Deanne declined to speak publicly about the identification. Her brother Tom Cassidy became the primary family member who spoke to journalists in the period following the announcement. Cassidy described what he knew of Kimberly’s childhood, the divorce, the move to Wyncote, the difficulties she had with the transition, the departure. He said the family had never understood why she left.
The formal confirmation was announced in September 2016. The Seattle Times, which had published the original 2013 article that set much of the subsequent investigation in motion, reported on the resolution. Joe Velling’s case was officially closed. The NamUS listing was removed. Lori Ruff had a name.
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## What Was Resolved and What Was Not
The identification of Lori Ruff as Kimberly McLean resolved the foundational question that the investigation had been pursuing: who was she? The answer — Kimberly Maria McLean, born October 16, 1968, in Philadelphia, daughter of James McLean and Deanne Cassidy — was specific and documented and confirmed by both DNA and personal recognition.
Several subsidiary questions were also answered. She had grown up in the Philadelphia suburbs. She had attended a specific high school. She had a mother, a sister, a biological father, an uncle, cousins. She had a childhood that, by her family’s account, had been reasonably happy before the disruptions of the divorce and remarriage. She had left voluntarily, as an adult, after telling her mother not to look for her.
But the identification left the most significant questions unanswered.
Why did she leave? The family’s understanding, as expressed through Tom Cassidy and other relatives who spoke to journalists, was that she had never adjusted to the divorce or the stepfather. The alcoholism in the extended family was mentioned as a context. These are family accounts of a family situation, offered decades after the events they describe, and they represent an interpretation rather than a documented fact. Kimberly did not explain her reasons in the note she left her mother. She did not explain them in the documents in the locked box. She did not explain them in the letters to Blake and her daughter, which investigators examined and found to contain no relevant information.