The differences between the Chandler and Ruff cases are instructive. Chandler had used the identity for decades without attracting investigation during his lifetime. He had collected government benefits — Social Security, Medicare — in the assumed name, a specific form of federal fraud. He had left no children and no family through the false identity, so there was no biological sample available that could be used for genealogical reconstruction after his death. The case was still unsolved when the Ruff case was resolved.
The Ruff case was resolved specifically because Lori had a daughter, and the daughter’s DNA could be analyzed. This feature of the case — which is also a feature of Lori’s choices, her decision to pursue fertility treatment and have a child rather than the alternative — was not a planned investigative advantage. It was a consequence of the life she built as Lori Kennedy and Lori Ruff, and it became the mechanism of her identification.
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## The Colleen Fitzpatrick Method in Detail
The forensic genealogy methodology that Colleen Fitzpatrick applied to the Lori Ruff case has become more widely understood since the Golden State Killer identification in 2018, but it remains worth describing precisely because the Lori Ruff application was unusual in a specific way: the DNA being analyzed was not directly from the unknown subject.
In a typical forensic genetic genealogy case, the DNA in question comes directly from the unknown individual — from a crime scene sample, from a body, from a personal effect that holds biological material. The analysis then searches databases for relatives of the person who left that sample. The Ruff case was different because Lori was dead, and the investigators did not have a sample directly from her.