Interviews with more than a dozen investigators in this case? That's not good enough for you? Do you claim to know more than the investigators in this case? Why are you spinning your wheels and our wheels with this small question, which seems to depend on whether Ricci actually had a syringe stuck in his arm when the police came to arrest him?
Yes, heaven forbid we would speculate based on someone's PAST behavior. It's better to speculate based on that than to speculate based on some strange dislike for the Smarts b/c they are too "white" or too "perfect-looking" or too "wholesome-acting." (I'm SPECULATING about what the motive might be for the preference for Ricci over the Smarts.)
And better, I guess, to speculate based on some strange attachment to a low-life, dirtball, repeat-criminal who used his wife, used his employer Smart, used his employer Mitchell (for example, wonder whose posthole digger that was), used the memory of his little dead son (when the boy's mother Robin White said on TV that Ricci never paid a bit of attention to the boy when he was alive, and certainly didn't support him), used his running buddy Remington (convenient name to give police about Federal Hgts. jobs, to take heat off himself), and used his mechanic (bill still unpaid as of Moul's interviews). Why do you, an intelligent person, go to such lengths to defend the memory of this man? Do you really think you could have trusted this man in any scenario btw you and him, especially the proverbial dark alley? I worry about you. This guy was not Jean Valjean. He wasn't even Al Gore.