Posted on 07/28/2002 1:31:05 PM PDT by Palladin
Sunday, July 28, 2002
Smarts' lives revolve around the search
Elizabeth's parents remain hopeful — and frustrated By Michael Janofsky
Edward and Lois Smart had planned to be on vacation with their six children around now. Instead, they are at a news conference, appealing for people with helicopters to join the search for their daughter Elizabeth, 14, who was taken at gunpoint from her bedroom on June 5.
Previous plans for a West Coast vacation are not in the picture for Lois and Ed Smart in what has seemed like a summer of child abductions across the nation.
In what has seemed like a summer of child abductions, kidnappings in California and Pennsylvania have ended, tragically in the first instance, happily in the second.
Yet another girl, a 6-year-old in suburban St. Louis, vanished from her home on Friday morning. Her body was found less than a mile away that afternoon. Through it all, the Smarts have remained in a limbo of anxiety and fading hopes.
So much for soccer games, movies and other staples of normal life. The family's days now consist of prayer meetings, public pleas for help and updates from investigators.
"This is the summer that wasn't," Edward Smart said as he and his wife sat in a small room at the LDS church they attend near their neighborhood of big houses and quiet streets. "We had plans for the California coast, ending up near Seattle, the San Juan Islands. We've been there before. Everyone in the family was looking forward to that."
The Smarts are not alone in their anguish. According to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, a nonprofit organization in Alexandria, Va., partly financed by Congress, theirs is one of 103 unsolved cases of nonfamily abductions since 1990.
Ernie Allen, president of the center, said that half of the children on the list at any time were under 13, and that two-thirds were girls. Allen described the typical victim as an 11-year-old girl from a stable middle-class family whose initial contact with the abductor occurred within a quarter-mile of home.
Abductions tend to take place in warm-weather states like California and Texas, he said, although no state is immune. According to Allen, 91 percent of children taken by strangers are recovered, although 20 percent are found dead.
In many ways, Elizabeth Smart is typical. Less typical is the enormous attention her case has received. After seven weeks in the spotlight, the Smarts seem bewildered by it all, overwhelmed by so much news coverage and public support, and painfully aware they may be awaiting an unhappy ending.
"We're still very hopeful; we are," Lois Smart said in an interview. "They haven't found her body. The fact they haven't found her body only makes us believe otherwise."
Her husband, a mortgage broker and real estate developer, had a faraway look in his eyes. "It has been a long time," he said, barely above a whisper. "It has been a long time."
Their strongest fiber of hope is information their 10-year-old daughter, Mary Katherine, gave to investigators. She was sharing a bed with Elizabeth the night of the abduction. Mary Katherine gave a description that led the authorities to Richard Albert Ricci, 48, a handyman who worked for the Smarts last year and received as payment a Jeep Cherokee that the family had once used.
Ricci is now in jail on charges unrelated to the abduction. Investigators have told the family that he could become a prime suspect because of questions about his whereabouts the night of the abduction and the days that followed.
Despite daily contact with the authorities and the lingering interest in Ricci, the Smarts are frustrated at the investigation's pace, other family members say. "They won't say anything critical," said one. "They can't. They need the police."
Edward Smart has been particularly careful with his words. "I know they're doing all they can," he said. "I know they do have lots of leads." His wife has been slightly less diplomatic. "We support them 100 percent," she said. "But it's not going fast enough. I don't think anything they do is fast enough for us."
At home, they said, their phone rings constantly, a mix of people with tips and good wishes but also crank callers. Hundreds have sent messages by mail and by e-mail, and many more have followed the search on a Web site, ( www.elizabethsmart.com). "It's just amazing," Edward Smart said.
The abduction also has linked the Smarts, at least by circumstance, with other families of abducted children, including some whose children's names have been removed from the list kept by the center for missing children.
The most recent was Samantha Runnion, the 5-year-old from Stanton, Calif., who was found dead on July 16, 50 miles from her home. She was listed until Monday, when Alejandro Avila, 27, a factory worker, was arrested and charged with murder, kidnapping and sexual assault.
Another little girl quickly took Samantha's place. Witnesses in Philadelphia told the police that they saw two men grab Erica Pratt, 7, on Monday and drive away with her. She turned up on Tuesday after escaping from the abandoned building where captors had imprisoned her.
But others remain unaccounted for, and their cases have faded from public view. Morgan Nick was 6 when she disappeared seven years ago from a park in Alma, Ark. Jacob Wetterling was 11 in 1989 when a man in a ski mask snatched him off a rural road at gunpoint in St. Joseph, Minn. Neither child has been found.
"They have some kind of closure," Edward Smart said of the families of Samantha Runnion and Erica Pratt. "In this situation, we're still waiting."
Few around Salt Lake City are unaffected by Elizabeth's disappearance. Parents say they watch their children more closely. Home security companies have been busier than usual. Public schools are changing their approach to children's safety.
"The message this time is, 'Don't go willingly. Go kicking and screaming,' " said Karen Derrick, a member of the Salt Lake City District Board of Education.
Judy Eror, a past president of the Parent Teachers Association at Bryant Intermediate School, which Elizabeth attended, said: "A couple of years ago, when we looked at child safety, we talked about drugs and watching both ways when you cross the street. Now, it's not enough to tell our kids if you're where you're supposed to be, you'll be safe. It's simply not always true."
According to Allen of the missing children's group, greater vigilance by parents and children is a major cause for a decline in abductions by strangers in recent years, in addition to tougher laws, like those requiring sex offenders to register with authorities, and better coordination among law enforcement agencies.
For now, the five other Smart children are almost constantly surrounded by one another, by cousins and friends in a world that adults around them are trying to keep as normal as possible.
"The kids are like us," Lois Smart said. "They have good days and bad days. Our youngest, William, asks us when Elizabeth is coming home. He thinks she is having an extended harp lesson. But all the kids are hopeful; they talk about her coming back."
No vacation? That should be the least of their worries.
Whoever killed Elizabeth Smart will never be caught and her body may never be found.
What?
Hey, SLPD, hurry it up, will you? The San Juan Islands are beckoning to Lois and Ed.
Now they're saying Mary Katherine has all but solved the case.
Something is not kosher in Salt Lake City.
They act as if Elizabeth is away at summer camp. Or an extended harp lesson.
Like last years 'Summer of Sharks', I hope this one turns out like last scare and the statistics don't show a worsening situation.
Maybe one day the media will do stories on what we should really fear, the out of control government where nearly everything they do is blatently UNCONSTITUTIONAL to anyone who can read English and not legalese.
I despise the word closure! There is no such thing when your child has been raped and murdered!
As is the story.
Wasn't it the Smart family who said they were going to do things because they have other children for the 4th of July? These people contradict themselves.
Two little girls, about 10 and 12, the Lyons sisters, were snatched from Wheaton Plaza in suburban Maryland about 25 years ago. Their father was on WMAL radio. They have never been found. Their family must go through a stab of pain with news of every child abduction. My heart goes out to all families that suffer this tragedy.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.