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