Police fly to W.Virginia to question Edmunds
Searchers returning to Draper area after dogs pick up scent
Posted on 06/22/2002 12:20:16 PM PDT by stlnative
Saturday, June 22, 2002
Police fly to W.Virginia to question Edmunds
Searchers returning to Draper area after dogs pick up scent
By Brady Snyder
Deseret News staff writer
A Salt Lake police detective and an FBI agent were en route Friday night to West Virginia to interview Bret Michael Edmunds — a man they hope can give them clues in the disappearance of Elizabeth Smart.
Boarding a Delta Air Lines jet at 5:08 p.m. the pair were set to arrive in West Virginia sometime after midnight Eastern time. There they hope Edmunds will unlock the mystery surrounding Smart's kidnapping. The 14-year-old girl was taken at gunpoint from her parent's million-dollar Federal Heights home in the wee hours of June 5. More than two weeks later police have yet to name any suspects.
Maren Laurence, 10, plays the harp Friday at the Arts Festival trying to raise money for the Elizabeth Smart Search Fund.
Laura Seitz, Deseret News
Meanwhile, in the continuing search for Elizabeth, the Salt Lake County Sheriff's search and rescue team was alerted late Friday by volunteer searchers whose dogs indicated on three dirt piles in construction sites on Traverse Ridge above Draper. Deputies cordoned off the area and planned to send their dog into the area early Saturday, deputy Peggy Faulkner said. "It's one more clue we have to follow up on."
Faulkner said deputies were concerned about contaminating possible evidence in the area in the darkness and the search could wait until morning.
In the Edmunds case, FBI special agent Dan Roberts said he didn't believe the man had obtained legal counsel Friday. Investigators have repeatedly said that Edmunds is not a suspect in the kidnapping. However, he is named in two felony warrants from Utah, has violated conditions of his probation and is the subject of a federal warrant for fleeing prosecution. None of the warrants are related to the Smart abduction.
Harpist Maren Laurence catches a poster before it blows away from a Main Street kiosk on Friday at the Utah Arts Festival.
Laura Seitz, Deseret News
Under that backdrop, Sgt. Fred Louis said police don't know if Edmunds will be forthcoming with information.
"It would really help us out if he talks to us," Louis said.
For 11 days Edmunds — a 26-year-old transient who lives out of his green Saturn — had eluded police, who released his photograph to media outlets last week.
Police theorize that Edmunds might have been in the area when the kidnapping occurred, since a neighborhood milkman noticed a car in the area that could have been Edmunds' Saturn. The milkman said part of the license plate on the car he viewed matched the Saturn's plate.
Edmunds was also spotted at a June 9 candlelight vigil for Elizabeth Smart, fueling investigators' desire to discover what, if anything, he might know about the abduction.
West Virginia state police troopers R. Elswick, left, and Dean Olack photograph a green Saturn sedan with Washington state license plates outside of City Hospital in Martinsburg, W.Va. The car is believed to have been driven by Bret Edmunds, who is at City Hospital, being treated for a drug overdose and liver failure.
Ron Agnir, Associated Press
"He's a question mark, and we want to put a period on that question mark," Salt Lake Police Chief Rick Dinse said.
Salt Lake police attempted to arrest Edmunds at the vigil, but he fled in his Saturn and police declined to enter a high-speed pursuit.
On Thursday, investigators received the break they needed when a seriously ill Edmunds checked himself into the Martinsburg City Hospital at 5:15 a.m. under the name Todd Richards.
Hospital staffers on Friday became suspicious and telephoned Edmunds' mother in Sterling, Sanpete County, since her number was listed as an emergency contact. The mother then contacted authorities, Salt Lake Police Capt. Scott Atkinson said.
Knowing the location of the 26-year-old was a relief for his family members, who haven't heard from the transient in more than six months after he skipped town, violating his probation.
City Hospital
Ron Agnir, Associated Press
"Of course they were relieved. They were concerned for his welfare," Sanpete County sheriff's deputy John Cox said.
Dave Sacks, spokesman for the U.S. marshals in Washington, D.C., said Edmunds had overdosed and was in need of emergency care when he entered the West Virginia hospital. He remained in the Intensive Care Unit Friday night in serious condition, hospital spokeswoman Teresa McCabe said. He was under watch by U.S. Marshals and the FBI, she said.
Sacks also said police in West Virginia had impounded Edmunds' Saturn, which was found in the hospital parking lot.
Melodie Rydalch, spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney's Office in Utah, said prosecutors, in cooperation with the FBI, were seeking a search warrant for the car.
The sole known witness to Elizabeth's kidnapping is 9-year-old Mary Katherine Smart, who slept in the same bed as her older sister and was left behind by the abductor. The girl, who feigned sleep during the incident, has described the kidnapper as a man who is between 5-feet-8-inches and 5-feet-10-inches tall, with dark hair on his arms and the back of his hands, and who was dressed nicely with a Polo brand shirt, tan pants, dark shoes, a light-colored jacket and a golf or English driving-style hat similar in color to the jacket.
Across the state Friday, several grocery stores pulled editions of the National Enquirer that reported — using unnamed sources — on the Smart family and what may have been found during searches of family computers and residences.
Albertson's stores won't sell the edition at any location statewide. At Smith's Food and Drug stores the edition was extracted from racks and could only be purchased by request.
Albertson's spokeswoman Jeannette Duwe said the company's decision is similar to one made last month when the company yanked the Enquirer from Colorado stores after learning the editions contained bloody photographs of the Columbine High School massacre.
The Smart family said the tabloid report doesn't merit comment.
http://www.msnbc.com/news/767810.asp
Close to Home
Flummoxed so far, investigators take a harder look at the possibility that there might be a family connection in the kidnapping of 14-year-old Elizabeth Smart
By Kevin Peraino and Andrew Murr
NEWSWEEK
June 24 issue — Tom Smart emerged drawn and tired from Salt Lake City police headquarters. He’d just finished a session with investigators probing the disappearance of his niece, 14-year-old Elizabeth Smart, snatched from her bed in the middle of the night June 5 by an armed man in a tan, short-billed cap.
NOW INVESTIGATORS WERE EXPLORING the alibis of family members, including Tom, a 48-year-old photo editor at the Deseret News, the Mormon Church-owned daily paper. Slouched on a bench in the lobby after giving fingerprints and blood samples, Tom pledged full cooperation with investigators. It’s all right, “tear me apart” if you have to, as long as it will help solve the mystery, Smart told NEWSWEEK.
As frustrated police and hordes of volunteers continued to comb Utah’s deserts and mountains for Elizabeth and her abductor, investigators turned their attention last week to the missing teen’s family in an attempt to shake something—anything—loose. Elizabeth’s father, Edward Smart, a real-estate and mortgage broker, submitted to a polygraph test, and, NEWSWEEK has learned, came out clean, according to one well-placed law-enforcement source. Polygraphs for other members of the prominent Mormon family, including Tom Smart, were “inconclusive,” the source said. An inconclusive test hardly means that a person is guilty of a crime—or even of trying to hide something. It indicates only that the subject neither failed nor completely passed the polygraph, an often-inaccurate investigative tool that measures the body’s involuntary stress reactions. Officials say they have no plans to give a second test to Tom—whose wife, Heidi, says “he was in bed with me all night” the evening Elizabeth disappeared.
June 5:
1 a.m. – Intruder sneaks in through window and into bedroom Elizabeth shares with her sister. Taking Elizabeth, he brandishes a small, black handgun and tells the younger girl Elizabeth will be harmed if any alarm is sounded.
After 3 a.m. – Elizabeth’s younger sister tells her parents about the abduction.
Afternoon – Utah’s Emergency Alert System, known as the Rachael Alert, broadcasts news of her disappearance. Mayor Rocky Anderson anounces a $10,000 reward for information about her disappearance, as police search Utah’s foothills and investigate recently paroled sex offenders.
June 6:
Police launch nationwide manhunt for the kidnapper and Elizabeth. Parents make appeal for volunteers and hundreds of people line up to assist in searching for Elizabeth. Printable version
Is it possible that the man police are hunting for, seen only by the frightened 9-year-old sister who shared a bedroom with Elizabeth, wasn’t some random stranger, but kin? Police were increasingly scrutinizing the extended family last week, even as they launched a frantic search to find and question a mysterious drifter who had attended a candlelight vigil for the missing blond teenager. “We decided to take a hard look at the family,” the law-enforcement source said. On Friday teams of FBI agents fanned out to nail down family members’ stories, trying to learn where each one was in the hours before and after Elizabeth’s disappearance. “It comes down to three things,” the source said. “Alibi, alibi, alibi.”
NORMAL PRODECURE
Focusing on the family is normal in child-abduction cases. And for good reason: in almost half the cases, the kidnapper is a relative, according to one study of 1997 cases. “You want to eliminate or reduce the possibility [that a family member did it] as quickly as possible,” says Kenneth Lanning, a retired supervisor in the FBI’s Crimes Against Children section. Salt Lake City police have repeatedly said they have no suspects yet, and that looking at the Smart clan is just “one among many theories,” according to Capt. Scott Atkinson, the lead police spokesman. “The family has been very cooperative,” Atkinson says.
Bret Michael Edmunds was seen driving in the Smart's neighborhood nights before the kidnapping
Investigators’ efforts have hardly been limited to grilling the Smarts. By late last week 60 police officers and 40 FBI agents had run down thousands of leads. One involves a 26-year-old homeless drifter named Bret Michael Edmunds, whom police want to question because he was spotted driving slowly in the neighborhood just two mornings before the kidnapping, and later appeared at Elizabeth’s vigil. Police stressed that Edmunds, who has outstanding warrants for fraud and assaulting an officer, isn’t a suspect: for one thing, he stands 6 feet 2 inches and weighs 235, while the intruder described by Elizabeth’s sister is only 5 feet 8. Nonetheless, the search for Edmunds turned into an all-out manhunt by the end of the week, after boys playing in some cattails in a northern Salt Lake suburb found his discarded license plates. On Friday authorities were certain that they had nabbed Edmunds shoplifting from a department store in the Texas Panhandle, but the fingerprints did not match.
There are troubling questions about how a stranger could have broken into the Smarts’ million-dollar home and known exactly which of the seven bedrooms was Elizabeth’s. The Salt Lake Tribune reported Thursday that some investigators now think the screen on the kitchen window where the kidnapper was alleged to have entered was cut from the inside, a sign that the break-in may have been staged. But law-enforcement sources close to the investigation told NEWSWEEK that they “have no evidence of that.” Nonetheless, investigators are puzzled by how someone could have squeezed through the window, which is tall but not very wide and opens with a crank. “We’re not so confident about how he got in,” a source tells NEWSWEEK.
It didn’t help investigators that the crime scene was polluted before they could even set about their work. Elizabeth’s parents apparently had called friends and neighbors to start looking for the girl be-fore they phoned police at 4:01 a.m. By the time investigators arrived, several neighbors were already milling around the Smart house, and others were combing the neighborhood, leaving shoe marks, clothing fibers and fingerprints in their wake. Securing the crime scene is a problem in a lot of cases, says Lanning, the retired FBI supervisor. In the still-unsolved JonBenet Ramsey case, police were highly criticized for lax handling of the crime scene in the early hours. Says Lanning: “All [investigators] can do is deal with the reality you’re dealt.” In Elizabeth Smart’s case, the sad reality is that investigators haven’t been dealt much of a hand at all.
With Ellise Pierce in Texas
© 2002 Newsweek, Inc.
Maybe the RIAA has something to do with this.
Hasn't the family been claiming as of late that this wasn't true?
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