Elizabeth Smart Thread, 9/17/02 to ???

[Utah Girl]

Just thought I would start a new thread.

[varina davis]

Here is link to article about Tom Smart. Interesting paragraph in it about an unnamed photographer who took lots of pix of Liz about a month before her disappearance. http://www.sportsshooter.com/news_story.html?id=712

[cherry]

I will have you know that I am sending my secret agent to slc this Thursday...well, she is actually my sister-in-law....

.she has a temp sales job there....I have asked her to get the straight skinny on the Elizabeth Smart case from the locals.....of course, I had to remind her who ES was....just seems we here are the only ones still wondering about her...obsession?

[lakey]

Have been waiting for this. Thanks.

[Utah Girl]

|| SportsShooter.com: News Item: Posted 2002-07-02

Life Turns Man Up and Down
By Trent Nelson, Salt Lake Tribune
Before another fine WNBA game nearly a month ago, I was eating ice cream with my competition. Tom Smart, a photographer for the Deseret News, was sitting with me wearing his usual smile as our conversation hit on all topics, sacred and profane. If you've covered a big story in Salt Lake City in the past twenty-five years, you know Tom. He's one of those guys who everyone knows.

Photo by Trent Nelson

Tom Smart tells the media that the Smart family believes Elizabeth is still alive, June 9.

After putting in a couple decades as the News' chief photographer, Tom recently stepped away from his management role and was back to shooting for the paper full-time. Once he made the switch you'd see him show up to an assignment floating on air, so happy to be "just a photographer."

This night was no different in that respect. During a timeout we joked about the lighting situation- after a dark, smoky, laser-beam team introduction, someone had forgotten to turn all of the lights back on and the Delta Center was darker than your worst high school gymnasium nightmare. Rather than letting it get to us, we laughed about it. The light sucked, but life was good, and that's the way things were.

Later that night, hours after we had packed up our laptops and Salt Lake City fell asleep, a 9-year-old opened her eyes to find a stranger in her bedroom speaking quietly to her sister. He was carrying a gun. The little one feigned sleep, and was the only witness to her sister's kidnapping. These were Tom Smart's nieces, and his life would be forever changed.

Fourteen-year-old Elizabeth Smart was gone.

As the sun rose over the mountains that morning, the kidnapping was already a huge story. At the family's first press conference, I noticed Tom walking by and shook his hand as he passed. His eyes were empty, but he never stopped moving, handing out fliers and press releases.

During the press conference, he stood off to the side with his crying daughters. Tom held back his own tears as his brother, Ed, broke down on camera addressing the kidnapper: "If you can hear me, Elizabeth is the sweetest girl. She's an angel. Please let her go." It was a terrible moment.

When the press conference was over, Tom stepped in, making comments and answering questions. He was open and honest, and good with his words. The family apparently had a spokesman. 'Good thing they have Tom,' I thought to myself, 'He knows how to work this situation.'

Seemingly present at every press conference and police briefing, Tom became a man with a mission. He arranged pool situations, answered questions, and was interviewed by countless media outlets. He went for days without sleep. Finding his niece became an all-consuming passion and he devoted himself to spreading the word, getting photographs out, and making sure people were getting information.

"I feel that everything I've learned in life was for this," Tom told me on the fourth day after Elizabeth disappeared. I would speak with him a few times over the next three weeks. Sometimes he sounded exhausted. Other times, emotionally overwhelmed. But always positive that his niece would not only be found, but found alive.

The kidnapping quickly became a national story. But for the local photographers, it was something more. Rushing to the neighborhood that first morning, they felt more than the usual emotions that come with reporting these kinds of tragedies. These weren't tear-streaked strangers easily framed into clean, contest-winning compositions. These were people we knew, and in some cases, close friends. Even if I'd stayed in college, this wasn't a situation I would have learned about in a classroom.
I remember walking up to the family's press conference that first afternoon.

Photo by AP/Steve C. Wilson

Heidi Smart, left, her husband Tom, top, and their daughter Sierra, right, the aunt, uncle, and cousin to kidnapped 14-year-old Elizabeth Smart, listen during a news briefing Sunday, June 9, 2002, in Salt Lake City.

I saw Tom's wife, Heidi. I had seen her many times before, when she photographed University of Utah football and basketball games with Tom. Working as a tech during the Olympics, she was the one who had famously smuggled sushi through the draconian security checkpoints so that the Reuters photographers could have something other than hot dogs to eat. Now she was moving to hug one of her nieces, tears in her eyes. I composed the shot, and realized how strange it felt to photograph someone I knew in this situation, and I think she felt it, too. She seemed to back away from the hug and the moment never materialized.

The pressure of covering the Smart family seemed to affect everyone. Photographers who wanted talk about new cameras and computers at the scene were met with silence. Others found themselves in emotionally and ethically confusing situations. And before I list some of them, I want to say I'm not doing so to point fingers. This is just how it was?

One photographer, who had photographed Elizabeth a few months before, handed out color prints to any media outlet that wanted it, before and after shooting the first press conference.

One photographer embraced tearful family members after photographing them grieving.

One photographer, a long-time friend of Tom and his family, was so concerned that he'd infringe on the friendship he basically pulled himself off the story.

One photographer recalls missing great shots of Elizabeth's parents because two other shooters were working up close with wide-angle lenses and she felt uncomfortable about being so intrusive.

Another photographer, as a family press conference was about to begin said, "I hope Tom's not speaking today. I don't feel like taking any more sad pictures of him."

The pressure on us mounted during one point it was reported that the police had starting investigating the extended family and Tom admitted to haven taken a polygraph test. Media outlets eager to scoop their competitors started throwing Tom's name around as a possible suspect. Phone calls started pouring into our photo department from various agencies wanting us to send them photographs of our friend Tom Smart, now an alleged suspect.

Thankfully by the next day the investigation looked away from the family and seemed to move onto other suspects. But for those hours, things were nuts. Each photographer who heard the news, who had worked side-by-side with Tom for years, took in this twist in the investigation with shock and disbelief.

Now it's been three weeks. The emotions aren't as raw, and neither Salt Lake paper is covering the case photographically on a daily basis. The investigation has taken its twists and turns, each day seeming to bring a new development, but Elizabeth is still gone.

One night during the first week there was a candlelight vigil in Liberty Park. There was a prayer, a moment of silence, and candles were lit. I photographed the sad family and stood there in the cold, feeling the grief and watching. Tom was one of the last people to leave. He embraced me, and with tears in his eyes, said, "You know, I'm a crazy guy. But I know she's coming home."

(Trent Nelson, a frequent contributor to Sports Shooter, is the Chief Photographer at The Salt Lake Tribune.)
Life Turns Man Up and Down

[ChocChipCookie]

Cherry, I have actually thought of doing this myself. I have a friend in the SLC area who is from a very prominent (politically) and old Mormon family. One of these days I'll give her a call and grill her.

[Bella]

http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,405032070,00.html

Friday, September 20, 2002

Police reviewing clues in Elizabeth Smart case

Salt Lake police have been going back over early clues in the Elizabeth Smart kidnapping, and they interviewed Elizabeth's mother last week. They have been going back through a list of people the family knew in hopes of finding new clues in the 3 1/2-month-old kidnapping.

As part of their plan to go back to square one and re-examine the disappearance of 14-year-old Elizabeth, police have returned to the Federal Heights neighborhood looking for more clues, said Elizabeth's father, Ed Smart.

Smart family spokesman Chris Thomas said that within the past few weeks, police have conducted separate interviews with both of Elizabeth's parents. Lois' interview last week lasted two to three hours and was meant to help police review the family's extensive list of friends, associates and workers who knew the family or had access to their million-dollar residence.

[lakey]

"The pressure of covering the Smart family seemed to affect everyone. Photographers who wanted talk about new cameras and computers at the scene were met with silence. Others found themselves in emotionally and ethically confusing situations. And before I list some of the, I want to say I'm not doing so to point fingers. This is just how it was..."

Maybe I'm missing something, but I can't see what would be "ethically confusing". The Smarts wanted publicity from the beginning. Any family of a kidnapped child deserves publicity, & the source matters little.

That statement, though, makes one wonder what the heck was known, or rumored, back then.

[ChocChipCookie]

Lois' interview last week lasted two to three hours and was meant to help police review the family's extensive list of friends, associates and workers who knew the family or had access to their million-dollar residence.

You know, it doesn't sound like LE is as convinced that Ricci was the main suspect as they previously declared. It's interesting that they are going back over the list of names. That's a good sign.

[ChocChipCookie]

Lakey, I took that statement to mean that they felt conflicted about their reporting being intrusive in the lives of people they knew. Sure wish the media would feel that way in similar situations.

[Devil_Anse]

No, Varina, my post to Sherlock was not a joke.

Why must you be so intolerant of the views of someone, simply b/c they are not in lockstep with yours?

[Bella]

They've been on a wild goose chase...

[lakey]

Square one is a little late. What a bunch of incompetents!!!

[lakey]

Where have you been? Not "lock-step"? You've got the shoe is on the wrong foot. The insults from Sherlock & Jolly Green began with them, and began a long time ago.

[Devil_Anse]

The Smarts are behaving the exact opposite of the Levys.

Hardly. For one thing, the two cases are quite different. The Levys were thousands of miles away from their daughter when she disappeared, and hence could hardly be suspected, even by the most cynical observer. Also, their daughter was grown and out of the house, had her own life. Seems to me any family conflicts go way down when a child grows up and starts a life of his/her own. I'm sure the Levys had a few arguments with their daughter through the years; I'm sure the Smarts did, too. What is there to indicate that either set of parents would have wanted their daughter dead? Just show me one fact, I'm eager to see it, I'm all for anything that will explain this mystery, whether it implicates the family or not.

The Levys' daughter's body has been found. The Smarts' daughter has not been found. We have heard virtually nothing from the poor Levys since the sad discovery, now 4 months ago. Any progress on finding the killer? We have no idea, we are told nothing. As for the Smarts, they have not been before the cameras in, what, a couple of weeks at most? Yet when Ed was in front of the camera every day, all I heard out of people like you was, "he sure loves the camera." Maybe they really were trying to be sensitive to the Riccis' grief.

It wasn't "competent professionals" who found Chandra's skeleton. It was a man and his dog looking for turtles. Yes, I know the Levys' p.i.'s claimed to find more bones, but who found the skeleton to begin with? I'm sure the Levys are still hoping to find the killer, but we certainly haven't heard anything to that effect lately. So just b/c we haven't heard anything of the Smarts' efforts in TWO WHOLE WEEKS (an eternity for someone with ADD) doesn't mean they are not working and hoping just as the Levys no doubt are. If the Smarts have a p.i. working on the case, the last thing anyone who's paying good money to such a person would want to do is blow his cover.

There it is, another "term paper." I guess a long post is a "term paper" unless it's got lots of sensational, unproven tabloidesque tidbits in it.

[ChocChipCookie]

DA, how would you compare the Ramsey case with this one?

[lakey]

Yes, I see your point & thought that myself at first. But these are people who all know each other, either through church, or their profession, or friendships.

Sometimes we have to do things for our friends that we'll remember for the rest of our lives - and it turns out to be the hardest thing we've ever had to do.

[lakey]

Thank you for your thoughts, Levy vs Smart.

[Devil_Anse]

In the posted articles, this columnist Tim Rollins raises many good points. Most have been raised before by posters on this forum, but then, posters here talk about the case daily, whereas surely Mr. Rollins does not.

A couple of things he said, though, tend to stick in my craw (to borrow one of his own expressions.) Hearing someone who is described as "a New Yorker with an attitude" accuse people from any other region of "smugness, arrogance, and elitism" is a JOKE! Puh-leeze! Sorry, Mr. Rollins, if we blighted peasants in "flyover country" can't meet your high expectations. Also, I assume this man is some sophisticated, trained, well-educated journalist, so I would suggest he get a new editor. Well-educated journalists are not supposed to use phrases such as "like I said," or "she could have fell asleep."

Mr. Rollins apparently has a bone to pick with the people of SLC, and I think it's a sort of religious difference, stemming from the old debate between free will and determinism. He can't seem to understand what he apparently sees as their tendency to perhaps take too much on faith, and see some things as being preordained. He should leave his personal criticism out of his columns and just stick with his discussion of the discrepancy in stories, which was quite good.

He cites several tragedies that have occurred in the SLC area, and implies that they could have been prevented if the people had been more aggressive in taking safety measures. I hate to break it to Mr. Rollins, but tragedies like the ones he described can and do happen anywhere. Usually each tragedy has a confluence of unfortunate events leading up to it.

If a parent goes to sleep at night at home, with his child in her own bedroom, why is it unreasonable for him to expect the child to still be there when he wakes up? There are still many, many communities in which people proudly say "they never lock their doors." It's not like the Smarts were letting their daughter roam the streets at night. If they are to blame for their daughter's disappearing from her own bedroom, then that means we have to blame the parents of the little girl who was pulled from her bedroom and beaten with a hammer, and the parents of Jennifer Short, b/c someone violated their home, and the parents of Polly Klaas, too, b/c a man came right into Polly's bedroom. That sort of thinking is hysterical and wrong.

[Devil_Anse]

how would you compare the Ramsey case with this one?,

Every time I go to some of those true crime sites--the ones that clearly started out as followers of the neverending Ramsey case--I always try to think of this case as compared to the Ramsey case. But, while I used to be up on all that happened in the Ramsey case, I'm not totally up to speed on it now. I heard that in the Ramsey case, the ransom note was suspect, and they tried to get handwriting exemplars from everyone, but never could get a valid one from Patsy b/c she was always on some sort of medication to help her cope with the horror of the loss. I also read that someone wrote a book analyzing the words of the ransom note, making a case that a person who had had a serious bout with cancer (as Patsy had) might write a note with such wording. Then I heard that a stick used to tighten the garotte around the little girl's neck had turned out to be a fragment of one of Patsy's paintbrushes. Then there was the report that Jonbenet was constantly being taken to the doctor (by her mother) for bladder infections and bedwetting problems. Of course, there's also the recent report that the footprint and handprint do not belong to any outsider, but belonged to close family members.

There was also a report that during one of the first police searches, Patsy sat curled in a chair with her hands over her face, apparently overcome with grief, but one officer claimed to see her peeking at them through her fingers, watching their reactions. That reminds me of my first impression of Ed--he was crying, but no tears were coming out. A lot of people wondered about him at that point. Also, the fact that Ed had to be hospitalized for a few days--we've followed cases like this, how many times have we heard that any of the distraught parents had to be hospitalized?

I also wondered if anyone in the Smart family had ever suffered from mental instability. But I've never heard word one, that this was the case.

The Ramseys--if they did it--had only one little boy to keep quiet. They denied police access to him for a long time, at least in my memory. The Smarts, OTOH, have apparently let several professionals interview Mary Katherine. And the Smarts have 4 other children, including an older one, to "keep quiet." I just don't see how they could hide a big secret for this length of time--if they have one. Also, all those neighbors who came into the house like a herd of elephants that morning, all those neighbors can't have been in cahoots with the Smarts. If there is anything funny about Elizabeth's immediate family, I feel sure that someone noticed something, and I can't believe that that person hasn't talked, or isn't at least on the verge of talking.

If you know someone in SLC, by all means, see if you can get us some more "inside" information!

[Devil_Anse]

I just can't figure out what to think, as to whether Ricci was involved or not in Elizabeth's disappearance. One strong point is that he knew and admired Elizabeth.

Whether or not he had anything to do with it, I feel sure Ricci was involved in some sort of illegal doings during that time period btw May 31 and June 8--even if it was no more than lending his jeep to someone, knowing that person was going to use it in the commission of crimes. Since he'd spent so much time in prison, it just makes sense that a great many of Ricci's acquaintances were probably people he'd met in prison. I don't believe that being in prison really rehabilitates anyone, so really what was there to make Ricci change his ways once he was on the outside?

If someone is caught in the web of heroin addiction, he may be "in recovery," but IMO, he is never really completely cured. And having a periodic craving for heroin has got to be something that would lead anyone into the world of criminals.

He's dead, and beyond the reach of any earthly judgment now, but IMO, he doesn't exactly qualify for sainthood.