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 ...
And wait one fine minute, Sherl. You're skewing things a bit in saying, They wouldn't have thrown him in jail and kept him there for drinking beer on parole." They would have let him out if he had told him where the Jeep was.
No, no, no, no, no. Aren't you forgetting the bank robbery?
Can't have it both ways, Sherl. Drinking beer was the ruse for an arrest. LE needed someone in custody that the Smarts knew. If they didn't nab someone "logical", they would have had to come up with the 911 phone call tape and a composite drawing.
If he would have been able to answer the questions on the Jeep he wouldn't have gotten busted on the bank robbery, that came later.
lakey, you have always been in denial of the central point in the case, that Ricci's lying about not having the Jeep and thus failure to give an account of where he got it muddy, what he did with the stuff in it, why it wasn't parked at his trailer, and who picked him up at Mouls scream of his guilt.
Ricci's MO is all over this case. 1) The hiding the Jeep or letting someone else use it thing, like when he lent his vehicle to the gang that robbed the food bank, the Jeep was not seen at his trailer the week he had it and he told the police it was at Mouls, 2) middle of the night break in, like he broke into the other house he worked at on the same street also in the middle of the night, and he told his friends he was going to break into the Smart's home and burglarize it in the middle of the night for the easy pickins there sometime and tried to enlist their help, and 3) use of small hand gun as weapon like in the bank robbery (do you think MK or Ed just made this up and happened to luck onto Ricci's MO?).
lakey, is it denial, or are you just exceedingly naive?
Welcome to the thread, Platero. Last summer I would have looked at a disrepency like Baird's and Ed Smart's statements here and thought they were actually working together because they thought this roofer might be holding Elizabeth and this was the best strategy to protect her. Ed did show surprise that John Walsh talked about the roofer on LKL in December, it seemed Ed didn't expect him to make the roofer public until their story airs on America's Most Wanted.
If this roofer is truly a potential suspect, it's hard to imagine the police wouldn't have found him by now with the help of the FBI or put out a description for help from the public. I would also like to know if the roofer's description matches the sketch released by Ed Smart in the days after Ricci's death of the pig roaster driving the blue SUV. Hopefully these type questions will be answered when the America's Most Wanted program airs.
Kidnapping and/or pedophila were not Ricci's MO.
When he shot at the police officer, he was most likely on drugs. Thus the short sentence.
He was a not-too-swift thief and cat burglar. The threesome's take from the bank was around $1700.
The State of Utah v. Richard Albert Ricci, Salt Lake City Police Department, Agency Case No. 01-59273, defendant "exercised unauthorized control over the property of Sue Ann Adams with the purpose to deprive the owner thereof, and that the value of said property is or exceeds $300, but is less than $1,000."
Four witnesses: S. Adams, L. Linh, R. Lewis, and T. Siebert. There were also witnesses to the bank robbery.
The Jeep has, to date, yielded no DNA evidence of Elizabeth being in the vehicle. If the Jeep was loaned out, that person's DNA would be in it. If Moul vacuumed the interior, the debris would be in the vacuum's bag, and forensics would have examined it.
What does this mean? Ricci was wearing a mask. He brandished his small handgun in the air and threatened to take a woman hostage.
The Jeep has, to date, yielded no DNA evidence of Elizabeth being in the vehicle. If the Jeep was loaned out, that person's DNA would be in it. If Moul vacuumed the interior, the debris would be in the vacuum's bag, and forensics would have examined it.
So you don't think he had anything to hide? Then why wouldn't he admit he had the Jeep, tell police where it had been, tell police what he did with the things he took out of it, and tell police who picked him up at Mouls? These are the key questions to the case, lakey, and if Ricci had answered them off the bat he would have gone home exonerated and the police may never have known about Remington and the bank robbery. Obviously, for whatever reason (denial, naivete, or dishonesty) lakey, you refuse to address this issue of why Ricci wouldn't answer these questions from the police because your complete mindset is to exonerate Ricci at any cost. Are you going to tell me again all Caucasians look alike to Moul?
LE needed someone, anyone, who would look guilty in the eye of the public. A flimsy reason to arrest - drinking beer while on parole when drinking beer was not on the man's list of no-no's.
Ricci admitted to the Adams crime more than a year afterwards. Why wasn't he arrested for that - there were witnesses. Because the Smart connection didn't come up until June 5th, 2002, that's why.
This isn't Iraq, Sherl, but if we allow people to be convicted of a crime simply because they are habitual criminals -convicting them without some sort of evidence - then we've totally lost our country. And I'm not too sure we haven't anyway.
So don't talk to me about dishonesty. To date, there is no factual evidence but you are still willing to convict possibly the wrong person, thus allowing the real demon to escape punishment. Worse, you are willing to make a farce of our constitutional rights and justice system.
What's that saying? Something like: They came for the Jews, and I kept silent. Then they came for me, but there was no one left to speak for me.
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