Posted on 08/05/2002 8:50:20 AM PDT by Neenah
sandude...if you read my post, I was NOT berating you at all...I admitted we ALL have thoughts of what might have happened. ME INCLUDED....I was just trying to set a president that it is really better to discuss what we know..or what has been given to us...I need to take that advise, and I think everyone should...otherwise, we are going to have a thousand sceanario's of what MAY have taken place, and we will loose site of what has been presented so far.
I respect your thought. And I don't think anyone should be censored. ok ? friends ?
let's just try to get along ....can we all agree that finding Lizzie is our #1 concern and making whoever took her the object of our hate and disdain....
in other words...everyone should keep posting....for better or for worse, we need to keep brain-storming...
she and Mark Klaus are good friends....and have worked together.......I would think that they would be conversing with each other on the case in private....
so I am going to be listening very carefully to Mark K....to his words..to his attitude...because that might give us a hint of what he knows about the inner workings of the investigation from his friend Jeannie...
for instance,,,if he comes out very positive in the next few interviews then perhaps he knows from Jeanie that they really do have their guy in their sites...
Your mercy knows no boundaries. You are not limited by time or space. We commit to You Elizabeth once again and we pray that by Your mercy, she would be brought home to her family. It has been two long months for this precious child, and yet we know that Your loving arms have never left her. We know You love her and are caring for her, Lord. Please convict the heart of the person who has information that will lead the investigators to her. We pray that You would shine a light in front of those who are diligently searching for her. We submit to Your perfect timing, Lord, and we trust in You for the answers that will surely come. In the Name of Jesus Christ, Amen.
By Kevin Peraino and Andrew Murr
NEWSWEEK
June 24 issue — Tom Smart emerged drawn and tired from Salt Lake City police headquarters. He’d just finished a session with investigators probing the disappearance of his niece, 14-year-old Elizabeth Smart, snatched from her bed in the middle of the night June 5 by an armed man in a tan, short-billed cap.
NOW INVESTIGATORS WERE EXPLORING the alibis of family members, including Tom, a 48-year-old photo editor at the Deseret News, the Mormon Church-owned daily paper. Slouched on a bench in the lobby after giving fingerprints and blood samples, Tom pledged full cooperation with investigators. It’s all right, “tear me apart” if you have to, as long as it will help solve the mystery, Smart told NEWSWEEK
. As frustrated police and hordes of volunteers continued to comb Utah’s deserts and mountains for Elizabeth and her abductor, investigators turned their attention last week to the missing teen’s family in an attempt to shake something—anything—loose. Elizabeth’s father, Edward Smart, a real-estate and mortgage broker, submitted to a polygraph test, and, NEWSWEEK has learned, came out clean, according to one well-placed law-enforcement source.
Polygraphs for other members of the prominent Mormon family, including Tom Smart, were “inconclusive,” the source said. An inconclusive test hardly means that a person is guilty of a crime—or even of trying to hide something. It indicates only that the subject neither failed nor completely passed the polygraph, an often-inaccurate investigative tool that measures the body’s involuntary stress reactions. Officials say they have no plans to give a second test to Tom—whose wife, Heidi, says “he was in bed with me all night” the evening Elizabeth disappeared.
Is it possible that the man police are hunting for, seen only by the frightened 9-year-old sister who shared a bedroom with Elizabeth, wasn’t some random stranger, but kin? Police were increasingly scrutinizing the extended family last week, even as they launched a frantic search to find and question a mysterious drifter who had attended a candlelight vigil for the missing blond teenager. “We decided to take a hard look at the family,” the law-enforcement source said. On Friday teams of FBI agents fanned out to nail down family members’ stories, trying to learn where each one was in the hours before and after Elizabeth’s disappearance. “It comes down to three things,” the source said. “Alibi, alibi, alibi.”
NORMAL PRODECURE
Focusing on the family is normal in child-abduction cases. And for good reason: in almost half the cases, the kidnapper is a relative, according to one study of 1997 cases. “You want to eliminate or reduce the possibility [that a family member did it] as quickly as possible,” says Kenneth Lanning, a retired supervisor in the FBI’s Crimes Against Children section. Salt Lake City police have repeatedly said they have no suspects yet, and that looking at the Smart clan is just “one among many theories,” according to Capt. Scott Atkinson, the lead police spokesman. “The family has been very cooperative,” Atkinson says.
Investigators’ efforts have hardly been limited to grilling the Smarts. By late last week 60 police officers and 40 FBI agents had run down thousands of leads. One involves a 26-year-old homeless drifter named Bret Michael Edmunds, whom police want to question because he was spotted driving slowly in the neighborhood just two mornings before the kidnapping, and later appeared at Elizabeth’s vigil. Police stressed that Edmunds, who has outstanding warrants for fraud and assaulting an officer, isn’t a suspect: for one thing, he stands 6 feet 2 inches and weighs 235, while the intruder described by Elizabeth’s sister is only 5 feet 8. Nonetheless, the search for Edmunds turned into an all-out manhunt by the end of the week, after boys playing in some cattails in a northern Salt Lake suburb found his discarded license plates. On Friday authorities were certain that they had nabbed Edmunds shoplifting from a department store in the Texas Panhandle, but the fingerprints did not match.
There are troubling questions about how a stranger could have broken into the Smarts’ million-dollar home and known exactly which of the seven bedrooms was Elizabeth’s. The Salt Lake Tribune reported Thursday that some investigators now think the screen on the kitchen window where the kidnapper was alleged to have entered was cut from the inside, a sign that the break-in may have been staged. But law-enforcement sources close to the investigation told NEWSWEEK that they “have no evidence of that.” Nonetheless, investigators are puzzled by how someone could have squeezed through the window, which is tall but not very wide and opens with a crank. “We’re not so confident about how he got in,” a source tells NEWSWEEK.
It didn’t help investigators that the crime scene was polluted before they could even set about their work. Elizabeth’s parents apparently had called friends and neighbors to start looking for the girl be-fore they phoned police at 4:01 a.m. By the time investigators arrived, several neighbors were already milling around the Smart house, and others were combing the neighborhood, leaving shoe marks, clothing fibers and fingerprints in their wake. Securing the crime scene is a problem in a lot of cases, says Lanning, the retired FBI supervisor. In the still-unsolved JonBenet Ramsey case, police were highly criticized for lax handling of the crime scene in the early hours. Says Lanning: “All [investigators] can do is deal with the reality you’re dealt.” In Elizabeth Smart’s case, the sad reality is that investigators haven’t been dealt much of a hand at all.
Wouldn't that be strange if something like that did happen. It would be bad enough to get kidnapped but then to get bit by a snake, all in the same day.
Too bad the perps didn't get bit.
Monday, August 5th, it will be two months since 14-year-old Elizabeth Smart disappeared. And so far, there's been no sign of Elizabeth, and no arrests.
It's a situation that is especially frustrating when you consider during the two months, at least two other young girls were kidnapped, and in both cases there is a suspect arrested and behind bars.
Crime Specialist Karen Scullin takes a look at the progression of the case over the last 60 days.
What happened to Elizabeth and why? It's a question Ed and Lois Smart have been living with for two months as they search for their daughter, and as police try to firm up a case against the man they believe is responsible.
On June 5th, in the middle of the night, police say the impossible happened. A man crept into the Smart's Federal Heights home and kidnapped 14-year-old Elizabeth Smart.
Thousands volunteered to search as police worked day and night to find answers.
But it wasn't until June 24th, two and a half weeks after the kidnapping, that police announced a former Smart family handyman, Richard Ricci, had moved to the top of the list of potential suspects.
Chief Rick Dinse/Salt Lake City Police Dept./June 24: "HE HAD SPENT A CONSIDERABLE AMOUNT OF TIME IN THE HOUSE AND WAS VERY FAMILIAR WITH THE HOUSE."
Since that time, police have been building a case against Ricci.
Through theft and burglary charges filed on July 11th, we learned Ricci had allegedly stole from the Smart family before, and that he allegedly crept into another Federal Heights home in the middle of the night, walked into a bedroom where someone was sleeping, and stole jewelry.
Then, just six days later, federal bank robbery charges were filed against Ricci and two others.
The charges paint Ricci as a very violent man who threatened employees at a Sandy bank with a gun and screamed orders at them.
If found guilty, both the burglary charges and the bank robbery charges could have Ricci spending life in prison for being a habitual criminal.
Despite the charges, though,he has not been charged with kidnapping.
Ricci denies any involvement. But several members of law enforcement tell Eyewitness News they're sure he's the man, and it's just a matter of time before they prove it.
The Smart family continues to hold out hope Elizabeth will be safely returned to them, and they say they are confident the police investigation is moving forward.
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