The identification changed her situation in ways that only she and those closest to her can fully understand. She now had, on her mother’s side, a grandmother, an aunt, cousins — a family of origin that had not known she existed. She had a name for the woman her mother had been before she was Lori Kennedy or Lori Ruff.
Published accounts of the aftermath of the identification indicate that Lori’s birth family and the Ruff family, including her daughter, began building a relationship after the identification was made public. The nature and extent of that relationship is not something the available public record documents in detail, and it would not be appropriate to speculate beyond what is reported.
The daughter’s identity and current circumstances are private matters. She was a child when her mother died and remains a private individual. The investigation that identified her mother involved using her DNA, with the cooperation of her family, to reconstruct the maternal profile that made the genealogical search possible. Her participation in that investigation was mediated through her father and other adults who cared for her.
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## The Ethics of Forensic Genetic Genealogy
The Lori Ruff case sits at the intersection of several ongoing ethical conversations about DNA databases, forensic investigation, and privacy.
The method Fitzpatrick used — searching consumer DNA databases for relatives of an unknown individual — raises questions that the field of forensic genetic genealogy has not fully resolved. The databases she searched were built by millions of people who submitted their DNA voluntarily to learn about their ancestry. They did not submit it with the expectation that their data would be used to help identify relatives who were subjects of investigations. Their DNA carries information not just about themselves but about their relatives, including relatives who have never submitted a sample.