In the nine months after teenager Elizabeth Smart was taken from her bedroom on June 5, 2002, police received more than 16,000 tips about her possible captors or whereabouts, only to continuously hit dead ends. A few days after the kidnapping, Salt Lake City, Utah, investigators questioned a possible suspect who was depicted in a composite sketch and was believed to have relevant information.
“It’s another lead that has gone nowhere,” Detective Dwayne Baird told reporters once the suspect had been released.
As time wore on and 14-year-old Smart didn’t turn up, her abduction became the “media’s latest obsession.” Amid a massive search, Smart’s story gained national attention, and the series America’s Most Wanted featured her disappearance in February 2003. The airing of the episode marked the beginning of the end of Smart’s horrifying ordeal.
How Was Elizabeth Smart Kidnapped?
In fall 2001, Smart, her mother, Lois, and her younger sister, Mary Katherine, encountered a clean-shaven man panhandling in downtown Salt Lake City. Lois offered the man, who identified himself as “Emmanuel,” (sometimes spelled “Immanuel”), five dollars and a chance to earn additional money by working on the roof of the Smarts’ house. He spent a few hours there, and they didn’t see him again.
“What I didn’t know—what would later learn—was that he had been watching me very carefully as we walked toward him,” Smart later recounted in her memoir, titled My Story. “He had taken the opportunity to study me further as my mother searched through her purse.”
Months later, around 1 a.m. on June 5, 2002, Smart awoke to the man—whose real name was Brian David Mitchell—in her bedroom, pressing a knife to her neck and ordering her to come with him. Prosecutors later said Mitchell entered the Smart home by cutting through the screen of a kitchen window.
Smart shared a bedroom with Mary Katherine, who woke up to Mitchell’s voice but pretended to be asleep as Elizabeth was taken. She got up to see Mitchell leading her sister down the hall and, frightened for her own safety, quietly returned to bed. After two hours had passed, Mary Katherine informed her parents.
Nine Months of Captivity
Smart recognized her captor as “Emmanuel,” who now had a beard. Mitchell walked Smart over the foothills near her home to a campsite, where he performed a ceremony to “marry” him and Smart. Mitchell then proceeded to rape her. And did he so nearly every day, sometimes multiple times a day, for the next several months, according to media reports. Smart later said she was frequently drugged, tied to a tree and denied food for days at a time.
Mitchell’s wife, Wanda Barzee, was at the campsite throughout the ordeal. According to Smart, Barzee called Elizabeth her “handmaiden” and encouraged her husband to rape her.
“Everything that my captors threatened to do to me or wanted to do to me, they did,” Smart told ABC News in 2023. “And nobody was there to protect me.”
In public, Mitchell required Smart to wear white robes and a face-covering veil to conceal her identity.
Media Coverage and Search Efforts
Within two days of Smart’s abduction, her family offered a $250,000 reward for her safe return. (Community donations significantly boosted the original reward of $10,000.) Lois Smart and her husband, Ed, a real estate and mortgage broker, held press conferences asking for the public’s help.
“In the months after Elizabeth’s disappearance, thousands of people on foot and horseback, or in planes and helicopters, combed hills and valleys around the state,” The New York Times reported.
Why did Smart’s kidnapping generate so much attention? Perhaps because of all the unanswered questions and frightening circumstances surrounding the case, CNN correspondent James Hattori told the Washington Post in 2003.
Some newspapers, including The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, questioned whether the media prioritizes coverage of cases involving white victims. The paper published an editorial asking, “Why haven’t the reporters descended on Milwaukee to tell the nation about Alexis Patterson?” referring to a 7-year-old African American girl who disappeared on her way to school.
The Search for Suspects—and a Suspicious Break-In
After Smart was taken, police questioned Richard Albert Ricci, a handyman who once worked at Smart’s home and had a 29-year criminal record. Days later, Ricci was arrested for a parole violation and later charged with burglary and theft for stealing jewelry from the Smarts and another local residence.
With Smart still in captivity, Mitchell and Barzee attempted to break into the home of Smart’s relatives just after 3 a.m. on July 24, 2002. Smart’s cousin, Jessica Wright, awoke to noises and noticed somebody cutting through her bedroom window screen. The entry attempt was unsuccessful.
As for Ricci, he was still a “top potential suspect” when he suffered a brain hemorrhage while in prison in August 2002. He fell into a coma and died three days later.
Elizabeth Smart’s Rescue
In September 2002, Mitchell and Barzee—along with Smart—traveled from Utah to the San Diego area via Greyhound bus, where they stayed at desolate campsites.
The lead-up to Smart’s rescue came in October 2002, when her sister suddenly remembered Emmanuel, the handyman who had completed work at the Smart home the previous year. Mary Katherine realized she recognized the voice of her sister’s captor.
Police created a composite sketch of “Emmanuel” but advised the family not to publicize the image until February 2003, to the Smarts’ frustration. That month Mitchell, Barzee and Smart returned to Utah.
Upon the sketch’s release, Mitchell’s sister informed police that the image may show her brother. The sketch—along with a photo of Mitchell—then appeared on ‘America’s Most Wanted to an audience of millions.
After the episode aired, two different couples reported possible sightings of Mitchell in Sandy, Utah. Smart was found alive with Mitchell and Barzee at a traffic stop on March 12, 2003.
Kidnappers Charged and Convicted
When it was all over, Salt Lake City police admitted to their mistakes—first, wrongly focusing on Ricci as a potential suspect, then initially withholding Mitchell’s composite sketch. Mitchell and Barzee were taken into custody and charged in Smart’s abduction. But a Utah judge deemed them unfit for trial.
After a years-long legal saga, in March 2010, Mitchell was found competent to stand trial in federal court. He was ultimately found guilty on charges of kidnapping and unlawful transportation of a minor across state lines to engage in sexual activity. A judge sentenced him to life in prison in 2011.
Barzee, who in 2009 was found competent to stand trial, pleaded guilty to state and federal charges. She apologized to Smart and testified against her husband. She was sentenced to 15 years in federal prison and released in 2018.
Where Is Elizabeth Smart Today?
Smart went on to become an advocate for child safety and sexual assault prevention. In 2006, she publicly expressed her support of federal legislation designed to protect kids from predators.
In 2009, Smart spoke publicly about her ordeal for the first time and went on to found the Elizabeth Smart Foundation two years later. She published My Story in 2013. In 2017, she narrated and produced the Lifetime movie I Am Elizabeth Smart. More recently, she’s worked as the executive producer on a number of “Ripped from the Headlines” movies on Lifetime that includes The Girl Who Escaped: The Kara Robinson Story, Abducted by My Teacher: The Elizabeth Thomas Story and The Girl Locked Upstairs: The Tanya Kach Story.
She lives with her husband, Matthew Gilmour, and their three children in Utah.
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