Posted on 12/26/2002 2:56:18 PM PST by Palladin
KING: All right, let's talk about the Elizabeth Smart case, which the media has kind of left now. What is your best read on that tragedy in Utah?
WALSH: I spent yesterday by coincidence with Ed and Lois Smart. I had them on "The John Walsh Show" to kind of give an update to the case. You know, Ricci, the guy that was the main suspect, died in prison of an aneurysm. He's the guy that was the handyman at the house that put 1,000 miles on his pickup truck during the two days that she was missing. He was a burglar. He also had a rap sheet, which a lot of the media doesn't understand. He spent 10 years in jail. He tried to blow the head off of a cop with a shotgun. This is a real bad guy.
I hope that he didn't take the secret of Elizabeth Smart to the grave with him. I talked to Ed and Lois yesterday. I said, don't give up hope. Justice delayed isn't justice denied.
What's killing them is the fact of the not knowing. I think they're prepared for the worst. Most parents of missing children are prepared for the worst. But their young daughter has now said that she believes that Ricci wasn't the guy in there that night, that it may have been another guy that did some work on their roof, an itinerant guy that worked at a homeless shelter, and he may be a suspect in this. And I don't want to give away a lot of breaking information here, but "America's Most Wanted" is going to take a look at the Smart case, because I know one thing, we have been able to solve crimes after 10 years.
So I gave the Smarts, you know, the best encouragement I could and said, look, don't give up hope. We'll relook at the case. It is normal for the media tension to die down, and to try to have a good holiday. This is going to be the first Christmas without this beautiful girl, and the Smarts have five other beautiful children. So they're trying to hold that family together.
I said, you know, do the best you can with your five children. Don't give up hope, and, you know what, we'll take another look at this case and try to keep it alive.
(Excerpt) Read more at silenter.com ...
As much as they must have dreaded doing it, Ed and Lois Smart went public again this week about the disappearance of their daughter.
It's been eight months since Elizabeth Smart was taken from her east bench bedroom. Her middle school class is now in high school. Her 15th birthday has come and gone. Summer has turned into fall and fall into winter and still the blue ribbons wave in her neighborhood, tied to trees, fences, antennas, mailboxes and memories. Elizabeth's home is still her home. It will be blue until she returns.
Ed and Lois held a press conference Monday to release information about a homeless handyman with the apparent pseudonym of "Emmanuel" who spent a day at the Smart's house about seven months before Elizabeth's abduction. Elizabeth's younger sister, Mary Katherine, the only eyewitness to the crime, made Emmanuel a suspect of sorts when she told her father this past October that Emmanuel's hair was slicked back in a style reminiscent of the person she saw abduct her sister; he "might" have been the one who took her.
The police and FBI have discreetly searched for Emmanuel ever since, to no avail. So, in a call reminiscent of the immediate aftermath of Elizabeth's kidnapping when more than 10,000 volunteers searched every canyon, crag, fold and ravine in northern Utah, the Smarts felt it was again time to go public and let everyone start searching.
The Smarts are a family tortured twice — tortured by what they know and what they don't know. Elizabeth is missing, but who took her? And why? There has been no ransom demand (save for a bogus one from a candidate for America's Dumbest Criminals). There has been no discovery of huge losses of money or jewels from the Smart residence that would indicate a burglary that went awry. There was no death-bed confession from Richard Ricci, the career criminal and handyman who once burglarized the Smart home and died unexpectedly last August.
Now there's another handyman to add to the mystery: a self-styled street preacher who walked in and out of the Smart's life in a single day, doing yardwork and hammering shingles on the roof not six feet from Elizabeth's father.
For the life of them, Ed and Lois Smart can deduce no motive for the street preacher to abduct their little girl. Lois Smart made the initial contact with Emmanuel when he asked for spare change while she was shopping downtown. She gave him $5 and said if he needed more, he could work for her husband.
The skylights were leaking, so when Emmanuel appeared the next day, Ed not only put him to work on the shingles but climbed atop the house with him. They talked of Jesus and being saved. When Emmanuel left five hours later, Ed paid him $50 and asked him to come back. But Emmanuel, a transient who told the Smarts he and his sister were staying with someone in the valley, never returned.
The relationship is eerily similar to the one Ed had with Ricci, whom he befriended with work and a car, only to be rewarded by larceny and dishonesty.
What does it all mean? Are the Smarts the epitome of do-gooders who help the homeless and ex-cons and get paid with a backhand across the face? Are they living proof that no good deed goes unpunished?
As they publicly released the police composite sketch of Emmanuel, Ed and Lois talked yet again of someone they once helped who is now wanted for questioning in their daughter's disappearance.
They don't know if there is a connection. Eight months later, all they have are questions — and an undying hope that someone, somewhere, has the answers.
Lee Benson's column runs Sunday, Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Please send e-mail to benson@desnews.com and faxes to 801-237-2527
Police incompetent? In a way, I think so. Their handling of the earliest hours may have been due to poorly trained officers. But it could also have been because of what was reported to them by Ed in his 911 call. Or not reported...the gun, in particular.
Frankly, I have my doubts about there being an "Emanuel."
Angela Ricci has a record of conning people so it is not surprising to have a situation were many people can be fooled by this type of individual. Who are you going to believe? The SLCPD/FBI or an ex-con who may have been involved in the crime. Mr. Klass should not be making the kind of statement he made without being prepared to back it up. He is no more an expert in this matter than anyone who has followed this case here on the free republic. His "feelings" about Angela Ricci and the Smart family are nothing more than that, "feelings". It irritates me to see someone like him getting paid by the networks for their "expert" opinions.
Huh? Slicked-back hair? How could she see that under the baseball/golf cap?
These people are losing all credibility.
The Smarts are talking so much, they've forgotten what their scenario was.
Way back on June 30th: # 157 "Could it be the sister didn't see anything at all? Could it be the family does not want an accurate sketch released because they don't want the man MK saw to be found?"
Varina replied, "Ping!"
I say, BINGO!
No, I'm not suggesting there's any hanky-panky. But why is it "dad" tucking her in, as if he does it every night? Just a thought.
I have always pinned my trust in the law enforcement community in this case. I believe that if the family was involved in anyway that they would have been found out by now. I also feel that the Smarts are guilty of being gullible and naive as to the real world. Their desire to do things on the cheap and to help down and outers may have brought this tragedy to them.
What the Smarts are doing is highly contradictory to their insistance that they trust LE. Throwing out info, bit by bit, a new handyman - one who cannot be documented - and now Ed wants Ricci out of his life. A reward for Ricci's innocence?????
Wait a minute, honey....
Ping!
Looks like some guilt-tripping to me.
Dated 6/13/02, from the National Desk of United Press International, Salt Lake City:
Chance of hoax clouds Utah kidnap probe
www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=1306022-120158-7599r
On other pages, I was reminded of Ed's hospitalization for exhaustion. Had not slept for two days! The two days after Elizabeth's disappearance.
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