I don't think it was anyone with a past criminal record.
In spite of the fact it was Ricci's M.O. (breaking into neighbor's house in middle of the night, burglary with pistol), you don't think this kidnapper was a dirtbag friend and cohort of Ricci????? When Ricci knew where Elizabeth slept, may have had a key but knew how to get in anyway like the neighbor's house, had the pistol, bragged to his friends what an easy place to knock off the Smart place was and what easy pickins there were inside??????? Doesn't this at least give you some pause to at least give some brief consideration to the obvious to the thinking posters on the thread, varina?????............................I didn't think so.
If you rule out anyone with a past criminal record, Varina, then you have not been around criminals or the criminal justice system much.
It could have been someone without a past criminal record, but it couldn't have been someone without a PAST of some sort. I'm even including a hypothetical older teenaged boy in that, b/c it wouldn't have been a boy with an absolutely trouble-free past.
If this was someone more sophisticated than the average stereotypical criminal, I still believe that this person would at least have been seen to do a few questionable things, by his family and those who knew him best, at least. That would be the Westerfield type. Westerfield, though he'd been smart enough to avoid police, had done some pretty perverted things in the past--and people knew about them, but they just never reached "critical mass" to the point that they became known to all.
It's hard to be a perv like Westerfield, and get through half your life w/o at least having a couple of scrapes. Whoever did this had a past of some sort.
The fact that whoever did this boldly entered someone else's property in the middle of the night tells me he is such a risk-taker, that he probably acted incautiously in the past and got caught. That would mean a criminal record, probably.
Westerfield was no fool. He knew a lot about the goings-on at Danielle's home. And notice that he indicated surprise when police told him that it had been Damon, the dad, who was home with the kids the night Westerfield boldly walked in and took Danielle. He said, "Are you sure? I could have sworn she [Brenda] told me there was a babysitter that night." He was thinking probably, "man, I could have had some really angry guy coming after me with a baseball bat!" As I said b/f, the guys who do this sort of thing are BIG cowards.
And Ricci may or may not have done it, but there is no denying that he was such a risk-taker, that he walked around in that bedroom at night where that young woman, Lin Lee, was right there sleeping, knowing she could wake up. In fact, she did wake up! He was so good at the game, he still got away with it.