Elizabeth Smart Kidnapping - Daily News & Case Discussion Thread - Day 40

07/14/02 - Sunday - Day 40 | Elizabeth Smart Kidnapping - Daily News & Case Discussion Thread - Day 40

[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 & Case Discussion Threads on FreeRepublic

	Day 38	Day 31	Day 23
	Day 37	Day 30	Day 22
	Day 36	Day 29	Day 21
	Day 35	Day 28	Day 20
	Day 34	Day 26/27	Day 19
	Day 33	Day 25	Day 18
Day 39	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)


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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.

[Sunshine55]

I wonder if the van that was spotted in Lincoln Nebraska has made its way to Columbus, Ohio, where I live. I was reading another article about Ricci's trial being postponed on the Deseret News website, and at the bottom, it says "Volunteers continued to search for Elizabeth Saturday, with organized searches in Farmington, along the west side of Farmington Canyon and in Butterfield Canyon. A fourth, two-hour search was planned for a Columbus, Ohio, park and surrounding woods." The entire article is HERE.

Anyone here from Columbus or the surrounding area that has seen this on the local news?

[cherry]

columbus Ohio????

what in the world?....I hope that is just a typo..or is there something going on that we don't know about?

[Sunshine55]

That's what it says, and I didn't get home until after the 6:00 news was over. I'll keep looking for ANYTHING I can find on this, we have tons of Metro Parks in this city that are surrounded by woods, and the CPD is fighting a never-ending battle in these parks to stop homosexual activity in broad daylight. I hear eyewitness reports about it practically every other day, but I've not heard one word about THIS.

[cherry]

please keep us posted....

it's a shame our cities have become such unsavory areas....

[Rotan]

That's incorrect, Ricci broke in to the Smart's home at night too.

Really? Where was that reported? I'm not doubting you, I just haven't heard that. All I heard about was the stuff he took while working there.

[stlnative]

Hmmm... I wonder if they traced the van to the Columbus Ohio area or if it was spotted there? (this is the Van that had the young crying blond girl in it right, that was headed towards Columbus, Ohio?)

[TheDon]

Does anyone know if Dick's other crimes involved accomplices? I believe he was involved with a bank robbery and various burglarlies, hot or otherwise. Did he ever have accomplices for these crimes, and in particular for the residential burglaries?

[cherry]

i just emailed to the News about the article....let you know if I hear anything///

[stlnative]

All I have heard is that he is going to be charged with Theft/Larceny in the Smart home theft (meaning he took things from the home while he had permission to be in it) Then he burglarized a neighbors home at night while people were sleeping in the home. (burglary is charged when someone enters a home or business without permission - Theft/Larceny is when you have free access to the home or business and committed the crime while you have permission to be there. (also known as shoplifting if it is a business).

I have not heard that he entered the Smart home at night or returned to the home after he was not working there to steal things. If you steal from your employer while you are working... it is theft/larceny. If you break into your employers business after hours and steal it is burglary as you broke in or entered the business when you were not suppose to be there. Ricci is being charged with theft/larceny for stealing from the Smart home.

[Sunshine55]

I hope so, brigette, and I hope they are looking for the van rather than a body.

[stlnative]

Also we have to consider as we do not know if Ricci had a key to the home. It is possible that the theft took place while the family was out of town and they gave him a key to access the home and to work on it as time would allow him to. Now if had key and made a copy of it and then entered the home at a later date and after his work was complete, then even though he had a duplicate key it would be considered Burglary then. Since the charges have been stated as Theft/Larceny in the theft of the Smart home... then it is to be believed that the items he took were taken while he had permission to work in the home. Theft/Larceny has a lighter sentence than what burglary does. But since he is a habitual criminal he could face life due to the 3 stikes your out law. His last sentence for robbery of the food pantry may have been his first strike since the law came into effect... then the burglary charge of the Smart's neighbors (strike 2), then the theft of Smart home (strike 3). More strikes are bound to come if they can place him at the bank robbery that took place last fall or if they can find him involved in kidnapping Liz or other crimes.

[Rotan]

Since the charges have been stated as Theft/Larceny in the theft of the Smart home... then it is to be believed that the items he took were taken while he had permission to work in the home.

That's what I thought, but wasn't sure if I had missed something.

Does anyone know if Dick's other crimes involved accomplices?

As far as I know, there has been no mention of accomplices in his burglaries. I believe, and I could be wrong on this, that one of the other cons implicated Ricci in the bank robbery, which would mean he had accomplices for that. I can't remember if I read that here or saw it on the news, though.

[Rotan]

It has, but it's one of the few sparks of hope to be found in the case so it bears repeating. Thank you.

[TheDon]

Unfortunately, I don't see much hope in that statement. What is the abductor going to say, "As soon as I can get you somewhere remote, I'm going to kill you. I can't have any witnesses you see. If I'm caught I'm going to prison for the rest of my life, so I have little to lose by offing you."

"Maybe" Too spooky, I mean what are the other options?

[Rotan]

True, but the fact that he answered at all holds significance. He could have just told her to shut up if he was only intent on harming her.

[Faith]

I live near Dayton. Please keep me posted. Perhaps they would consider using volunteers to assist in the search.

[Palladin]

Bringing over the story from yesterday. I am in PA, and will be looking for this van here.

Andrea Kolarik, a cashier at a Texaco Food Mart on the northwest side of Lincoln, Neb. told the Deseret News she saw a van filled with three men and a blond girl, who appeared to be between 12 and 14 years old, pull into her gas station about 11 a.m.

The girl, who Kolarik said "possibly could be" Elizabeth, was looking out the window at Kolarik, her manager and a customer inside the store.

"She gave us a look like something was wrong," Kolarik said. "She was just crying. She had her hands over her face . . . She looked scared and exhausted."

The customer inside the store then called police. Before officers arrived, one of the men inside the vehicle eventually pulled the girl over the seat and placed her in the back of the van out of view from onlookers, Kolarik said.

The driver filled the car up with $21 of gas and the passenger went inside to pay for the fuel. The driver then came into the store and used the restroom before the van left the station and headed west, Kolarik said.

Police have taken footage from the store's surveillance cameras and made photos of the two men, Kolarik said.

Lincoln police, however, say it's still unclear who the girl inside the van was.

"Obviously we'd like to find it and find out what's going on," Lincoln police Capt. Allen Soukup said.

Salt Lake police have tried to contact Nebraska authorities about the incident but still had not heard back from them Friday night. "If there was something significant, we assume they would have gotten back to us," Louis said.

The van is blue or gray in color, with a Pennsylvania license plate ECJ1368. One of the men told Kolarik they were heading to Wisconsin.

[Jolly Green]

A little something about Shelties, they have no brain. We have had 2 of them (I don't know why). They can bark a warning & have lots of hair, but no brain.

That's probably why they are so good with kids. My niece has one and her kids maul theirs to death and he never complains.

[crystalk]

Since Van Dam, prosecutors don't seem to need to have any evidence, any case at all.

Just claim he is a sinner, this guy is a perv, and charge him with murder-one, sentence him to electric chair. All in a day's work.

If the SLC department thinks it needs to make out a case, it is being old fashioned. Now, do as San Diego does!

Just show he stole an apple off a tree at age 8, and once had sex with a woman he wasn't married to, and send him up to death row.