Second Victim In Smart Case?

The late Richard Ricci was widely regarded as the prime suspect in the kidnapping of Elizabeth Smart. Many thought the key to solving the case was lost when Ricci died in prison last year. Now it appears Ricci was innocent all along.

The 48-year-old handyman, who had a lengthy criminal record, did some work at the Smart home in Salt Lake City prior to Elizabeth's abduction nine months ago. Ricci quickly became the focus of an intense police investigation even though he was never formally named as a suspect.

He died in prison last August, while being held on an unrelated parole violation. Ricci suffered a brain hemorrhage and collapsed in his jail cell, doctors said. The hemorrhage left him with irreversible brain injuries, and his family decided to take him off life support.

"He was the main focus and that makes it difficult. There were so many questions that only he could answer," said Salt Lake City police Capt. Scott Atkinson shortly after Ricci's death.

The lingering belief that Ricci may have taken the secret of Elizabeth's abduction to his grave remained until Wednesday, when the 15-year-old girl was miraculously discovered alive in a Salt Lake City suburb.

Police in Sandy, Utah, arrested Brian Mitchell and his wife, Wanda Barzee, after getting calls a minute apart from two couples who saw a man and two females wearing bedraggled veils and carrying bedrolls and bags. Elizabeth, Barzee and Mitchell, who is also known as Emmanuel, were all wearing wigs when they were stopped, authorities said.

Mitchell, a self-styled prophet for the homeless, and Barzee were booked into the Salt Lake County Jail for investigation of aggravated kidnapping. Mitchell, who had also worked briefly at the Smarts' home, escaped close scrutiny with the spotlight on Ricci.

As the months passed, the Smart family grew increasingly critical of police for focusing too much on Ricci. In mid-October, Mary Katherine Smart, the sole witness to her sister's abduction, told her parents she thought Mitchell - known then to the family as Emmanuel - could have been the one who took Elizabeth.

Ricci's widow, Angela Ricci, said Thursday that she doesn't blame the Smart family for any negative things they might have said about her late husband.

Ricci told NBC's "Today" show that she understands they were "desperate" to find their daughter. Angela Ricci said she thinks police focused on her husband more than they should have, but adds she "couldn't change that."

Last June, Richard Ricci said he had given 26 hours of police interviews, taken polygraph tests, given a blood sample and surrendered a Jeep that Elizabeth's father, Ed Smart, had gave him as payment for work.

Ricci insisted that he was innocent, but he remained the focus of the police probe.

In a statement a few hours after she asked doctors to allow her husband to die, Angela Ricci said: "I know that the world will never know the Richard that his family and I knew, but I will always remember him as a kind and gentle man, with a great sense of humor who was a loving husband to me."