NEW CLUES: Police say kidnapper didn't know girl's sister saw him
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Wednesday, June 19, 2002 |
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Two weeks after the wee-hours disappearance of Elizabeth Smart from her home, few answers have developed as posters of the missing girl have been put up all over Salt Lake City and elsewhere. (Francisco Kjolseth/The Salt Lake Tribune)
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BY KEVIN CANTERA, ASHLEY BROUGHTON and LINDA FANTIN
THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE
Thirteen days after the disappearance of Elizabeth Smart, police revealed Tuesday that the sole witness to her abduction -- the girl's 9-year-old sister -- had feigned sleep and apparently fooled the intruder into believing the crime had gone unseen. The startling new details recast what the public has been told for two weeks about the girl's June 5 disappearance and contradict an initial police report.
Police initially said Elizabeth's younger sister was threatened to keep quiet by the armed intruder. A brief log entry released on the day Elizabeth disappeared said: "The suspect threatened the younger sister, and after about 2 hours, she ran in and told her parents."
Officers now insist the man spoke only to Elizabeth, warning the 14-year-old to keep quiet before he slipped undetected from the Smart family's home with her. "The threat was not made to [the 9-year-old]," Salt Lake City police Capt. Scott Atkinson said Tuesday.
The younger girl remained quiet after hearing the man talk to Elizabeth, said Atkinson, who continued to attribute the child's delay in alerting her parents to fear. He also said the younger girl saw the suspect twice -- once inside the bedroom during the abduction and a second time in an undisclosed area of the Smart family's Federal Heights home.
New information about the suspect was also released Tuesday, including an estimate that he is 30 to 40 years old, details about what he wore, and that he has black hair on his arms and the backs of his hands.
"We believe this man may be a trusted person in the neighborhood or community," Atkinson said.
Police initially described the intruder as soft-spoken, 5-foot-8 with dark hair, carrying a small handgun and wearing white pants, a white baseball cap and a light jacket. On Saturday, they changed their description of the cap to a tan, flat golfing hat. On Tuesday, they gave the new age range, said the pants were tan, and that he wore a light polo shirt.
"He spoke nicely and dressed nicely," Atkinson said.
Police also showed reporters Ralph Lauren tennis shoes identical to ones owned by Elizabeth. Her younger sister told police the abductor allowed Elizabeth to grab the dark blue and white shoes.
Last Thursday, Atkinson said the 9-year-old had been interviewed at least three times. On Tuesday, maintaining that the girl's story has remained consistent through three interviews with a specially trained child interviewer, he said the new details are the result of analyzing the girl's responses over a matter of days.
It would not be unusual for new details to surface out of repeated interviews with a child who has been traumatized, said Laura Blanchard, director of the Children's Justice Center in Provo. "For anybody -- and not just children -- it is a process," she said. "Memory isn't an instant recall."
Interviewers keep a child's age and language skills in mind, and open, nonleading questions are crucial, she said.
"I'm sure they start out with, 'Please, just tell us what happened,' " Blanchard said. "The child picks from that experience those things they remember, that are important at the moment."
The "general rule of thumb," she said, "is to try to ask as few questions as possible" and let the child do the talking. "Sometimes, if you ask a question that has multiple parts to it, they pick up one part by answering that without answering the others," she said.
With children, hypnosis is not generally used, she said -- "only as an absolute last resort."
Marc Klaas, whose daughter, Polly, was kidnapped and murdered in 1983, said the new information released by police undermines public confidence in the investigation.
"They keep spewing out little things here and there and there are all these conflicting stories," said Klaas, who has lent support and advice to other families of missing persons. "It sounds like the cops don't have a clue."
Klaas also said that the more detailed description of the kidnapper only adds to the confusion. "What the police seem to be saying, basically, is she saw everything but his face. That's amazing."
Police have said they do not have sufficient information to create a sketch of the abductor.
But experts in the search for missing and abducted children weren't surprised that, as the probe into Elizabeth's disappearance deepens, new details are starting to emerge.
"In the beginning stages of these things, information is difficult to get, especially from people who are emotionally involved," said Bob Walcutt, executive director of the Laura Recovery Center Foundation, the Texas-based missing persons agency that coordinated the search for Elizabeth Smart until last weekend.
"They're scared, they're tired, they're upset. So it's not unusual for the initial information to be less accurate than police would like," he said.
The discrepancies are even more understandable given the age of the only eyewitness, said Mike Gibson, president and head of case work for Operation Lookout, a clearinghouse for missing persons based in Everett, Wash. The 9-year-old's vantage point may explain why she could not see the kidnapper's face, but could describe the hair on his hands, he said.
Or, he suggested, she may have been too frightened to look at his face.
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