Salt Lake City police Chief Rick Dinse said, however, that police were not ready to charge the handyman, Richard Ricci, with any involvement in the abduction of Elizabeth, and said the 48-year-old ex-convict is not the only person investigators are looking at in the case.
"There is no question there is a connectivity between Mr. Ricci, these charges and the Smart case, but that does not mean that he's the abductor in this case," Dinse said. "There are other people we are looking at."
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/us/DailyNews/missingutahgirl020711.html"There is no question there is a connectivity between Mr. Ricci, these charges and the Smart case, etc." They have to find the body b/f they charge anyone. It would be very risky to try anyone for the abduction w/o knowing if Elizabeth is alive or dead, especially since she's almost surely dead.
And once they indict someone for Elizabeth's murder, or just for her kidnapping, that starts the legal clock running, and they can't slow it down. They might have ended up convicting Ricci of kidnapping, when he'd really done murder, and then if they later got evidence of his having done murder, double jeopardy would have prevented them from ever convicting him of the murder.