Elizabeth Smart Kidnapping - Daily News/Chat Thread - Day 17

Elizabeth Smart Kidnapping - Daily News/Chat Thread - Day 17 | 6/22/02

[JudyB1938]

Thank you. Excellent idea to have everything on one thread so that we don't have to hunt around. I'll appreciate being on your list. May God help that family!

[upstatenyrepublican]

What about the harp connection. She looked very pretty playing in the harp concert. Maybe someone connected with that kidnapped her. I wonder if they have checked out all the non-parent audience members of these children's concerts.

[per loin]

Yes, and many will assume it to be true, if they do not quickly and directly deny it. But if there is a smidgeon of truth in the NE report, that smidgeon should be admitted. The public accepts human differences, but despises proven liars.

[r9etb]

Thanks for the ping. Please keep me on the list.

[mystery-ak]

Please check your mail....this is a great idea...I hope we don't have to continue this thread too much longer......Im losing hope, but still praying!

[Plummz]

If it's all true, should they admit that? Would they still have the support and help of their Mormon community and the political structure which would just as soon have it shushed up?

Or can they get the community to help more by joining in the fiction that's nothing is going on by ignoring it to the point that the newspaper isn't even sold at most local outlets?

[stlnative]

I am offline here pretty much now until after 10pm central time tonight. I have to cook dinner and do some house cleaning. Please feel free to keep sending private emails to be added to the Elizabeth Smart ping list, a private FR email is best so I do not miss your request. I'll update my ping list as often as I can during the day.

Prayers for Elizabeth and her family... --- Brigette

[scholar]

Let me or Brigette know if you still want to be pinged...

Please keep me on your list--I appreciate it.

[stlnative]

BTW... The scents the dogs picked up last night turned out to be nothing right? - Keep up the hope and prayers for Elizabeth --- Brigette

[Bella]

Add me to your list..Am on UtahGirl's ping list.

[Kentucky]

Please add me to your ping list.

Did anything come of the construction area they were going to search today?

[per loin]

I can neither speak for the Mormons, not predict how they might act, but as an outsider to their community, I'd expect them to act with the same admirable sense of compassion that they have shown thus far.

The sad reality is that the Smart family, and their linen, are now under public scrutiny. The practical reality is that truth is their best option; it has a power that can not long be suppressed.

[Bella]

Might be best to click the link below for the pix and actual time line set...

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.

[Lower55]

Apparently she occasionally downloaded some music off the internet but that was the extent of her computer activity.

Maybe the RIAA has something to do with this.

[Plummz]

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.

Hasn't the family been claiming as of late that this wasn't true?

[Plummz]

That Hilary rosen is one creep character.

[TheDon]

Please ping me when there's news. Thanks.

[hergus]

Thanks for the idea of starting a daily thread for Elizabeth. I was having trouble finding the other threads.

[hergus]

Some details from the local WV paper, I hope this isn't a duplicate post that I missed:

"The Journal: Martinsburg, West Virginia

Fugitive found

The man wanted for questioning in connection with a June 5 Salt Lake City kidnapping checked into City Hospital under an assumed name, the victim of an apparent drug overdose.

The Martinsburg Journal
6/21/2002
MARTINSBURG, WV - Local police and FBI agents were tight-lipped Friday evening about the man who was wanted for questioning in a Utah kidnapping and checked into City Hospital early Thursday morning.

Bret Michael Edmunds, 26, walked into the emergency room Thursday at approximately 5:15 a.m. using a false name, according to City Hospital spokeswoman Teresa McCabe. He suffered from liver damage caused by an apparent drug overdose, she said. He was alone, according to hospital staff.

He was admitted to the intensive care unit around 10:30 a.m. Hospital nurses in the ICU unit, became suspicious and contacted the FBI Friday afternoon after Edmunds gave inconsistent information. FBI agents identified the drifter around 3 p.m. and arrested him.

Three other patients who were in ICU at the same time as Edmunds were transferred to another part of the hospital, McCabe said. Eight or nine U.S. marshals and West Virginia State Police troopers stood guard on the locked-down unit. FBI agents have questioned Edmunds and hospital staff, according to McCabe. Edmunds faded in and out of consciousness Friday, officials said.

"He still needs medical care," McCabe said. "As long as he's here, he'll remain under guard."

FBI officials said Edmunds will not be moved until his condition stabilizes. At presstime, he was listed in serious condition.

Late Friday afternoon, state police and FBI agents roped off a portion of City Hospital's front parking lot, leaving only a dark-green Saturn with Washington plates believed to be Edmunds' car in a row of 13 spaces. An FBI agent wearing rubber gloves opened the trunk, revealing clothes and other items stuffed inside. State troopers took photos of the car before a worker with Big K's Towing hauled it from the parking lot. News helicopters hovered overhead and TV trucks were set up in the parking lot.

Police declined to release information on what Edmunds may have been doing in Martinsburg.

Reporters from several major networks converged in an eighth-floor conference room to interview McCabe. Cable news shows, including Larry King Live, CNN and Fox News, called to speak with her.

"This is probably the biggest thing that's happened at City Hospital," McCabe said.

Authorities across the country had been looking for Edmunds, a transient living out of his Saturn, because a Salt Lake City milkman remembered seeing him near Elizabeth Smart's home two days before the teen was kidnapped. The milkman recalled part of the license plate number of Edmunds¹ car and passed it along to police.

Those plates, stolen from another car, were found last week along a road north of Salt Lake City.

Edmunds was being held on a federal warrant charging him with unlawful flight to avoid prosecution for violating probation in Utah on charges unrelated to the Smart case. He has been considered a fugitive since October.

"He is still not a suspect at this time," said Salt Lake City Police Chief Rick Dinse. "He¹s a question mark and we want to put a period on that question mark."

Federal and state officers will question Edmunds if they get a chance and others are being sent from Salt Lake City, Dinse said in a press conference in Utah.

Smart was taken from her bedroom. Her 9-year-old sister, Mary Katherine, described the kidnapper as a 5-foot-8 man.

Edmunds is 6-foot-2 and 235 pounds.

As soon as Edmunds is medically able, he will be taken to a magistrate for a hearing. Edmunds will then be taken to Utah "forthwith."

A $250,000 reward created by family, friends and community is being offered for the safe return of Elizabeth Smart. Anyone with information is asked to call 1-800-932-0190."

[SarahW]

Yes, please ping me!