Kidnapping of Elizabeth Smart

Elizabeth Smart is a 15-year-old Utah girl who disappeared on June 5, 2002, in the morning hours from her house in the Federal Heights area of Salt Lake City, Utah. She was kidnapped at gunpoint, according to her 9 year old sister, who pretended for at least another 2 hours to be asleep before telling her parents.

The police actively worked on the case, and they had signaled a suspect in custody. The suspect, Richard Ricci, died a few weeks later in jail.

On March 12, 2003, Smart was found alive during a pedestrian stop in Sandy, Utah involving Brian David Mitchell and Rhonda Eileen Barzee, who were taken into custody. Mitchell is thought to have worked as a handyman at the Smart residence.

Unresolved questions

Many, many questions remained unanswered after Elizabeth's recovery, even though round-the-clock attention was given the case by the cable news channels. To protect her from face-to-face media exposure, Elizabeth was kept close to her family, and her father claimed that she was not being "questioned to death" at home about her activities.

As a result, almost no details were available about what happened to Elizabeth Smart during the 9 months of her disappearance.

Nonetheless, the most obvious questions began appearing in headlines and news segment titles across the country.

For instance, Elizabeth was stopped by police while casually walking in broad daylight with two other persons. Why did she not identify herself as Elizabeth Smart?

The two people with her, Brian David Mitchell and Rhonda Eileen Barzee, were placed under arrest as her abductors. But had Elizabeth truly been held against her will?

Also, her face was on numerous versions of "Missing" and "Reward" flyers and posters all over town. Did she realize that there had been a massive search for her?

She initially identified herself as Augustine, according the the arresting officers. She also said, "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 it," a possible reference to Matthew 27:11, Mark 15:2, and Luke 23:3, in which Pontius Pilate repeatedly questions Jesus about his identity. Officer Victor Quezada said he "took that as a yes."

Elizabeth Smart was promptly reunited with her parents and siblings, and Mitchell and Barzee were placed into custody as suspected kidnappers.

In the hours to follow after Smart's recovery, several people came forward with details of sightings in which Elizabeth did not seem to be held against her will. She was even photographed attending a party wearing a veil, and on another occasion, strolling with Mitchell and Barzee in a park.

According to Elizabeth's father in appearances after the recovery, Elizabeth did know about some of the family's search efforts, but missed the billboards on the freeways. Also, she had heard her uncle calling for her during one of the search efforts in the hills behind the Smart residence.

No motive for the alleged kidnapping was offered.

Many Utah residents believe that she is suffering from the Stockholm syndrome, where captives initally revile, then tolerate, then embrace the beliefs of their captors. The father immediately claimed that Elizabeth had been brainwashed, and this notion was supported by Barzee's estranged 27-year-old daughter, who suggested that drugs may also have been involved. However, there has been no evidence that Mitchell or Barzee have practiced any brainwashing techniques on other victims, and authorities indicated that no drugs were found on the kidnapping suspects.

Even the facts surrounding Elizabeth Smart's alleged abduction are still hazy. There are no matching prints for Mitchell in Elizabeth's bedroom. For months, the only available witness to the abduction was Mary Katherine Smart, Elizabeth's 9-year-old sister who shared the same bedroom. According to Mary Katherine, Elizabeth was instructed at gunpoint (a detail later altered to "knifepoint") by an intuder to put on her athletic shoes and leave with him. The little sister said she tried to follow them outside the room but returned to hide another 2 hours before telling her parents of Elizabeth's disappearance. There was also confusion over whether a screen had been cut from outside or inside the house, for purposes of either entering the house or creating a red herring.

Perhaps most puzzling is the fact that the sketch released by the Smart family and based on Mary Katherine's recollections depicts a perpetrator with no facial hair, whereas photographs of Brian Mitchell both before and after June 5, 2002, show him with a full beard.

Undoubtedly, the many questions and discrepancies in this case will be addressed in the march to the trial of Mitchell and Barzee. But the case is also interesting for its involvement of the media since day one of the disappearance.

Media influence

Elizabeth's parents and extended family persistently maintained a presence in the local and national media, fighting hard to keep their story of family loss, faith and hope from fading away.

They provided the media with home movies of Elizabeth as both a teenager and as a child, and uploaded over 20 photos of her on a website which served as a resource center, http://www.elizabethsmart.com/. They have been generally commended for this, although some questioned why the media was paying so much attention to a blonde, blue-eyed missing girl when so many other missing children did not receive the same level of media coverage. Media critics speculated that a black, asian, Latino, male, or even ugly child would not have had any national media exposure after the first 24 hours.

The parents' continued cries for help in the media brought much good will, in the form of large groups of volunteers conducting searches throughout different terrains, and also built a platform from which to promote the "Amber Alert."

On the other hand, however, daily media attention brought about much sensational speculation. Night after night, talk shows such as CNN's Larry King Live featured commentators who mercilessly villified early suspects. This kind of discussion may have tainted many of the appearances of Smart family members.

In addition, there developed some tensions as the parents accused the police of not thoroughly following up on leads.

Ironically, on the day of Elizabeth's return, the authorities joined the media in roundly congratulating themselves on a job well done.

It should also be noted that the story of Elizabeth Smart's recovery came at a time of intense unrelenting debate among members of the United Nations Security Council on whether to go to war against Iraq. Elizabeth's story came along as a breath of fresh air, and even President Bush took the time to call Ed Smart, Elizabeth's father, to wish him well.