We all need to remember that LE had absolutely NO evidence or witnesses to associate Ricci with Elizabeth's disappearance.
I'm beginning to wonder if the Smart brothers didn't steer LE to Ricci from the beginning, despite how they strongly backed away publicly from declaring him a suspect in the beginning. Was that a sham?
I will have to disagree with you here. I'm convinced that Mary Katherine picked Ricci's voice out of an audio lineup sometime after the 1st of August.
1) Mohl said he brought his Jeep in on May 30 for a variety of repairs. After he fixed the fuel pump & got it running again a woman identifying herself as Mrs. Ricci called and said Ricci would be picking it up. Ricci came in and said he needed it for an emergency and took it. He returned it on Jun 8 covered with mud & pine needles, all the windows rolled down, bugs on the windshield, newspaper on the floor, sweating profusely, wearing a machette at his waist, wouldn't talk to Mohl who he usually joked with, and walked off with a post hole digger, seat covers, and trash bags of newspapers and whatever else from the Jeep. He met someone he had been looking nervously over his shoulder to see across the street and left with him. He refused to admit he ever had the Jeep, said none of the above ever happened, and thus there was no man across the street.
2) Between May 30 when he took the Jeep back from Mohl and Jun 8 when he returned it he put 500-1000 miles on it yet it was never parked at his trailer park.
3) Neighbor Thurber, a friend of Angela, said he was drinking at 8:30 AM the morning of the abduction and had undergone a complete personality change from what he had known him to be. He was pounding 2'x4's on his neighbors trailer with some weak excuse about keeping his cat out. He went into a story Thurber called bizare about how beautiful Elizabeth was and how she used to follow him around the house and help him out. He said in the car taking him to & from the movie Ricci, who usually carried the conversation, said virtually nothing. Thurber said he never would have imagined it possible for Ricci to do something like this but because of his personality change and the facts surrounding that day he thinks Ricci was involved in it. Thurber also said he knows Angela was somatosed the night of the abduction and that Angela went around and made sure no one in the neighborhood saw Rick leave so she would know there would be no one to counter her testimony that she knew Rick was with her all night.
The truth is, it's too bad Ed didn't steer LE to him immediately and LE didn't followup on the whereabouts of the Jeep before Jun 8 and Elizabeth may very will have been rescued early and home with her parents tonight. This ugly reality doesn't compute in the short circuitry of varina's mind. I pity her parents raising and trying to make sense out of her.