Beginning in 1969, a series of taunting letters from a killer calling himself the Zodiac began arriving at San Francisco Bay Area newspapers. The correspondence contained chilling details of his crimes, threats of future violence against targets like schoolchildren, and a distinctive cross-circle symbol he used as a signature. Interspersed within the missives were four complex cryptograms, which he claimed would reveal his identity; two of these ciphers remain unsolved to this day. Despite providing specific information only the perpetrator could know and directly engaging with law enforcement and the public, the author of these letters was never identified, and the communications ceased as abruptly as they had begun, leaving his true name and motive unknown.
Following her 2010 suicide in Texas, the woman known as Lori Erica Ruff left behind a lockbox that unraveled a life built on meticulous deception. Inside, her husband’s family found documents detailing how she had first assumed the identity of Becky Sue Turner, a toddler who died in a fire decades earlier, and then legally changed that name to Lori Erica Kennedy. For over twenty years, she had maintained this fabricated persona, offering no details about her family or childhood to anyone, including her husband. It was only through genetic genealogy in 2016 that her birth name was revealed to be Kimberly McLean, a woman who had vanished from her Pennsylvania home in 1986. While her true name is now known, the reasons behind her decision to completely and permanently erase her former self remain the biggest mystery.
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