March 12th 2003: Elizabeth Smart is found, 9 months after her kidnapping.

Elizabeth Smart was a 14 year old girl living in the affluent neighbourhood of Federal Heights in Salt Lake City with her mother (Lois), father (Edward) and siblings. She grew up in a loving Mormon family and was very much adored by those who knew her. On the 4th of June she had received an award for excellence in physical fitness and academics from school. The next morning, around 4.30 am Elizabeth's 9 year old sister, Mary Katherine, went into the room of her parents to tell them that Elizabeth was gone and they would not find her. Unsure of what she meant her parents got out of bed and began to search the house for Elizabeth, assuming that she must have woken with a bad dream and confused it with reality. Having been woken from their sleep, groggily the reality was beginning to set in, they realised that a screen in the kitchen had been cut open and Elizabeth was nowhere to be found. 

When questioned Mary Katherine told police officers and her parents that she had pretended to be asleep when a man took Elizabeth from the room they had both been sleeping in. Mary Katherine revealed that the man was about the same height as her brother Charles, had dark hair and also had dark hair on his arms and hands. He was soft spoken, well dressed and he had threatened Elizabeth with what she thought to be a gun. The most eerie detail Mary Katherine revealed was that the man's voice, although she could not place it, sounded familiar. 

The next morning an appeal was put out for any available bodies to volunteer in the search party organised by The Laura Recovery Centre. Initially they printed about 400 flyers for volunteers to submit their contact information but they quickly ran out as almost 2,000 people volunteered. Searches focused on wooded areas around the house initially while police worked on recovering any evidence from the house. The use of bloodhounds was unsuccessful and police found no DNA, fingerprints or other evidence at the scene, except the slashed screen which was the assumed point of entry. The FBI informed the family that if Elizabeth was not home in 48 hours, she would probably not be returning home. 

The search carried on for weeks with hundreds of people volunteering on a daily basis and the Smart family made appeals on TV and radio, pleading with the abductor to return her safely. As sadly tends to be the case, with kidnappings, when there are no major leads, public attention tends to steadily ebb away and the search was called off. The Smart's did however keep appealing for information and set up a website to help keep people's attention about the case. They failed to ever give hope of finding their daughter, releasing different home videos of their daughter at various stages in her life which showed a loving family, desperate to be reunited with their daughter. 

Edward Smart and his brothers were all taken in for questioning and subjected to lie detector tests. Police were well familiar with the fact that kidnappings are mainly carried out by a known perpetrator, only 10% are actually carried out by somebody unknown to the victim. Edward Smart said in an interview that he was willing to go through any questioning to find his daughter but was frustrated with the time police spent questioning his family instead of using the man hours to be out searching for Elizabeth. Another person of interest was Richard Ricci who had been a handy man that Edward Smart had used for odd jobs around the family home. He had been a person of interest to police based on a previous parole violation and also, he had a history of drug abuse. Once again, police were assuming that Elizabeth may have known her abductor. Ricci was ruled out as a suspect and died in August of 2002. 

Brian David Mitchell was born in 1953, the third of six children in Salt Lake City. Like Elizabeth. Neighbours said that they may have been a little odd but they were good people. His mother Irene was a school teacher and his father Shirl was a social worker. Brian led quite a social life as a child and was a member of The Cub Scouts and played on the local Little League team. As an 8 year old child Brian's father tried to educate him about sex by using various medical journals. Other pornographic and sexually explicit content were left within Brian's reach as a child. When he was closer to his teenage years, Brian's father would drop him off in an unfamiliar areas of town and tell him to find his way home, in an effort to teach his son about independence. While it seems Shirl was quite tough on Brian, these incidents had a profound effect on the young boy and he felt himself becoming more and more isolated, drifting away from the closeness of a family. 

At aged 16 Brian was found guilty of exposing himself to  a child and was sent away to a juvenile delinquents hall. Upon his release, Brian found himself more alone than ever. He would argue with his mother almost constantly and when she could take no more, it was decided that Brian would go to live with his grandmother. It was soon after this that Brian decided to drop out of school and he turned to a life of alcohol and drugs. 

At age 19, Brian married 16 year old Karen Minor after she fell pregnant and the couple had 2 children. The relationship was unsteady, a situation that was not helped by the fact that Karen was also an abuser of drugs. When the marriage came to an end, Brian was granted custody of the children as Karen in been in relationships with other men during their relationship and also because of her drug problem. Karen went on to get sober and remarried and when she was applied to gain full custody of the two children, the court ruled in her favour. 

In 1980 Brian found himself desperate and alone, just as his brother returned from a religious mission. This new life that his brother had found in God inspired Brian to become sober and lead a life dedicated to The Church of Jesus of The Latter Day Saints (LDS). By 1981 Brian was a completely different person, sober. He married for the second time to a woman called Debbie and the couple went on to have two children. Shortly after this Debbie claims that Brian change, he became possessive and abusive, controlling what she would wear and eat, he started to scare her. His new love of religion had taken a dark turn as he had not only found the light in God but he had found a darkness and his interest in Satan started to grow. He claimed to Debbie that he was merely learning about his enemy. In a shock turn, Brian divorced Debbie in 1984 claiming that she was abusive and violent. He claimed that she was trying to turn his children against him. 

On the day that the divorced was finalised, Brian married for the third time, this time to Wanda Barzee. The couple were active members of the church and Brian worked as a die cutter. Wanda had 6 children from her previous marriage who at first lived with their father but over time would come and stay with he couple and live for periods at a time with them. The children would comment on Brian's behaviour and think he was an odd guy but as time went on, his conduct became more extreme and erratic. The children claimed that he started to act dangerously. He would claim to be a prophet of God, he would speak to angels and eventually, Wanda's children would move away because Brian had become so difficult and bizarre to be around. Brian was excommunicated from the church for his repeatedly claiming to be a prophet.

Brian and Wanda decided to change their names and went by "Emmanuel" and "God Adorneth". Brian had taken to growing his hair and beard long and wearing a long white robe while Wanda would be ever present by his side. The two became familiar faces around Salt Lake City. Regularly seen begging on the streets and preaching to any passerby that would spare a moment to hear their message. 

While flicking through an annual of The Guinness World Records Book, months after the kidnapping, Mary Katherine (Elizabeth's sister) had a moment of epiphany. She ran to her father saying "it was Emmanuel, it was Emmanuel". Startled and confused Edward brought Mary Katherine in to sit down and explain what the hell she was babbling about so frantically. She claimed that the man she had seen that night taking Elizabeth was Emmanuel. Edward Smart sat for a moment or two thinking, searching his memory for any recollection of an Emmanuel. Finally a memory stirred, there had been an Emmanuel in the home. He had been in the house one day after Edward Smart picked him up on the street while he was begging. He had offered him an invite to his family home. He had given the man some food and money for doing some odd jobs around the house that day. He was there when Elizabeth and Mary Katherine had arrived home from school that day. This could not have been the man that Mary Katherine was remembering as she had only met him for a brief couple of minutes.  Police tried to follow up on the lead but found it to be a dead end. A composite sketch was drawn up of the man and released nationally. Brian Mitchell's family recognised the drawing and alerted police to his real identity. 

On March 12th, a month after the composite sketch was released, Brian Mitchell was spotted with a woman and a girl in Sandy, Utah. Police were dispatched to the scene and a gentle spoken police officer approached Elizabeth, although she was disguised with a wig and sunglasses, the officer knew he recognised her. "Are you Elizabeth Smart?" he asked. 

......."I am Elizabeth."

Elizabeth Smart had been held captive in woods where the couple had built an encampment. Soon after her kidnapping a ceremony took place whereby Elizabeth became his wife. They kept her cuffed to a tree so she could not escape and was repeatedly raped by Brian Mitchell, sometimes several times a day. She was starved and bloated from malnutrition when she was found. The camp was a mere 18 miles from her family home and during her time with the couple had been taken out in public but was always disguised. Occasionally she would quickly glace at the bulletin boards with pictures of missing children on it, hoping to see her own photo. Brian would tell her that she had no family any more, that they had given up on trying to find her. 

Brian Mitchell was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole while Barzee was sentenced to 15 years and was released in 2018. 

“When I look in the mirror, I don’t see a victim anymore. I see an activist, I see a wife, I see a mother, I see a friend, I see someone I’m proud to be. It’s not what happens to us, it’s what we decide to do next, how we move forward, how we pursue our lives. It’s not the acceptance of the action done against you. I don’t think forgiveness is saying, ‘It’s OK that you raped me.’ It’s not saying, ‘We’re going to be friends now.’I will never be OK with the act of rape. There is no circumstance on earth in which I will say rape is OK.It is not that you accepted the evil that was done to you. It is an acknowledgment that it has happened, and that you have dealt with your anger, your grief, and your pain, and you are able to then move on.It’s loving yourself enough to let go of your pain and move forward.If I get to the end of my life, if I die, and I find out religion is one big lie, I still won’t regret it because it’s helped me to live a better life, to be a better person, to care about people, to believe in forgiveness, to believe in hope.” - Elizabeth Smart. 

Since her return home Elizabeth has married and become the mother of three children. She works as a child safety activist and commentator for ABC News. The strength and resilience is an amazing achievement under any circumstances, even more under the tragic ordeal she endured at the hands of Mitchell and Barzee. 

Mary Katherine has never been able to pin point exactly what it was that finally made her so sure of the kidnappers identity after four months but she was absolutely correct when she said she was sure it was Emmanuel who had taken Elizabeth.