Utah handyman to face burglary charges

Utah teen-ager Elizabeth Smart has been missing since June 5.

SALT LAKE CITY, Utah (CNN) -- Richard Ricci, the handyman who worked in the home of missing 14-year-old Elizabeth Smart, is likely to be charged this week on several counts of burglary of the Smart home and others in the neighborhood, according to law enforcement sources.

The sources said all the incidents occurred well before the girl's disappearance.

Ricci, 48, is in a Utah state prison on alleged parole violations and has become a focus of the missing girl investigation, although authorities have not named him as a suspect and he has not been charged in connection with the disappearance.

The sources said Ricci would be charged in connection with the burglaries of several homes in the Federal Heights area of Salt Lake City and with stealing from the Smarts' 6,600-square-foot home. He is also to be charged with theft from a local hardware store.

Elizabeth was taken from her bedroom in the middle of the night on June 5 while her parents and four brothers slept elsewhere in the house, according to police. Her younger sister told police she witnessed the kidnapping.

Ricci's criminal record goes back 30 years. His attorney, David Smith, said the arrest that resulted in his current incarceration was for drinking alcohol, a parole violation.

EXTRA INFORMATION Images of Elizabeth Smart  • Missing children facts    Elizabeth Smart information Web site: ElizabethSmart.com Tip lines: 800-932-0190 or 801-799-3000

Smith said his client has cooperated with authorities, undergone hours of questioning, taken a lie-detector test, consented to searches of his property and vehicles, and given a blood sample.

Ricci's wife, Angela, maintains he was at home in bed with her the night Elizabeth was abducted.

Investigators also have been looking for an unidentified man whom a mechanic said he saw with Ricci when Ricci returned his white Jeep, removing a post-hole digger and seat covers from it. The mechanic said the Jeep had about 1,000 more miles on its odometer when Ricci returned it.

In another development, a spokesman said Monday that Salt Lake City police do not place much value on a surveillance videotape of a hospital parking lot near the house of missing 14-year-old Elizabeth Smart.

The FBI is trying to enhance the poor-quality tape that shows two cars in the parking lot of Shriners Hospital shortly before Elizabeth disappeared.

On the video, the drivers of the cars appear to be talking with each other. A security guard said one of the men resembled the description of the kidnapper given by Elizabeth's sister.

But Salt Lake City police spokesman Sgt. Fred Louis said, "We don't even think those cars were involved in the kidnapping."

Investigators were still working on a number of theories about why the kidnapping occurred, including that it was a botched burglary, a sex crime or a kidnapping for ransom.

-- CNN Producer Janice Hui contributed to this report.