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Questionable Motives

6/25/02
Public Forum Letter
SLC Tribune

Questionable Motives

Concerning the investigation of the Elizabeth Smart case: Acknowledging that every avenue must be investigated, why did The Tribune put such heavy emphasis on the family as suspects, prompting many national media outlets to follow suit?
Is it the most plausible explanation? The police clearly don't think so, despite what unnamed individuals may have told The Tribune. These families have been frank and cooperative and have not sought to protect themselves in doing so. Yet The Tribune skewed that very circumstance, and skewered a family amid the greatest suffering most of us can imagine.
It couldn't be Tom Smart's Deseret News affiliation. Too minor, I would hope. Surely it couldn't be the potential career gains for the reporters who crafted the intriguing arrangement of opinion and conjecture from "unnamed law enforcement sources." Or the institutional gains in selling more papers, and most importantly, getting The Tribune noticed by and widely mentioned in the national media outlets that "largely confirmed" the story. Surely we can hope for better than that. Can't we?
Yet these motives have all crossed my mind. Am I wrong to publish them? I suppose so, mainly because I only have as much on The Trib as The Trib has on these families. I'm told by a highly placed unnamed media source that The New York Times wouldn't touch The Tribune 's allegations. But the media is increasingly carnivorous, and seems to care less and less whether the meat is cooked or raw.
To all the Smarts and Francoms, to Ed and Lois and their children, hang on. Hang on. We are with you, with Elizabeth, and all will be well.

CYNTHIA COLLIER
Holladay

Ricci -- who once shot and wounded a police officer during a burglary -- has spent much of the past 30 years behind bars. Since his first adult conviction for burglary in 1972, he has been convicted of theft, escape from custody, aggravated robbery and attempted murder.
He has escaped or absconded from Utah State Prison twice, the first time in 1978, when he failed to return from a home visit during Easter weekend; and again in 1983, when he subsequently fired a sawed-off shotgun at an officer who interrupted him during the burglary of a Salt Lake City drug store, according to Salt Lake Tribune news stories from the time.