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Elizabeth Smart--New Suspect, New Thread
Larry King Live; KUTV; Salt Lake Tribune; etc. ^ | December 23, 24, 25, 2002 | Various

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 ...


TOPICS: Heated Discussion
KEYWORDS: amw; briandavidmitchell; elizabethsmart; missingchild; newsuspect
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To: FR_addict
Good to see you back. What makes you think there will be a break?
41 posted on 01/04/2003 7:57:57 PM PST by lakey
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To: Sherlock
With all we've read, heard, and written, I could be totally off-track in saying that Ed has said he did believe Ricci committed the crime, not only an accomplice. In the beginning? I kind of think it was more towards the end of Ricci's life.

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.

42 posted on 01/04/2003 8:16:30 PM PST by lakey
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To: lakey
Aren't you forgetting the bank robbery?

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?

43 posted on 01/04/2003 11:18:25 PM PST by Sherlock
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To: Platero
Baird said investigators have known about him for months, adding that he is "on the same level of priority as several hundred people we've looked at."

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.

44 posted on 01/04/2003 11:34:54 PM PST by Sherlock
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Comment #45 Removed by Moderator

To: Calcetines
Hon, you type just like scaredkat. Any relation?
46 posted on 01/05/2003 7:06:58 PM PST by lakey
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Comment #47 Removed by Moderator

To: Sherlock
Naive? Not hardly.

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.

48 posted on 01/05/2003 7:52:16 PM PST by lakey
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To: Calcetines
LOL! I know html, too, just too lazy to use anything other than paragraphs.
49 posted on 01/05/2003 7:53:26 PM PST by lakey
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To: lakey
There were also witnesses to the bank robbery.

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?

50 posted on 01/05/2003 9:59:23 PM PST by Sherlock
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To: lakey
Excuse me??? I don't think I am the only one on here that miss-types, but for some reason everyone likes to pick on me! Well, maybe it's because I really know something about this case and it bugs the **** out of some posters that want to discredit it.
51 posted on 01/05/2003 10:38:33 PM PST by scaredkat
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To: Calcetines
Scaredcat?

It's Scaredkat.
52 posted on 01/05/2003 10:40:28 PM PST by scaredkat
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Comment #53 Removed by Moderator

Comment #54 Removed by Moderator

To: Sherlock
Sherl, -ONE MORE TIME- of why Richard Albert Ricci would not answer the interrogation questions is PERHAPS, PERHAPS, that he did not have HIS Jeep. I don't care if Moul is cat-eyed & green with purple polka dots, he could have made a mistake. Humans make mistakes. Law enforcement sometimes deliberately sets rumors in flow.

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.

55 posted on 01/06/2003 3:20:07 PM PST by lakey
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To: scaredkat
Think of it as a ball of yarn to lure you out of your hiding place. :o)
56 posted on 01/06/2003 3:32:42 PM PST by lakey
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To: Sherlock
btw, the book I am now reading is "Reasonable Doubt."
57 posted on 01/06/2003 3:46:40 PM PST by lakey
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To: Sherlock
I'm new to this forum, although I've been reading it for awhile. (So please bear with me on my first post!) I've also been following the case since June. I just wanted to point out that the police knew Remington was involved in the Sandy bank robbery since the day it happened. He was arrested disposing of the clothes that Ricci wore on his way to meet up with Remington and Young. Remington has been in jail since that time. I'm not sure how the police found out about the robbery--if Remington finally snitched in the hopes of getting a deal when he found out Ricci was a potential suspect in Elizabeth's disappearance, or if the DNA samples Ricci provided in Elizabeth's investigation matched up to samples that might've been taken from the clothes he wore in the bank robbery. Maybe Ricci just caved under the 26 hours of questioning. In any case, Remington has been in jail since November 2001.
58 posted on 01/06/2003 5:32:28 PM PST by Lissa2002
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To: All
mark. Someone put me on a ping list for this please. Thanks in advance.
59 posted on 01/06/2003 5:36:57 PM PST by UCANSEE2
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To: lakey
"Good to see you back. What makes you think there will be a break?"

Nothing specific, just following the case on other boards and have found some very interesting analysis of the case.

I still think the family knows a lot more than they are letting on and it is beginning to catch up with them.

There must be some reason for this mysterious roofer connection to be coming to light after all this time. This is just another one of Ed's itinerant workers he had working around his family. Hard to believe anyone that hired as many homeless and itinerant workers as Ed did would be so careless about setting the alarm, especially after being robbed only a few months before Elizabeth's disappearance.
60 posted on 01/06/2003 5:49:24 PM PST by FR_addict
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