Investigators searched her home in Leonard. It was in disarray. Documents had been shredded. The signs of a life ending in deliberate disorder were everywhere.
And then, in a closet, they found the box.
—
## What the Box Contained
The metal strongbox had been in the closet of Lori’s home. She had at some point told Blake to leave it alone. After her death, when the Ruff family went to the house, they forced it open with a screwdriver.
Inside were documents. There was a birth certificate for a person named Becky Sue Turner. There was a court record documenting a legal name change from Becky Sue Turner to Lori Erica Kennedy. There were handwritten notes — pieces of paper with phrases and names written on them: “North Hollywood police,” “402 months,” the name “Ben Perkins.”
There were, according to multiple published accounts, identity documents bearing Lori’s photograph but different names, at different stages of apparent age — a visual record of the same face attached to different identities at different points in time.
None of this told the Ruff family who Lori had really been before she became Lori Kennedy and then Lori Ruff. They knew only that she had lived under names that were not hers, and that one of those names had belonged to a child who was long dead.
The name “Ben Perkins” appeared in the notes. Investigators tracked down a lawyer named Ben Perkins. He had no recollection of ever having represented anyone connected to Lori Ruff’s case. He had, in any case, been disbarred in 1989. The “402 months” notation was never satisfactorily explained — speculation varied, but no definitive interpretation emerged from the investigation. The “North Hollywood police” reference similarly did not produce a clear lead. A mail-forwarding address in Boulder City, Nevada, was found in her records; it had been used to route mail to Dallas.