Kathleen M. Ruta-Liacos

Kathleen Marie Ruta-Liacos died on January 5, 2026 at Salem Hospital. The primary cause was hemorrhagic shock, but there is more to the story. There always is.  

Kathi, as she liked to be called, was born on June 27, 1958 in Danvers, Massachusetts. She loved and hated the town she called home, but that was her relationship with most things – extreme, oppositional, contradictory, passionate. She loved the Porter River, which she saw every day growing up at the bottom of Eden Glen Avenue, where she lived most of her adult life as well. She loved the dramatic sunsets that bled orange and purple and magenta in the water, the swan dynasties that nested in the salt marshes, and the smell of low tide. She fought her neighbors and their desire to make their seldom used yards look bigger by mowing down marsh grasses, destroying the habitats vital to the river’s health. Like all the battles in Kathi’s life, she fought this one fiercely, full of equal parts spite and self-righteousness, and in the end she lost. 

Kathi was the fourth of five children. Her parents were Michael Ruta, originally from New Jersey, and Rita Detorre Ruta, from Beverly. She graduated from Danvers High School, where she proudly served as class president. Her ambitions for her herself were big and scattered, as she was diagnosed with dyslexia too late in her education, and like many people of her generation, was left behind by a system that did not understand ADHD, particularly in girls. Despite that, in her early thirties she took courses at the Harvard Extension School and was working toward a bachelor’s degree that she never completed. She worked as a waitress, a bar tender, a canteen truck driver, a manicurist, a taxi driver, and later an entrepreneur, launching Kathi Co., a successful but short-lived coach and livery service in partnership with her husband’s family business, C&A Taxi.   

Kathi was fond of bragging about the many boyfriends of her youth. One of those boyfriends, Jeffrey Citroni of Danvers, fathered her only child; and one of them, Michael Liacos of Danvers, she married. The love her life, Michael Liacos was a faithful, patient, and self-sacrificing partner to her until he died of lung cancer in December of 2019. It was his family who generously supported and housed Kathi in the dark years leading up to her death.  

A survivor of violent early childhood trauma, Kathi was sick, in one form or another, for most of her life. She suffered from severe endometriosis, rheumatoid arthritis, and most acutely, addiction. For over fifty years Kathi endured the dramatic physical, emotional, financial, and spiritual consequences made common by the disease of addiction. It is a testimony to her strength that she lived as long as she did.  

Kathi is preceded in death by her parents, her husband, her nephew, Donald Amor Jr., and many beloved dogs, notably Kili, Missy, and Ganja. She is survived by her four siblings, many nieces and nephews, her in-laws Emmeline Liacos, Susan Amor, and Georgia Bettencourt, her dog Godzilla, a son-in-law and two grandchildren whom she never met in person, and her estranged daughter, Domenica Ruta, who wrote a New York Times Bestselling book about her.   

If you’d like to honor her life, consider making a donation in her name to the HAWC Shelter in Salem, Massachusetts.