MARTINSBURG, W.Va. – A transient who was questioned in the disappearance of a 14-year-old Salt Lake City girl signed paperwork in court Monday to allow authorities to take him back to Utah.
Bret Michael Edmunds, 26, who has never been called a suspect in the Elizabeth Smart kidnapping case, waived his right to an extradition hearing after telling Circuit Court Judge David Sanders he did not want a lawyer.
Edmunds is wanted for violating his parole in Utah. He also is accused of fleeing police and assaulting a police officer.
He should be extradited within one week from Eastern Regional Jail, where he is being held on $100,000 bail, said Berkeley County Prosecutor Pamela Games-Neely.
Under federal law, anyone arrested on fugitive charges has the right to request that the state in which charges are pending file a formal request to have the prisoner returned.
Clad in an orange jail uniform, handcuffs and shackles, Edmunds sat quietly, nodding occasionally before deciding to waive his right to a formal request and a hearing.
"I pretty much understand it," Edmunds told Judge Sanders. "I'd just like to sign the waiver and have them come pick me up."
Authorities had been searching for Edmunds for two weeks when he checked himself into City Hospital June 20 for treatment of drug-related liver damage.
A milkman thought he saw Edmunds' car in the Salt Lake subdivision where Smart lived just two days before her disappearance. He has never been called a suspect, and authorities said last week that their questioning did not change that.
Smart was taken from her bedroom at gunpoint on June 5.
Police and federal authorities are interviewing Richard Albert Ricci, an ex-convict who worked as a handyman in the Smart home more than a year ago. He is in police custody on an unrelated parole violation and had not been charged in the Smart case.
Get all the stories you need-to-know from the most powerful name in news delivered first thing every morning to your inbox