The process of requesting the birth certificate had been straightforward. On May 20, 1988, someone requested a copy of Becky Sue Turner’s birth certificate from Kern County, California, where the child had been born. The request was granted; the certificate was issued. On June 16, 1988, the person who now possessed that certificate went to Boise, Idaho, and obtained an Idaho state identification card in the name of Becky Sue Turner, with her own photograph attached to it.
She had Becky Sue Turner’s identity. What she needed next was a more permanent legal foundation.
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## The Name Change in Dallas
On July 5, 1988, in Dallas, Texas, a woman appeared before a judge and petitioned to have her name legally changed. She presented herself as Becky Sue Turner. The court granted the petition. Her name was legally changed to Lori Erica Kennedy.
A week later, on July 12, 1988, she applied for and received a Social Security number under the name Lori Erica Kennedy. On July 13 she obtained a Texas identification card. On April 18, 1989, she received a Texas driver’s license, which listed her age as nineteen — a figure based on Becky Sue Turner’s birthdate of July 18, 1969, which she had retained as her stated date of birth despite being born almost exactly a year earlier.
The legal name change was an additional layer of separation from whatever she was leaving behind. Becky Sue Turner’s birth certificate was the foundation, but Lori Erica Kennedy was now a legal name, with Social Security documentation to support it. She was not simply using a dead child’s identity as a temporary alias; she had layered one legal identity on top of another, using the first to generate the second.