Bringing Elizabeth Home (12 page)

For us, Elizabeth's disappearance was a huge wake-up call about life's priorities. Making that one extra deal was no longer as important as getting home to have dinner together as a family. We wanted to be there—to hear how the children's day was, what they did, whom they saw, catching as much of their lives as possible. We held our children a little closer. We told them we loved them all the time. We never expected to hear it back as often as we said it, but the impact on our children was noticeable. They were kinder and more thoughtful to one another. When birthdays came around, they each wanted to do something more special than they had on the last birthday. There has always been a genuine loving feeling in our home, but Elizabeth's absence was a reminder to all of us to be even more peaceful and loving. Life is not all about work and money. Success is not something that is achieved only in the workplace. Life is about living. If you're not out there living it, you're losing out. That point was driven home each and every day Elizabeth was gone. Life is filled with checkpoints that are times to reevaluate how we are doing. We asked ourselves, “Is there anything that we should be changing?”

L
OIS

I didn't want to believe Elizabeth was dead. I absolutely believed we would one day be reunited—I knew without question that we would see Elizabeth again. I am her mother—I carried this child in my womb next to my heart for nine months. There is no replacing that. How could I ever accept that she was gone—I mean, really gone? I didn't. Not inside. But I knew I still had to be a mother to my five other children. If I wasn't strong for them, I would lose everything I had lived for. I was among the living. I was not dead. I had to endure the pain and suffering of thinking Elizabeth might be dead—but not knowing for certain. Equally hard was the thought that she was living and how horrible things might be for her. Of those two choices, it was easier to think she was dead and with our Heavenly Father in a much better place. The maternal instinct defies explanation. If you are a mother, you know what I am talking about. It comes naturally. It made the hair on my neck stand up when people would say to me, “I'm going through the same kind of pain.” Unless you've been through this kind of loss, you cannot imagine what it feels like for a mother to lose a child at the hands of an abductor. Pain comes in layers, and mine was to the deepest part of my core. Your pain belongs to you—not your children, not your husband, not your friends or family. No one else can feel it the way you do. To be honest, after several months of agony, I didn't want to feel that pain anymore. It was unbearable to think that someone had my daughter. Taking care of my family was the only way I could go on.

E
D

There was a point when I said to my wife that if she felt so strongly that Elizabeth was dead, we needed to have a funeral. I was feeling so incredibly down, and when speaking with John Walsh, as I had done at times in the prior months, I expressed my need to have a memorial service. John told me that the likelihood was that she was dead and I had a wife and five other children to live for. I explained to him how I couldn't leave her behind; nothing was telling me she was dead. Lois was vehement that we not have a memorial service (which seemed diametrically opposed to her need to carry on with life), and I couldn't see how I could even come close to moving on until there was one. Throughout the previous months I had been driven and comforted by dreams of Elizabeth walking back into our lives. What incredible elation I felt at those times. It gave me great hope and peace.

Over the months we met other families that had missing children. These families remained traumatized—in many cases for years after the kidnappings. I couldn't imagine life going on like that. I could not tolerate the idea that the monster who took Elizabeth could take us all down—destroy our entire family. I was no longer willing to accept that as a possibility. I don't believe the media always portrayed us that way. Lois is the reason we survived. She is my best friend, and we were in this ordeal together—we would get through it together. There was no way I could have handled this on my own. We are a couple with conviction and devotion to one another, and above all we possess a will of spirit that brings us together. Lois wore a protective coat of armor so that nothing else could get in and hurt our family. She protected her heart, and in the process she protected all of us.

We decided to reveal a key piece of information about the night of the kidnapping. We divulged to the
Deseret News
that a wrought-iron chair that had been moved from our patio had been found by police beneath the kitchen window with the cut screen. This information hadn't been made public before, but we felt it was relevant because it linked the break-in at our niece's home the previous month with Elizabeth's abduction. If no one knew about the chair, how come the break-in had been set up exactly the same way it was at our home the night of Elizabeth's disappearance? With Richard Ricci dead, there were still too many unanswered questions. We wanted to bring as much public pressure as we could to solving those puzzles. We couldn't accept letting the case die with Ricci. We wanted—
needed
—answers.

To some degree, we felt at peace when Ricci died. At the very least, there would be no trial. We would not be forced to relive Elizabeth's nightmare if he was in fact the kidnapper. If he didn't abduct our daughter, what was it that he was hiding right up to the day he died? Who picked Ricci up at Neth Moul's shop? Where did Ricci go from May 28 to June 5? What about those unexplained miles on the Jeep? There had been several sightings of the Jeep in the midwest desert of Utah. Offering a reward for answers, even after Ricci died, had not turned up a single credible lead. We were definitely frustrated.

L
OIS

As hard as it was for me to accept, the realization that Elizabeth might be dead continued to set in. It was time to resolve my internal conflict so that I could be a wife and mother to my five other children. In order for this to happen, I had to separate myself from the grueling, sometimes gruesome, daily routine of dealing with the details of the investigation. Our family had already been put through enough in the three months that had gone by. I could see the responsibilities I needed to attend to, I knew I would have to move on to do so, but it took a very long time to even approach the idea that Elizabeth would not be coming home.

We held out hope for her safe return. We prayed, fasted, and looked to God for guidance. This was my daughter. She was the beautiful child whose tears I wiped when she skinned a knee and whose pride I shared every time I heard her play the harp. We had (and still have) a very special mother-daughter bond. That never goes away. Not even in the absence of your child. I would always feel connected to Elizabeth, whether here on earth or in the hereafter. My mind and my heart were dueling over the right thing to do. No one tells you what it's like when you lose a child. I found comfort in reading scripture and other books of inspiration, but mostly I had to come to this decision on my own, and accept that what I was doing was truly the right thing for my family.

Like Elizabeth, I enjoy horseback riding, especially in the mountains above Salt Lake. I enjoy getting on the back of a horse and feeling the open space and fresh, crisp, fall mountain air. It's a time for reflection. On an early-September morning, I drove up to Ed's parents' cabin and decided to ride up the Red Cliffs trail with Ed's father. This was the same trail Elizabeth had ridden so many times before. I hadn't been riding for more than a year. We did most of our riding in the summer. I wanted to go on this ride for Elizabeth. I got her riding boots, her spurs, her riding gloves, and her cowboy hat and wore them on this ride.

At the top of the trail there is a geographical marker that had been placed there several years ago. This place is tied to some very happy moments in my life. We rode our horses to the top of the trail, dismounted, and contemplated the situation our family faced. How were we supposed to move on with our lives? We had no answers. There was no certainty that Ricci had kidnapped Elizabeth. I looked into the valley below and wondered if Elizabeth was somewhere down there. I was weeping. I thought about my role as a wife and mother of our household. It was my role to pick up the pieces of our broken family, but my heart was itself shattered into a million tiny pieces. I grieved every single day, but I had no need to publicly share my torment more than we already had as a family. My way of handling adversity is to do it in the privacy of my own home and heart. For the bulk of the summer, the focus of the investigation and media coverage had been so heavily placed on our family. That added an unexpected pressure to deliver some nugget of information, true or otherwise. It was my opinion that if there was nothing to say, we were better off saying nothing. I didn't feel I needed to be a part of the daily briefings. Everybody wanted to do an interview with the family, but I felt that the less exposure the children had to the media, the less they might realize how big a news item Elizabeth's disappearance had become. I didn't want their lives to be changed more than they already had been.

I was happy that Ed was out there fighting the fight and facing the frenzy. It allowed me to be home. Going to the market was hard. Buying a carton of milk or picking up the dry cleaning meant facing the eyes of wondering friends, strangers, or maybe even Elizabeth's captors, watching, stalking, and planning their next attack. I could feel people staring, wondering what it was like. Wondering how I was doing. Judging. Analyzing. Always reaching out to offer comfort. In a way, Elizabeth became the entire country's daughter, but she was also my daughter. I missed her. I desperately wanted her home. But every night, her bed remained empty.

It was time.

I had to put on a protective coat of armor to safeguard our family—and that coat needed to be big enough to fit all of us inside. I needed to see to it that whoever had taken Elizabeth from us didn't succeed in taking all of us. The situation was incomprehensible. Our family couldn't continue to go through this process of living in the unknown. There were birthdays to celebrate, the start of a new school year was upon us, and there were school plays and recitals to attend. Life was marching on. There is nothing more precious than the bond between a mother and her children. I would never lose that bond with Elizabeth. I wanted to believe with every ounce of my mind, heart, and soul that Elizabeth was still alive and that she'd someday come home. I could not let this destroy our family. Losing Elizabeth had brought us to our knees. The time had come to get back up. I knew what I had to do.

I turned around, took a good look at the panorama of the mountains that surrounded me on the top of the trail, took a deep breath, and began to cry. As difficult as it was to allow my mind to go there, it was time to accept the possibility that Elizabeth was dead.

For Elizabeth to survive, some part of her had to shut down. Our situations paralleled each other quite a bit. Until she left for San Diego, Elizabeth had great hope that she'd be found. She was so close. I had held on to the same hope, thinking that somebody would surely see her. Somebody would recognize her. There were Missing posters everywhere. You couldn't go anywhere in Salt Lake without seeing Elizabeth's face. Ironically, my letting go coincided with Elizabeth's departure from Salt Lake to San Diego. We both changed from that point forward. I had to let go so that my other children could go on. It's not that I didn't want her to come home. It's not that I didn't have strong faith. Of course I wanted her to come home. Naturally I had strong faith. But we were becoming unrecognizable as a family. It was the hardest decision of my life—like Elizabeth,
I chose life over death; life over myself
.

Chapter 15

Lead, kindly Light, amid th'encircling gloom, lead Thou me on!
The night is dark, and I am far from home; lead Thou me on!
Keep Thou my feet; I do not ask to see
The distant scene; one step enough for me.

—JOHN HENRY NEWMAN

R
ICHARD RICCI
'
S DEATH
and diminished media attention coincided with the decision to try to move on with our lives. We hadn't given up hope. Lois focused on family and rebuilding our lives, while Ed put his attention toward keeping Elizabeth's name in the media, lobbying for the Amber Alert bill, and keeping the investigation open. He used the one-year anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks to draw attention to the importance of security in our homes and our families. He spent more time trying to help get the Child Protection Act through Congress, a much more comprehensive bill, of which the Amber Alert was only a part. When it became clear that it was going to be harder and take longer to pass the Child Protection Act, we focused on just the Amber Alert. The Child Protection Act would require the FBI to create a national response center to rapidly investigate child abductions. The bill also directs the Justice Department to create a nationwide database of sex offenders that would be posted on the Internet. The bill, if passed, would help to prevent child abductions and would allow potential kidnappers to know the serious ramifications of their crimes. The bill was being heard by the Senate Judiciary Committee in mid-September of 2002 but was unlikely to move forward.

While Lois intentionally started to fade into the background, Ed was ever-present. These roles were fully supported by our respective families. Though our faith was constantly being tested, we remained true to our belief that Elizabeth could still be alive and that if she was, we would find her. By the end of September, our family press conferences were down to once a week. News was scarce.

In early October, we made the first of many trips to Washington, D.C., to meet with President George W. and First Lady Laura Bush. We were there to attend the first-ever White House Conference on Missing, Exploited, and Runaway Children. No explanation was necessary when our eyes met those of the President and First Lady. On our lapels, we wore the buttons with Elizabeth's face. We know the President and Mrs. Bush took notice.