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American Morning
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Aired June 28, 2002 - 08:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: Up front this morning, the close -- investigators looking at right now -- they're looking at a handyman, Richard Ricci, the more potentially incriminating evidence they seem to find, a Salt Lake City car mechanic telling authorities and CNN that Ricci took his car out of his repair shop just before Smart's disappearance, then returned it a few days later with about 1,000 more miles on the odometer.
As we've been reporting, according to Ricci's father-in-law, as Jack just mentioned, the (UNINTELLIGIBLE) also removed articles of clothing from his mobile home.
Our law enforcement analyst Mike Brooks joins us from Atlanta to look at this new information.
Good to see you again, Mike. Always good to have you, too. Good morning.
MIKE BROOKS, CNN ANALYST: Good morning, Bill. I'm looking for you to get back down here in Atlanta.
HEMMER: Thank you, pal.
You're an investigator, right? Put on your hat for a second. How do you account for 1,000 miles on this vehicle?
BROOKS: Something isn't right. Something stinks to me. A thousand miles? That's a lot of territory to cover in about three days. You look at how much, you know, how much average driving does a person do in three days? That's -- 1,000 miles is -- a lot. There's, there would be a lot of questions that he would have to be, that he'd have to account for.
HEMMER: Some of the clues we're picking up on in terms of the investigation now, we're told that they'll try and take some soil samples from inside the wheel wells of his car. If you travel 1,000 miles, logic tells you you can go out 500 miles and come back. But how reliable could it be in the state of Utah, where you find soil samples and say OK, this was the part of the state where this car was?
BROOKS: Well, if you look at the car, it's either rust or a lot of dirt that's on the hood, as we see in the pictures right here. Up underneath the wheel wells, as you know, a lot of dirt can get kicked up in, kicked up there. Also, the catalytic converter, stick to that. The heat from that bakes it on. You know, when you see two cars have an accident and you go to an accident scene, what do you find all over the ground?: dirt.
So that's what they're going to do. They're going to take this, they're going to compare it to an area where he may have been, you know, in that kind of time frame for 1,000 miles. There's a lot of different dirt that's indigenous to that part of the country, in the valley and also up in the mountains. And I'm sure that the people out there will go ahead and take soil samples and see if they can do any comparison.
Should they ever, you know -- and it's a gruesome thought, Bill, but the longer we go, the less likely there is that, it is that they'll find her alive, you know -- but they're still not, you know, not saying that she's not. But if they ever do find a place, they will take that soil, compare it to what they find is in his truck.
HEMMER: Mike, I just mentioned with Daryn and Jack here, don't you want to know more about the relationship between Elizabeth's father and Richard Ricci?
BROOKS: Absolutely. You know, it sounds like that he was well known in the neighborhood. He broke into other houses in that neighborhood. You know, what was the relationship between the father and him? He gave him a car. Now, is the reason he gave him this car is because that he didn't have something to get back and forth? You know, most people don't pay in payment, and it's not like they were short of money. Something just doesn't seem right here.
HEMMER: From an investigative standpoint. But Michael Edmunds, that was the name on everybody's tongue for weeks, and apparently he's checked out on the negative side in terms of a suspect right now. And now all the focus for the past several days has been on Richard Ricci. Is that normal under an investigation, for things to shift and slide like that?
BROOKS: Absolutely. You know, with Ricci especially, with the work he did in the neighborhood, his admitting that he has broken into other homes in the neighborhood, spending his 30 year criminal history, being known to the family, having been in the house, knowing the house intimately inside and out, knowing who sleeps where, what's in that house, and now going back to, you know, him removing things from the truck, the seat covers, those kind of things. Going to his trailer and finding a hole there in the trailer. The FBI outed his trailer, digging up, digging around there.
If I was also the FBI, I'd want to bring in the experts from Quantico, and they have what they call ground-penetrating radar. They can, what they can do is grid off an area and check to see if there's any anomalies, if there's anything that's not usually under the surface. And if I were them, I'd be doing that also, and I'm sure they will be.
HEMMER: Mike, quickly here before we let you go, reports say a grand jury has been convening in Utah throughout the week. What does that tell you? BROOKS: That tells me that they are looking to try to indict someone. They had Ricci's wife there. She says that he has an alibi. You know, his wife, she also has a criminal record...
HEMMER: So it suggests to you that they're getting closer on that front?
BROOKS: I would say so. If they have gone ahead and convened a grand jury, they are actively investigating and actually looking at this, where they can bring people in, compel them to testify under oath to tell the truth, where when they're talking to federal agents and Salt Lake City police, they might not want to tell the truth.
But they're a little more compelled to tell the truth in front of a grand jury.
HEMMER: Right, thank you, Mike.
Have a good weekend.
BROOKS: All right, Bill.
HEMMER: Mike Brooks, in Atlanta.
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