THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE A few days back, Cynthia Smart Owens made a confession. She had been feeling guilty about asking so many people to devote so much energy to finding her niece. As time goes by, she told friends and family, it's getting more and more difficult to call on the kindness of strangers. But if the past three weeks have established anything, it is that, in the phenomenon known as The Search for Elizabeth, there are no strangers. The entire country is now on a first-name basis with the Smart family -- Elizabeth, Ed, Lois, even 9-year-old Mary Katherine. We watch their home videos on the nightly news. We know from the Web site that Elizabeth likes grapefruit. Every day, the Smarts step before the cameras. They expose their anguish and weep with gratitude. And in return, people who have never met them, never attended their church or set foot in their Federal Heights neighborhood, surrender a part of themselves. For some, it is time -- time off work, time away from their own families, time alone with their thoughts and fears. Others can offer only sympathy. But The Search for Elizabeth is more than every parent's nightmare or a recurring segment of "America's Most Wanted." It is an emotional supercollider -- one that, for better and worse, has put family, fortitude and faith to the test in a community famous for all three. 'Definitely Something': They say that when a coyote kills a rabbit, the yelp resembles a child's cry. What Steve Voss heard in the early hours of June 5 sounded much more human. Voss, a gynecologist, was on call so he was sleeping in the back bedroom of his Federal Heights home. He was awakened by his wife who was in the bathroom. They heard a car racing down the street. It was 2:30. "I drifted and then I heard what I thought was a yell or a scream. It sounded female," Voss says. "I've never heard anything like it before." Dogs started barking and Voss went downstairs to check on theirs. He looked at the hills behind Tomahawk Drive and saw nothing unusual. He went back to bed. At 6 a.m., a neighbor dropped by and said, "Go check your kids.'' The Smarts' 14-year-old daughter has been kidnapped from their home on Kristianna Circle, the street below Tomahawk. An hour later, a police officer knocked on the door and Voss recounted what he had heard. "I suppose it could have been a coyote. I was half asleep," he says. "But it was definitely something." Exactly what happened at the Smarts' home that night remains a mystery. But police say that sometime between 1 and 2 a.m., an intruder entered the seven-bedroom home and left with Elizabeth as her 9-year-old sister watched in horror. Mary Katherine Smart, who shares a bed with her sister, saw a soft-spoken man in a white shirt, tan pants and tan golf hat. He had a gun and he threatened to hurt Elizabeth if she made any noise. He told her to grab a pair of shoes. Mary Katherine, who pretended to be asleep until the two left, got out of bed to tell her parents. But she spied the kidnapper and Elizabeth still in the house and, frightened, sneaked back to bed. Approximately two hours later, she woke her parents. The day after Elizabeth's disappearance, Ed Smart recounted for CNN what happened next. "When my daughter initially came in, all I heard was, you know, a man took her. And I rushed in there, and I thought, you know, she is just having a bad dream. And she -- we have six children -- and I went from room to room, because occasionally one of the kids will sleep with the other. And you know, and I couldn't find her, and I just -- I heard then at that point that, you know, it was at gunpoint, and it just, you know, it just seemed unreal. I mean, it just . . . I still can't believe that it has happened." Following Leads: Elizabeth may have interrupted a burglary or she may have been what the intruder coveted. Police won't speculate. But they have chased plenty of tips -- more than 10,000. One of the first people police questioned was Richard Ricci, a Kearns handyman with a 29-year criminal history who last spring spent two months painting and doing yard work for the Smarts. He was re-interviewed June 11. When his stories didn't quite match, investigators took a closer look. What they found was a pattern of suspicious behavior. They questioned a West Valley City mechanic who worked on Ricci's 1990 Jeep Cherokee, the vehicle Ricci had received as payment for work done on the Smart home. Neth Moul, owner of Neth's Auto Repair, says Ricci took the vehicle from his repair yard on May 31 and returned it, caked in mud, June 8. Moul said he watched as Ricci filled two large bags with items from the vehicle -- including the Jeep's seat covers -- and slung them over a posthole digger he took from the back of his vehicle. Ricci then crossed the street where a man waited for him in front of a gas station. Police officers impounded the Jeep. They also have seized clothing matching Mary Katherine's description and a machetelike knife from Ricci's in-laws, who live next door. So far, law enforcement officials have no forensic evidence linking the 48-year-old ex-convict to the crime. Ricci denies any involvement and his wife is adamant that the two were in bed together at the time Elizabeth was abducted. But Ricci's neighbors have their doubts. Carma Tolman, who lives next door, told CNN that Angela Ricci asked her and others living in the Shadow Ridge Estates mobile home park if they had seen her husband leave in the middle of the night. She hadn't. And Tolman's son, Andy Thurber, said Richard Ricci was digging and pounding on his trailer the morning Elizabeth was kidnapped. Ricci said he was boarding up a hole on the bottom of Tolman's trailer so his cat could not get in. "He's a good guy, he really is. I borrowed smokes from him. He borrowed smokes from me," Thurber said. "I was thinking they were after the wrong guy until I heard about the Jeep and stuff and they started questioning me. Now I don't know what to think." A Horrible Education: In a missing person case, there is the investigation and there is the search. And as time goes on, the two become more and more distinct. The Smart family knows this and would prefer the news media shared its focus: finding Elizabeth. So family members meet every morning at 8 and again at 10. They talk about the search efforts and the Web site. They strategize about how to keep the news media's interest. And while they are devoted to one another and the search for Elizabeth, they do disagree. They are, after all, family. "It's not all smooth going," says Ted Wilson, a neighbor, family friend and director of day-to-day search efforts. "There is a lot of discussion and some argument over what to do. You can see the tremendous tension they're under. "They know this is a battle we could lose. But overriding all that is this intensity, this dedication and this hope. It's just an amazing thing to observe." The family transformed the Federal Heights Stake Center into The Elizabeth Smart Search Center, complete with a communications room with extra phone lines and fax lines, a filing room, a copy room and a media relations room. The stake president's offices were turned into an operations center where family members could gather. And that was the easy part. "In the beginning, no one knew what to do," says Dave Johnson, a family friend and confidante. "There was this press frenzy. Tom [Smart, Elizabeth's uncle and a photo editor at the Deseret News] filled the vacuum until the others got up to speed. He was up for five days straight without any sleep." Eventually, each family member settled into a role depending on their areas of expertise. One of Elizabeth's uncles created the command center and handles the finances. Uncle David Smart created and maintains the Web site. And all have become more media savvy. "It was a horrible educa- tion," Angela Smart, an aunt, confides. They had the good fortune to have friends in the public relations business. But make no mistake, the family is running the show. "They don't say, 'We think you should wear Levis and a T-shirt today.' They just filter things for us," says Angela Smart. "They're doing what we want." Through it all, the two families -- the Smarts and Lois' side of the family, the Francoms -- have grown much closer even as they have had to spend time away from their own kids. "Our children haven't seen us much," Cynthia Smart Owens says. "We try to find out where we can farm them out for the day so we can focus very intently on this." In the Spotlight: Outside the church, Ashleigh Banfield sits on a curb, beneath a brigade of television cameras. The MSNBC TV anchor takes a drag on a cigarette and blows the smoke skyward. In a moment, she and other reporters will continue the daily ritual of recording the Smart family's pain. From the start, it struck the national news media as odd that the nerve center for news briefings was a church. In the case of Danielle van Dam, the San Diego 7-year-old who was abducted and killed, briefings occurred outside the family's home where satellite trucks were parked around the clock. The setup in Salt Lake City is much better, observed one NBC producer. For starters, there is a lot more room. As of last week, NBC alone had three, two-person camera crews, four producers, a reporter and two technicians in town. They, along with the other networks and cable TV stations, have each carved out a corner on the huge lawn in front of the church. The first to arrive nabbed spots under the few shade trees. Others brought tents. Even so, the place feels less like a traveling circus and more like fraternity row. It is not unusual to see the behind-the-scenes crew members tossing a football around, killing time. When 11 a.m. rolls around, a crowd gathers at the other end of the grassy knoll near the chapel. At first, police officers gave the morning briefings and the family held theirs in the afternoon. Before long, however, the two were melting together. And at a time when police were still scrutinizing family members, some reporters privately wondered if the mixture of church, family and state was such a good idea. But that was nothing compared to the growing perception that the police were mishandling the investigation. By the second week, the lack of new information was starting to frustrate journalists and make police spokespeople appear uninformed. That frustration nearly turned into a frenzy the day police corrected a key piece of information, saying the kidnapper had not directly threatened Mary Katherine because he did not know she was awake. By that afternoon, cable TV commentators were second-guessing the investigation. Even the mayor was getting calls. Then and there, Salt Lake Police Chief Rick Dinse decided to limit news conferences to when there was actual news -- and to field most questions himself. It has been up to the Smart family to keep the news media interested in the search for Elizabeth and not just in the hunt for her kidnapper. Monday through Friday at 11 a.m. they emerge from the church, arm in arm. The reporters and photographers are ready, too. They cock their heads empathetically as Elizabeth's parents step forward. Lois tells Elizabeth to be strong and Ed says how thankful they are -- for the volunteers, the prayers and the news coverage. "We would ask that you continue to pray for her and keep your eyes open . . . and help us find Elizabeth because we feel very strongly she's still out there. She's waiting for us to find her." His voice starts to crack, the reporters start to scribble and all you can hear is the clicking of camera shutters. Looking for a Sign: It's Day 22 and it's hot. The kind of hot that makes you want to run through the sprinkler like a kid. Like Elizabeth might have done. You can see her back yard from where the volunteers are searching. It goes without saying that, after three weeks, they are more afraid of what they might find than what they won't. But they are not necessarily looking for Elizabeth, just some sign that she or her abductor was here. Instead, they find a long, knit stocking. An empty cigarette pack. A lighter that looks like it's been there for much longer than three weeks. There's a pencil -- could it have fallen from a backpack? -- and a Band-Aid. Ted Wilson thinks maybe, just maybe, Elizabeth had it on her finger and, as the kidnapper led her out of the house, she pressed it against his fingertip and dropped it as a clue. "Dick Tracy kind of stuff," he says. He marks the Band-Aid's location so police can check it out. Two weeks ago, Wilson took charge of the day-to-day search for Elizabeth. He's a pro at this community mobilization stuff. Wilson was the mayor of Salt Lake City during the floods of '83. He will never forget how, under the most trying circumstances, compassion and neighborliness overflowed along with the banks of City Creek. The Search for Elizabeth, too, has brought out the best in people. But earlier that day, as Wilson entered the Federal Heights chapel for the morning meeting, it was hard to see the happy ending. He was, as he says, "a little down." He wondered how long he could keep this up. Elizabeth's aunt Cynthia spoke up. She confided her fears about taking too much from the community, Wilson says, and how she knew deep down their efforts would not be in vain. At the very least, there would be a network of phone trees and search groups that could spring into action if, God forbid, something like this every happens again. "And it hit me," says Wilson. "I know why I'm here." |
