Posted on 06/11/2002 6:33:20 AM PDT by MVV
BY KEVIN CANTERA
THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE
Six days after a teen-age girl reportedly was kidnapped from her Salt Lake City home by an unknown gunman, police said Monday they have ruled out the possibility Elizabeth Smart staged her own abduction and was a runaway.
With no credible leads and almost no physical evidence, baffled investigators have re-examined the family's Federal Heights home, reinterviewed members of the family and administered a polygraph test to the 14-year-old girl's father, said Salt Lake City police Capt. Scott Atkinson. He emphasized Edward Smart is not a suspect in his daughter's disappearance.
Edward Smart took the lie detector test willingly Sunday and the results were being scrutinized by FBI agents Monday, said Atkinson.
"We are looking at every possible angle. [The polygraph] is just one of the tools we've been using," Atkinson said.
Investigators refused to say what questions Smart had been asked during the interview. He is the only family member to be tested, but Atkinson said other relatives could be asked to take a similar test.
"We are no closer to solving the case," Atkinson said, noting that 100 detectives, including about 40 federal agents, were sifting through "hundreds" of leads pouring in to police dispatchers from around the country.
In a brief statement Monday, Edward Smart said he took the test because he had "nothing to hide. . . . It's not uncommon in a case like this for a polygraph to be administered. When asked by law enforcement, I fully cooperated."
Elizabeth was taken by an armed intruder inside her family's Federal Heights home between 1 a.m. and 2 a.m. Wednesday, according to police. The man, who reportedly carried a small black handgun, entered the bedroom shared by Elizabeth and her 9-year-old sister. He forced Elizabeth to go with him and threatened the younger girl that if she told anyone, her sister would be hurt, the child told police.
The girl -- the only witness to the abduction -- waited two hours or more, then woke her parents, police said. The abductor "didn't leave any clues," Atkinson said. Police planned to question the 9-year-old girl, but would probably not issue a more detailed description of the suspect, he said.
Dozens of off-road enthusiasts were asked Monday to bring their all-terrain vehicles to a wide expanse of barren desert west of Salt Lake City to hunt for clues.
"Every day we want a place where we can do one search," said Tom Smart, Elizabeth's uncle, in making the plea for the off-road quest. No specific information prompted the plan to search the desert, said Smart, who suggested "horse posses" might be used to hunt for the girl in the future.
Between 400 and 500 volunteers took part in other search efforts, going through neighborhoods, city parks and surrounding foothills, calling Elizabeth's name and posting fliers.
Residents throughout Utah have been asked to search their own property -- under boat covers and inside vacation cabins, for instance -- and the Utah Farm Bureau Federation encouraged the state's farmers to comb their farms, fields and outbuildings.
As the hunt continues, Elizabeth's loved ones remain hopeful.
"The whole family believes she is alive," said Elizabeth's cousin, Sierra Smart, who said she is as perplexed as police investigators by the girl's disappearance. "It is exactly as confusing as it appears. There's no secret."
kcantera@sltrib.com
Do you agree?
I don't think this thread should be about the church of Mormon, and I just want to state that it was not my intent to do that, but to just state, that they act and react in a different way. ( In most cases ).
Oh, I agree...I just found the article accidentally using general search terms like "utah and girl" together...that's one of the things it spit out...
Keeping in mind, though, that this article and others like it refer to cross-state-line abductions and sending of these girls to Canada...don't know if any of it is true or rumor or what, just adding to the collective static as we all speculate. She is very pretty...her abductor could even be someone as incidental as the photographer who took those recent family pictures...a neighbor of her music teacher...who knows? It could be anyone. And if the little sister is timid, she could easily have buried her head under the covers and shivered and cried for those two hours.
My hope is that Elizabeth is still living and will be found and returned to her family and all our bizarre theories will be proven wrong. My heart goes out to her little sister...poor child...how can she not blame herself now or later, if her sister is not found?
Redesign your bedrooms... have the entire family sleep in one space. Adults closer to the door, children toward the back of the room...The remaining bedrooms can be redesigned as private spaces for adults, and for children's play.
Clothing can be stored in the private rooms for dressing, as well as retreats for communication, relaxation, etc...
But, when it is time for sleep, the entire family sleeps on the same space, so that the kids feel protected, and the parents feel that they have an edge in the event of "intruders".
Aside from that, get a couple of good protective dogs, from one of the various shepherd breeds, get them trained at your home, private lessons, with a good police dog trainer, not your local obedience class chirpie.
The trained dogs sleep in the same room with the rest of you, but nearest the door, and you put up with the dog hair, etc... It really isn't that hard to make one's home a "safe place", it just takes a change in thinking.
We are the most vulnerable when we are asleep, and this is one of the reasons why families usually slept together in "olden times", had good guard dogs, and conducted private activities separate from sleeping. It is just common sense, which we have almost lost in the last 35 years or so...
Our own four children have all "grown and flown", but we still have our two trusty Belgian Malinois to protect us at night, and they sleep right at the foot of our bed, between us and the bedroom door. Since we are now elderly, live in a rural area, and know we would have a long time wait until the local LE could find our driveway, we consider our two dogs our best defense.
We encourage the male, particularly, to treat unexpected strange visitors as potential ax-murderers, and make a very big point of telling the various people that come to the house that while he has never bitten anyone yet, we just aren't sure that he can just keep it to nasty barking, snarling, air-snapping, etc.. (a really good "Cujo" imitation, which he has down pat). In the protection dog jargon his behavior is called "Bark And Hold", but we do not tell folks that he won't actually bite, and just say we don't think he will, but can't be sure!!!!
We tell the meter-reader, the fed-ex guy, etc... to make sure the dogs are in the house before getting out of their vehicles, or to blow their horn so we can call the dogs into the house when they must deliver packeages, read the meter, etc...
Our close friends know that they can come without fear, but they respect our training of the dogs, and will call first before showing up, or honk before getting out of the car, so that we can keep the dogs' protective edge finely honed...
We do have a really nice gun, but prefer not to keep it loaded and ready, and it is a totally dumb idea to do that if you have inquistive younguns around... Better to have a couple of good dogs, and some sensible rules about property rights, safety, and the home being the castle and refuge, the safe place...
If one family reads this, and is ultimately protected, my thoughts put out into the ether will not have been in vain...
This may be a bit of police deception -- telling the media that the younger sister waited two hours before informing her parents -- as instructed by the abductor, who is likely following media reports closely. The perp probably thought the younger sister could not recognize him and would not endanger his escape -- or she would have been killed on the spot. The likelihood that Elizabeth was alive three hours after the abduction is about 3 percent. The chief's press conference Tuesday was an effort to make the perp bolt and run so they can take the mystery out of this chase. Almost no chance that this is a stranger-on-stranger abduction -- though that was the case with Polly Klass. That is very unusual.(Stranger-on-stranger abductions are those by people who have had no previous contact with the victim -- such as in the Klass case.) Stranger-on-stranger abductions are invariably committed by "disorganized" personalities, usually under the influence of drugs or alcohol, or both. That doesn't appear to be the case in this instance. Greatest probability: It's someone in the family or in its close circle of friends and relatives. In that case, the perp probably has not been arrested previously for assaulting a child. Second: It's someone in the neighborhood -- either a neighbor or someone else with justifiable reason to be in the neighborhood, such as construction, repair or utilities people. In that case, the perp has a record and has served time for assaulting (and/or killing) a child. If any of those men in the construction crew carrying out renovations on the Smart home has a record, he's in big trouble. The police probably already know about it and were attempting in the media conference to scare him enough to break and run or, it is to be hoped, enough to release Elizabeth if she is still alive.
Does this statistic apply only to stranger abductions, or does it hold across the board? It seems to me that if the perp knows the victim, the likelihood of murder would be decreased.
And what I heard is that the uncle wasn't cooperating with Klaas. Why should he? I think Klaas is miffed on being on the outside of the investigation. Sorry, my 2 cents worth. Plus, from what the police have said, the sister only saw the profile of the abductor, not full face, which is why there isn't a drawing from her. The police were also in the house last night during the same time that Elizabeth was abducted. Plus the police said the sister's story has been consistent, and she has added little details, which is very common.
And many are acting like it is hinky or something that she isn't at home. Have you ever thought that she might be in danger? I'm sure she is at a relative's home, out of danger, but accessible to police. Plus police have interviewed her twice since last week, both times getting a bit more information about the perp from her. Very consistent with other abductions and witness stories.
I just saw the late news here, and the police have shifted focus of the investigation a little bit. They are taking a look at known sex offenders in the area (19!, which makes my skin crawl. And almost 800 people turned out to search again today, which is pretty amazing.
Another example, from my personal experience. I was working for a women's pro tennis tournament in Arizona, and one of our main volunteers was a Mormon woman. For a couple of months leading up to the tournament, she had taken charge of organizing the ticket sales process, was doing a wonderfully efficient job, and was slated to oversee ticket sales and the other volunteers who would be working in that area during the week of the tournament. Then about a week before the tournament she suddenly told us she wasn't going to be in town the week of the tournament. "My husband is going on a business trip and wants me to go with him," she explained, "He just told me today." Now she had no role whatsoever in her husband's business, but it was just automatic that if he said he wanted her to go on the trip, then she was to drop all her other plans immediately and go. That she had been looking forward to the tournament was irrelevant, as was, apparently, the fact that she was leaving us (all women) in the lurch.
Whatever -- people should be free to live however they want to, and the Mormons' system seems to work a lot better in practice than many other more "mainstream" systems. However, it does look odd, and sometimes a bit ominous, to outsiders.
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