Money Crimes with Nicole Lapin - Elizabeth Smart: Her Family Had Already Met Her Kidnapper

Episode Date: July 4, 2026

In June 2002, fourteen-year-old Elizabeth Smart was taken from her bedroom at knifepoint while her nine-year-old sister hid under the covers and watched. Her kidnapper knew exactly which door of the house wasn't wired to the alarm. For months, investigators zeroed in on the wrong man. And a sketch that could have broken the case wide open sat untouched in a filing cabinet.This episode contains descriptions of kidnapping, child sexual abuse, and captivity. Please listen with careFollow America's Most Infamous Crimes to hear the rest of the story: https://pod.link/1882861002Join Crime House+ to binge a special limited series on Murder: True Crime Stories for America’s 250th: The Crimes That Built America. These are the cases that created the FBI, gave us Miranda rights, sparked criminal profiling, and gave us America’s Most Wanted. Join at crimehouseplus.com or if you’re listening on Apple Podcasts, tap “Try Free” at the top of this show’s page. You’ll also get ad-free and early released episodes across the Crime House lineup.🎧 Need More to Binge? Listen to other Crime House Originals Clues, Crimes Of…, Crime House 24/7, Serial Killers & Murderous Minds, Murder True Crime Stories, and more wherever you get your podcasts!Follow me on SocialInstagram: @CrimehouseTikTok: @CrimehouseFacebook: @crimehousestudiosX: @crimehousemediaYouTube: @crimehousestudios

Hi listeners, exciting news. Crime House Plus and Murder True Crime Stories are celebrating America's 250th by dropping a four-part limited series on the Crimes That Built America. These are the crimes and cases that gave us Miranda rights, sparked criminal profiling, and a murder that built America's missing children movement. Follow Murder True Crime Stories for a new episode every Monday leading up to July 4th. Or you can listen to all of them right now with Crime House Plus. To join, go to Crimehouseplus.com, or if you're listening on Apple Podcasts, tap try free at the top of this show's page. This is Crime House. On the night of June 4, 2002, 14-year-old Elizabeth Smart read her little sister, bedtime story, turned out all the lights and fell asleep in the bedroom they shared in one of the safest neighborhoods in Salt Lake City. Sometime before one in the morning, she woke up to a knife at her throat in a stranger's voice.

telling her to get out of bed, or he'd kill her entire family. Within minutes, she was gone. What followed was one of the most agonizing searches in modern American history. Thousands of volunteers, dozens of aircraft, and a police investigation that zeroed in hard on the wrong man, while Elizabeth's real kidnapper was hiding in plain sight. Every crime tells a story about the people involved, the system that tried to stop it, and the nation that couldn't look away. Some cases are so shocking, so deeply woven into who we.

are that decades later we're still asking, how did this happen? I'm Katie Rang, and this is America's Most Infamous Crimes. Every Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, I'll take you deep into cases that have a lasting imprint on society and still haunt us today. Crimehouse exists because of listeners like you. Want even more, join Crimehouse Plus and get all three parts of each week's America's most infamous crime stories dropped at once every Monday and ad-free. You'll also get the rest of the Crimehouse lineup ad-free and early and exclusive

bonus episodes. To join, go to Crimehouseplus.com. Or if you listen on Apple Podcasts, tap, try free at the top of America's Most Infamous Crimes Showpage. And to help keep growing our community, be sure to rate review and follow America's Most Infamous Crimes wherever you get your podcasts. Before I get started, please be advised that this episode contains descriptions of kidnapping, child sexual abuse, and captivity. So please listen with care. This is the first of our three episode series on the kidnapping of Elizabeth Smart. Today, I'll introduce you to the smart family, walk you through the terrifying night Elizabeth was taken from her bedroom, and follow an investigation that spent months chasing the wrong suspect until a nine-year-old girl's memory changed everything.

Before we get into what happened to Elizabeth Smart, I want you to understand who she was, because she wasn't just a name on a missing person flyer. She was a real kid, living a real life, with a family that adored her. In 2002, Elizabeth was 14 years old and living in Federal Heights, one of the most prominent neighborhoods in Salt Lake City, Utah. Picture, big houses, manicured lawns, and families who rarely locked their doors. It was the kind of community where kids played in the streets until dark and neighbors borrowed sugar from each other without thinking twice about it.

Crime felt like something that happened somewhere else. Most of the residents were members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and the smarts were no exception. The family was steeped in Mormon traditions. They didn't drink alcohol or caffeine. They attended church regularly. They went on missions to spread the LDS message, and at the center of their household was a pretty simple philosophy,

faith, family, and hard work. Elizabeth's dad, 47-year-old Ed Smart, was a mortgage broker with a knack for construction. He'd been working on the family's own house for six years, constantly renovating and improving it, with plans to sell once the construction was finished. Her mom, 45-year-old Lois Smart, was a stay-at-home mom managing the organized chaos of six children. Elizabeth was the second oldest. She had one sister, nine-year-old Mary Catherine, and four brothers, three-year-old William,

seven-year-old Eddie, 12-year-old Andrew, and 16-year-old Charles. They were a big, close-knit family. Dinner together every night at 6 o'clock sharp, church on Sundays, constant involvement in their LDS congregation, which they called their ward. The smarts were what you call a classic American success story, not flashy but solid, built on routine, devotion, and each other. As for Elizabeth herself, she was described as the most shy and well-mannered kid in the house. She never showed a rebellious side.

Where her brothers could be loud and rowdy, Elizabeth was calm and thoughtful. She was a teenager who still read bedtime stories to her little sister. She was deeply devoted to her faith, obedient to her parents, and by every measure, a model kid, the kind of daughter who made her family proud without ever trying too hard to do it. And she was incredibly talented. Elizabeth played the harp beautifully. She had been practicing for years and had real skill. She was even featured as a soloist at a major concert for the 2002 Paralympic Games in Salt Lake City.

For a 14-year-old, that was a huge achievement. It was the kind of thing that added to the glow of the whole smart family, a family that seemed to have it all. The evening of June 4, 2002, was just another Wednesday night in the smart household. Elizabeth had spent the day nagging her parents about letting her go on vacation to a small town in Utah with a friend and their family. Her older brother, Charles, joked that she would be wasting her time. It would be a boring trip anyway.

Annoyed, Elizabeth shot back with a line that would haunt Charles for years. Hey, what if those are the last words you ever say to me? It was a throwaway comment the kind of thing a sister says to a brother to shut him up. But in hours, those words would take on a meeting nobody could have imagined. Sometime before midnight, Elizabeth said good night to her parents and her four brothers and headed to the bedroom she shared with her nine-year-old sister, Mary Catherine. It was late in a school night, but she took a few minutes to read to her little sister before turning out the lights.

As Mary Catherine drifted off to sleep, Elizabeth fell asleep herself. But shortly before 1 a.m. on June 5th, Elizabeth was jolted awake by something terrifying. It was the feeling of a cold knife pressed against her neck. A man's dirty beard scraped her face as he whispered to her, quote, I have a knife to your neck. Don't make a sound. Get out of bed or I'll kill you and your family. Elizabeth was paralyzed with fear.

Her heart hammered in her chest. She looked at his face and knew this stranger meant every word. Then she glanced over at Little Mary Catherine still in the bed next to her. She had to protect her sister, so she got up. The stranger shoved her down the hallway, past her brother's rooms and out the kitchen door onto the back patio. Now, the smarts house had an alarm system, and under normal circumstances, the minute he opened that door,

there should have been a piercing shriek that woke up everyone in the house. But here's where a small detail made all the different. Thanks to an error during the alarm system's installation, this particular door, the kitchen door leading to the back patio, was one of three doors in the house that wasn't connected to the system. And whoever this man was, he knew that. So that night, it didn't make a sound. No one in the house even stirred. The kidnapper told Elizabeth he was taking her hostage. They walked uphill from her house, past the windows of neighboring homes, towards the Wasatch Mountains looming above the city.

With each step, she walked further into the darkness, away from safety, away from her family, and closer to a future she couldn't imagine. But here's the thing, Elizabeth thought her little sister was sound asleep through all of it, but she wasn't. Mary Catherine had heard Elizabeth wake up. She heard the man threaten her sister, and his voice sounded vaguely familiar,

though she couldn't quite place it. The nine-year-old stayed perfectly still, hiding under the covers and pretending to sleep, until she heard the two of them leap the bedroom. Then she raced to the door and peeked around the frame catching a glimpse of her sister's abductor. He wasn't tall, about the same height as her brother Charles, maybe five foot six or seven.

He wore light-colored clothes and a light-colored hat and carried some kind of bag, maybe a backpack or a small duffel. She strained to see his face, but it was dark, and she was terrified of being seen, so she didn't stare for long. Mary Catherine waited in her room, frozen and terrified the man might come back for her too.

She pulled the covers over her head and laid perfectly still, barely breathing, listening for any sound that might mean he was still in the house. She stayed there for nearly three hours. Finally, just before 4 a.m., she worked up the courage to venture out and run to her parents' bedroom, and the moment she woke them up, everything changed. Hi, listeners, it's Carter Roy, host of Murder, True Crime Stories. I want to let you know that Crime House Plus and murder true crime stories are celebrating America's 250th by dropping a four-part limited series on the crimes that built America.

These are the crimes and cases that gave us Miranda rights, sparked criminal profiling, and a murder that built America's missing children movement. Follow murder, true crime stories for a new episode every Monday leading up to July 4th, or you can binge all of them right now, add free with Crimehouse Plus. To join, go tocrimehouseplus.com, or if you're listening on Apple Podcasts, tap try free at the top of this show's page.

As soon as Mary Catherine told her parents what had happened, Ed and Lois sprang out of bed. Lois ran to the kitchen and saw that a window was open. Someone had cut a hole in the mesh screen with a knife. At 4.01 a.m., Ed called 911. 12 minutes later, the first patrol officer arrived. Meanwhile, Ed and Lois were frantically making calls to family, to friends, to fellow members of their church. The entire community leapt into action, which was great in some ways, but in others it was a disaster.

By 4.30 a.m., church members started showing up at the smart home with flashlights wanting to help search. Detective Corden Parks, one of the homicide detectives called to the scene, later said, quote, It was an absolute mess. We got there, the house was full of people. Even worse, the police didn't clear the home right away. They didn't even start tracking visitors until 6.54 a.m., nearly three hours after the kidnapping was reported. By then, dozens of unidentified people had already trampled through the crime scene.

The crime lab would later find that photos taken by the state investigators didn't match the initial photos taken by the first responding officers. Objects like flour and a knife had been moved around. Footprints in the kitchen were destroyed by all foot traffic. That contamination would haunt the investigation for months. Crucial evidence. Fingerprints, trace evidence, anything that might have pointed directly to the kidnapper may have been erased before anyone even had a chance to collect it. The whole thing was a disaster right off the bat.

What police did have to work with was limited. The cut window screen in Elizabeth's room, a partial palm print on the window frame, and a few fingerprints on the back door handle and Elizabeth's bedposts. In the days ahead, they'd try to run those prints through every database they had. None would match anything on file. Meanwhile, the police launched a ground search. They canvassed the neighborhood, stopping at homes up to a mile away. They also brought in canine units to follow Elizabeth's scent from the house.

The dogs followed trails along neighboring streets and in in the house. into the foothills of the mountains, half a mile from the smart home. But the crowds of volunteers who'd already turned out made it almost impossible for the dogs to hold a scent. They couldn't even determine which general direction Elizabeth had gone after leaving the house. Still, the community response was jaw-dropping.

By 10.30 a.m. on Wednesday, June 5, just six hours after Elizabeth's parents reported the kidnapping, more than 450 volunteers had shown up to search for her. By Thursday evening, that was, number swelled to 1800. Friends of the family guaranteed a $250,000 reward for Elizabeth's safe return. Neighbors across the street offered their home as the operational headquarters for the investigation. By Friday, June 13th, eight days after the kidnapping, more than 8,000 people had joined the search effort. That's in addition to 33 fixed-wing aircraft, seven helicopters, and 150 ATVs combing the area.

Police had also received over 3,000 tips from the public. The scale of it was staggering. Salt Lake City had never seen anything like it. The case made national news almost immediately. Elizabeth's face was everywhere, on television screens, flyers, stapled to telephone polls, and the front pages of newspapers across the country. She was a photogenic, innocent-looking 14-year-old from a good family and the circumstances of her abduction, stolen from her own bed in the middle of her

of the night in one of the safest neighborhoods in the city, terrified parents everywhere. If it could happen to the smarts, it could happen to anyone. But tips and volunteers alone weren't going to bring Elizabeth home. Detectives needed a suspect. As the leads piled up, investigators began looking for anyone with possible motive. And as we've seen in case after case, many abductions are committed by someone the victim knows. In this case, the kidnapper had used one of only three doors in the house that wasn't connected to the alarm system. That suggested someone familiar with the home, possibly an inside job. For a brief time, detectives looked at Ed Smart himself.

He had a complicated business involving multiple real estate, mortgage, and contracting companies. He also bought and sold cars. From a financial crime standpoint, all that cash moving around could theoretically be used to conceal illegal activity. But Ed was extremely cooperative, and try as they might. Investigators couldn't find a single motive for him to kidnap his own daughter, so he was quickly cleared. Police turned their attention to other people in the family's orbit,

and time was not on their side. In 40% of what law enforcement calls stereotypical kidnappings, stranger abductions, the child dies. And in almost 90% of those cases, the child is murdered within the first 24 hours. Every hour that passed without finding Elizabeth meant her odds of survival were dropping. On the first day she went missing,

Ed had given police a list of everyone he could think of, family, friends, employees, and casual acquaintances. When detectives combed through this list, one name stood out. Remember, Ed was a general contractor. Over the years, he'd hired a number of construction workers to do hands-on work at his properties, including the house he lived in. One of them was a 48,

year old handyman named Richard Recy. Richard had a checkered pass that Ed knew nothing about. He dropped out of high school in 1969 when he was 16 and joined the Navy, only to get discharged for hepatitis. After that, he'd been in and out of jail for various burglary-related offenses. Richard was also addicted to heroin and fed his habit by stealing. It was a cycle that had to find most of his adult life. Get out, get hooked again, steal to pay for it, get caught. Go back in. He'd only been out of prison less than six months when he met Ed in early 2001. Richard came recommended by a contractor friend, and Ed didn't bother doing a background check. That's because Ed and Lois were generous and trusting by nature.

As far as Ed could tell, Richard had turned his life around. He was engaged now, and he'd known serious hardship. Ed learned that Richard had lost an eight-year-old son to a drunk driver years earlier. So Ed offered him a job doing carpentry and odd jobs around the house. And when he found out Richard didn't have a car, Ed even let him take his white cheap Cherokee as payment for some of the work. But in early June of 2001, a full year before Elizabeth's kidnapping, Ed fired Richard for theft.

Lois had been digging through her jewelry box when she discovered her favorite pearl bracelet was missing. On June 8, 2001, they reported the theft to police. Ed knew that three of his contractors had been working on the house when the bracelet disappeared, including Richard, so he confronted all of them. Each one denied having anything to do with it. Richard, most of all. He told Ed that police had given him a polygraph to prove he hadn't stolen the bracelet and he'd aced it. Except that was a lie. The police never polygraphed anyone in connection to the theft. Now, it's a big leap from potential theft to kidnapping, but at this point the police were willing to follow every lead they had. And while Richard's alibi for the night Elizabeth was

taken seemed solid on the surface, it started to show cracks the longer detectives looked at it. On June 4th, Richard had worked a normal shift at a nursery, then watched his 11-year-old stepson get tutored by LDS missionaries. He cooked dinner for his family and invited the missionaries to join them. Later, after the boy went to bed, he and his wife, Angela, stayed up watching TV. Angela confirmed all of this. So did the missionaries. But Angela also said she'd taken a heavy-duty sleep aid the night Elizabeth disappeared, which meant Richard could have slipped out of the house around 1 a.m.,

driven 30 minutes from their mobile home in Shadow Ridge estates to the smart home in Federal Heights. Taken Elizabeth, stashed her somewhere, and returned. All without Angela ever knowing. On June 14, 2002, 10 days after the kidnapping, police called Richard Recy back in for questioning. They also took a blood sample hoping he'd test positive for alcohol and violate his parole. The idea was straightforward. Get him in custody on something so they could search his trailer and press him harder on Elizabeth's disappearance.

It worked. Richard's blood came back positive for alcohol, and two hours later he was arrested. When police searched his home, they found other items stolen from the smarts, including a wine goblet filled with sand from one of the family's vacations. That detail struck investigators as strange. The goblet had no real monetary value. It was a keepsake, a personal memento, so they wondered, could this have been some kind of trophy?

Did Richard have an obsession with the smart family? A search of his father-in-law's trailer nearby turned up a machete that could have been used to cut the window screen and a light-colored golf cap, which was significant because Mary Catherine had said the kidnapper was wearing some kind of light-colored hat. By now, Richard was looking very suspicious. He had worked inside the smart home, and he would have known the layout, including details about the defective alarm system.

Detectives theorized that maybe he'd tried to rob the house and Elizabeth caught him in the act. It was a solid motive, and it was backed up by something Richard had once told a friend, that he'd sooner kill a witness than end up back in jail. Police interrogated Richard for 22 hours over the following days. Under intense pressure, he admitted to stealing the bracelet and other items from Ed and Lois, but he repeatedly declared that he had nothing to do with Elizabeth's abduction. The investigators thought there was something he wasn't telling them, though. Specifically, when it came to his Jeep, the white Jeep Cherokee Ed had given him.

Apparently, Richard had dropped the car off for repairs sometime in May of 2002, but he picked it up on May 30th before the repairs were finished. Then he brought it back on June 8th, three days after the kidnapping. The mechanic said Richard was acting odd that day, not his usual loud self. The Jeep was covered in mud like it had been off-roading and had about a thousand extra miles on it, a lot to put on in just a few days. The mechanic also claimed he saw Richard take a machete out of the truck. But Richard said it was all nonsense.

He hadn't taken the truck at all during that time. Either the mechanic was mistaken or he was. is lying. Desperate to prove his innocence, Richard begged to take a polygraph. He passed it. And the forensic examination of the Jeep came back clean, contrary to what the mechanic claimed. The crime lab didn't find any signs of off-road use. Still, the police believed Richard knew something. He was the only suspect they had with means, motive, and opportunity, so they kept him in custody. And then, just seven weeks after Elizabeth's kidnapping, while Richard was a behind bars, an abductor tried to strike again. At three in the morning on July 24th, 2002,

18-year-old Jessica Wright was jolted awake by the sound of a picture frame crashing to the floor in her bedroom. Jessica was Elizabeth's cousin living about 20 miles south of the smart home. When she looked towards her window, she saw something terrifying, a knife blade cutting through the screen from the outside. Someone was trying to break in using the exact same method, as Elizabeth's kidnapping. But this time, the intruder was stopped. The window had a security screw that prevented it from opening fully, and Jessica's dad heard the commotion in time to run into her room.

The would-be intruder fled into the night. Police found a chair propped outside of the window, but couldn't pull any useful prints. And despite the obvious parallels to Elizabeth's case, a lot of the officers on scene thought it was nothing more than a twisted prank. They filed their report and moved on. It was a massive missed opportunity, but they didn't know that yet. Then, a month later, the case took another shocking turn. On August 27th, Richard Reesie went to a court hearing regarding his case.

Afterward, back in the cell, he told guards he was having trouble breathing. He collapsed and fell into a coma. Three days later, on August 30th, Richard died from a brain hemorrhage. And when he died, the last real lead the police had died too. Up until his death, Richard had maintained his innocence. The authorities didn't believe him, but now they'd lost any chance of proving otherwise. After that, the case went cold, but the family kept going, doing talk shows, getting Elizabeth's name out there, trying everything they could to keep the public's attention on their missing

daughter. But privately, they were losing hope. And then, four months after the kidnapping, something remarkable happened. On October 12, 2002, Mary Catherine was sitting in her bedroom when something dawned on her. She finally remembered where she'd heard the voice from the night. That evening, she told her parents, I know who took Elizabeth. She said it was a man named Emmanuel. The memory traced back to November of 2001 just before Thanksgiving.

Lois and Elizabeth had been downtown near the Salt Lake Temple when they encountered an unhoused man panhandling on the street. He was well-spoken and seemed down on his luck. He told Lois his name was Emmanuel. He asked for money and Lois gave him $5. They struck up a conversation about Jesus, discovered they were both deeply religious, and Lois told him that if he needed work, he should call her husband Ed.

A few days later, Emmanuel took her up on the offer. Ed told him he needed help clearing the roof and doing some yard work, so Emmanuel came by for five hours. Ed paid him 40 bucks and sent him on his way. Emmanuel never came back and never called again. He was such a blip in the smart family's life that Ed hadn't even thought to include him on the list of workers he gave the police. But that night in October, the memory of Emmanuel working on their home came back to Mary Catherine. She remembered his voice.

She remembered the way he moved. And she was sure that he was the one who took her sister. However, the police had a hard time believing her. The more they questioned her, the less confident she said. seemed. There was no obvious motive. Emmanuel barely knew the family. And even if he was somehow responsible, all they had was a first name. Still, detectives did their best to track him down. Ed and Lois had only interacted with Emmanuel briefly months before the kidnapping, which made the task of putting together a sketch difficult. Ed wasn't happy with the first composite sketch

police put together. He felt like it looked nothing like Emmanuel. But then in November of 2002, a new sketch artist arrived at the Salt Lake City Police Department and they put together a representation that matched the family's memory perfectly. Ed was so confident in this new sketch that he wanted it released to the public immediately. He believed it was their best chance of identifying Emmanuel and bringing Elizabeth home. But the police resisted. Their argument was that releasing the sketch might tip a manual off that they were onto him. So the detectives chose to keep it internal and warned Ed not to share any details with the public. Ed bit his tongue and did as he was told. He let the police handle it while he waited for any updates and waited and waited. Weeks turned

into months. The sketch sat in a filing cabinet and Elizabeth was still out there somewhere. It had been eight months since his daughter was taken. Eight months of press conferences, of sleepless nights, of holding onto hope that was getting harder and harder to justify. And now Ed Smart was staring at a sketch he was certain could break the case wide open, but the police wouldn't let him use it. Ed Smart wasn't the kind of father who was going to sit quietly forever, not when he believed the police were making a mistake, not when his daughter's life was on the line,

and the decision he was about to make would change everything. At the end of each episode, I like to take a moment to answer any questions you may have about the case and share my thoughts. So make sure to comment below. The crime scene contamination at the smart home sounds like it was a huge problem right from the start. How much do you think that hurt the investigation? In cases like this, it can be devastating. The police made a lot of mistakes in this case, but we will never really know the extent to which just may have hurt the investigation

because we don't know if there was evidence that was destroyed by all of the investigation. because we don't know if there was evidence that was destroyed by all of the visitors. However, that is the exact reason the cops are supposed to close off potential crime scenes right away. To be fair, Ed, calling his entire church community, made things extremely hectic. Within an hour, there were dozens of people walking through the house with flashlights, which was well-intentioned, but it was a nightmare for evidence collection. Objects were moved, footprints were destroyed, whatever trace evidence the kidnapper left behind may have been wiped out before anyone even had a chance to look for it.

And I think the investigation definitely suffered for it. They ended up with a partial palm print and a few fingerprints, and none of them matched anyone in the system. The fact that police didn't start logging visitors until almost 6.54 a.m., nearly three hours after the 911 call, is definitely hard to defend. You have to wonder what else they may have found if the scene had been locked down in the first hour. Can we talk about Richard Recy for a second? The police were so focused on him.

Looking back, was there actually solid evidence tying him to the kidnapping? Or was it mostly circumstantial? It was almost entirely circumstantial. Here's what they had. He worked in the house, so he knew the layout. He'd stolen from the family before his wife took sleep aids, so he could have slipped out. The mechanic said the Jeep had extra miles and mud on it,

and he'd said the thing about killing a witness rather than going back to prison. On the surface, it's something worth pursuing, but when you actually drill into it, the evidence starts falling apart. He passed a polygraph, the forensic exam on the Jeep came back clean, and the most important thing, he was in custody

when someone tried to break into Jessica Wright's bedroom using the exact same method. That alone should have told them that they were looking for the wrong guy, but it's a pattern we see over and over in these cases. Once investigators lock onto a suspect, it's really hard for them to let him go. Mary Catherine was nine years old when all of this happened.

She waited nearly three hours to tell her parents. And then it took her four months to identify the voice. What do you make of that timeline? I think people underestimate what it's like to be nine years old and witnessed something like that. She was hiding under the covers, terrified that this man was going to come back for her. She waited three hours because she was a child who was too scared to move. And honestly, the fact that she got up and went to her parents is incredibly brave for a nine-year-old. As for the four months, memory works in a strange way, especially with traumatic events.

She knew the voice was familiar, but she couldn't place it. And then one day, sitting in her room, it clicked. That's actually very consistent with how memory recall works, particularly in children. The brain sometimes needs time and distance from that trauma before it can put the pieces together. In my opinion, Mary Catherine is one of the unsung heroes in this case. The police didn't want to release the sketch of a manual. Ed, on the other hand, wanted it out there immediately. Who was right?

This is one of the situations where I understand both sides, but I am definitely on Ed side in this particular scenario. The police's argument was that releasing the sketch would tip off a manual and give him a chance to run. And that's a legitimate investigative concern, especially in the beginning. But here's the problem. They weren't making any progress by keeping it quiet. They had a first name and a sketch, and they were just sitting on both of them.

It felt like they were just trying to placate the family and didn't believe in the new lead at all. Meanwhile, Elizabeth was still out there. When your only lead is a first name in a face, the public is your best resource. You need millions of eyes looking for this person, not just a handful of detectives. Ed understood that instinctively, and as we'll see in the next episode, when he finally took matters into his own hands, the results came fast. One more thing. The break-in at Jessica Wright's house. Police thought it was a prank. That feels like a huge miss.

It was absolutely a huge miss, an attempted break-in using the exact same method, a knife cutting through a window screen at the home of Elizabeth's own cousin, and their suspect Richard Recy was in custody at the time, that should have been a flashing red light that they were chasing the wrong person. Instead, they chalked it up to a prank and moved on because they were so stubborn that they thought this suspect was the one. It's definitely one of those details that's painful to look at in hindsight because if they had taken it seriously, if they had really investigated it and connected it to the original kidnapping, the whole trajectory of this case might have been changed. Elizabeth might have been found months sooner, but that's the thing about these cases. You don't always see the mistake while you're making it.

Thanks so much for joining me for this episode. To enhance your listening experience, join Crimehouse Plus and get all three parts of each week's America's Most infamous crime story, dropped at once every Monday and ad-free. You'll also get the rest of the crimehouse lineup ad-free and early and exclusive bonus episodes. To join, go to crimehouse bless.com or if you listen on Apple Podcasts, tap try free at the top of America's most infamous crime show page. Come back tomorrow for our next episode on the kidnapping of Elizabeth Smart.