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 investigation was national, and Salt Lake City police had signaled that their prime suspect was a man already in custody. That 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 worked as a handyman at the Smart residence, for a day the summer of 2002. Smart was promptly reunited with her parents and siblings, and Mitchell and Barzee were placed into custody as suspected kidnappers.

Many questions remain unanswered after Smart's recovery. 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 are yet available about what happened to Elizabeth Smart during the 9 months of her disappearance, save that the suspect she was with, who called himself "Emmanuel", is speculated to have sought Smart as a bride. No motive for the alleged kidnapping was offered.

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.

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 the Matthew Gospel in the Bible, in which Pontius Pilate repeatedly questions Jesus about his identity. Officer Victor Quezada said he "took that as a yes."

The kidnapping

Psychologists have speculated that Smart likeley would exhibit symptoms of Stockholm syndrome, where kidnap victims eventually embrace the beliefs of their captors. Smart's father immediately claimed that Elizabeth had been brainwashed, which was supported by Barzee's estranged 27-year-old daughter, who added that drugs may also have been involved. There has been no evidence that Mitchell or Barzee practiced any brainwashing techniques on others, and authorities indicated that no drugs were found on the kidnapping suspects.

The facts surrounding Smart's alleged abduction are still unclear. 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 intruder 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. There are no matching prints for Mitchell in Elizabeth's bedroom.

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.

Media and aftermath

Smart'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, ElizabethSmart.com.

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." Daily media attention also 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.

In addition, there developed some tensions as the parents accused the police of not thoroughly following up on leads. On the day of Smart's return, the authorities joined the comminity in expressing great pleasure with the outcome.

Some have used the case to raise questions about why the media tend to focus so much attention on pretty, caucasian, blonde-blue-eyed, girls like Smart when so many other missing children do 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. These critics tend to avoid recognizing that the novelty of Elizabeth Smart's kidnapping was that she was taken by force from her own bedroom while the rest of her family was sleeping.

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. The rare and happy news of a child's safe recovery gave media a happy story for a change, and even President Bush took the time to call Smart's father, to wish them well.