***Searchers Go Door-to-Door in Hunt for Kidnapped Girl***

ABCNews.com ^ | 6/18/02 | Judy Muller & Dean Schabner

[MVV]

Lois Smart sends a message to her missing daughter to be strong, as her husband, Ed, reacts during a news conference on June 17.

— The focus of the search for missing Salt Lake City 14-year-old Elizabeth Smart will shift to neighborhood efforts today, as the police investigation into the girl's alleged abduction seems to have slowed. Mobile watch leaders met Monday night and today plan to go throughout the city, neighborhood by neighborhood, canvassing people door-to-door hoping to gain new information in the case.

"While we've searched the whole city there are still pockets, places that we have not been yet," Salt Lake City Councilman Eric Jergensen said. "We are going door-to-door to ask people if they've seen Elizabeth or anything suspicious. Something has to break and if any of us can help in that break we need to be out doing it."

The turnout of volunteers has dropped from more than 1,000 a day in the first few days after Elizabeth disappeared on June 5, to a few hundred a day most of last week, to less than a hundred over the last few days.

The family and their supporters decided to end the searches that were being coordinated out of a central command post over the weekend, and now have asked neighborhoods to carry on their own local efforts.

"In this case, where people are impacted by a family having tremendous stresses on them, I find people identify with that and all we have to do is remind, we don't have to push," said former Salt Lake City mayor Ted Wilson, who is coordinating what he called an "encouragement center," to keep the search effort alive.

Elizabeth was taken in the middle of the night from the bedroom she shared with her 9-year-old sister by a man armed with a handgun, the younger girl told police. However, the room was too dark for the girl to get a good look at the abductor, police said.

Police have steadfastly refused to comment on what evidence they have gathered in their investigation, they have not released a sketch of any suspect and have said they did not know what the motive for the abduction was.

On Monday, police said they had no new information, and were plowing through the approximately 6,500 telephone tips they had received. Salt Lake City police spokesman Capt. Scott Atkinson said that about 600 of those have seemed to be worth pursuing, and of those there are still "a couple hundred" that investigators need to follow up on.

"I think we're a lot further than we were Day One," he said. "We are closer, but we don't have any particular focus at this time."

Then he added: "I don't know that we're any closer to finding her at this time."

Dad: Open Door No Big Deal

Elizabeth Smart's father admitted on Monday that he left the garage door to the family home open for hours the evening before the 14-year-old was taken from her bedroom, but said the issue "has been made into some big deal."

Edward Smart confirmed a Sunday report in the Deseret News that he left the garage door partially open for a couple of hours on the night of the kidnapping, and speculated that the abductor could have come in through the door and hidden in the basement.

"The garage door was open during the day. I did close it that night," he said. "We don't know where the perpetrator came through or went out."

The newspaper reported that Smart left his powered garage door open halfway because he was in a hurry to get his daughter's heat-sensitive harp into the house. He only remembered to close the door just before going to bed, he told the newspaper.

"You know, somebody could have come into the basement," he said. "There are a number of places he could have hidden. We just don't know."

Police have refused to comment on whether they consider the door being left open significant, but Smart said too much was being made of the oversight.

"The garage has been made into some big deal," he said.

Dead Ends

A few apparent leads in the case have turned out to be unrelated.

Two separate individuals who matched the description of a man wanted for questioning in connection with the case both turned out to be people who had nothing to do with the investigation.

The most recent incident was Saturday night, when a man was spotted at a Denny's restaurant in Woods Cross, Utah, who looked like the drifter wanted for questioning, Bret Michael Edmunds.

But Woods Cross police said the man who three customers and a policeman at first thought was Edmunds turned out to be Brian Reeves, who has been trying to avoid arrest on several outstanding warrants.

Woods Cross police Lt. Clarence Montgomery said Reeves' girlfriend told police he was the man who was seen in the restaurant, and Reeves later surrendered to police.

On Friday a man who looked like Edmunds and was allegedly linked to a string of car thefts was seen in Texas and then New Mexico, but when he was finally captured, Utah investigators' hopes of a breakthrough in the kidnapping case were dashed. It was not Edmunds.

Police Say Tape Held Nothing

A hospital security tape that a guard thought might show the kidnapper's car also held nothing of interest to investigators, Atkinson said on Monday, after the guard sparked a controversy by saying that police waited eight days after learning of the tape before looking at it.

Atkinson said investigators looked at the tape within hours of receiving it on June 5, and determined that there was nothing worthwhile on it.

Fred Trujillo, a security guard at Shriners Hospital just blocks from the Smarts' home, said that on the night of the alleged abduction he reported a suspicious car to police, and when he heard of the kidnapping he called again and said he had a tape that showed the vehicle.

Police collected the tape, but returned eight days later to ask if they could watch it on hospital equipment, because they did not have a machine that was compatible with the tape, Trujillo said.

Atkinson said police only asked to view the tape on hospital equipment to see if they could see anything on the higher resolution machine than they had seen on their own equipment.

"At this point there is nothing legible on that videotape that would lead us in any one direction," Atkinson said.

Two telephone numbers have been set up for anyone with information: 800-932-0190 for people nationwide, and 801-799-3000 for people in Salt Lake City.

Elizabeth Smart's Description
Age		14
Race		Caucasian
Hair color		Blond
Height		5 feet 6 inches
Weight		105 pounds
Identifying feature		Long legs
Last seen wearing		Red, short-sleeved pajamas and shoes

Suspect's Description
Gender		Male
Race		Caucasian
Hair color		Dark
Height		Approximately 5 feet 8 inches
Identifying feature		Very soft-spoken
Last seen wearing		White pants, white baseball cap and tan, denim-type jacket

ABCNEWS's Judy Muller and ABCNEWS.com's Dean Schabner contributed to this report.

[MVV]

Where oh where is Elizabeth Smart? I fear the worst but I am still praying for her safe return.

[jwfiv]

This is beginning to remnd me of those poor, heartboken people in NYC, right after 9/f11, wandering the streets of Manhattan, showng pictures of their missing loved ones who were in the Towers that awful day, asking "Have you seen my love?"

I fear no happy ending for this story.

[alisasny]

Very sad, the scope of 911 was so severe and these poor victims could not even deal with the truama. For a good month they held out hope of finding survivors. What a long dreadful month. Still in NYC are tributes and such.

I couldnt imagine if my child was missing. I really couldn't.

[jwfiv]

I think these public displays of hopefulness and optimism are part of the denial phase of the grieving process we've all learned to go through in our modern cable-TV times.

I'm sure the demon who kidnapped little Elizabeth is loving the news shows these days, and somewhere out there in TV land, another anonymous nutcase is thinking of doing a similar deed, inspired by the fame and celebrity and power conferred upon the kidnapper.

Sometimes, I think, a little too much publicity attends these events and fosters even more suffering.

I dunno...just feel sad and hopeless about this, myself.

[xJones]

The parents' photo is terrible. They're going through hell and their daughter has been gone for too long.

[TheDon]

Ping

[Utah Girl]

Thanks for the ping. I am waiting for a press conference to start here in SLC, and will update with any new info. And I just lost my connection...

[JessicaDragonet]

How about the internet angle? Maybe it's someone she met in a chat room. Have they ruled that out?

[Utah Girl]

Yes, they ruled that out pretty quickly. Elizabeth wasn't all the Internet savvy and would ask her older brother to retrieve information for her. The police did look at the family computer immediately, did determine that she hadn't been chatting with anyone. I know some FReepers found that suspicious, that she wouldn't have computer knowledge, but in my experience, most girls that age have no interest in computers.