A Quest For Justice
By Joni Dourif
What happens when a child is abducted from an affluent family? Initially, the same types of events unfold such as search parties are formed comprised of both volunteers and law enforcement. The news media reports the incident. The newscast garners attention based on the degree of the family affluence, and the bizarre attributes of the abduction. Typically, the media flurry diminishes with time unless the case is impinged with an unusual cast of characters that keep it interesting and a stream of ongoing events that affect the public in some way. (i.e. Chandra Levy, Jon Benet Ramsey).
However, the bravado fades as the hunts diminish. When dead ends are declared, the playing field clears out and only the seriously committed players are left standing. By this stage, even if we have not already been summoned, we have already completed the initial work; that is to determine if the victim is dead or alive. In the case that we find the abductee alive we drop everything and immediately turn all of our resources to finding that child ASAP regardless of their family means and contacts. But when Elizabeth Smart's Uncle, Dave, called me six weeks after the abduction, we had already reported that Elizabeth was deceased. I cringed when I received the message that a family member was trying to reach me because I had felt their pain many times. There was no way that I could refuse him help. He asked me if we charged money for our services to which I responded, "We don't generally charge for missing children cases." I heard his sigh of relief and then I explained the difficulties involved in using our technology to solve the search problem He quietly listened and then told me how amazed they were at the sketches that we had initially produced of Elizabeth's location. They perfectly matched a particular strip of terrain in Utah.
You see, Dave Smart was not the first call. The first request came from an anonymous person who attempted to entice me with reward monies. I responded with, "I'm sure that the local police will find Elizabeth." But the next call was from a concerned neighbor of the Smart family; a kind and courteous woman who was conducting her own volunteer search party. She had been using our initial location sketches that we posted on our website. Although, her search resulted in a dead end as did all of the other searches around the state of Utah.
I told Dave Smart that we could easily describe and possibly identify Elizabeth's abductor much more rapidly than finding her hidden location. A silence fell and then we both agreed that we needed to find Elizabeth first. I reiterated to him the difficulty of the search task and the amount of time and effort required in providing the intel needed to locate a target in the vast homogenous terrain. He reassured me that he had a professional search team with scent dogs working only on PSI TECH sketches and with that reassurance we went forward.
On the heels of finishing the missing Bradley girls case in Chicago, my fourteen team members were weary. I wanted them to exert their energy and extend their focus on another crime related tragedy. So, without a break, they diligently forged ahead and spent the necessary time and effort to produce sufficient sketches so that we could vector in on precise areas. The terrain in Utah is so homogenous, we needed to identify the nearest unique feature to Elizabeth's location We were not familiar with Utah's landscape so we consulted topographical maps, satellite images and the internet.
In August I called Dave Smart, to ask him the question, "Is there a monument park with historic and religious significance where the temperature begins to drop located south east of Elizabeth's home?" He replied, "Yes, that would be This Is The Place Monument Park ."
A short time later, my partner and I were standing in This Is The Place Park holding up sketches to compare terrain features. We wrote about this excursion back in August in an issue of The Signal Line entitled "Finding Elizabeth."
I thought it highly unlikely that Elizabeth's body would be in an Indian Burial crypt but the outer fence had been cut and the scent dog did react. The police accommodated Dave Smart by searching the requested tomb area but we did not think the search was thorough and when my partner asked them to describe the area inside, the detective answered with a curt and flippant "nothing but caskets" as he climbed into his air conditioned car and drove away. It was over 100 degrees outside. A search was conducted but the only body uncovered that day was a political web of undisclosed alliances and disputed narratives. Even Richard Ricci, their primary suspect, died in prison that morning.
The following week, the Salt Lake City Tribune released an article with the local police chief, referring to the previous incident as "Many of these [psychic tipsters] are well-meaning, but these tips certainly take manpower away from the investigation."
My team of fourteen viewers, of which two are police officers, were feeling a bit discouraged. It wasn't that any of us firmly believed that Elizabeth was in the crypt but the scent dog reacted, the entrance screen was cut and the sketches matched, we felt it needed to be eliminated as a possibility.
After the release of the Tribune article, Dave Smart felt caught in the middle and he did not want to jeopardize his relationship with the Salt Lake City P.D. We were about to drop the case when a very timely e-mail emerged with photographs taken by another (volunteer) ground search party. Now, I was weary and discouraged along with my team members but with a new ground search team involved we decided to drudge forward. We would shift our focus to the abductor/perpetrators before we finished the project.
Describing the perpetrator was as easy as I had told Dave Smart it would be almost five months earlier. Our new ground search team had previous law enforcement experience and connections and they miraculously produced a perfect match to our perpetrator description. The perp they found had also been employed as a maintenance man at one of the locations PSI TECH had described at the time Elizabeth was abducted.
I contacted Dave Smart with the new information and encouraged him to make direct contact with the new ground search team. Our suspect had been put into custody one month earlier by a federal warrant on parole violation for carrying a gun. His car was impounded but it was not searched or paid for so it was about to be released and sold at auction. PSI TECH forked over the money to purchase the suspect's vehicle to preserve any evidence. The car was loaded with blood, blond hairs and fibers, as well as a butcher knife and burglar tools. Dave Smart asked the Salt Lake City Police Department's Crime Lab team to conduct a thorough search, and tests on the blood evidence. We are currently waiting for the Crime Lab's results.
By the way, you must be wondering why we do this work with so little reward.
First and foremost, I feel a responsibility to offer our services in hard-to-solve tragedies. We are the oldest and most experienced company to utilize this still very young intelligence collection technology. We are in possession of a valuable investigative tool with unsurpassed expertise. It does not sit right with me to deny a family member of a missing child this kind of resource. Sometimes, applying our technology is the only way to resolve a dead end case or at the very least generate new leads.
Did I mention that during last summer when we started the Elizabeth Smart case, we were also providing ongoing intel for homeland security? We were also simultaneously planning the design and managing the construction of our new Matrix Research Facility (an ongoing project) and I was also in the midst of writing new manuals and lessons for our newly erected TRV University, and way behind schedule on reading and editing a soon to be released book about PSI TECH.
PSI TECH is a multifaceted company with several departments, all dedicated to accomplishing separate but coinciding goals. We work hard day in and day out.
The only requirement that we assert for accepting a public service case and working on a volunteer basis is that there is reliable and thorough follow through on the information we provide.
In my next article I will begin to reveal the personal stories of our fourteen team members of our Special Operations Project force. These are the men and women who generously dedicate their time and energies to solving these difficult cases on a volunteer basis while they maintain their own professional careers and busy life schedules.
My warmest wishes to all of our public servants and tireless volunteers who care enough to persevere and to continue to do the right thing.
Update: The Elizabeth Smart Search: What Went Wrong & What Went Right
