Within a few months of Blake moving out, Lori had completely deteriorated. She was sending unhinged, threatening emails to the Ruffs; she and her daughter were losing weight; she even possibly tried to break into the Ruffs' home.

Early on Christmas Eve, Lori drove over to the Ruff house. She parked her car, left it running, and shot herself. Sometime later, Blake's father left the house to pick up the paper. He noticed the car and called the police.

Lori left behind two suicide notes, one of which was addressed to her husband and the other to her young daughter. Authorities inspected both letters, which they described as “ramblings from a clearly disturbed person.” They contained no reference to Lori’s life as an identity thief, nor a confession of her true identity. With little to no clues about who she might actually be, the woman once known as Lori Erica Ruff was registered in the federal government’s database of missing and unidentified persons as a Jane Doe. Investigators then began to search of her true identity—a process that would take six years to complete.

Then, in September 2016, the case of Lori Erica Ruff was finally solved: her real name was Kimberly McLean. Using a DNA analysis from Ruff’s daughter, investigators were able to trace Ruff’s identity back to a family in Pennsylvania, whose daughter had disappeared in 1986, when she was 17. They believed she fled because she did not like her mother’s new husband.

While the file on Lori Erica Ruff may be closed, her bizarre case continues to fascinate, and will forever raise the chilling question: Just how well do you know those closest to you?

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