Posted on 08/31/2002 10:26:34 AM PDT by IamHD
We'll have to see if there's confirmation on this. I heard him say Ricci himself came in and told him he needed it for an emergency. I also heard him say he would never give a vehicle to anyone other than the owner, so I think if the car disappeared he would have called Ricci to check on it. If someone else took it don't you think Ricci would have come by sometime between May 30 and Jun 14 when he went to jail to see how it was coming along? And doesn't this remind you of the caper where he loaned his truck to his buddies who went and used it to rip off a food bank with it. Maybe he loaned the Jeep to Uncle Tom Smart.
Ricci had worked in both bedrooms. He had worked in every room in the Smart house and he had just worked in the bedroom at the neighbors house that he burglarized that morning.
s-g might be gorgeous, or it might be that s-g's vision in the mirror is as dilusional as s-g's vision of the facts in this case!!
What was this about?
No, that was the doctor up on Tomahawk. When you posted those photographs, which were excellent by the way, you assumed the doctor lived in the cul de sac behind the Smarts which is the end of Tomahawk. By 1) the fact the doctor heard a vehicle race by and 2) the direction the perp & ES left the house (out the front), the doctor would have lived at least a couple of blocks west. I think the perp took ES down the cul de sac and got in a vehicle near the end or parked on the street where it ends. They went right out of the cul de sac up to Tomahawk then took a left. For them to pick up speed and be making a racket the doctor would have had to have been at least a block or two up the street. This would have put them well out of range of hearing Lois scream as others have tried to suggest and when the doctor went out, when all the dogs were barking, he looked up north into the barren hills and didn't see anything and went back to bed.
The next door neighbors I'm pretty certain also heard a female voice in the middle of the night.
Since he never checked on the Jeep it's hard to believe he didn't take it or know it was taken and this hoax was being perpetrated for foul purposes. The key is if one of the two vehicles in Shriner's Hospital parking lot is one of Ricci's. Also we know Angela was lying, she did not know if Ricci left the trailer or not and she checked all the neighbors to see if they had seen him leave.
And Ricci wouldn't have been all sweaty digging up the yard when by his own admission he knew he was on a short list of suspects and the police would be arriving any time if he didn't have something he needed to hide. Also remember Thurber's description of the personality change, the normal, easy going, carry the conversation Ricci was nervous, confused, drinking beer at 8:30 in the morning when he knew the police were coming, complete personality change. It was this personality change and the strange things he said, especially mushy things about Elizabeth, that convinced Thurber Ricci was involved in the crime.
I must say if the police have nothing on a suspect other than Ricci I'm baffled. Why haven't they made sketches of the guy the milkman saw, the guy seen digging the rectangular grave, the guy the security man at Shriner's saw from 20 feet, the guy Moul saw, etc. etc. if they don't know who the accomplice is. Why, if they don't know who the guy is that left Moul's with Ricci, did they hold back the information they thought they left in a blue van when someone may have seen someone take a post hole digger out of a blue van. I think either there's a lot of bunk in today's articles or the SLCPD is incompetent or there's a police coverup. Or maybe Edmunds was washing his car every day at the same car wash at Moul's Garage Moul used to scrub the Jeep.
He said the grease on the seat covers was the previous time that he had brought the jeep in, sometime prior to him towing it in for repair on May 30.
Good points Brigette. I do appreciate reasoned points that are opposite of my own. That is how we will get this thing solved. Your earlier post is most appreciated because it shows that Moul made contradictory statements to the media. What he said to the Grand Jury is what counts. I tend to agree with you that the PTL version is correct. The article today also is sourced to detectives that should know.
So we don't know who took the Jeep on the 30th of June. We can be sure that Richard returned it on the 8th and refused to admit that he ever had it in his possession during that week. Maybe he was trying to protect his seat covers but you'd think he would have gladly given those to the police if that were the case. If his friend was simply providing a ride you'd think he would have come forward by now. Angela surely would have known who this was. Your ideas of him being framed are possible but that would still involve him heavily in the crime even if it was just cleaning up somebody else’s mess. We also learned today that not only was Richard a cat burglar but he was in the habit of entering children’s rooms. As I said earlier, a very strange MO. We also have no explanation for his digging under Thurber’s trailer on the morning of the crime. My thoughts are that he was hiding the small black hand gun when Thurber unexpectedly came out of his trailer. The quick confessions point to someone who was trying to avoid a more serious charge.
And then there is Lois’ unexpected announcement in early August that Mary Katherine had recognized the voice of Elizabeth’s abductor. I’ve stated before that I think she picked Richard’s voice out of an audio line up and I’ll go over my thinking with you again if you’d like. If it was somebody else’s voice then that person would have percolated up to the top of the list of possible suspects. They didn’t specifically say it was Richards’s voice because they already had him in custody and divulging this would have prejudiced a potential jury. I might be wrong and we won’t know until they release this information. But from a logical point of view, it makes the most sense. Much has been said about Richard not having hairy hands. I think we need to remember that this description was coming from a 9 year old. What she would consider hairy may be different than what you or I may think. I also believe that she got this look as the perp stuck his arm under the blanket to wake Elizabeth up. So there is this man's arm an inch from your face. If he had any hair at all on his hands she may have keyed on it.
So I still feel that Richard entered the house that night and that Elizabeth did recognize him. Mary Katherine didn’t get a good enough look at his face to make that recognition. If she is in fact dead, it is anybody’s guess at this point as to how that went down. Perhaps we will never know and that is sad.
Thurber saw him sweating, Moul saw him sweating, maybe Ricks just a sweaty kind of a guy. Seriously, in both instances I think he was afraid that John Law might show up at any second. I really think that Thurber coming out of his trailer that morning was a surprise as well.
I don't believe Ricci had a history as a "killer." It was not in his MO. He shot back at a police officer after he was shot at. He was a burglar, thief and addict. He just doesn't fit the overall description.
What was this about?
It looks like the Jeep was taken from Mouls without anybody seeing who took it. If this thing was as well planned as it appears to have been, then the conspirators would have had to take into account the possibility that Moul could call Angela up to confirm that Richard had retrieved the Jeep. That would have been problematic if she didn't know anything at all about the Jeep being needed for a job. Of course if she did know then there is no problem at all. I'm just saying that perhaps the innocent Angela made the original phone call to Moul's garage.
Is is possible Ricci just wanted to clear out the jeep because he knew he'd be a suspect just by having worked in the Smart home? And that anything in the jeep might look incriminating whether he was guilty or innocent?
Well, why do you think he & his Jeep were all muddy and he removed the seat covers and had a machette at his waist and had all the windows rolled down and was sweating profusely and was in an ugly mood nervously looking over his shoulder and would talk to Moul like usual and later won't admit it was him so obviously didn't know who the guy across the street was? Bad hair day?
Well, good heavens. The guy had hypertension, high blood pressure -- that can easily make one sweat even when not laboring.
I can't imagine that another woman would have been in something like this with him (and note I say him, I think he was in it up to his hairline from the beginning).
No, because he would have told them that story instead of confessing to a robbery and a burglary.
Maybe they have checked all of these people out and cleared them. They don't have a responsibility to let us know who they have cleared. In Edmonds case they needed to because of the intense manhunt for him. As for the blue van I think that maybe they were hoping to find him on the QT and put him under surveillance in the hopes that he was in possession of one living breathing Elizabeth Smart. By the way, I really liked your description of how Thurber became convinced that Richard was involved.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.