Posted on 06/16/2002 10:53:07 AM PDT by callisto
Edward Smart, the father of missing Salt Lake City teen Elizabeth Smart, submitted to a polygraph test and came out clean, a well-placed law-enforcement source tells Newsweek. But polygraph results for other members of the prominent Mormon family -- including Elizabeth's uncle, Tom Smart -- were "inconclusive," Newsweek reports in the current issue. In an interview with Newsweek, Tom Smart pledged full cooperation with investigators probing the disappearance of his 14-year-old niece who was snatched from her bed in the middle of the night June 5. It's all right, "tear me apart," if you have to, as long as it will help solve the mystery, he tells Newsweek. Officials say they have no plans to give a second polygraph to Tom Smart, whose wife, Heidi says "he was in bed with me all night" the evening Elizabeth disappeared, report Los Angeles Correspondent Andrew Murr and Chicago Correspondent Kevin Peraino in the June 24 issue of Newsweek (on newsstands Monday, June 17). Police were increasingly scrutinizing the family last week. "We decided to take a hard look at the family," the law-enforcement source tells Newsweek. 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. Troubling questions remain about how a stranger could have broken into the Smarts' million-dollar home. Some investigators 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 tell 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. --PRNewswire
Seems like I read or heard recently that Polly Klass' father either flunked or was inconclusive on his test too.
We know she played it for her grandfather's funeral Mon. nite. We know she was scheduled to play it for a graduation and school group Tuesday night.
Might someone have started following her, attending each, making a little scrapbook of the programs, finally winding up perhaps by attending the candlelight vigil for her?
Odds and ends, bits and pieces, maybe snapping a photo covertly here and there...and then, like trapping the rarest butterfly of all for he collection, ...the girl herself.
It's only value is as an interrogation tool (and only then for someone who is tricked into thinking the results are meaningful.)
"baseline" questions that don't provoke the expected response skew the results. If you didn't steal that candy bar when you were three, you are going to get inconclusive results on the rest of the test.
That troubling thought occurred to me also. Polygamy is controlled by church elders, but is usually practiced only in remote outlying areas.
What this probably means is that they suspect the uncle, and therefore told him that the machine says he is lying to put pressure on him. The reality is that they have no idea. Sure, the people who give the tests will tell you that they work, after all, their livelihoods depend on it.
However, everyone use your keen freeper logic here: A machine that relies on "interpretation" by the people whose livliehoods depend on it should be the first sign that they are bogus. It's like Ford telling you that your car really gets 60 miles per gallon, but that you need a professional to administer the gas and read the odometer to know that. It's all BS.
Well, I wouldn't necessarily say that. Some are cursed with sleeping light.
At the risk of being flamed yet again (and suffering another in a series of sermons from "crowfoot"), I think that this story, when it comes out, will bear little or no resemblance to the "stranger-through-the-window-with-a-gun" fairytale that was put out at the start.
I agree.
One of the cable new stations, can't recall which, FN?, rereported a statement from the father that he made within a day of the abduction regarding the fact he had left the garage door open for several hours in the evening on the day of the abduction.
I'm confused, which church are you talking about?
Not really. Assuming the questions are well designed, it is very diffuclt to pass if you're lying, but fairly easy to fail even if you're telling the truth. In short, false-negatives are very rare but false positives are quite common.
That the uncle's test results are inconclusive means nothing.
Polygraph is a poor measure of truthfulness--if you don't think it's a lie, or really don't think there's anything wrong with lying, why would you be nervous? Average joes believe the polygrapher has some magic power to read the truth, and they betray themselves.
Listening to some of the statements from the family is as if they know who took her and are trying to talk to the person to calm them down so Elizabeth doesn't get hurt.
Just speculating here...
Don't you think the SLC police seem to know much more than they are saying? I don't think they are like the keystone cops of DC as some have suggested. Especially since this latest revelation regarding the tan golf cap, I think they have a darn good idea who did it and are playing a good game of chess with the perp.
A lot of us have been flamed lately for daring to speak about this case.
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