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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?