June 5, 2002 Elizabeth Smart14 years old, was kidnapped in the middle of the night after being threatened at knifepoint in her own home in Salt Lake City, Utah.
There was only one witness, his younger sister, Mary Katherine Smart9, who slept in the same room and managed to hear the voice of kidnapper.
The entire community searched for Elizabeth during nine months. The case gained national relevance and the alert about his disappearance was issued throughout the United States.
During the last stretch of the desperate search, the family no longer trusted the police authorities or the advice of the FBI. They revealed themselves and made a key decision.
The girl’s parents, Ed and Louis Smartheld a televised press conference, where they showed the public the portrait of the main suspect and asked for citizen collaboration in the event of any sighting.
Thanks to that action, Elizabeth was rescued. She is currently 37 years old, and is a reference in the activism against sexual violence. His impressive story of overcoming was told countless times, and films were even made to recreate the ordeal he experienced.
However, his captor was rarely spoken of, Brian David Mitchellthe man who kept her in atrocious captivity just five kilometers from her home for eight of the nine months she was missing.
The night of Elizabeth Smart’s kidnapping
The key witness from the beginning was Elizabeth’s little sister, as she herself told in the documentary Netflix released in February 2025, Sequestrian: Elizabeth Smart.
«I woke up because there was someone in my room who He told Elizabeth that if she screamed he would kill her.. I was paralyzed and when he left I ran to my parents’ bedroom to tell them that A man had come in and taken Elizabeth away.«, recounts Mary Katherine.
The investigations determined that Mitchel climbed onto a chair from the backyard, cut the mosquito net in the Smarts’ kitchen, entered through the hole and went to the sisters’ room.
He put a knife to Elizabeth’s neck and forced her to get up silently until she left the property. Then he made her walk five kilometers through the forest to a makeshift camp, where Another woman was waiting for her, dressed in a white tunic. and the face half covered.
They demanded that the girl take off all her clothes, the woman washed her body with water and rags, put a tunic identical to the one she was wearing on her, and told her that she was ready for «her marriage.»
Mitchel said a few words, looked at the sky and exclaimed that he was officially «the second of his seven wives». That was the first of hundreds of nights he sexually abused Elizabeth.
While she was experiencing that psychological and physical torture, everyone was looking for her. His sister told authorities that the captor’s voice seemed «familiar» to her.as if she had heard it before, but she was not entirely sure nor could she identify it.
The police questioned the entire family environment. Elizabeth belonged to a large family of the Mormon faith. His parents, his five siblings, his maternal and paternal uncles, all were investigated.
They did not find any suspicious element in any relative. Nine days after the kidnapping, on June 14, police arrested the first suspect in the case: Richard Ricci48 years old.
Ricci was free on parole. He had worked in the Smart house and had stolen jewelry and money from them. He claimed not to know anything, but they did not believe him and imprisoned him.
In July 2002, seven weeks later, while Ricci remained in prison, There was another kidnapping attempt, on Jessica Wright, Elizabeth’s cousin., 15 years old.
The mechanism was the same: a cut mosquito net and a chair to try to enter through the window. Apparently the suspect was scared when he heard the barking of the dog, which tried to attack him, and fled.
For the family there was no doubt that it had been the same person. Since Ricci was still in jail, they began to believe that he was not the criminal who had taken Elizabeth.
Investigators could not prove that both attacks were related and due to the media impact that the case had, they believed that it could be a copycat.
However, the detail of the chair had not been disclosed to the press, and that is why this new kidnapping attempt was more than relevant.
On August 30, after being detained for two months, Ricci had a stroke in prison and died. The police still thought he might be the culprit and had taken Elizabeth’s whereabouts to the grave. Fortunately, they were not right.
A hiding place in the mountains and double identity: «Immanuel», the false prophet
The real captor, Mitchell, was aware of developments in the case and the frantic search to find the girl. He saw the posters posted in the center of the city and decided to move Elizabeth two kilometers further, towards the mountains, where he had another makeshift store.
He forced Elizabeth to drink alcohol so that she would be fully conscious for a few hours a day. He also didn’t let her sleep and kept her tied with a rope during the rare moments when she rested.
The man He called himself a prophet under the name of «Emmanuel«. He recited his own gospel and justified all his actions by saying that «God had commanded it.»
All three wore the same white tunic, and both had their faces covered with a veil. Only their eyes were visible. So, when they went down in search of groceries – he, the adult woman who identified herself as his first wife, and Elizabeth – no one suspected.
Although they did not fully understand what religion they practiced, they believed that they were orthodox religious professors. The twist in the investigation occurred four months after the kidnapping, when Mary Katherine began to remember more details of the traumatic abduction of her older sister.
«I think I know who it is. It was Emmanuel, the homeless man we saw downtown begging and then he came to fix our roof«the 9-year-old girl told her parents.
The previous year they had seen him preaching the word of God in the streets. They started a dialogue with him and offered him a bricklaying job in their house.
They immediately told the FBI, which had become involved in the investigation. There were doubts, because Emmanuel’s contact with the family had been very limited: he worked three hours a year before the kidnapping, He went to that house only one day and didn’t even return to collect.
Emanuel was not even on the list of possible suspects. The researchers were also not sure that Mary Katherine’s memory was faithful.
They brought in a cartoonist and asked her for the most detailed physical description of Emmanuel possible. That identikit was archived for another four months.
The Smart family could not publish the portrait because it could put the culprit on alert. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to them, Elizabeth was still nearby, always guarded and threatened with death by the pair of captors.
He even sometimes crossed paths with climbers on the mountain, but he didn’t have the courage to ask for help. «I suffered extreme abuse and when I disobeyed I was raped, or they didn’t let me eat; so I had to be very sure that when I tried to escape, I would make it,» declared Elizabeth herself before the federal court.
«He threatened me all the time, telling me that if I didn’t do what he He told me he would kill me and then he would kill my family.. The memory of my parents and siblings was the only thing that kept me alive, because I had a family to live for; «I missed them a lot,» he added.
He said that one day the three of them went to the Salt Lake library to look at maps. Emmanuel told him that it was time to move and set his next routes.
«That was my best chance to escape, when a man approached us and said, ‘I’m a homicide detective and I need to ask you some questions to make sure this girl isn’t the one we’re looking for. Can I see your face?’, story.
«No, I’m sorry because it goes against faith and it would be disrespectful. The only ones who can see her face are her future husband and I, her father,» was Emmanuel’s lying response.
«I wanted to scream, but I couldn’t. He kicked my legs under the table as a threat. And for some reason, the detective didn’t insist anymore and I lost my chance,» he revealed.
After the meeting with that detective Emmanuel quickly took her back to the mountains. «He was very anxious and decided that we would leave Salt Lake City, he mentioned New York, Boston, as options,» the horror survivor recalled.
She knew that if they took her to another big city it would be practically impossible for them to find her. «I joined the conversation and said, ‘I have a feeling that we should return to Salt Lake, although I know that God does not speak directly to me, but you can ask him and he will confirm if that is the right path, because truly you are his servant and his prophet,'» Elizabeth said.
«He looked at me and said: ‘What a joy, God is finally starting to work in you. Now that you recognize your own insignificancewe can go back to Salt Lake City,'» he explained.
The betrayal of Brian David Mitchell’s brother-in-law that made up for the FBI’s failures
Eight months had already passed. Desperate, his parents published the portrait and gave a telephone number to receive citizen information.
They received a call from a man who thought he knew who Emmanuel was. «He said he got chills when he saw the drawing, that He looked a lot like his ex-brother-in-law«Elizabeth’s father revealed.
«I don’t want to believe it, but the man is crazy enough to maybe be involved in all this. Are you aware that he has a tent in the mountains?«, that informant, who actually turned out to be Mitchell’s ex-brother-in-law, told them.
Upon seeing the photograph he sent to the family of a family celebration with his sister’s ex-husband, they confirmed that it was Emmanuel. And then they knew his name, Brian David Mitchel, and his age, 48 years.
His father, Shirl Mitchell, said he was sent to live with his grandmother at age 16 after constant arguments with his mother, Irene Mitchell, that led to a physical altercation.
In his adolescence he was arrested because he exposed himself in an obscene manner to a minor. At 19, Mitchell married a woman named Karen for the first time, and they had two children before separating.
He then married another young woman, Debbie, but their union also dissolved. Her two children were taken into foster care. Around 1997 he said he was leaving the Mormon faith and created his own 27-page evangelical pamphlet.
Eight years later he married for the third time, with Wanda Barzee, divorced and mother of six childrenwho had lost possession after being reported for physical and emotional abuse of her children.
In the mid-1990s, the couple sold all their possessions and began hitchhiking around the country using habits.
Searching his criminal history, investigators discovered that Mitchell had been arrested for shoplifting beer during Elizabeth’s period of captivity.
«It was devastating to know that they caught him and let him go while he had our daughter kidnapped. He was dressed like a traveling fundamentalist preacher, with a robe and a long beard,» the girl’s parents said indignantly.
They learned that he was almost always with a woman who carried a doll, something that caught the attention of passersby. She was Wanda Barzee, and she had adopted the name Hephzibah.
Furthermore there was previous allegations of child sexual abuse against Mitchel. «He showed signs of an altered and aggressive mental state since then, as confirmed by Mitchell’s ex-wife, who considered him a dangerous person and divorced him after a horrible episode,» the police reported.
Mitchell knew she had a phobia of mice. He killed several rodents and put them in the oven. When she opened it she found all the mice dead. He laughed at her fears and constantly threatened her.
The calls kept coming, but the definitive and miraculous clue came on March 12, 2003. Several residents reported three people matching the description of Elizabeth and her kidnappers, walking along a road in Sandy, heading towards Salt Lake City, just 30 kilometers from the Smart family home.
Four patrols arrived immediately. They verified that it was Elizabeth, they took her to safety and arrested the couple of captorswho said they did not have identification and were «messengers of God.»
The sentencing of Brian David Mitchell and Wanda Barzee
On December 10, 2010, more than eight years after Smart’s kidnapping, the jury found Mitchell guilty of interstate kidnapping and unlawful transportation of a minor, while he sang songs about Jesus Christ during the reading of the verdict and held his hands in prayer.
Mitchell, currently 7.2 years old, is serving a life sentence. without the possibility of parole in a federal prison in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania.
As for his accomplice, Barzee, he took a plea deal and received a 15 year prison sentenceless time served. In September 2018, he was released and is currently 80 years old.
Elizabeth focuses on share survivors’ storiesas a writer, speaker, and victims’ rights advocate.
«I hope other survivors realize that they are not alone and do not feel ashamed of what happened to them,» he said in the brand new Netflix documentary.
As for her personal life, Elizabeth is the mother of three children with her husband, Matthew Gilmour, with whom she says she has regained her faith in love and respect.
«Hopefully it will comfort them to know that there are happy endings and that even after terrible things happen to you, you can have a wonderful life,» Smart said.
