Kidnapping of Elizabeth Smart

This photo of Elizabeth Smart was widely distributed after her abduction from her bedroom in June of 2002.

Elizabeth Ann Smart (born November 3rd, 1987) is a young American woman from Salt Lake City, Utah who was kidnapped at the age of 14 from her bedroom on June 5th, 2002. She was found alive nine months later on March 12th, 2003 a few miles from her home in Sandy, Utah in the company of two homeless adults, Brian David Mitchell and Wanda Ileen Barzee. Her abduction and recovery were widely reported in North American media.

Abduction

Ed and Lois Smart, with their six children, resided in the upper middle class neighborhood of Federal Heights in Salt Lake City, Utah. On the evening of June 4, 2002, the family attended a ceremony at Elizabeth's school, where she received many awards. Returning home, the family had evening prayers together and kissed each other good night. As the family got ready for bed, Ed made sure the doors were all locked, but he didn’t turn on the alarm. "If the children got up and moved (in the night), it would set the alarm off. And so we just, we’re not going to bother with it," Lois later explained.

In the early hours of the morning, someone broke into the home and came to the bedroom that Elizabeth shared with her 9-year-old sister, Mary Katherine. While Mary Katherine pretended to be asleep, she watched the abduction, and later gave these hints as to what happened:

• A white man about the height of her brother Charles (5' 8") about 30 or 40 years old, wearing light colored clothes and a golf hat. (He was actually wearing black, did not have a golf hat and was 49).
• He had dark hair, also has dark hair on his arms and on the back of his hands.
• The man threatened Elizabeth with a gun (it was actually a knife, but Mary Katherine thought it was a gun).
• When Elizabeth said "ouch" after stubbing her toe on a chair, the man said something that sounded like: "You better be quiet, and I won’t hurt you."
• She heard Elizabeth ask "Why are you doing this?" and though the answer was not clear, Mary Katherine thought the answer might have been "for ransom".
• The abductor was soft-spoken — even polite, calm and nicely dressed.
• Although the stranger spoke to Elizabeth quietly, Mary Katherine thought the kidnapper's voice seemed somehow familiar. But she couldn’t pinpoint where or when she had heard it.
• She never got a good look at his face. This fact was kept a secret by the police during the investigation.

By listening to the creaking floor as Elizabeth and the kidnapper walked, Mary Katherine thought she could tell where the kidnapper and Elizabeth were, so when it seemed safe she hopped out of bed to tell her parents, but froze in terror when she nearly ran into the abductor and Elizabeth as they seemed to be looking into her brothers' bedroom. Fearful that she had been spotted by the abductor, she crept back into her bed. "I thought, you know, be quiet, because if he hears you, he might take you too, and you're the only person who has seen this," Mary Katherine said in a later interview. "I was, like, shaking. She hid for an undetermined amount of time. Investigators later concluded that she may have been hiding over two hours before she felt safe enough to come out.

Just before 4 a.m., Mary Katherine came to her parents' bedroom and woke them up. She told them Elizabeth was gone, but her parents thought she was having a bad dream. Ed went from room to room, and didn’t find her. Mary Katherine told him, "You’re not going to find her. A man took her. A man took her with a gun." Still, the parents found this hard to believe until Lois spotted a screen window downstairs that had been cut with a knife. They immediately began contacting authorities, neighbors, family and friends. The neighborhood was searched thoroughly and many of the neighbors were immediately there to help. Although this caused some problems with crime scene contamination, it was not considered a major cause for problems in the investigation. One of their neighbors who came to help was Jake Garn, a retired U.S. Senator.

That morning, Ed went on television and asked the kidnapper to return his daughter. Using the technology of the Internet and the media, a massive search for Elizabeth began.

Search and investigation

A massive community search effort, organized by the Laura Recovery Center, looked for Elizabeth in the days immediately following her abduction. Up to 2000 volunteers a day were dispatched to the area surrounding her home trying to find any trace of the missing girl. Word spread quickly as an impromptu coalition of websites facilitated the distribution of information about Elizabeth Smart with pre-formatted flyers that could be downloaded for printing or immediately circulated online by email or Internet fax. Volunteers combed the hills near her family's home and extended the search using search dogs and aircraft. After many days of intensive searching, the community-led search was closed by the local volunteers and efforts were directed to other means of finding Elizabeth.

Brian David Mitchell (born October 18 1953)

Although police had an eye-witness, Mary Katherine's report was not very helpful to investigators. Furthermore, there was almost no significant forensic evidence such as clear fingerprints or DNA samples to help identify the abductor, so the investigation was difficult. Police questioned and interviewed hundreds of potential suspects including one individual, Bret Michael Edmunds, a 26-year-old drifter who was pursued across the country but ultimately was cleared of suspicion in the case after being located in a West Virginia hospital suffering from a drug overdose. One by one, the leads that were pursued often put at-large criminals back in prison, but they did not produce the desired result of finding Elizabeth. Ultimately, the Salt Lake City police signaled that their prime person of interest was Richard Ricci, being held in custody for unrelated reasons. Ricci, a handyman hired by the Smarts, was on parole for a 1983 attempted murder of police officer Mike Hill. He was charged with felony burglaries of homes in the area and similar in circumstances to the break-in at the Smarts. Ricci later died in jail from a brain hemorrhage a few weeks after he refused to provide a confession to Utah corrections officers. With his death, it seemed that all leads were exhausted.

Nevertheless, Ed and Lois Smart and their extended family persistently maintained a presence in the local and national media, fighting hard to keep Elizabeth's name in the press. They provided the media with home videos of her as both a teenager and as a child, and uploaded over twenty photos on a website which served as a resource center.

After many months of no positive news and a growing sense of inevitable disappointment, a breakthrough came in October 2002, when Mary Katherine suddenly had a flash of insight. Cleaning her room, she came across a copy of a Guinness Book of World Records and saw a picture of a very muscular woman that somehow triggered her memory of the abduction. Suddenly, she remembered where she had heard that voice before. Getting up, she went to her parents' room and said, "Dad, I think I know who it might be."

The Smarts sought to help unemployed people in the community by paying them for odd jobs or handy work around the property. Mary Katherine now identified a man who had worked in the home for one day in November 2001 — "Emmanuel." Lois and some of the children had met him downtown as he was asking for spare change. He was clean, soft-spoken, well-groomed, Caucasian, 5’8" tall, had dark hair, and was "about 45 years old". He called himself "Emmanuel," but it seemed clear that this was not his real name, but had something to do with his self-proclaimed calling as a minister to the homeless. He took a bus to a stop close to their home and then walked to the house. He worked for five hours, helping on the roof and raking leaves. While they worked together on Ed's roof, he told Ed that he was traveling to different cities preaching to homeless.

When this insight was reported to the police, they had doubts as to its reliability. Mary Katherine had barely heard the suspect's voice, for only a few minutes, in a whisper, several months previously, and after coming out of a sleep. Suddenly, she remembered it was the voice of a man she had met for a few moments a year earlier. To the police, this was not the most trustworthy lead.

Tensions developed as the parents accused the police of not thoroughly following up on this lead. The family used the services of a sketch artist to draw "Emmanuel"'s face from memory. In February, this drawing was released to the media, with the assistance of John Walsh, who revealed it in an appearance on Larry King Live and on his own series, America's Most Wanted. The drawing was recognized by Emmanuel's family and they reported his actual name - Brian David Mitchell - to the police along with contemporary photographs.

Recovery

On March 12, 2003, just over nine months after the abduction, Mitchell, who was now wanted by police for questioning, was spotted in the street with two companions not far from the Smart home in Sandy, Utah. The companions were Elizabeth Smart — disguised in a gray wig, sunglasses and veil — and Wanda Ileen Barzee. Smart was finally recognized by the officers during questioning, and was promptly reunited with her parents, little sister and four brothers. Mitchell and Barzee were taken into custody as suspected kidnappers.

Initially after her return, Elizabeth was kept close to her family, to protect her from face-to-face media exposure and additional information was still slow to be released to the public. Her father stated that she was not being "questioned to death" at home about her activities. Elizabeth took her parents to the location where she was chained by her kidnappers and announced this as her personal victory over that event. Later that year, and subsequently, her family has said that they receive counselling as needed, but that their lives are back on a more normal track. Smart moved on as a music student of Brigham Young University, and says (while at the reception of the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act), that ever since the abduction, "life will never be the same."

Details of captivity

Mitchell had several base camps hidden deep in the woods and scrub of Emigration Canyon. At his most hidden camp, he had dug several pits in the ground and built a rudimentary structure of tree branches as a sort of cabin or lean-to around them. These building materials made the compound difficult to see either from the ground or the air. During the search for Elizabeth, hikers came across Mitchell several times but he would successfully hide from them in one of the many spider holes he had dug along the hillside or in other hiding spots he established and his camp was never discovered. Elizabeth recalled that one time her uncle was close enough that she heard him calling for her during one of the search efforts in the hills, but she was too afraid to call back.

Immediately after being taken from her home, Elizabeth was forced on a difficult march through dense brush in only her pajamas and tennis shoes to Mitchell's remote campsite. Mitchell, who called himself "Immanuel David Isaiah," purportedly had received a revelation that he was to take Elizabeth as his plural wife (one of at least 7) and had been planning the abduction for several weeks. Once at the camp, she was forced to remove her pajamas, burn them, and put on clothes of her captor's choosing. At some time during that first few hours, Mitchell also performed a ceremony that he claimed was a 'marriage' (but he called Elizabeth his "daughter" when in public).

Mitchell enforced a program of coercion and physical force over Elizabeth, including repeated raping of the young girl, verbal threats against her, threats against her family, depersonalization, and constant preaching indoctrination. He kept Elizabeth tied with a cable to a tree or in a hole under boards. After a few weeks, he sometimes let her free, and once, while Mitchell and Barzee were arguing, Elizabeth tried to escape, but was unsuccessful. She was kept in isolation and given very little information. For example, despite the enormous search effort, Elizabeth was only partially aware of the efforts to find her and never saw the billboards on the freeways. Barzee's estranged 27-year-old daughter speculated that drugs may have been involved in controlling Elizabeth, although there has been no confirmation of this from police or Elizabeth.

When Mitchell decided he was in control of Elizabeth, he moved Barzee and Elizabeth to the city, but enforced the wearing of a heavy veil for both women, and disallowed Elizabeth from speaking to others. These rules made it possible for Mitchell to take her into public places without detection. After her return, people were surprised and frustrated to find that Elizabeth had sometimes been among them. Once her altered appearance was recognized, several people came forward with details of sightings of Elizabeth and Mitchell in a variety of places both in public areas and in private homes. For example, she attended a party with Mitchell and was photographed there, wearing a veil. Other attendees of the party were not aware that the veiled girl was a kidnapping victim, and Smart did not attempt to seek their help or accept it when it was offered.

In another instance, a Mormon youth group director, who had worked with Elizabeth previously, saw her behind her veil at the Chuck-A-Rama buffet in Salt Lake City but did not recognize her. "She would make this weird eye contact with me," said Banz. "Beautiful eyes -- that was the only piece of human flesh that you could see ... just the slit of her eye ... It (makes) me so sick to know I was that close."

With this ability to travel in public, and with the cold of winter approaching, Mitchell took Barzee and Elizabeth on an extended road trip that ended in Lakeside, Calif.. There, they lived miserably in a broken down trailer and were often cold and hungry. Perhaps one of the most heartbreaking ironies of the abduction occurred immediately after America's Most Wanted went forward with the sketch of Emmanuel in an attempt to find out his true identity. At the time of the episode's airing, Mitchell was sitting in a San Diego jail cell, accused of breaking into a church while intoxicated. Barzee and Elizabeth were left alone at the trailer with no food and little water for a week. Mitchell pled guilty to the crime, claiming to the judge presiding over his case that he was traveling with his "wife and daughter" and was promptly released.

Finally, just after the Smart's drawing of "Emmanuel" was being released to the public, Mitchell had a revelation to return to Salt Lake City. With his identity well revealed, he, Barzee and Elizabeth were spotted and taken into custody the day that they arrived.

As the police officers questioned her, Elizabeth initially identified herself to them as "Augustine" - an alias given to her by Mitchell. But she also hinted to her identity, saying, "I know what you're thinking. You guys think I'm that Elizabeth Smart girl who ran away". When pressed further by the officers to admit that she was indeed Elizabeth Smart, she finally said, "Thou sayest," a possible reference to the Gospel of Matthew in the Bible, in which Pontius Pilate repeatedly questions Jesus about his identity. Officer Victor Quezada said he "took that as a 'Yes.'"

The months of Mitchell's ongoing program of coercion, rape, and threats to murder her and harm her family had otherwise been chillingly effective. When asked why she seemed unwilling to escape from her captors, Police Chief Dinse expressed his opinion that "there was clearly a psychological impact that occurred at some point. There is no question she was psychologically affected by this group." Tom Smart, Elizabeth's uncle, suspected Stockholm syndrome, in which kidnap victims eventually embrace the beliefs of their captors and added, "She's in shock. She's been in the hands of a very sick person." Smart's father also expressed his view that Elizabeth had been brainwashed.

Timeline of events

• 4 June 2002 - Smart Family arrives late at the Bryant Middle School awards function. Elizabeth receives awards in physical fitness and academics but does not play her harp as planned. Family returns home and retires to bed.
• 5 June 2002 - Elizabeth is abducted from her bedroom in the early hours of the morning. Mary Katherine, her sister, is a witness to the crime. Elizabeth is taken to a secret camp in Emigration Canyon where she is held prisoner and raped.
• 6 June 2002 -- Bounty for her return is at $250,000
• 7 June 2002 -- Milkman reports suspicious activities of Bret Michael Edwards in neighborhood.
• 9 June 2002 -- Ed Smart questioned / polygraphed
• 12 June 2002 -- Manhunt for Bret Michael Edwards
• 14 June 2002 -- Richard Ricci arrested
• 21 June 2002 -- Brent Michael Edwards caught in West Virginia and questioned the next day.
• 24 June 2002 -- Richard Ricci arrest announced
• 11 July 2002 -- Richard Ricci charged with theft in the Smart home. Denies any involvement with Elizabeth's kidnapping.
• 24 July 2002 -- Attempted kidnapping at Elizabeth's cousin's house
• August 2002 -- Mitchel, Barzee and Elizabeth leave Emigration Canyon and go to Salt Lake City
• 27 August 2002 -- Richard Ricci collapses and (30 Aug) dies of a brain hemorrhage
• 17 Sept 2002 -- Police suspend regular briefings with the Smart family.
• 27 Sept 2002 -- Police Arrest Mitchell for shoplifting and later release him.
• 8 October 2002 -- Mitchell, Barzee and Elizabeth leave Salt Lake City and head to San Diego.
• 12 October 2002 -- Mary Katherine remembers the voice of the kidnapper -- Emmanuel
• 3 Feb 2003 -- Smart family releases the sketch of the man known as Emmanuel
• 12 Feb 2003 -- Mitchell arrested in El Cajon for breaking into a church. Not recognized as the person wanted in Utah.
• 15 Feb 2003 America's Most Wanted features Emmanuel and requests responses.
• 16 Feb 2003 -- Family of Mitchell step forward and identify Emmanuel as Brian David Mitchell and (17 Feb) provide more recent photographs.
• 5 March 2003 - Mitchell, Barzee and Elizabeth leave Lakeside, Calif.
• 12 March 2003 -- Elizabeth Smart found alive in Sandy, Utah
• 18 March 2003 -- Mitchell and Barzee are charged with aggravated kidnapping, aggravated sexual assault and aggravated burglary.
• 30 April 2003 -- Elizabeth makes her first public appearance after her return
• 27 Oct 2003 -- Dateline Interview with Elizabeth
• 26 July 2005 -- Mitchell is declared mentally incompetent to stand trial
• 9 March 2006 -- Elizabeth Smart goes to Congress to support Sexual Predator Legislation

Media attention

One of the most important impacts of this kidnapping was the family's successful use of the media including the Internet. Numerous volunteers searched throughout many areas, coordinating their actions through a centralized web based search center. The case also helped publicize the AMBER Alert system. Daily media attention brought about much sensationalism and pundit speculation. Night after night, talk shows such as CNN's Larry King Live featured numerous commentators with one opinion or another regarding the kidnapping.

Shortly after Mitchell's arrest, a Salt Lake defense attorney, Larry Long, visited Mitchell. Long claimed Mitchell insisted he has two wives: Wanda Barzee, or "Hephzibah Eladah Isaiah," and Elizabeth Smart, whom Mitchell calls, "Shear Jashub Isaiah" or "Remnant Who Will Return". Due to this, the media began to focus on The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and the history of polygamy in Utah. The Smarts are members of the LDS Church, and both Mitchell and Barzee had been at one time practicing Mormons as well. Various media outlets published a 27-page religious manifesto by Mitchell, The Book of Immanuel David Isaiah.

Some advocates have raised objections to the media tendency to focus so much attention on pretty, blonde, blue-eyed, white girls like Elizabeth Smart when so many other missing children do not receive the same level of media coverage. Media critics charged that black, Asian, Latino, male, or even ugly children would not have had any national media exposure after the first twenty-four hours (see Missing white woman syndrome).

The rare and joyous news of a young girl's safe recovery gave news outlets good news to report, and prompted President Bush to call Elizabeth's father, to wish the family well.

The similarity of Elizabeth's kidnapping and her family's search for her to the plot of Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones has also been credited with helping that book top the bestseller list that summer.

In April 2005, Elizabeth was named one of People magazine's "50 Most Beautiful People of 2005." She gave a short interview to the magazine about her career as a harpist and gave a small photo shoot for the magazine.

Aftermath

Television interviews

In October 2003, Elizabeth Smart and her parents were interviewed for a special segment of Dateline NBC. The interview, conducted by the Today show's Katie Couric, featured Elizabeth's first interview with any media outlet. Couric questioned Elizabeth's parents about their experiences while Elizabeth was missing, including the Smarts' personal opinions concerning Elizabeth's captors, Brian David Mitchell and Wanda Barzee. Couric then interviewed Elizabeth about school and her life following her kidnapping.

Shortly after the Dateline interview, Elizabeth Smart and her family were featured on The Oprah Winfrey Show, where Winfrey questioned the Smarts about the kidnapping. Elizabeth talked in sparse detail about her abduction. One detail she disclosed is that Mitchell forced her to keep a diary and to write in it daily. She knew he would read the entries she made, so she wrote such things as:

"I like it here. They are nice to me."

But below the entries in English, she wrote in French things such as:

"I hate it here. I hate them. I want to be back with my family."

She also revealed that after her experience, she has more compassion for the homeless. Asked if she felt sorry for her captors then, she stated that she was not referring to them and that they were homeless by choice and she had no compassion for their condition or what they did to her. But she went on to say, "It's hard to be cold. It's hard to not have enough to eat."

Elizabeth started school in the fall semester of 2003 at Salt Lake City's East High School. Elizabeth says that her friends have welcomed her back, but had not asked questions, and that some "weirdos" at school had taunted her. She later graduated in the class of 2006.

On July 19, 2006, CNN's Nancy Grace interviewed Elizabeth Smart, who appeared on behalf of a bill requiring sex offenders to register with their state of residence. Despite Smart's objection, Grace asked Smart a long series of questions about her abduction, relenting only when Smart, clearly upset, said "I really—I really—to be frankly honest, I really don't appreciate you bringing all this up."

Book and film

The Smart family published a book, Bringing Elizabeth Home, which was used as the basis of a television movie that aired Sunday, November 9 2003 on CBS. The Smarts claimed they wanted to avoid subjecting their daughter to the limelight, but that after realizing it was inevitable, they decided it would be preferable to allow a film authorized by them to be created, rather than allowing an unauthorized version to surface.

A lawyer for Mitchell, David Biggs, said the national broadcast of the television film would further delay justice and considered filing a motion. The piece characterizes Mitchell and Barzee as deranged religious zealots, and provides no background on either of them.

A small but detailed section of the book Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer describes Mitchell and his kidnapping of Smart in the larger context of Mormon fundamentalism.

In 2003 her case was the basis of a Law and Order SVU episode.

Legal proceedings

For several months, Mitchell and Barzee were held on $10 million bond awaiting the outcome of mental competency tests. Prosecutors said that Mitchell and Barzee kidnapped Elizabeth to be Mitchell's second 'wife' (though illegal), that they held her against her will in the foothills near Federal Heights until October 8, and they then took her to California, where they stayed until March 5.

In January 2004, Barzee was found incompetent to stand trial on charges including kidnapping, sexual assault, and burglary. On July 26 2005, Mitchell was also found incompetent to stand trial; he faces the same charges. A district judge has ordered him held until he is deemed fit for trial. . Barzee's condition has not improved since she was found incompetent to stand trial. Barzee has also refused "to take medication that might restore her mental competence".

The investigation has cost $1.5 million and has amassed 53,000 man hours. According to the New York Post, "that included hypnotizing Elizabeth's 9-year-old sister, Mary Katherine".

In February 2006, a bill went before the Utah legislature to allow prosecutors to apply for forcible medication of defendants to restore their competence to face trial. Permission to forcibly medicate Wanda Barzee was also sought, relying upon the U.S. Supreme Court's 2003 Sell decision, which permits compulsory medication when the state can demonstrate a compelling interest is served by restoring a person's competence and that medication would not harm the individual or prevent them from defending themselves. In June 2006, a Utah judge approved the forcible medication of Barzee so that she could stand trial.

In March 2006, a Utah state court dismissed a lawsuit by Richard Ricci’s widow, which claimed that police officer Cory Mack Lyman had arrested Ricci improperly in order to "satisfy the public's need to identify a suspect."

References

• Smart, Ed and Smart, Lois. Bringing Elizabeth Home: A Journey of Faith and Hope (2003). U.S.: Doubleday. ISBN 0-385-51214-7 (U.S.).
• Haberman, Maggie and MacIntosh, Jeane. Held Captive: The Kidnapping and Rescue of Elizabeth Smart (2003). U.S.: Avon. ISBN 0-06-058020-8 (U.S.).
• Smart, Tom and Benson, Lee. In Plain Sight: The Startling Truth Behind the Elizabeth Smart Investigation (2005). U.S.: Chicago Review Press. ISBN 1-55652-579-6 (U.S.).

External links

• CourtTV site with extensive information on the case from its inception
• Laura Recovery Center
• Mind Games audio report episode of This American Life with a story about why people didn't notice Elizabeth Smart on the street
• The Book of Immanuel David Isaiah
• Criminal Complaint against Mitchell and Barzee
• Interview with Larry King
• Interview with Nancy Grace