Elizabeth Smart Kidnapping - Daily News/Chat Thread - Day 34

07/08/02 - Monday - Day 34 | Elizabeth Smart Kidnapping - Daily News/Chat Thread - Day 34

[stlnative]

Please keep adding Elizabeth Smart updates to this thread...
Remember to keep checking back to this thread today for today's
developing news on the Elizabeth Smart Kidnapping.

Elizabeth was taken from her home at about 1:30am on the morning of June 5th, 2002.

Links

Elizabeth Smart Kidnapping - Daily News/Chat FreeRepublic Threads

	Day 31	Day 23
	Day 30	Day 22
	Day 29	Day 21
	Day 28	Day 20
	Day 26/27	Day 19
Day 33	Day 25	Day 18
Day 32	Day 24	Day 17

Salt Lake City Police Department Website
FBI Kidnappings/Critical Missing Persons - Elizabeth Smart
FBI - Salt Lake City Branch
Elizabeth Smart Website
Smart Residence Real Estate Listing
Brigette's Scanned Copy of House Layout from Newsweek Magazine
(Please do not link to the picture on my server space, if you wish to use it...
copy and paste it to your own hard drive and move it to your own server space)


Help keep this thread ongoing & pleasant...
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The best thing to do it not to bring attention to these post or reply to them.


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This single ping will help you find the daily Elizabeth Smart thread faster
when you check your own "My Comment's" FR feature. If something large breaks in the case during
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Elizabeth or actually arrest a person for kidnapping her. It is up to you to visit this thread several times daily
as others and I will continue to add the latest breaking news reports as they are released throughout the day.

[That Subliminal Kid]

The media manufactured interest. That's painfully obvious. Ask people where they first heard about this case. 99.9% of them will say they saw it on TV News. Probably Fox News Channel, which specializes in tabloid-style reporting. There is nothing about this case that is any more riveting than thousands of other missing persons cases that happen each year. The one factor that does stand out is the absurd wealth of the family.

[Utah Girl]

Yes, my heart breaks not only for the Smart family, but for every family who has lost a child. I cannot even imagine the pain they are going through.

[sandude]

While the Smarts are well off it is a bit of a stretch to label their wealth as absurd.

[baseballfanjm]

Hey, if all cases of kidnapped kids were in the news, I'd pay attention. One kidnapped kid is one too many. And, btw, I don't eat up whatever the media puts in front of me. I know they overblow things as much as anyone else. But I think you should take your opinion someplace else, not on a thread about a missing girl.

[That Subliminal Kid]

I don't see why this particular missing girl is worth of all this attention while all the other missing girls will, at best, be featured on a milk carton for a day.

[Utah Girl]

The abduction of Elizabeth Smart and coverage has been unique. Her abduction was the first one that met the criteria of the new Rachael alert system in Utah, which is part of the national Amber alert system. There are four criteria to the Rachael alert system:

* The child is assumed kidnapped;
* The child is 15 or younger, or has a proven mental or physical disability;
* The child is in imminent danger of serious injury or death;
* There is information provided to aid the police, such as a description of the abductor, the abductor's vehicle or the child's last known location.

The Smart family is a prominent one in SLC, they do live in a prominent neighborhood, Elizabeth is blonde and beautiful, the family is well-to-do (absurd wealth???). They do have connections. But is that enough to keep the story in front of the media? No, what started the media frenzy is that it was a very slow newsweek when Elizabeth was abducted. It was the way she was abducted, in the middle of the night at gunpoint. The neighborhood the Smart family lives in was considered to be a safe one, and SLC is usually considered to be a safe city (although those of us who live here know better. SLC is safe in most sections.)

And now that you have made your point, move onto another thread at FR and leave your words of wisdom for them. Thanks.

[baseballfanjm]

I don't see why, just because the media doesn't pay attention to other missing kids, which I think is sad, one should not pay attention at all.

[Utah Girl]

And the Smarts would trade all the media attention and everything they have to have Elizabeth back in their family. Some people keep griping about the coverage, but it sure hasn't helped in bringing her home so far...

[The people have spoken]

No, what started the media frenzy is that it was a very slow newsweek when Elizabeth was abducted. It was the way she was abducted, in the middle of the night at gunpoint.

Did you mean to say ...

No, what started the media frenzy is not that it was a very slow newsweek when Elizabeth was abducted. It was the way she was abducted, in the middle of the night at gunpoint.

[Utah Girl]

No, I meant to say both, although I should have said

No, what started the media frenzy is that it was a very slow newsweek when Elizabeth was abducted and it was the way she was abducted, in the middle of the night at gunpoint.

[baseballfanjm]

You're right there.

[TheDon]

That Subliminal Kid

member since June 11th, 2002

[Utah Girl]

Yah, I know. Let's see if it comes back...:)

[GovernmentShrinker]

Actually a lot of things stand out about this case (and by the way, there is no evidence that the family has "absurd wealth"):

-- Elizabeth was abducted from her bedroom at gunpoint, in what was thought to be a very safe neighborhood, while her parents slept just a few feet away;

-- There was a single eyewitness to the abduction, and that eyewitness is a young child;

-- The victim was an unusually accomplished harpist for her tender age, who had given many public performances in recent months (and not just little school and church performances);

-- The family are Mormons living in Salt Lake City, providing a connection to that distinctive group which had received a great deal of media coverage and public interest earlier this year, in connection with the Olympics;

-- The response of the heavily Mormon community was overwhelming in comparison to the response to similar abduction cases of pretty little girls from upper middle class neighborhoods, making the community response an interesting aspect of the story, and also highlighting the unfortunate fact that having thousands of people caring and going out searching and posting flyers, and massive nationwide media coverage, doesn't necessarily help the bottom line;

-- No body has been found and no credible ransom request has been received;

-- A "non-suspect" has been in custody for at least a couple of weeks, known to have worked in the family's home, burglarized it, iffy alibi for the time frame in question, long criminal history, etc., and yet as far as has been publicly disclosed, police have yet to make any connection between the non-suspect and the abduction.

All in all, it's a very unusual case, bearing almost no resemblance to any other child abduction case I can recall. And frankly, the case is interesting to follow via a group discussion in large part because the extensive publicity has provided a pretty steady flow of information to discuss -- I think all of us have learned a good deal about various topics such as police investigative procedures, police use of the media as in investigative tool, techniques for interviewing child witnesses, the propensity of even a conservative state such as Utah to let career criminals with convictions including things like attempted murder of a police officer and prison escape roam free, etc., etc.

If you don't find it interesting, that's fine, but please don't come here telling us that we shouldn't find it interesting. Do you realize that right now there are thousands of people out there spending hours and hours watching golf on television, and thinking THAT's interesting? Shouldn't you be heading off to some golf chat forums to warn these folks how silly they are to let the media convince them to waste their time paying attention to something as fundamentally boring as golf?

[mel]

What about those girls missing in Oregon (?)? They went missing simply walking to school. I only knew about this story perusing People while at the dentist office.

[Jolly Green]

If memory serves, the words used were "trusted member of the community." That would not be Ricci.

I'm not sure this is correct. Ricci was trusted in the community before his first burglary of the Smart home.