Smart family: Ricci's death doesn't end search

The latest news... Sorry the weekly thread posts are just is too much to handle with petty and rude arguments on it. If a new "news report" comes up and if this thread is getting long I will start a new thread based on the new Smart Case "news report" at the time it is published.

Ping...

Thanks, I agree with all you said! I have felt something would be happening soon. I just didn't think that it would be Ricci dying!

Great double post! (Sarcasm off)

**Great double post! (Sarcasm off) **

Post hiccups. Type with your keyboard upside down and they'll go away. :o)

Thank you. :o)

Thanks for the ping - I hadn't realized he'd passed away.

9/1/02

Smarts seeking new leads

They believe clues may surface in wake of Ricci's death

By Pat Reavy
Deseret News staff writer

The family of Elizabeth Smart says it still has faith the mystery surrounding Elizabeth's kidnapping will be solved. And whatever information Richard Ricci took to the grave with him will not stop the investigation.

Richard Ricci

Cynthia Smart Owens, Elizabeth's aunt, spoke on behalf of the Smart family Saturday. Saying the case is now in God's hands, Owens said the family has great faith that someone with information will step forward now that Ricci is gone.
"We know other people do have some of these answers," Owens said.
Specifically, the Smarts want to know who picked up Ricci June 8 from Neth's Auto Repair after he dropped off his white Jeep Cherokee. And they want to talk to anyone with information surrounding an apparent July 24 break-in attempt at the home of Jeannie and Steve Wright. Elizabeth's mother, Lois Smart, is Jeannie's sister.
Ed Smart, Elizabeth's father, announced a $3,000 reward Friday for anyone with answers to those two questions.
Ricci, 48, was pulled off life support Friday night at University Hospital and pronounced dead at 7:28 p.m. He never regained consciousness after suffering a massive brain hemorrhage Tuesday while in his cell at the Utah State Prison.
Ricci's body was taken to the Utah State Medical Examiner's Office Friday night for an autopsy. Neither Department of Corrections spokesman Jack Ford nor Ricci family spokeswoman Nancy Pomeroy knew when the autopsy would be completed or when the results would be released.
Pomeroy said Angela Ricci, Richard's wife, would at some point address the media regarding her husband's death. Saturday however, Angela Ricci was deeply grieving and asked that her privacy be respected, Pomeroy said.

Cynthia Smart Owens says Richard Ricci's previous crimes and Elizabeth's abduction share similarities.

Ravell Call, Deseret News

Angela Ricci did say through her spokeswoman that despite her husband's criminal history, she wants others to know that there is a different side to him that the public didn't see.
Through Pomeroy, Angela Ricci said her husband nursed her back to health after she was injured in a severe traffic accident two years ago. She also said her husband loved to cook and would always cook extra for visiting LDS missionaries or her parents. He was a soft-spoken person with a good sense of humor, she said.
The Smart family issued a statement Saturday expressing their "heartfelt condolences" to Angela Ricci.
With Ricci's passing, a number of outstanding questions surrounding his involvement in the kidnapping remain. Since his arrest on an unrelated parole violation June 14, Ricci denied having any involvement in Elizabeth Smart's abduction.
But Owens said it's hard to ignore Ricci's past history and the striking similarities his previous crimes had to Elizabeth's kidnapping.
Ricci was charged with theft and burglary for stealing items from the Smart's house and another house. In the second burglary, Ricci was accused in 3rd District Court of going into a bedroom where someone was sleeping and stealing items out of the room.

Elizabeth Smart

"We don't know," Owens said when asked if the Smart family thinks Ricci was for sure involved in the abduction. "But it's so striking, the similarities."
The Smarts' suspicions are also raised by the fact police believe Ricci lied to them about where he was the night of the kidnapping. If Ricci is innocent, why didn't he try to clear himself when he had the chance? asked Owens.
Based on the belief Ricci did not act alone, the family remains confident the case has not hit a permanent road block.
"There is so much evidence that suggests someone else was involved," Owens said. "There is a great deal of hope. We remain optimistic."
While not revealing names, Owens said she knew police had a "short list" of specific people under investigation.
Salt Lake police concurred Friday the investigation "still had breath" and Ricci was just one of a number of people being looked at. They concede however, that Ricci's death will have a big impact on the case.
Meanwhile, between 40 and 50 people on ATVs and horses Saturday searched for signs of Elizabeth in the Fairview Canyon area in Manti after two hikers reported suspicious activity in the area.
Ed and Lois Smart were away this weekend spending quiet time with each other, Owens said.

E-mail: preavy@desnews.com

Potential suspect in Elizabeth Smart abduction dies
By CATHERINE BLAKE
Associated Press Writer
SALT LAKE CITY (Sept. 1) — Detectives investigating the disappearance of Elizabeth Smart lost their best lead when Richard Albert Ricci died, leaving them no closer to solving the crime than they were nearly three months ago.

But a Smart family member said Saturday she hopes Ricci’s death will lead anyone who has information about the man or the crime to come forward.

“There’s just so much that’s suspicious” about Ricci, said Cynthia Smart-Owens, the missing girl’s aunt. She said she thinks more than one person was involved in the kidnapping, though the sole witness, Elizabeth’s 9-year-old sister, reported seeing only one person in the bedroom where Elizabeth was taken at gunpoint June 5.

Police Capt. Scott Atkinson on Saturday refused to comment on whether he thought more than one person was involved in the adbuction.

“We’re still headed down the same road we’ve been on, only now, we don’t have the opportunity to speak to Mr. Ricci anymore,” Atkinson said. Investigators haven’t gotten any new leads since Ricci died, he said.

Doctors said Ricci, 48, had an irreversible injury to the brain stem after a hemorrhage Tuesday night. His family, including his wife, Angela, his mother, brother and sister, decided to take Ricci off the ventilator Friday evening after his condition worsened and he lost the ability to breathe on his own, said Dr. Richard J. Sperry.

Police are no closer to finding 14-year-old Elizabeth than they were when the girl was taken.

Ricci, a felon with a long prison record, once worked in the Smart home as a handyman. He had been charged with stealing items from the Smart’s house, but investigators had never been able to charge him with the kidnapping.

Though they had no proof Ricci was involved, detectives still weren’t satisfied with Ricci’s answers to their questions.

“He has told us things we don’t believe are true,” Salt Lake City Police Chief Rick Dinse said. “We also have a lot of information about him, about his relationship to the family.”

His death will have a big impact on the investigation, Dinse said, though he’d give no details on the clues his officers have collected.

Ed Smart, the missing girl’s father, has said he never would have hired Ricci if he’d known about the man’s criminal past, which included convictions for burglary and assaulting a police officer.

“What he knows goes with him,” police Capt. Scott Atkinson said Friday night. “With Ricci gone, there will be no more opportunity to question him about things left unsaid or things he said that we didn’t believe.”

Ricci has maintained his innocence throughout the investigation. In late June, he said he had given 26 hours of police interviews, taken polygraph tests, given a blood sample and surrendered the impounded Jeep given him by Ed Smart as payment for work.

Ricci was in jail on a parole violation when he suffered the brain hemorrhage.

Doctors tried to save Ricci in a Tuesday operation to remove a blood clot in his brain and alleviate pressure on his brain stem, but the damage had already been done. There is no indication of foul play, and no suicide note was found in Ricci’s jail cell.

Police had said Ricci’s death could make it difficult to ever find Elizabeth or determine what happen to her.

Elizabeth’s family offered $3,000 rewards for information on who picked up Ricci when he left his white Jeep Cherokee at a repair shop on June 8, three days after the abduction, and information regarding a July 24 attempted break-in at the home of Elizabeth’s aunt.

Cynthia Smart-Owens, speaking to the media on Saturday, said whoever picked Ricci up from the auto shop could have information about the crime.

“That would be a good person to talk to,” she said. “Somebody had an idea of what he was doing.”

A $250,000 reward was posted in June for information leading to Elizabeth’s safe recovery. A separate $25,000 reward was offered for information leading to finding Elizabeth or contributing to the arrest and conviction of her abductor. Neither has been claimed.

The Smart family also is asking for information regarding a July 24 attempted break-in at the Cottonwood Heights home of Jeannie and Steve Wright. Lois Smart, Elizabeth’s mother, is Jeannie Wright’s sister.

The families are close and regularly spent Sundays together. Elizabeth and the Wright’s 15-year-old daughter also were close, Ed Smart said.

Salt Lake County sheriff’s deputies reported that the screen covering the 15-year-old’s window was cut and that a chair was found by the window.

The break-in also happened at the same time of night.

Why Ricci Topped Cop List

Sunday, September 1, 2002

Police have been unable to determine if Richard Ricci was involved in the abduction of 14-year-old Elizabeth Smart and, if he was, whether he had help. Members of the Smart family are "quite convinced there was somebody with Richard," said Elizabeth's aunt, Cynthia Smart Owens, during a family news conference Saturday. "There's so much evidence that someone else was involved."
(Danny La/The Salt Lake Tribune)

BY MICHAEL VIGH and KEVIN CANTERA
© 2002, THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE

    Though police have never publicly called Richard Albert Ricci anything but a "potential" suspect in the kidnapping of Elizabeth Smart, among the inner circle of investigators there remains scant doubt that the career criminal, who died Friday, somehow managed to snatch the girl without a trace.
    But the nagging question police have been unable to answer is: If Ricci did it, could he have done it alone, or did he work with at least one accomplice? And if he did it, why is there not any physical evidence linking him to the crime?
    Ricci insisted on his innocence until his death late Friday from a massive brain hemorrhage. And with him as their prime suspect, investigators have little to show -- at least publicly -- in their three-month probe into the 14-year-old's June 5 disappearance.
    With intriguing circumstantial evidence -- failed lie detector tests, a dubious alibi and a history of brazen nighttime home break-ins specifically targeting children's rooms -- police say Ricci fits almost seamlessly into a scenario of a desperate, drug-addled burglary attempt gone awry.
    The Salt Lake Tribune has pieced together the following scenario based on interviews with more than a dozen investigators on the case:
    Ricci, 48, whose criminal history dates back three decades, was a hard-core heroin addict with a costly habit. In need of easy cash, he targeted the Smart home, where he had worked odd jobs for the family a year or so earlier.
    After somehow entering the Federal Heights home -- whether through a cut window screen in the kitchen or elsewhere -- Ricci crept upstairs to the bedroom Elizabeth shared with the crime's only witness -- her then 9-year-old sister Mary Katherine.
    Ricci was known to enter kids' rooms during break-ins, based on his belief that items stolen from children would simply be written off by parents as lost. Having worked in the home nine months earlier, Ricci knew of small yet valuable items kept on the girls' dressers.
    But Ricci's simple plan was foiled when Elizabeth -- a light sleeper -- awoke to find the man she recognized lurking in the darkened room.
    The intruder threatened to shoot Elizabeth with his small black handgun if she didn't keep quiet, according to Mary Katherine, who apparently feigned sleep while trying her best to capture mental images of the intruder.
    She would later describe her sister's captor as a white male, about 5-foot-9, with dark hair on the backs of his hands and wearing an odd get up -- a white polo shirt, a tan jacket and a tan British-style cap. Two weeks later police would confiscate just such a hat from the trailer of Ricci's father-in-law, who lived next door to him. They also took a machete from the man's shed.
    Police initially reported that the kidnapper wore a white baseball cap, but altered that description about a week after Elizabeth disappeared based on more extensive interviews a specially trained investigator conducted with Mary Katherine.
   Elizabeth, wearing red satin pajamas and a pair of sneakers her captor ordered her to grab, was roughly led down the stairs and out of the house, the 9-year-old would later tell police.
    When Elizabeth fell and skinned her knee on the driveway, Mary Katherine heard her faint yelp of pain -- the last sound she would hear from her sister.
    But the problem with the above scenario is that no physical evidence has been found to back it up. All police have is Ricci's past behavior and suspicious alibi -- that he was home sleeping with his wife, who has acknowledged taking prescription narcotics that night.
    In fact, a minority of police investigators interviewed by The Tribune expressed skepticism over this scenario. They say that while Ricci's history suggests his possible involvement, they remain flummoxed by the complete absence of forensic evidence to tie him to the crime.
    Those doubters acknowledge the wealth of unanswered questions, but are unable to believe that Ricci was smart enough to have committed the crime without leaving a shred of forensic evidence.
    No hair fibers, fingerprints, blood or other tell-tale clues have been discovered connecting Ricci to the crime. And without finding Elizabeth -- alive or dead -- police seem unable to make a case against anybody.
    During the investigation, Ricci was questioned extensively and consistently maintained his innocence.
    Still, Salt Lake City Police Chief Rick Dinse has publicly focused on Ricci, questioning his refusal to tell police where his 1990 Jeep Cherokee, given to him last year by Elizabeth's father, Ed Smart, was during the week of the abduction.
    Ricci's West Valley City mechanic Neth Moul told police and a federal grand jury that Ricci surreptitiously took the vehicle from his lot May 30, returning the mud-spattered vehicle nine days later with an additional 1,000 miles on the odometer.
    Police had hoped to analyze mud samples from the Jeep, but the vehicle was washed clean before investigators had a chance to search it. Besides, investigators note that Elizabeth rode in the Jeep when it belonged to her father, and thus even if physical evidence had been found inside, it would not incriminate Ricci.
   "There are questions that [Ricci] has refused to answer," Dinse said. "He has been less than candid."
    Dinse acknowledged that Ricci's death could make it "impossible" to ever clear him: "I'm not saying I won't someday call Ricci our main suspect, but if I ever do, I will lay out the evidence against him."
    Ricci's mother-in-law, Roxie Morse, told The Tribune on Saturday that she believes police simply want to pin the abduction on her now deceased son-in-law.
    Police "wanted him to give them the answers they wanted to hear," Morse said, adding that investigators would be "stupid" if they stopped looking for the "real" kidnapper.
    "He didn't do it, he's innocent. They've got to keep looking for the person who really did this," she said.
    Elizabeth's family shares the prevailing police belief that Ricci was somehow involved in the teen's disappearance, but they believe somebody connected to Ricci is holding the girl -- still alive -- somewhere.
    Family members are "quite convinced there was somebody with Richard. . . . There's so much evidence that someone else was involved," said Cynthia Smart Owens, one of Elizabeth's aunts.
    Police continue to say that no one -- even close family members or acquaintances -- has been eliminated from scrutiny.
    mvigh@sltrib.com; kcantera@sltrib.com

Ricci Blamed Long Criminal History on 'Heroin ... Prescription Narcotics'

Sunday, September 1, 2002

BY STEPHEN HUNT
THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE

    Like many career criminals, Richard Albert Ricci had a long-standing drug problem.
    Ricci, who died Friday at age 48, failed four times at parole during his lifetime, either for committing new crimes or violating release terms. And while in prison, he would repeatedly claim to have overcome his drug addiction, yet continued to use drugs, according to Utah Board of Pardons and Parole.
    "Ricci's a hard one to figure out,'' Region III Adult Probation & Parole spokesman Bradley Bassi said Wednesday, prior to Ricci's death from a brain hemorrhage. ''The ones who usually have problems have chips on their shoulders. Ricci does not."
    Ricci's first criminal conviction as an adult was for second-degree burglary in October 1972. Granted a parole in December 1974, Ricci was back to prison within two years after he pleaded guilty to attempted burglary and attempted vehicle burglary.
    According to parole records, Ricci absconded in 1978 when he failed to return from an Easter weekend home visit. Paroled again in March 1979, Ricci was back in prison a year later for associating with a known felon, as well as two new criminal allegations: a burglary arrest in Pima County, Ariz., and a Salt Lake County conviction for possession of burglary tools -- a pair of gloves, pliers and a screwdriver.
    Ricci won a new parole date of June 1981, but was returned to prison five months later for breaking into a Carbon County tavern. Ricci, who used a screwdriver to break into the jukebox, change machine and a safe, had filled a trash can with $250 in coins, according to police.
    Despite the new conviction, Ricci was granted a March 1984 parole date. But he once again absconded during a home furlough. While a fugitive, he robbed a fast-food restaurant and shot at a police officer during a drugstore burglary.
    Ricci told a parole hearing officer that drugs were the motivation behind the August 1983 break-in at the Sugar House pharmacy. When the Salt Lake City police officer shot at Ricci, he fired back with a sawed-off shotgun, inflicting minor wounds.
    Charged in that incident with a handful of felonies, Ricci pleaded guilty to first-degree felony counts of attempted murder and aggravated robbery and was sentenced to prison for up to life.
    "I was a wreck 10 years ago," Ricci said during a 1993 parole hearing. "I was in self-destruct mode." At a subsequent parole hearing, Ricci said his drug of choice was "heroin . . . or any kind of prescription narcotics."
    Based on good prison behavior, he was granted a June 1995 parole date. But he was soon involved in new criminal activity.
    Ricci was living with his fiancee and her three sons in Elsinore, Sevier County, and working for a landscaping company when he loaned his pickup truck to some friends, who used it to steal more than $2,500 in donated items from a local food bank.
    Ricci denied any involvement or foreknowledge of the Jan. 2, 1996, burglary, but admitted he accepted food he knew was stolen. Ricci pleaded guilty to third-degree felony theft and a burglary count was dismissed.
    Ricci was subsequently given a July 2000 parole date, which was bumped back two months because he again used drugs in prison. He was paroled Sept. 12, 2000.

Suspect's Death Failed to Bring Closure in a Similar Case

Sunday, September 1, 2002

BY LINDA FANTIN
THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE

    Richard Ricci's death doesn't change the fact that police still believe he was involved in Elizabeth Smart's disappearance, and that is where their focus will remain.
    Simply put: Police have no solid evidence suggesting otherwise. Then there's Occam's razor -- the principle that the least complicated theory is most likely the right one.
    But there is such a thing as too simple, and for one Florida family, such logic may have cost them the chance to find a loved one.
    On March 19, 1984, 15-year-old Colleen Orsborn disappeared from a Daytona Beach mall. At first, family members and police considered her a runaway. It wouldn't have been the first time.
    But as time went by, and more girls turned up dead or missing, police focused their attention on Christopher Wilder, a millionaire developer whose hobbies included car racing and torturing teenage girls.
    Wilder had been spotted at the mall where Colleen was last seen, and he had a pattern of luring girls from such places with promises of modeling work.
    He eluded authorities for two months, going on a coast-to-coast killing spree, raping and murdering a dozen women in 1984. Three survived and identified Wilder as the culprit. He died in a shoot-out with New Hampshire state troopers before he could be charged with any crimes.
    After Wilder was killed, Florida authorities stopped investigating Colleen Orsborn's disappearance, said her brother, Bruce Orsborn. "When they lost him they lost their best lead," he said. "They said they kept the files open but we never heard from them again."
    Then, in February 2001, Orsborn received an anonymous letter from Manchester, N.H. The author said he was dying of cirrhosis of the liver and needed to unburden his soul.
    "I killed your beloved Colleen nearly 15 years ago," he wrote. "For that I can only beg your forgiveness. I can only hope to make amends buy [sic] disclosing to you where her innocent little body is."
    The letter said he buried Colleen and her belongings along the Tomaka River off Route 415 near Daytona Beach. It was signed with the Christian fish symbol.
    The author knew Colleen was petite and seemed familiar with the area. Even the county sheriff's office believed the letter was legitimate. But by then, the stretch of swamp where the author said the body was buried was covered by urban sprawl and authorities said a search would be futile.
    For the family, letting go again is not so simple.
    "It opened old wounds again," Orsborn said. "My sisters want closure and finally put her to rest. But it's like the sheriff's office just forgot all about it again."
    Salt Lake City Police Chief Rick Dinse insists Ricci's death will not torpedo the investigation into Elizabeth Smart's kidnapping. Nor do police have any intention of giving up on the search for Elizabeth, he said.
    But police believed Ricci was a big key to solving the mystery, and now that he is dead, it is difficult to know just what direction police will go in.
    "We said all along Mr. Ricci is somebody we have a lot of interest in. He's at the top of our list. There are questions about things that he did and things he says he didn't do," Dinse said.
    "Our priorities have always been finding her and prosecuting the individual who did it," the police chief said. "They're both equal priorities, but if I had a choice I'd want to find her for sure."

Thanks brigette. I'll try to stick to discussing the articles on this thread. :)

Didn't this statement a history of brazen nighttime home break-ins specifically targeting children's rooms just jump out at you? Yikes, new information. This week may prove to be an interesting one with new facts being released by the police, and the Smarts probably being more able to say stuff also. And I do have sympathy for Angela Ricci, I think the Riccis did love each other, and it is hard to lose a husband.

Utah Girl there are no rules... I just thought that some people would rather read the news than all the other BS that has been on the weekly thread. They don't seem to be reporting the news in the case on other thread.

Thanks for posting the whole articles. Welcome back, you have been missed. :)

The Salt Lake Tribune has pieced together the following scenario based on interviews with more than a dozen investigators on the case: Ricci, 48, whose criminal history dates back three decades, was a hard-core heroin addict with a costly habit. In need of easy cash, he targeted the Smart home, where he had worked odd jobs for the family a year or so earlier. After somehow entering the Federal Heights home -- whether through a cut window screen in the kitchen or elsewhere -- Ricci crept upstairs to the bedroom Elizabeth shared with the crime's only witness -- her then 9-year-old sister Mary Katherine. Ricci was known to enter kids' rooms during break-ins, based on his belief that items stolen from children would simply be written off by parents as lost. Having worked in the home nine months earlier, Ricci knew of small yet valuable items kept on the girls' dressers. But Ricci's simple plan was foiled when Elizabeth -- a light sleeper -- awoke to find the man she recognized lurking in the darkened room. The intruder threatened to shoot Elizabeth with his small black handgun if she didn't keep quiet, according to Mary Katherine, who apparently feigned sleep while trying her best to capture mental images of the intruder.

I think alot more will come out since he is dead, I think the police will come out possibly with what evidence they had on him to justify why they thought he was the number 1 suspect in the case. If they don't they are being foolish.

Yeah, I think you are right. Just that one comment that Ricci had a history of entering children's bedrooms really shook me up. And yet all the evidence is circumstantial, nothing to tie him to the crime, no DNA, no nothing.

And heroin addicts, indeed most addicts, will do anything to get money to feed their drug habits. I still think Elizabeth's abduction was a burglary gone bad. And the perp didn't realize that the Amber alert would take affect, didn't know about the Amber alert, and the perp(s) were caught off-guard, having the description out a few short hours later all over the local news, and then the national news.

I had to get away from the case and FR for awhile. I'll do my best to post a new thread when this one gets long, but I will keep coming back here to this thread while it is a short one and post news reports as I learn of them.

Personal Story - Off Topic
I woke this morning to news that one of our dogs died overnight. It was our Rottie and she must have passed away in her sleep. She would have been 9 years old on 9/20. She was not sick that we know of, but the hubby found her dead in the dog pen this morning when he went to let them out for the day. They get locked up at night due to the coyotes. Her "hubby" my 9 year old Belgian Tervuren is extremely tore up about it (very sensitive dogs). My hubby buried her early this morning on our 5 acres of land. That is 3 animals I have lost in the last 2 months, 2 cats and now a dog. We wonder if possibly the West Nile Illiness is what is killing them, the cats showed they were ill and we had to put the cats down, but the dog died on her own without showing any real illiness. She was always a problem dog, due to poor breeding, she had bad hips so maybe her heart just gave out. I am down to 2 cats and now 1 dog and that is enough for me. We have the cats for mouse catching and the dogs protect the property and were strictly outdoor dogs and had the run of the 5 acres without taking off on their own.