A little-known detail that was not widely publicized then or now is that on Mar. 12, 2003 Ed Smart had been summoned to Sandy, 20 minutes from his home in the Salt Lake foothills, so yet another false lead in the kidnapping case could be dismissed.
The Salt Lake City police detectives who called Ed and ordered him to drive to Sandy did not expect he would soon be hugging his daughter. The detectives, who were on the scene and looking right at her, believed the homeless girl traveling with the bearded man and haggard woman — the three of them detained by Sandy police — would turn out to be nothing more than a homeless girl traveling with a bearded man and haggard woman.
The quickest way to positively prove that it wasn't Elizabeth was to have her father drive out and say so.
It was the reason Ed went alone and his wife, Lois, wasn't with him.
COMMENT: Nice little story... but police knew it was Elizabeth and their conversation with her reported and carved in stone. Elizabeth had no interest in her family only for her friends and what would happen to them and she was right to be concerned considering they have spent the last seven years locked up. The police knew it was Elizabeth and the mum does not go to meet her daughter who has been missing for nine months? However, in the movie made within months of Elizabeths return, the mother is present at the police station.......
