would say it is a little more indicative of what she probably truly looks like. But these I'm I'm leary of using a I D card photo because I don't look anything like my I D card photo. But so

the photographs have been blown up. Yeah, true, but the basic proportions of the faces are going to be the same in my opinion, if you look at all the different photographs that were out that are out there. Obviously, I calculated the ratio between the distance between the eyes and the distance between the bridge and the nose and the end of the nose on both on both women. So for Jennifer it was one to one point two four and for Lori it was one to one point

six six. So pretty dramatic difference. Pretty dramatic difference, even though there are slight differences in the angles of the photos and everything that if it had been a lot closer than that, I would say, hey, okay, but yeah, that means. What that means is that is that Jennifer's eyes are relative to the length of her nose much

closer together. Also, if you take it out a close look at Jennifer in that photograph, you'll see that their left eye is slightly higher than her right eye, whereas Lorie did not have that her eyes were at the same level. So it's basically you're pointing out there there's some serious flaws in the idea that Jennifer Wicktor and Lori Slash who Jane Doe, we're the same person. I doubt I don't believe it at all. Okay, I mean,

I think that's fair. I think that there's a lot that you can do with facial reconstruction surgery that you can drastically change the way that somebody looks. But you can't you know, make eyes different. I mean, you cannot move them. You probably could, but it would be really expensive. And you know, I just think that I agree. I just think that it's definitely worth the look. I think it's fascinating that there are some pretty strong coincidences. Well,

there are some some similarities. I mean, they have similar jaw lines, and their their lips and the shapes of their mouths are very similar, very similar. Yeah, there are some similarities. Structure generally is fairly similar. Yeah, but generally, but and you know the fact that they were just appeared and reappeared about the same time, and you know, very convenient. It's convenient. Yea, let's say that. I can see why a lot of people are in that, but

I really don't think. Yeah, I think they're the same person. Okay, so let's let's move away from that, move on to another thing. We just ran down that it wasn't It wasn't Jennifer Wicktor. But I was thinking that possibly she committed committed some major crime like embezzlements. So imagine, imagine she works, so you know, for god knows who, let's assume that she was older than she claimed she was. She was not when she said she was eighteen when she got her I D Card from Idaho. And let's

assume that she was like five or so. Yeah, and I'm going to go ahead and like stage solidly she was not older than Yeah, probably not, but definitely not eighteen. Because after all, if you're a woman, especially and you're getting and you're gonna get a fake a new identity, you're gonna shave a few years off, right, Well, yeah, I mean, especially if the most convenient thing for you

is that that person would have been eighteen. But imagine that she's in a job where she realizes she's in a position to embezzle or steal a whole bunch of money. She's got to figure out a way. She knows that she's not going to get away with it, but she has she has this idea. What if I get myself all set up with a fake ID, and then I commit the crime, whatever the crime is, whether it's murder

or stealing a whole bunch of money or whatever. Then I commit the crime, and then I just disappear because they can go they can go looking for whatever my name is, Jane Doe or whatever what I've disappeared because I got me a new identity D. Why would you stay in this country if you have a new I D. Because at the time, all you had to have to cross the border was a driver's license some kind of I D cards. So why wouldn't you just take off

of the suitcase of money rather than settling in Texas? Yeah, and I'm a disparaging Texas. I'm just it's like, why would you just go settle in Connecticut? I mean, why would you just go settle in another state? Why wouldn't you just beat feet so you don't ever have to worry because obviously she's whatever she did, she was worried about that catching up with her, So why why choose

that area? I The only thing I can think of for that is that she just, you know, she didn't seem like the kind of person that could just go out and and really get into or melt into another culture, like going to South America for example, where she actually to England. The overarching thing is we have we have and she also Cuban food, so she could have gone to Cuba, and she could have gone to Canada. I mean, yeah,

could have been from Canada. But that there is a rabbit hole now she didn't speak with the distinctive accent. She had no accent apparently. But we have an extradition treaty with Britain then with Canada, so she would have probably gone to Brazil or somewhere like well, but if she had her new idea, she could have just gone

over there with her new identity, you know. I mean that the thing is, if you have a brand new identity, why even bother staying here, why not just go there because they're not going to extradite you because they're not gonna be able to find you. Yeah. Also, it doesn't on that theory. I didn't read anything that said that

she had like gods of money. No, nothing indicated that she was high on the hog or you did better than she should have been for being a secret chopper, yeah she I. Yeah, So I don't know she if she had, it sounded to me like she had a little bit of an estay. But on the other hand, she had to go work as a stripper in the early nineties, so that actually I I kind of went down the rabbit hole on this story, and I'd like to walk through that a little bit, if you guys

are okay with that. Yeah, you're not going to take a close There's a lot of speculation that she was from somewhere on the West coast. We've kind of deduced that from five Washington, the Idaho thing, and the peel box, all of this stuff. I previnced she was. Okay, Well, there's there's a couple of things that I've I've done.

I spent a lot of time looking for her in databases of people who were convicted of crimes and wanted But what I came to the conclusion of, and then I started doing some more reading, is well, we would have had their fingerprints on file, so we would have found her pretty quick. So I abandoned that. But then that got me thinking to a couple of ways, which is in the mid eighties, somewhere in that range, there was a cup cup a number of different things that happened.

There were protests that went wrong, so there were like nuclear protests that suddenly turned violent and people died. There was eco terrorism and protests that happened that suddenly turned violent and people were hurt and killed. So I'm thinking, well, and and it makes me think of have either of you ever read the book The Monkey Wrench Gang it's by Edward Abbey, and then he does another follow up book called Hey Duke Lives, which is based on a anyway.

It's about a group of eco terrors who have to they try to hide themselves and regardless, it makes me think of that. So I could see her being, oh, hell, that went really bad, and I'm going to be on the hook for it. So she hasn't been prosecuted, she hasn't even been arrested. She just knows that she's going

to the clink, so it's time to hide. I also then started going down the rabbit hole of Okay, well, she got her new identity, and she got her new breasts, and then she started stripping because that's an easy way to make money and you don't have to provide a lot of I d to be a stripper. Well okay, well why would you do that? What would And and I kind of I ran these weird threads and I

won't tie them all together. But you know, the Idaho thing I kind of briefly mentioned her I started to go to earlier was there was a lot of supremacy movements in the eighties. Um, and these are also tied to uh, you know, there's a book I read recently that I was telling Joe about. I think I told Devon about the Turner Diaries, and part of the Turner Diaries is based on a supremacy movement that happened at the time that then turned into crime, So she could

have been involved in that. Realized everybody's gonna get cleaned out because they're robbing banks now or stuff like that, and the only way I know to get away is just to completely disappear. But then that that's that's the reason I looked at it went well, no wonder she was stripping, she got an ID card, she didn't have a sout security card. But all you gotta do when you go to a strip club owner at that day and age, I imagine to say, hey, look at my card,

I'm over eighteen. Can I take my clothes off and will you give me money? Yes. The thing about it is if you're involved in the in the white supremacist movement and there's violence going on and everything, and you don't agree with it and you want out, there's a really easy thing to do, and that is you go to the FBI. You inform on them, and they put you in the witness protection program that's expecting that you're not going to get tracked out. I mean the white

supremacy movement. I equate it to kind of like the mob. They have feelers everywhere and there, you know, it's like the old school mob. Oh euratus is out, Oh hey

we found you. We're not gonna say anything. Our guy, we paid him a hundred grant and he's gonna walk away from the hotel room and the maid's gonna find you hanging in the shower, and you know, there's serious fear when it comes to being dealing with those kind of organizations that I can see that the person goes you know what my option is, I hope it works

out for the best, or just freaking disappear. Yeah. But the thing about it is is, you know, I would I would be if I were if I were Jane Doe, I'd be looking at, say, you know, probably the witness Protection program. They probably know what they're doing as far as making me disappear, and they'll probably see to it that I have a little more comforts along the way,

and I won't entirely be on my own broke. I'll you know, I'll have the FEDS there to provide me with at least, if not an income, at least job opportunities and stuff like that. Maybe she was in the witness Protection program and she decided it wasn't enough, so she decided to disappear from the witness protection program. Yeah. Some some agents says, oh yeah, well, you know occasionally what people do is they do this and she's like, oh really, well, let me start going through. Well, I

got nothing to do in this hotel room. Can I Can I go down the local library and just look through the books and look through the newspaper section. That could completely be I mean, this is again, as we do with so many of these random rabbit hole theories, as we stitched so many things together. But that's that's the thing that makes me wonder about her. Because the breast implants, I know, that is something that people talk about as they say, well, implants always have serial number,

so let's get the serial number. Well that and she got them under her her newest identity, so that doesn't lead anywhere. So I mean, she's for all things said and done, she was really really good at what she did, which was hiding who she was. Yeah, she did a good job of it. Although again I don't I don't think it's rocket science. She but she was pretty thorough about the whole thing, and as far as serious go, I have one last theory. We so as we know,

she was a little bit erratic. She kind of marched to a different drummer. So I could see where she might get an idea that maybe life wasn't that great. You know, it wasn't hell on Earth. She didn't have it wasn't fleeing a cult, didn't have abusive parents or anything like that. But life wasn't that thrilling for her, And she thought to herself, you know, you know, maybe if I changed my identity and move somewhere else, I'll

become a whole new meet. So it's not just as I have a new name and a new location, I'll like, you know, turn into a different, cooler and more exciting person by just by the by having done this. Now I realized that sounds stupid, but at the same time, thank you, because I didn't know how to put it that that doesn't make any sense to me? Well yeah, but I mean, how many times have you seen people

do things that don't make any sense? I know? I mean, so I'm just saying that's a possibility that she might have really thought, I'm unhappy in my present life and not wing a cult or or a white supremacist gang, but I'm unhappy and maybe if I just changed my name and move somewhere else, things will get better and I'll be a happier person. It didn't really work out that way for but again, and that's just one more theory, and really it's probably not the best one, but what

the hell? One more theory, right, But it's not gonna help. Yeah, and also there's of course, she was fleeing the troop of Cobra, aren't we yea? He really is the chip Copra has really kind of reared his ugly little head again. Yeah, flapping those little bat wings. Yeah, so you guys have

any more thoughts, any more theories? Um? No, other than I'm pretty sure that I'm probably in trouble because I've been scouring the FBI websites lately because of this case and all kinds of escaped convict websites, and I'm pretty sure that I've probably gotten flagged and I was probably being watched forever. Yeah, what do you bought? And what you bought? The Turner Die used to read them that you pay with a credit card. Actually, yeah, you're on

watch list for that one, dude. Yeah, yeah, you should have paid cash. Yeah. Well, anyway, um, if you happen to know Jane Doe and as a child, we'd like to hear from you. Maybe you lived in Fife and you remember the people who got killed in the in the house fire, and you remember some little girls saying one of these days, I'm gonna steal her identity. We'd really love to hear from you. Other than that, that's about the end of it all. Let me give you

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