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CNN Crossfire
Elizabeth Smart Has Been Found Alive
Aired March 12, 2003 - 19:00 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.
ANNOUNCER: CROSSFIRE. On the left James Carville and Paul Begala. On the right Robert Novak and Tucker Carlson.
In the CROSSFIRE: she's alive. Nine months after her disappearance, Elizabeth Smart turns up at a traffic stop. In just moments, authorities will tell us how it happened.
Tonight on CROSSFIRE.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
ANNOUNCER: Live from the George Washington University, Paul Begala and Tucker Carlson.
TUCKER CARLSON, CO-HOST: Welcome to a special edition of CROSSFIRE. We have some good news for a change. Elizabeth Smart, the teenage girl who disappeared from her bedroom in Utah last June 5 and became the subject of a nationwide search, was found today, and she is alive. We're standing by for a news conference by authorities in Utah. They're going to tell us how it happened.
PAUL BEGALA, CO-HOST: And investigators handled some 16,000 tips in the nine months since Elizabeth Smart disappeared. Somehow, something paid off today. They found her alive.
Let's go to CNN Center in Atlanta. Our Legal Correspondent Mike Brooks has been on this from the beginning. Mike, can you brings up- to-date on the story?
MIKE BROOKS, CNN LEGAL CORRESPONDENT: Good evening, Paul. It has been a good day. And as Elizabeth Smart's Uncle Tom has said, miracles do happen.
We're going to go to Salt Lake City right now for a news conference with Salt Lake City Police.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: ... Rick Dinse of the Salt Lake City Police Department. Secondly, will be Chief Steve Chapman of the Sandy City Police Department. Then you will hear from Mayor Rocky Anderson, Salt Lake City mayor. After that, the special agent in charge of the FBI office in Salt Lake City, Chip Burress will address you. Followed by Mr. Paul Warner of the U.S. Attorney's Office. We'll go to that point. We hope to have someone from the Salt Lake County District Attorney's office, but they have yet to arrive.
QUESTION: What about the family? UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The family will probably address you, but we don't know which members of the family will be here for that at this point.
Again, two to five minutes.
She will not be coming out. No.
BEGALA: Mike brooks, you're in Atlanta. As we saw the family will be speaking to us later on. But until they come out, again, bring our viewers up-to-date on this miraculous story you began to tell us about a moment ago.
BROOKS: Absolutely, Paul. This afternoon at about 1:00 p.m. Salt Lake City time, law enforcement officers performed a traffic stop in the city of Sandy, which is a small town about 15 miles south of the Elizabeth Smart home in Salt Lake City.
Now law enforcement apparently had received two calls, two calls from two separate women saying they saw a subject that they recognized as "Emmanuel". Emmanuel's real name is David Brian -- I'm sorry. Brian David Mitchell. He is a drifter and apparently had done some work at the Smart home, only apparently one time.
About a month ago the Smarts put out on a $10,000 reward, an additional $10,000 reward and put out a photo looking for this man as well as police. So they've been looking for him for approximately a month, Paul. And today, the tip from those two women paid off.
Now as you said, law enforcement, since she was kidnapped on June 5, 2002, had received over 16,000 tips as well -- from the citizens as well as the investigative leads. Detectives and the FBI had been running down for quite some time now.
Now there's a number of questions that hopefully the Salt Lake City Police, the FBI and the U.S. Attorney's Office there can answer tonight. Some of those where has she been for the last nine months? Has she been with this drifter? When he was stopped today, he was also in the company of a woman.
One of the eyewitnesses we talked to earlier, Paul, said that the woman had on some kind of veil. Our law enforcement sources in Salt Lake City said that they look at Brian David Mitchell as a drifter and as a religious fanatic. Now what they mean by that, hopefully we can -- our questions will be asked -- Tucker.
CARLSON: Mike, by amazing coincidence there was a story in "The Salt Lake Tribune", the biggest newspaper in the area, just this morning with a photograph of Brian David "Emmanuel" Mitchell. Are police saying that that photograph helped alert people to his presence? Is there any connection between the story and the capture?
BROOKS: That's not known right now. But any time a picture is put out to the media, especially in the area of Salt Lake City where she was found, that is going to help. Apparently just recently, they also profiled this "Emmanuel" subject on "America's Most Wanted". Whether that had any effect at all on her safe return, that remains to be seen.
But any time that a picture is put out into the public, it does help. We have not really done too much, the media around the country has not done too much recently on the Elizabeth Smart case -- Paul.
BEGALA: Well, Mike, the story today, though I want to follow up on that. It was a remarkable clash in public in the newspaper this morning between the Smart family and the police, where an Uncle of Elizabeth Smart, speaking for the family, said that the police had not been doing a very good job.
They're holding the press conference now, though. We're going to go to that live, Mike. Let's listen.
(INTERRUPTED FOR LIVE EVENT)
CARLSON: All right. Remarkable story out of Salt Lake City, Utah. Elizabeth Smart, of course, has been found alive in the suburb of Salt Lake City. We are going back to CNN's Mike Brooks in Atlanta, who we understand has some new information -- Mike.
BROOKS: Yes, Tucker. Jeanne Meserve, our CNN correspondent in Washington, just spoke a short time ago with Senator Jake Garn, who, as you know, was a former U.S. senator from Utah. Apparently he and his wife Kathleen (ph) are good friends with both Ed and Lois Smart. Kathleen (ph), his wife, ran into Ed Smart on Sunday and asked how he was doing and Ed said that he's fine because he still believed Elizabeth was alive.
Now Senator Garn was hearing that she was hidden in the mountains, then to San Diego, then to Atlanta, Georgia, and only recently went back to Salt Lake City. Now that does coincide with some of the information that Chief Rick Dinse of the Salt Lake City Police Department just moments ago believed that she was in San Diego and also in Florida. So this is some of the information we're getting from former Senator Garn. And so that does apparently coincide.
Now one of the questions was asked, Tucker, if, in fact -- one of the questions was, can you confirm if she spent the first night behind the hills, behind the Smarts' home. He could not confirm that. So I'm sure that will again be looked into to see if in fact she spent the first night after her disappearance behind the Smart home and then maybe went somewhere else in the mountains -- Tucker.
CARLSON: Now, Mike, we just saw on our air a remarkable, really a creepy picture of apparently Emmanuel Mitchell and what looked like two females wearing veils. Is that Elizabeth Smart, A? And, B, do you know where that photograph came from?
BROOKS: No. Apparently it was coming from one of our affiliates, that picture. Now someone asked during the press conference with Chief Dinse about a picture of Elizabeth with this Emmanuel in a veil at a party. I think that is the picture that they're referring to. It does resemble Elizabeth somewhat, and it definitely looks like the picture we've seen of this David Brian Mitchell, this so-called Emmanuel.
Where this picture was taken, we don't know. We'll attempt to find that out from our affiliates where we received it -- Paul.
BEGALA: Mike Brooks at the CNN Center in Atlanta, thank you very much. Stay with us. We're going to come back to you later.
But right now we are joined from Capitol Hill by the senior Senator from Utah, the honorable Orrin Hatch. Senator Hatch, thank you for joining us. I know you're a man of profound faith. This is proof that miracles happen, isn't it?
SEN. ORRIN HATCH (R), UTAH: Well, it sure does. You know there have been so many prayers offered for this young girl and for this family. And the family has been so active in their faith and believing that this young girl is alive. And we're just all overjoyed.
I've got to tell you, this is one heck of a family. You know Jake Garn and his wife Kathleen (ph) have been great supporters of the Smarts and they live in the same neighborhood, and I want to give them a lot of credit, too. But the Smarts never gave up hope.
I met with them what seemed to be countless times certainly back here and out there. And, frankly, they're just wonderful people whose faith has been rewarded.
CARLSON: Senator, this story sort of dropped from national coverage a couple of months ago. Give us a sense of how it's been covered in Utah. Has Elizabeth Smart been in the newspapers and on television continuously for eight months?
HATCH: Well, she has by and large. But the last few months they haven't been able to do very much. They haven't known what to do.
And of course when Ricci -- when all of that occurred with him, everybody thought well perhaps it was he. I understand his wife, his surviving widow, was just overjoyed to find out it was not he, or at least that's what I was told. But you know it has kind of drifted off in the last (UNINTELLIGIBLE).
But I will say this, that I don't believe the police or the FBI ever quit doing everything they could to find this young girl. Because it was apparent that, you know, it may very well have been some of these drifting people who the Smarts were trying to help as good Christian people, trying to help them get along in life. And there were two or three or four of these people that had worked on the Smart home.
So I've got to give the police a lot of credit. They never gave up and neither did the FBI< the federal law enforcement people. And it's just fortunate that some very alert people, as I understand it, in Salt Lake spotted this young girl today and that's what brought this all about. BEGALA: Well, Senator, I know that you worked with the Smart family when you were pushing through the Amber alert legislation in the Senate. I know you also brought them back -- I remember back -- I think it was October -- for a hearing that you held on exploited children and child pornography. As you got to know the family, what kept them going?
HATCH: Well, their faith. I mean these are very religious people, they're very faithful people, they're very family oriented people. They love their children, they love their church, they love their state and their community and their neighbors. And I have to say, I've never seen a community where all of the neighbors banded together and brought solace and support to this great Smart family.
And, of course, they did play a serious role in getting the Amber Alert system that legislation passed through the Senate. But not only that, we passed the Protect Act through the Senate. They are both over in the House, and I think they're holding hearings today on at least one of those bills. And we intend to get both of them through this year because that might be able to -- those bills might be very influential in protecting children in the future.
CARLSON: OK. Senior Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah joining us from Capitol Hill, thank you very much, Senator Hatch.
Now joining us, another member of the Utah delegation, Congressman Chris Cannon, a Republican from Utah. Mr. Cannon, thanks very much for joining us. You heard at the press conference already beneath the elation sort of a hint of hard questions being asked, particularly about Richard Ricci, a career criminal who died in jail after being the focus of the investigation. Do you think he was wronged?
REP. CHRIS CANNON (R), UTAH: He died of totally unrelated causes.
BEGALA: That's right.
CANNON: So there was no roughing him or anything like that in prison, as I understand. He was in jail for parole violations, not for this case, although clearly they were holding him in the context of this case. No, I think it is just totally wrong to rethink what the police did.
You know the police are in a world where you've got tons of possibilities, tons of leads, and 16,000 tips were called into this case. And I think it is just totally unfair at this point, or frankly at any point, to rethink what the police did and what their choices were.
BEGALA: Right. But at the same time, there is a remarkable story here. And you represent the Smart family in Salt Lake, they're your constituents. And your hometown paper today, as fate would have it, has a story where Elizabeth's uncle Tom, speaking for the family, says, and I'm quoting the paper here, that the police "were dragging their feet in pursuit of a homeless drifter." This man Emmanuel Mitchell, who is now in custody, because Tom Smart said they should have this guy by now. But the police are too vested in their top suspect, Richard Ricci. It's a way to cover your ass. Now the family was frustrated with the police, weren't they?
CANNON: You know I met with Ed and Lois, and they believed that they would find Elizabeth at some point. They were not unreasonable about that. They recognized the likelihood that she would not be recovered, but they had hope.
They never expressed any irritation, and I haven't seen irritation expressed until this story. And I'm not sure where the story came from and how this all (UNINTELLIGIBLE) to the surface. But if there was a sense that something was happening and some frustration by Ed's brother Tom, you can understand that.
You know, the idea -- I mean I have six daughters. The idea of one of them being kidnapped would drive me over the -- off the charts. So I think you need to downplay that reaction in the context and just say this is wonderful. This is truly wonderful.
I have a 4-year-old daughter who I've had a struggle with because she's been praying for six or nine months now that Elizabeth Smart would return home. And at some point you want to just -- you want to wean her from that and you don't know how to do it. You know?
And so my wife and I have talked about. The fact is, her prayers and the prayers of many other people have been answered. It's a wonderful thing, and it just seems wrong to be nitpicking the police as those reporters were doing. I mean it's fair to ask questions, but let's rejoice in a young girl who has been returned, which is marvelous.
CARLSON: Amen. We're going to go quickly to Doug Wright of KSL radio in Salt Lake City. Doug, first off, do you know anything about this photograph? The photograph apparently or perhaps of Elizabeth Smart in the veil?
DOUGH WRIGHT, KSL RADIO TALK SHOW HOST: You know, I wish I did. The first time I saw that photograph was on your program tonight. But as we were taking phone calls from listeners a little earlier on our radio station, more and more people said that they had seen her with a veil. We have one person who indicated that they thought they saw them last August in one of our grocery stores in a veil.
So who knows? But that's the first time I've seen that photo.
CARLSON: Have you -- we were just -- I don't know if you heard the conversation we have been having here in Washington, but it was about this story this morning in the "Salt Lake Tribune" and the uncle of Elizabeth Smart essentially saying that the police were looking for the wrong man and weren't paying enough attention to this Emmanuel Mitchell character. Is that a conversation that's going on in Utah right now?
WRIGHT: Oh, absolutely. You know the fact that it's just so ironic, because Ed and Lois and Tom and Dave and Cynthia, the entire Smart family, they have been so supportive of the police, and this was the very first obvious crack in that. And it was today, and today's the day we find Elizabeth.
BEGALA: Well, Doug, another source of controversy in this has been the role of the media. Talk show hosts like you, cable outlets like us. Apparently, from the police press conference, it was ordinary citizens who had seen a picture of this man and spotted him, who then alerted the police. Isn't this kind of a victory for the media keeping the spotlight on this case?
WRIGHT: Well, I think so. And I think Anita Dickerson (ph) is the person that we are hearing. We have seen interviews and we have talked with her. She was just driving down the street in Sandy and saw these very odd-looking individuals, and apparently somebody else did, too.
She, along with somebody else, made the phone call. The Sandy City police reacted very, very quickly. And we had this kind of an outcome. So, yes, just average citizens made the difference today.
CARLSON: Mr. Cannon, tell us, for those of us who haven't been to Sandy, Utah, describe it. What sort of town is it? Is it a suburb? What's it like?
CANNON: It's a suburb of Salt Lake City. Salt Lake has grown south, the town. And this is sort of -- most of the houses are new within the last 20, 25 years. Many of them within the last two or three months. So it's one of the really growing, booming areas.
We had the mayor of Sandy, Tom Dolan, in town today. I met with him right before -- he's on an airplane now, so he missed this. But it is one of the really aggressive, growing burgeoning areas in Salt Lake and a wonderful place.
CARLSON: So it's not the sort of place -- I mean it's the sort of place where people wandering down the street in veils would be noticed.
CANNON: It would seem a little odd, yes.
BEGALA: But not the kind of place that a homeless drifter. And I suppose the police are trying to figure out also, how does a homeless man hide a 14-year-old girl?
CANNON: Yes. This a lot we're going to have to learn about this. But apparently -- I mean Paul Warner (ph) would not have been on unless it's pretty clear they have been outside of the state of Utah, meaning you have a federal crime here, not just a state crime.
BEGALA: Well let me pick up on that, too. Your colleague, Senator Hatch, was talking about his efforts successful to pass an Amber Alert system through the Senate and a Protect Act, which is to crackdown on child pornography. He then kicked the can to you and said, well those are over in the House now.
You're a member the House Judiciary Committee. Will we get that kind of legislation...
CANNON : We passed that last year, and we will get that out as quickly as we can. We are, in fact, trying to pace ourselves so the Senate can keep up with the bills we are sending them.
BEGALA: Well walk us through the Amber Alert. I know you're an expert on it, but walk our viewers through. What does Amber Alert do for other kids who are missing?
CANNON : The Amber Alert really is about federal funding. There are several states who have programs. This is about federal funding to create some consistency through the federal -- or through the state programs and help advertise across the board when you have a missing person. Those state programs have been remarkable in a couple of abductions in finding people within minutes.
And so it's clear. I mean what happened here is that the media and the faith of these people and having Elizabeth Smart's face out in front of people is what turned this problem around. And, frankly, it is going to be the people of America who help us solve these kinds of problems, as they have in the past and they'll do in the future.
So the Amber Alert is about funding and consistency across programs so we can communicate in the region where someone is...
BEGALA: So that every missing kid -- there's at least 800,000 missing kids out there. So that more kids get the kind of lucky break that we have with Elizabeth Smart.
CARLSON: We're going to go to a quick question from our audience -- yes.
MATT NOWKOSKI: Yes, I am Matt Nowkowski (ph) from Eerie, Pennsylvania, and I was wondering if Utah had the Amber Alert system in place. Whether it would have led to a quicker apprehension of the abductor. And will this influence other states to implement this system?
BEGALA: Doug Wright at KSL, did you have that system or did you just ad hoc it?
WRIGHT: No, no, we do have the system, and it is in place. But we call it the Rachel (ph) Alert here, named after a young girl who was abducted in Utah and killed, Rachel Runion (ph). And this was the first time that was implemented in our state. So the Elizabeth Smart case was the debut of our Rachel (ph) Alert.
BEGALA: Congressman, are you at all worried about the so-called chicken little effect? That with 800,000 missing children and sometimes false reports, that maybe people start to tune it out then if they see too many Amber Alerts?
CANNON: You know we had 16,000 tips in this case.
BEGALA: Right. CANNON: I don't think people are going to be -- I think we care too much about our kids. So people that have a reason to think there is some connection to something, I think will continue to report. And, in fact, I think, frankly, as more of this happens and people become aware that it is the report of the citizen, or two citizens in this case, that result in the apprehension of criminals who have kidnapped a child, you'll see more activity, not less.
CARLSON: Now, Doug Wright, give us a thumbnail on this man Emmanuel Mitchell. What, briefly, do we know about him?
WRIGHT: People around Salt Lake City and the vicinity have seen him. As a matter of fact, he is from this area. We talked with his mother-in-law, Dora Corbert (ph), a little earlier on the radio. She indicated she has not seen him, hasn't known that much about him.
She suspects that her daughter, Wanda (ph), is the woman that might be with him. We don't have confirmation of that. But she suspects that to be the case.
He is an extremely religious individual who feels that he has had certain revelation and so on. He is not an unknown sight in Salt Lake City. She claims that he quite often would head up into the mountains to a teepee and would commune and get some kind of religious benefit from that.
CARLSON: OK. Thank you. Well, we've brought on Congressman Nick Lampson of Texas, a Democrat, chairman of the Congressional Missing and Exploited Children's Caucus. Mr. Lampson, is there any obvious lesson from today's news about how to find children who have been abducted?
REP. NICHOLAS LAMPSON (D-TX), MISSING AND EXPLOITED CHILDREN'S CAUCUS: I think there is. I think there's a magnificent partnership that was shown through this today. Through the heightened awareness that's come about with this issue in the last several years, the public has become a partner for law enforcement, as well as with the media.
And it's the basis of the Amber Alert that we're working on so hard. But here again, it's an example of the public responding to a plea of the law enforcement through the media to become thousands and thousands of eyes and ears for the police. And it proved to be successful.
BEGALA: And didn't the family, though -- weren't they the ones really pushing? I looked at the family's Web site today and it had a prayer on their...
LAMPSON: Congratulations to the family and to congratulations to the little sister, who focused, who was calm, who paid attention when her sister was in trouble and was able to communicate that later.
BEGALA: And, in fact, was at times doubted. She, in fact, later, months later, identified a photograph of this man, Emmanuel Mitchell, and said, I think that's the guy who did it. And she recounted that he carried a gun and that he made a threat, and it turned out that she was certainly right about the identification, even though she was a 9-year-old girl. And I think some of the cops maybe doubted her because other evidence pointed to this character Ricci.
LAMPSON: Well, there are tremendous lessons that we can learn from it. And we have tried through our caucus to -- and with members of Congress in their districts, to try to raise the level of awareness, try to teach parents about keeping current pictures, current information about descriptions of their children.
Hopefully nothing will ever happen to another child, but there is the possibility. So be prepared.
BEGALA: Well, Congressman Cannon, do we need to fingerprint our children? I hear commercials about things like that. I mean how far do parents need to go?
CANNON: Well we have a fingerprinting program in Utah which I think has been fairly successful. And it makes an enormous amount of sense. Those are the biometrics you can take on a child. Those are the things that make a lot of sense. Parents should be -- I don't think the state and the federal government should enforce it, but parents should recognize the value of having that kind of information.
BEGALA: Just look on the walls of my house and you'll find all of the fingerprints you want.
CARLSON: I want to get back to Doug Wright in Salt Lake City. Doug, back to something you said a moment ago. You -- I think you said that Emmanuel Mitchell was married to Wanda Elaine Barzy (ph)? That that was the name of the woman announced in the press conference, the woman who was apparently with him when he was arrested. Is it true that he's married, and what does he do for a living, do we know?
WRIGHT: Well, he's been homeless. He's been a drifter around Salt Lake for some time. His mother-in-law, whom we talked to earlier, indicated that she had been out of touch with him and that he had strayed from traditional religious beliefs and so on. Had become a little peculiar. And she was very concerned about her daughter, Wanda (ph).
I didn't catch the whole name when we talked with Dora (ph) a little earlier, but she suspected when we talked with her a little while ago, that Wanda (ph) was the person who would be found to be with Emmanuel.
BEGALA: Doug, let me ask you again. He was not unknown, though, to people in the area?
WRIGHT: Oh, no. And, again, when we have talked with members of the Smart family -- and many of us know them personally -- you know, Tom and Dave and Ed and Lois. They're a very, very important part of our community. And Tom is in the media here.
And I have heard, and I don't know if it's actual fact, that the Smarts quite often would extend their resources and extend opportunities to individuals that they would run across. And I've heard that that's how Lois Smart actually found Emmanuel and they offered him work. He worked on the roof of their house from what we know.
So, yes. He is not an unfamiliar figure in and around Salt Lake City.
BEGALA: Let me bring Mike Brooks back into this. He's still in the CNN Center in Atlanta. Mike, before you joined CNN, you had a long career in law enforcement. A lot cases, a lot of tough cases like this. What do parents need to do to both cooperate with the police, but also keep the heat up on the cops and the media so the case doesn't go cold?
BROOKS: Well, it's very fortunate that the Smarts had the resources to actually get the word out there and to get pictures out. But parents need to get fingerprints of their kids, any kind of DNA material, hair, those kind of things.
You know when you go to fairs, you go to open houses at your local firehouse, you usually have the sheriff's department there or other groups. They're fingerprinting kids. You talk to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and they'll tell you the same thing.
You know, dental records, any kind of DNA, fingerprints. It's all helpful. And not to give up hope. This is a case like I've never seen before, Paul, where someone has been missing for this long and has been found. I cannot remember a case like this.
BEGALA: That's just remarkable.
CARLSON: Congressman Cannon, tell us about the community's role, the neighborhood's role in keeping this case alive.
CANNON: You know it was a remarkable feeling in Utah, in Salt Lake, especially the area where you had many, many people. I mean the Smarts are well known, a substantial family. And not only that, there's a very strong community feeling.
And the day or the day after her kidnapping you had a large number of groups come forward. I think my campaign offered $5,000 or $10,000 reward as part of the reward. That reward got very big very quickly, and we hope that actually gets dispersed.
That's one of the very pleasant checks I think I'll write out of my campaign this year. And I think many other people are looking forward to that, too. So you had a huge response from the community, saying we want information and we're willing to pay for it.
LAMPSON: I think there are some other things that can be done as well. And that's great. And some communities have responded significantly.
So the parents can take the time right now to call the local school and find out what curriculum is offered to teach their children to be more alert, to be aware of their surroundings. We can call our local law enforcement officers and ask them what their plan is in the event that they received a phone call that said, my child is missing, I need help.
Make sure that that is a conscious, thought out written plan. We need to train, train, train. Train our children to be aware of their surroundings, to be vigilant about what could happen to them. To not just stay away from strangers or don't talk to strangers, but there are a lot of circumstances around them. And there is a program.
We need to train our law enforcement agencies. The Jimmy Rice Law Enforcement Center (ph), through the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, and then there are chief administrative officers of police departments may receive that training completely free at no charge. And then we need to train ourselves to be ready to support someone who has the difficulty, turn out our communities, whether it's to search for a child in the neighborhood or whether it is to keep that hope alive and make sure that the media is talking about the case.
BEGALA: Let me bring Mike Brooks back into this. Based on your experience, the family offered a large reward, and the community did for information leading to Elizabeth. But something I've never heard of before, recently they offered $10,000 extra for information that would clear Richard Ricci, the man thought to be a potential suspect before, who died in the hospital with a brain hemorrhage later on. Why was the family so certain it wasn't Ricci?
BROOKS: Well, it's very unusual. Apparently, they were just totally convinced that he had nothing at all to do with the case. But as Chief Dinse said a little while ago, that they go on evidence, and law enforcement thought that they had the evidence that led them to him. So again, it's highly unusual that they would take this kind of motive and this kind of route to say we want to make sure that his name is cleared, and possibly they did it just to make sure his name was cleared even after he died.
CARLSON: Doug Wright, in Salt Lake City, you heard what Mike Brooks and what the police have said, that that they followed Mr. Ricci, followed that lead because there was evidence, some evidence tying him to the crime. What was the evidence? Why were the police so convinced he was significant?
WRIGHT: Just the fact that he was familiar with the Smart family, that he had actually done some business with the Smart family, in that he worked on their home, and he had received payment from Ed Smart. Even payment in the form of a jeep that became the focus of part of this investigation.
He had a criminal record. He was in violation of probation, and there were some things in his story that just didn't match up. So there were lots of questions to be asked surrounding Richard Ricci, and then just the bizarre way in which he died just left everybody wondering if the secret to this case had literally died with Richard Ricci.
BEGALA: Well, Congressman Cannon, you spoke with the Smart family about this very aspect of the case, right?
CANNON: And let me just reiterate. There were a lot of complicated factors. Doug's talked about a few of those. The jeep disappeared that was in the shop. It was taken out and it disappeared.
A lot of things indicated that Ricci was the guy. I ask Ed about that with his wife there and he explained why he thought at that time it was probably Ricci. And then there as a little discussion between them and it became very clear that they were not convinced. And that the wife in particular was pretty sure that it was not Ricci based largely upon her view of him as a person.
Not evidence. You look at all this damning evidence. They listed all of that evidence, and they said -- but she feels it was want. So I think that they went from looking at Ricci as the guy to saying, wait a minute, there's no closure here, there are a lot of questions. And I think the family probably came up with the leads that led to Emmanuel.
CARLSON: Well it just goes to show that a wise man trusts his wife's instincts. We'll take a question from our audience -- yes.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What kind of strategies are being researched to implement faster recovery of abducted children?
LAMPSON: The best thing that's there is the Amber Alert and the training of law enforcement. We're looking for ways to reach out into the community. And the fastest and best thing that's necessary is to respond quickly, particularly to an eyewitness. An Amber Alert doesn't work in every case, particularly if there's not enough information to put out.
But there are a number of instances where they've already been successful. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children has worked diligently and is expanding their overall effort throughout this country and the world and is doing a magnificent job in just that area.
BEGALA: And, Mike Brooks, one of the reasons the Amber Alert is so important, because it's urgent, it's immediate. Experts tell us that in the first hours after an abduction, each hour that passes, the trail gets more cold. And yet here, nine months later, this child is found. Have you ever heard of a case like this?
BROOKS: No. As I said earlier, Paul, I've never heard of a case like this. But I do agree, the faster you can get the information out there to the public, to those thousands of eyes looking around, being cognizant of what's going on around them and looking for specific tag number, a specific make of a vehicle, that definitely does help.
And we talk about this Brian David Mitchell. Apparently at a -- just recently, it was last month that her parents announced that new reward that you were just speaking of and then also introduced a picture of this subject known as Emmanuel. I'd be curious to find out if he was anywhere on the radar scope prior to a month ago, and if he wasn't, why?
CARLSON: Dough Wright in Salt Lake City, what do we know about where Elizabeth Smart may have been? We've heard that she may have been camping out in the mountains near her home. Are there mountains, is there a rural area nearby?
And, second, do we know anything about this talk that perhaps she and Mitchell went to Florida or San Diego or Atlanta? What do we know?
WRIGHT: I heard that reported through former Senator Jake Garn, and we've received the same information from a different source that, apparently, when Ed was reunited with Elizabeth, he asked where have you been, and she said that she had been in the mountains immediately after the abduction.
Apparently they were up there until there things "cooled off" and then they headed out on some kind of a cross-country trek. We, too, just like Senator Garn, heard that San Diego, Atlanta. And then also, when we talked with Dora (ph) earlier -- again, this is Emmanuel's mother-in-law -- she confirmed that he would quite often go up into the mountains and always, several times on the radio this afternoon, referred to the teepee that he would go to.
So -- and I don't know where that is. And boy do we have mountains, yes. Here right in our backyards in Salt Lake City we have lots of mountains. And it would be tough if somebody truly wanted to hide to find them.
BEGALA: Well, Congressman Cannon, we don't want to accuse anybody of crime, nobody's been charged yet. But there's clearly a crime here. Somebody -- and if they took this little girl out of state, that makes it a federal offense, too. How long can somebody go away for this? Tell me forever.
CANNON: What the penalty is...
(CROSSTALK)
CANNON: We actually created the death penalty for this kind of interstate kidnapping back in the Lindbergh days. So this is a very, very serious crime. This is a federal capital crime, perhaps.
BEGALA: So this could be a death penalty case?
CARLSON: Mr. Lampson, you've spent a lot of time studying this phenomenon. How common or uncommon are these non-family kidnappings like the Elizabeth Smart case?
LAMPSON: Not near as much as the family ones. There are several hundred of those that happen each year. About 300 or so children die at the hands of a stranger abduction each year, and 70 percent of those who do die, die within the first three hours of the abduction. And so that's the critical need for police and communities to be able to respond very, very fast.
BEGALA: So speed is of the essence. These are the take home points.
LAMPSON: Absolutely. And take every missing child case seriously.
BEGALA: There's no such thing as a trail that's gone cold. I want to leave you all with a thought from the Smart family on their Web site. They said, "We are praying. We will never, ever give up. We are family."
Congressman Chris Cannon of Utah represents the family. Thank you very much. Congressman Nick Lampson -- just before we go -- I'm sorry, they tell me we have one more minute. What else do we need to be doing on the federal level?
LAMPSON: Well, we are passing legislation, and that's coming along, and that's very important. And I think that the big thing that we need to do is to continue to reach out in our communities and help continue to raise the level of awareness. That partnership that I spoke of at the very beginning is something that's important through our whole lives.
If we train ourselves to be aware of our surroundings, then we become the eyes and ears of law enforcement. And we can make a significant difference, whether it's in the case of a missing child or there's some terrorist act that might be happening within our communities.
CARLSON: Chris Cannon, it's your state. We're almost out of time. What do you want to say to the family of Elizabeth Smart?
CANNON: Hallelujah, thank heavens. And instead of prayers of hope and request, I suspect will have a lot of prayers of thanksgiving and praise. This is wonderful.
BEGALA: Couldn't say it better. Congressman Nick Lampson, thank you very much. Congressman Chris Cannon of Utah, thank you very much. Doug Wright, of KSL in Salt Lake, thank you very much. Our own Mike Brooks in Atlanta, thank you very much.
One quick programming note, members of Elizabeth Smart's family will be holding their own news conference tonight at 8:30 Eastern Time. CNN of course will have live coverage. And at 9:00 Eastern Time tonight, "America's Most Wanted" host, John Walsh, will join our own Larry King.
Also, Angela Ricci, the widow of the original suspect in the case, Richard Ricci. We'll be interested in what she has to say. Stay tuned to CNN throughout the evening for more on this remarkable story.
For now, I am Paul Begala. A very good night from CROSSFIRE.
CARLSON: And I'm Tucker Carlson. Join us again tomorrow night for another edition of CROSSFIRE.
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Aired March 12, 2003 - 19:00 ET
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ANNOUNCER: CROSSFIRE. On the left James Carville and Paul Begala. On the right Robert Novak and Tucker Carlson.
In the CROSSFIRE: she's alive. Nine months after her disappearance, Elizabeth Smart turns up at a traffic stop. In just moments, authorities will tell us how it happened.
Tonight on CROSSFIRE.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
ANNOUNCER: Live from the George Washington University, Paul Begala and Tucker Carlson.
TUCKER CARLSON, CO-HOST: Welcome to a special edition of CROSSFIRE. We have some good news for a change. Elizabeth Smart, the teenage girl who disappeared from her bedroom in Utah last June 5 and became the subject of a nationwide search, was found today, and she is alive. We're standing by for a news conference by authorities in Utah. They're going to tell us how it happened.
PAUL BEGALA, CO-HOST: And investigators handled some 16,000 tips in the nine months since Elizabeth Smart disappeared. Somehow, something paid off today. They found her alive.
Let's go to CNN Center in Atlanta. Our Legal Correspondent Mike Brooks has been on this from the beginning. Mike, can you brings up- to-date on the story?
MIKE BROOKS, CNN LEGAL CORRESPONDENT: Good evening, Paul. It has been a good day. And as Elizabeth Smart's Uncle Tom has said, miracles do happen.
We're going to go to Salt Lake City right now for a news conference with Salt Lake City Police.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: ... Rick Dinse of the Salt Lake City Police Department. Secondly, will be Chief Steve Chapman of the Sandy City Police Department. Then you will hear from Mayor Rocky Anderson, Salt Lake City mayor. After that, the special agent in charge of the FBI office in Salt Lake City, Chip Burress will address you. Followed by Mr. Paul Warner of the U.S. Attorney's Office. We'll go to that point. We hope to have someone from the Salt Lake County District Attorney's office, but they have yet to arrive.
QUESTION: What about the family? UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The family will probably address you, but we don't know which members of the family will be here for that at this point.
Again, two to five minutes.
She will not be coming out. No.
BEGALA: Mike brooks, you're in Atlanta. As we saw the family will be speaking to us later on. But until they come out, again, bring our viewers up-to-date on this miraculous story you began to tell us about a moment ago.
BROOKS: Absolutely, Paul. This afternoon at about 1:00 p.m. Salt Lake City time, law enforcement officers performed a traffic stop in the city of Sandy, which is a small town about 15 miles south of the Elizabeth Smart home in Salt Lake City.
Now law enforcement apparently had received two calls, two calls from two separate women saying they saw a subject that they recognized as "Emmanuel". Emmanuel's real name is David Brian -- I'm sorry. Brian David Mitchell. He is a drifter and apparently had done some work at the Smart home, only apparently one time.
About a month ago the Smarts put out on a $10,000 reward, an additional $10,000 reward and put out a photo looking for this man as well as police. So they've been looking for him for approximately a month, Paul. And today, the tip from those two women paid off.
Now as you said, law enforcement, since she was kidnapped on June 5, 2002, had received over 16,000 tips as well -- from the citizens as well as the investigative leads. Detectives and the FBI had been running down for quite some time now.
Now there's a number of questions that hopefully the Salt Lake City Police, the FBI and the U.S. Attorney's Office there can answer tonight. Some of those where has she been for the last nine months? Has she been with this drifter? When he was stopped today, he was also in the company of a woman.
One of the eyewitnesses we talked to earlier, Paul, said that the woman had on some kind of veil. Our law enforcement sources in Salt Lake City said that they look at Brian David Mitchell as a drifter and as a religious fanatic. Now what they mean by that, hopefully we can -- our questions will be asked -- Tucker.
CARLSON: Mike, by amazing coincidence there was a story in "The Salt Lake Tribune", the biggest newspaper in the area, just this morning with a photograph of Brian David "Emmanuel" Mitchell. Are police saying that that photograph helped alert people to his presence? Is there any connection between the story and the capture?
BROOKS: That's not known right now. But any time a picture is put out to the media, especially in the area of Salt Lake City where she was found, that is going to help. Apparently just recently, they also profiled this "Emmanuel" subject on "America's Most Wanted". Whether that had any effect at all on her safe return, that remains to be seen.
But any time that a picture is put out into the public, it does help. We have not really done too much, the media around the country has not done too much recently on the Elizabeth Smart case -- Paul.
BEGALA: Well, Mike, the story today, though I want to follow up on that. It was a remarkable clash in public in the newspaper this morning between the Smart family and the police, where an Uncle of Elizabeth Smart, speaking for the family, said that the police had not been doing a very good job.
They're holding the press conference now, though. We're going to go to that live, Mike. Let's listen.
(INTERRUPTED FOR LIVE EVENT)
CARLSON: All right. Remarkable story out of Salt Lake City, Utah. Elizabeth Smart, of course, has been found alive in the suburb of Salt Lake City. We are going back to CNN's Mike Brooks in Atlanta, who we understand has some new information -- Mike.
BROOKS: Yes, Tucker. Jeanne Meserve, our CNN correspondent in Washington, just spoke a short time ago with Senator Jake Garn, who, as you know, was a former U.S. senator from Utah. Apparently he and his wife Kathleen (ph) are good friends with both Ed and Lois Smart. Kathleen (ph), his wife, ran into Ed Smart on Sunday and asked how he was doing and Ed said that he's fine because he still believed Elizabeth was alive.
Now Senator Garn was hearing that she was hidden in the mountains, then to San Diego, then to Atlanta, Georgia, and only recently went back to Salt Lake City. Now that does coincide with some of the information that Chief Rick Dinse of the Salt Lake City Police Department just moments ago believed that she was in San Diego and also in Florida. So this is some of the information we're getting from former Senator Garn. And so that does apparently coincide.
Now one of the questions was asked, Tucker, if, in fact -- one of the questions was, can you confirm if she spent the first night behind the hills, behind the Smarts' home. He could not confirm that. So I'm sure that will again be looked into to see if in fact she spent the first night after her disappearance behind the Smart home and then maybe went somewhere else in the mountains -- Tucker.
CARLSON: Now, Mike, we just saw on our air a remarkable, really a creepy picture of apparently Emmanuel Mitchell and what looked like two females wearing veils. Is that Elizabeth Smart, A? And, B, do you know where that photograph came from?
BROOKS: No. Apparently it was coming from one of our affiliates, that picture. Now someone asked during the press conference with Chief Dinse about a picture of Elizabeth with this Emmanuel in a veil at a party. I think that is the picture that they're referring to. It does resemble Elizabeth somewhat, and it definitely looks like the picture we've seen of this David Brian Mitchell, this so-called Emmanuel.
Where this picture was taken, we don't know. We'll attempt to find that out from our affiliates where we received it -- Paul.
BEGALA: Mike Brooks at the CNN Center in Atlanta, thank you very much. Stay with us. We're going to come back to you later.
But right now we are joined from Capitol Hill by the senior Senator from Utah, the honorable Orrin Hatch. Senator Hatch, thank you for joining us. I know you're a man of profound faith. This is proof that miracles happen, isn't it?
SEN. ORRIN HATCH (R), UTAH: Well, it sure does. You know there have been so many prayers offered for this young girl and for this family. And the family has been so active in their faith and believing that this young girl is alive. And we're just all overjoyed.
I've got to tell you, this is one heck of a family. You know Jake Garn and his wife Kathleen (ph) have been great supporters of the Smarts and they live in the same neighborhood, and I want to give them a lot of credit, too. But the Smarts never gave up hope.
I met with them what seemed to be countless times certainly back here and out there. And, frankly, they're just wonderful people whose faith has been rewarded.
CARLSON: Senator, this story sort of dropped from national coverage a couple of months ago. Give us a sense of how it's been covered in Utah. Has Elizabeth Smart been in the newspapers and on television continuously for eight months?
HATCH: Well, she has by and large. But the last few months they haven't been able to do very much. They haven't known what to do.
And of course when Ricci -- when all of that occurred with him, everybody thought well perhaps it was he. I understand his wife, his surviving widow, was just overjoyed to find out it was not he, or at least that's what I was told. But you know it has kind of drifted off in the last (UNINTELLIGIBLE).
But I will say this, that I don't believe the police or the FBI ever quit doing everything they could to find this young girl. Because it was apparent that, you know, it may very well have been some of these drifting people who the Smarts were trying to help as good Christian people, trying to help them get along in life. And there were two or three or four of these people that had worked on the Smart home.
So I've got to give the police a lot of credit. They never gave up and neither did the FBI< the federal law enforcement people. And it's just fortunate that some very alert people, as I understand it, in Salt Lake spotted this young girl today and that's what brought this all about. BEGALA: Well, Senator, I know that you worked with the Smart family when you were pushing through the Amber alert legislation in the Senate. I know you also brought them back -- I remember back -- I think it was October -- for a hearing that you held on exploited children and child pornography. As you got to know the family, what kept them going?
HATCH: Well, their faith. I mean these are very religious people, they're very faithful people, they're very family oriented people. They love their children, they love their church, they love their state and their community and their neighbors. And I have to say, I've never seen a community where all of the neighbors banded together and brought solace and support to this great Smart family.
And, of course, they did play a serious role in getting the Amber Alert system that legislation passed through the Senate. But not only that, we passed the Protect Act through the Senate. They are both over in the House, and I think they're holding hearings today on at least one of those bills. And we intend to get both of them through this year because that might be able to -- those bills might be very influential in protecting children in the future.
CARLSON: OK. Senior Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah joining us from Capitol Hill, thank you very much, Senator Hatch.
Now joining us, another member of the Utah delegation, Congressman Chris Cannon, a Republican from Utah. Mr. Cannon, thanks very much for joining us. You heard at the press conference already beneath the elation sort of a hint of hard questions being asked, particularly about Richard Ricci, a career criminal who died in jail after being the focus of the investigation. Do you think he was wronged?
REP. CHRIS CANNON (R), UTAH: He died of totally unrelated causes.
BEGALA: That's right.
CANNON: So there was no roughing him or anything like that in prison, as I understand. He was in jail for parole violations, not for this case, although clearly they were holding him in the context of this case. No, I think it is just totally wrong to rethink what the police did.
You know the police are in a world where you've got tons of possibilities, tons of leads, and 16,000 tips were called into this case. And I think it is just totally unfair at this point, or frankly at any point, to rethink what the police did and what their choices were.
BEGALA: Right. But at the same time, there is a remarkable story here. And you represent the Smart family in Salt Lake, they're your constituents. And your hometown paper today, as fate would have it, has a story where Elizabeth's uncle Tom, speaking for the family, says, and I'm quoting the paper here, that the police "were dragging their feet in pursuit of a homeless drifter." This man Emmanuel Mitchell, who is now in custody, because Tom Smart said they should have this guy by now. But the police are too vested in their top suspect, Richard Ricci. It's a way to cover your ass. Now the family was frustrated with the police, weren't they?
CANNON: You know I met with Ed and Lois, and they believed that they would find Elizabeth at some point. They were not unreasonable about that. They recognized the likelihood that she would not be recovered, but they had hope.
They never expressed any irritation, and I haven't seen irritation expressed until this story. And I'm not sure where the story came from and how this all (UNINTELLIGIBLE) to the surface. But if there was a sense that something was happening and some frustration by Ed's brother Tom, you can understand that.
You know, the idea -- I mean I have six daughters. The idea of one of them being kidnapped would drive me over the -- off the charts. So I think you need to downplay that reaction in the context and just say this is wonderful. This is truly wonderful.
I have a 4-year-old daughter who I've had a struggle with because she's been praying for six or nine months now that Elizabeth Smart would return home. And at some point you want to just -- you want to wean her from that and you don't know how to do it. You know?
And so my wife and I have talked about. The fact is, her prayers and the prayers of many other people have been answered. It's a wonderful thing, and it just seems wrong to be nitpicking the police as those reporters were doing. I mean it's fair to ask questions, but let's rejoice in a young girl who has been returned, which is marvelous.
CARLSON: Amen. We're going to go quickly to Doug Wright of KSL radio in Salt Lake City. Doug, first off, do you know anything about this photograph? The photograph apparently or perhaps of Elizabeth Smart in the veil?
DOUGH WRIGHT, KSL RADIO TALK SHOW HOST: You know, I wish I did. The first time I saw that photograph was on your program tonight. But as we were taking phone calls from listeners a little earlier on our radio station, more and more people said that they had seen her with a veil. We have one person who indicated that they thought they saw them last August in one of our grocery stores in a veil.
So who knows? But that's the first time I've seen that photo.
CARLSON: Have you -- we were just -- I don't know if you heard the conversation we have been having here in Washington, but it was about this story this morning in the "Salt Lake Tribune" and the uncle of Elizabeth Smart essentially saying that the police were looking for the wrong man and weren't paying enough attention to this Emmanuel Mitchell character. Is that a conversation that's going on in Utah right now?
WRIGHT: Oh, absolutely. You know the fact that it's just so ironic, because Ed and Lois and Tom and Dave and Cynthia, the entire Smart family, they have been so supportive of the police, and this was the very first obvious crack in that. And it was today, and today's the day we find Elizabeth.
BEGALA: Well, Doug, another source of controversy in this has been the role of the media. Talk show hosts like you, cable outlets like us. Apparently, from the police press conference, it was ordinary citizens who had seen a picture of this man and spotted him, who then alerted the police. Isn't this kind of a victory for the media keeping the spotlight on this case?
WRIGHT: Well, I think so. And I think Anita Dickerson (ph) is the person that we are hearing. We have seen interviews and we have talked with her. She was just driving down the street in Sandy and saw these very odd-looking individuals, and apparently somebody else did, too.
She, along with somebody else, made the phone call. The Sandy City police reacted very, very quickly. And we had this kind of an outcome. So, yes, just average citizens made the difference today.
CARLSON: Mr. Cannon, tell us, for those of us who haven't been to Sandy, Utah, describe it. What sort of town is it? Is it a suburb? What's it like?
CANNON: It's a suburb of Salt Lake City. Salt Lake has grown south, the town. And this is sort of -- most of the houses are new within the last 20, 25 years. Many of them within the last two or three months. So it's one of the really growing, booming areas.
We had the mayor of Sandy, Tom Dolan, in town today. I met with him right before -- he's on an airplane now, so he missed this. But it is one of the really aggressive, growing burgeoning areas in Salt Lake and a wonderful place.
CARLSON: So it's not the sort of place -- I mean it's the sort of place where people wandering down the street in veils would be noticed.
CANNON: It would seem a little odd, yes.
BEGALA: But not the kind of place that a homeless drifter. And I suppose the police are trying to figure out also, how does a homeless man hide a 14-year-old girl?
CANNON: Yes. This a lot we're going to have to learn about this. But apparently -- I mean Paul Warner (ph) would not have been on unless it's pretty clear they have been outside of the state of Utah, meaning you have a federal crime here, not just a state crime.
BEGALA: Well let me pick up on that, too. Your colleague, Senator Hatch, was talking about his efforts successful to pass an Amber Alert system through the Senate and a Protect Act, which is to crackdown on child pornography. He then kicked the can to you and said, well those are over in the House now.
You're a member the House Judiciary Committee. Will we get that kind of legislation...
CANNON : We passed that last year, and we will get that out as quickly as we can. We are, in fact, trying to pace ourselves so the Senate can keep up with the bills we are sending them.
BEGALA: Well walk us through the Amber Alert. I know you're an expert on it, but walk our viewers through. What does Amber Alert do for other kids who are missing?
CANNON : The Amber Alert really is about federal funding. There are several states who have programs. This is about federal funding to create some consistency through the federal -- or through the state programs and help advertise across the board when you have a missing person. Those state programs have been remarkable in a couple of abductions in finding people within minutes.
And so it's clear. I mean what happened here is that the media and the faith of these people and having Elizabeth Smart's face out in front of people is what turned this problem around. And, frankly, it is going to be the people of America who help us solve these kinds of problems, as they have in the past and they'll do in the future.
So the Amber Alert is about funding and consistency across programs so we can communicate in the region where someone is...
BEGALA: So that every missing kid -- there's at least 800,000 missing kids out there. So that more kids get the kind of lucky break that we have with Elizabeth Smart.
CARLSON: We're going to go to a quick question from our audience -- yes.
MATT NOWKOSKI: Yes, I am Matt Nowkowski (ph) from Eerie, Pennsylvania, and I was wondering if Utah had the Amber Alert system in place. Whether it would have led to a quicker apprehension of the abductor. And will this influence other states to implement this system?
BEGALA: Doug Wright at KSL, did you have that system or did you just ad hoc it?
WRIGHT: No, no, we do have the system, and it is in place. But we call it the Rachel (ph) Alert here, named after a young girl who was abducted in Utah and killed, Rachel Runion (ph). And this was the first time that was implemented in our state. So the Elizabeth Smart case was the debut of our Rachel (ph) Alert.
BEGALA: Congressman, are you at all worried about the so-called chicken little effect? That with 800,000 missing children and sometimes false reports, that maybe people start to tune it out then if they see too many Amber Alerts?
CANNON: You know we had 16,000 tips in this case.
BEGALA: Right. CANNON: I don't think people are going to be -- I think we care too much about our kids. So people that have a reason to think there is some connection to something, I think will continue to report. And, in fact, I think, frankly, as more of this happens and people become aware that it is the report of the citizen, or two citizens in this case, that result in the apprehension of criminals who have kidnapped a child, you'll see more activity, not less.
CARLSON: Now, Doug Wright, give us a thumbnail on this man Emmanuel Mitchell. What, briefly, do we know about him?
WRIGHT: People around Salt Lake City and the vicinity have seen him. As a matter of fact, he is from this area. We talked with his mother-in-law, Dora Corbert (ph), a little earlier on the radio. She indicated she has not seen him, hasn't known that much about him.
She suspects that her daughter, Wanda (ph), is the woman that might be with him. We don't have confirmation of that. But she suspects that to be the case.
He is an extremely religious individual who feels that he has had certain revelation and so on. He is not an unknown sight in Salt Lake City. She claims that he quite often would head up into the mountains to a teepee and would commune and get some kind of religious benefit from that.
CARLSON: OK. Thank you. Well, we've brought on Congressman Nick Lampson of Texas, a Democrat, chairman of the Congressional Missing and Exploited Children's Caucus. Mr. Lampson, is there any obvious lesson from today's news about how to find children who have been abducted?
REP. NICHOLAS LAMPSON (D-TX), MISSING AND EXPLOITED CHILDREN'S CAUCUS: I think there is. I think there's a magnificent partnership that was shown through this today. Through the heightened awareness that's come about with this issue in the last several years, the public has become a partner for law enforcement, as well as with the media.
And it's the basis of the Amber Alert that we're working on so hard. But here again, it's an example of the public responding to a plea of the law enforcement through the media to become thousands and thousands of eyes and ears for the police. And it proved to be successful.
BEGALA: And didn't the family, though -- weren't they the ones really pushing? I looked at the family's Web site today and it had a prayer on their...
LAMPSON: Congratulations to the family and to congratulations to the little sister, who focused, who was calm, who paid attention when her sister was in trouble and was able to communicate that later.
BEGALA: And, in fact, was at times doubted. She, in fact, later, months later, identified a photograph of this man, Emmanuel Mitchell, and said, I think that's the guy who did it. And she recounted that he carried a gun and that he made a threat, and it turned out that she was certainly right about the identification, even though she was a 9-year-old girl. And I think some of the cops maybe doubted her because other evidence pointed to this character Ricci.
LAMPSON: Well, there are tremendous lessons that we can learn from it. And we have tried through our caucus to -- and with members of Congress in their districts, to try to raise the level of awareness, try to teach parents about keeping current pictures, current information about descriptions of their children.
Hopefully nothing will ever happen to another child, but there is the possibility. So be prepared.
BEGALA: Well, Congressman Cannon, do we need to fingerprint our children? I hear commercials about things like that. I mean how far do parents need to go?
CANNON: Well we have a fingerprinting program in Utah which I think has been fairly successful. And it makes an enormous amount of sense. Those are the biometrics you can take on a child. Those are the things that make a lot of sense. Parents should be -- I don't think the state and the federal government should enforce it, but parents should recognize the value of having that kind of information.
BEGALA: Just look on the walls of my house and you'll find all of the fingerprints you want.
CARLSON: I want to get back to Doug Wright in Salt Lake City. Doug, back to something you said a moment ago. You -- I think you said that Emmanuel Mitchell was married to Wanda Elaine Barzy (ph)? That that was the name of the woman announced in the press conference, the woman who was apparently with him when he was arrested. Is it true that he's married, and what does he do for a living, do we know?
WRIGHT: Well, he's been homeless. He's been a drifter around Salt Lake for some time. His mother-in-law, whom we talked to earlier, indicated that she had been out of touch with him and that he had strayed from traditional religious beliefs and so on. Had become a little peculiar. And she was very concerned about her daughter, Wanda (ph).
I didn't catch the whole name when we talked with Dora (ph) a little earlier, but she suspected when we talked with her a little while ago, that Wanda (ph) was the person who would be found to be with Emmanuel.
BEGALA: Doug, let me ask you again. He was not unknown, though, to people in the area?
WRIGHT: Oh, no. And, again, when we have talked with members of the Smart family -- and many of us know them personally -- you know, Tom and Dave and Ed and Lois. They're a very, very important part of our community. And Tom is in the media here.
And I have heard, and I don't know if it's actual fact, that the Smarts quite often would extend their resources and extend opportunities to individuals that they would run across. And I've heard that that's how Lois Smart actually found Emmanuel and they offered him work. He worked on the roof of their house from what we know.
So, yes. He is not an unfamiliar figure in and around Salt Lake City.
BEGALA: Let me bring Mike Brooks back into this. He's still in the CNN Center in Atlanta. Mike, before you joined CNN, you had a long career in law enforcement. A lot cases, a lot of tough cases like this. What do parents need to do to both cooperate with the police, but also keep the heat up on the cops and the media so the case doesn't go cold?
BROOKS: Well, it's very fortunate that the Smarts had the resources to actually get the word out there and to get pictures out. But parents need to get fingerprints of their kids, any kind of DNA material, hair, those kind of things.
You know when you go to fairs, you go to open houses at your local firehouse, you usually have the sheriff's department there or other groups. They're fingerprinting kids. You talk to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and they'll tell you the same thing.
You know, dental records, any kind of DNA, fingerprints. It's all helpful. And not to give up hope. This is a case like I've never seen before, Paul, where someone has been missing for this long and has been found. I cannot remember a case like this.
BEGALA: That's just remarkable.
CARLSON: Congressman Cannon, tell us about the community's role, the neighborhood's role in keeping this case alive.
CANNON: You know it was a remarkable feeling in Utah, in Salt Lake, especially the area where you had many, many people. I mean the Smarts are well known, a substantial family. And not only that, there's a very strong community feeling.
And the day or the day after her kidnapping you had a large number of groups come forward. I think my campaign offered $5,000 or $10,000 reward as part of the reward. That reward got very big very quickly, and we hope that actually gets dispersed.
That's one of the very pleasant checks I think I'll write out of my campaign this year. And I think many other people are looking forward to that, too. So you had a huge response from the community, saying we want information and we're willing to pay for it.
LAMPSON: I think there are some other things that can be done as well. And that's great. And some communities have responded significantly.
So the parents can take the time right now to call the local school and find out what curriculum is offered to teach their children to be more alert, to be aware of their surroundings. We can call our local law enforcement officers and ask them what their plan is in the event that they received a phone call that said, my child is missing, I need help.
Make sure that that is a conscious, thought out written plan. We need to train, train, train. Train our children to be aware of their surroundings, to be vigilant about what could happen to them. To not just stay away from strangers or don't talk to strangers, but there are a lot of circumstances around them. And there is a program.
We need to train our law enforcement agencies. The Jimmy Rice Law Enforcement Center (ph), through the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, and then there are chief administrative officers of police departments may receive that training completely free at no charge. And then we need to train ourselves to be ready to support someone who has the difficulty, turn out our communities, whether it's to search for a child in the neighborhood or whether it is to keep that hope alive and make sure that the media is talking about the case.
BEGALA: Let me bring Mike Brooks back into this. Based on your experience, the family offered a large reward, and the community did for information leading to Elizabeth. But something I've never heard of before, recently they offered $10,000 extra for information that would clear Richard Ricci, the man thought to be a potential suspect before, who died in the hospital with a brain hemorrhage later on. Why was the family so certain it wasn't Ricci?
BROOKS: Well, it's very unusual. Apparently, they were just totally convinced that he had nothing at all to do with the case. But as Chief Dinse said a little while ago, that they go on evidence, and law enforcement thought that they had the evidence that led them to him. So again, it's highly unusual that they would take this kind of motive and this kind of route to say we want to make sure that his name is cleared, and possibly they did it just to make sure his name was cleared even after he died.
CARLSON: Doug Wright, in Salt Lake City, you heard what Mike Brooks and what the police have said, that that they followed Mr. Ricci, followed that lead because there was evidence, some evidence tying him to the crime. What was the evidence? Why were the police so convinced he was significant?
WRIGHT: Just the fact that he was familiar with the Smart family, that he had actually done some business with the Smart family, in that he worked on their home, and he had received payment from Ed Smart. Even payment in the form of a jeep that became the focus of part of this investigation.
He had a criminal record. He was in violation of probation, and there were some things in his story that just didn't match up. So there were lots of questions to be asked surrounding Richard Ricci, and then just the bizarre way in which he died just left everybody wondering if the secret to this case had literally died with Richard Ricci.
BEGALA: Well, Congressman Cannon, you spoke with the Smart family about this very aspect of the case, right?
CANNON: And let me just reiterate. There were a lot of complicated factors. Doug's talked about a few of those. The jeep disappeared that was in the shop. It was taken out and it disappeared.
A lot of things indicated that Ricci was the guy. I ask Ed about that with his wife there and he explained why he thought at that time it was probably Ricci. And then there as a little discussion between them and it became very clear that they were not convinced. And that the wife in particular was pretty sure that it was not Ricci based largely upon her view of him as a person.
Not evidence. You look at all this damning evidence. They listed all of that evidence, and they said -- but she feels it was want. So I think that they went from looking at Ricci as the guy to saying, wait a minute, there's no closure here, there are a lot of questions. And I think the family probably came up with the leads that led to Emmanuel.
CARLSON: Well it just goes to show that a wise man trusts his wife's instincts. We'll take a question from our audience -- yes.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What kind of strategies are being researched to implement faster recovery of abducted children?
LAMPSON: The best thing that's there is the Amber Alert and the training of law enforcement. We're looking for ways to reach out into the community. And the fastest and best thing that's necessary is to respond quickly, particularly to an eyewitness. An Amber Alert doesn't work in every case, particularly if there's not enough information to put out.
But there are a number of instances where they've already been successful. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children has worked diligently and is expanding their overall effort throughout this country and the world and is doing a magnificent job in just that area.
BEGALA: And, Mike Brooks, one of the reasons the Amber Alert is so important, because it's urgent, it's immediate. Experts tell us that in the first hours after an abduction, each hour that passes, the trail gets more cold. And yet here, nine months later, this child is found. Have you ever heard of a case like this?
BROOKS: No. As I said earlier, Paul, I've never heard of a case like this. But I do agree, the faster you can get the information out there to the public, to those thousands of eyes looking around, being cognizant of what's going on around them and looking for specific tag number, a specific make of a vehicle, that definitely does help.
And we talk about this Brian David Mitchell. Apparently at a -- just recently, it was last month that her parents announced that new reward that you were just speaking of and then also introduced a picture of this subject known as Emmanuel. I'd be curious to find out if he was anywhere on the radar scope prior to a month ago, and if he wasn't, why?
CARLSON: Dough Wright in Salt Lake City, what do we know about where Elizabeth Smart may have been? We've heard that she may have been camping out in the mountains near her home. Are there mountains, is there a rural area nearby?
And, second, do we know anything about this talk that perhaps she and Mitchell went to Florida or San Diego or Atlanta? What do we know?
WRIGHT: I heard that reported through former Senator Jake Garn, and we've received the same information from a different source that, apparently, when Ed was reunited with Elizabeth, he asked where have you been, and she said that she had been in the mountains immediately after the abduction.
Apparently they were up there until there things "cooled off" and then they headed out on some kind of a cross-country trek. We, too, just like Senator Garn, heard that San Diego, Atlanta. And then also, when we talked with Dora (ph) earlier -- again, this is Emmanuel's mother-in-law -- she confirmed that he would quite often go up into the mountains and always, several times on the radio this afternoon, referred to the teepee that he would go to.
So -- and I don't know where that is. And boy do we have mountains, yes. Here right in our backyards in Salt Lake City we have lots of mountains. And it would be tough if somebody truly wanted to hide to find them.
BEGALA: Well, Congressman Cannon, we don't want to accuse anybody of crime, nobody's been charged yet. But there's clearly a crime here. Somebody -- and if they took this little girl out of state, that makes it a federal offense, too. How long can somebody go away for this? Tell me forever.
CANNON: What the penalty is...
(CROSSTALK)
CANNON: We actually created the death penalty for this kind of interstate kidnapping back in the Lindbergh days. So this is a very, very serious crime. This is a federal capital crime, perhaps.
BEGALA: So this could be a death penalty case?
CARLSON: Mr. Lampson, you've spent a lot of time studying this phenomenon. How common or uncommon are these non-family kidnappings like the Elizabeth Smart case?
LAMPSON: Not near as much as the family ones. There are several hundred of those that happen each year. About 300 or so children die at the hands of a stranger abduction each year, and 70 percent of those who do die, die within the first three hours of the abduction. And so that's the critical need for police and communities to be able to respond very, very fast.
BEGALA: So speed is of the essence. These are the take home points.
LAMPSON: Absolutely. And take every missing child case seriously.
BEGALA: There's no such thing as a trail that's gone cold. I want to leave you all with a thought from the Smart family on their Web site. They said, "We are praying. We will never, ever give up. We are family."
Congressman Chris Cannon of Utah represents the family. Thank you very much. Congressman Nick Lampson -- just before we go -- I'm sorry, they tell me we have one more minute. What else do we need to be doing on the federal level?
LAMPSON: Well, we are passing legislation, and that's coming along, and that's very important. And I think that the big thing that we need to do is to continue to reach out in our communities and help continue to raise the level of awareness. That partnership that I spoke of at the very beginning is something that's important through our whole lives.
If we train ourselves to be aware of our surroundings, then we become the eyes and ears of law enforcement. And we can make a significant difference, whether it's in the case of a missing child or there's some terrorist act that might be happening within our communities.
CARLSON: Chris Cannon, it's your state. We're almost out of time. What do you want to say to the family of Elizabeth Smart?
CANNON: Hallelujah, thank heavens. And instead of prayers of hope and request, I suspect will have a lot of prayers of thanksgiving and praise. This is wonderful.
BEGALA: Couldn't say it better. Congressman Nick Lampson, thank you very much. Congressman Chris Cannon of Utah, thank you very much. Doug Wright, of KSL in Salt Lake, thank you very much. Our own Mike Brooks in Atlanta, thank you very much.
One quick programming note, members of Elizabeth Smart's family will be holding their own news conference tonight at 8:30 Eastern Time. CNN of course will have live coverage. And at 9:00 Eastern Time tonight, "America's Most Wanted" host, John Walsh, will join our own Larry King.
Also, Angela Ricci, the widow of the original suspect in the case, Richard Ricci. We'll be interested in what she has to say. Stay tuned to CNN throughout the evening for more on this remarkable story.
For now, I am Paul Begala. A very good night from CROSSFIRE.
CARLSON: And I'm Tucker Carlson. Join us again tomorrow night for another edition of CROSSFIRE.
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