| Kidnapping of Elizabeth Smart | |
|---|---|
| Location | Abduction: Federal Heights Salt Lake City, Utah Confinement: |
| Date | June 5, 2002 – March 12, 2003 |
| Attack type | Kidnapping; rape |
| Weapon(s) | Jagged-edged knife |
| Victim | Elizabeth Smart |
| Assailants | Brian David Mitchell and Wanda Barzee |
The kidnapping of Elizabeth Smart occurred on June 5, 2002, when 14-year-old American girl Elizabeth Smart was abducted from her Salt Lake City, Utah, bedroom. Smart was found alive nine months later on March 12, 2003, in Sandy, Utah, about 18 miles from her home, in the company of Brian David Mitchell and Wanda Ileen Barzee, who were indicted for her kidnapping, but initially ruled unfit to stand trial. Barzee, in 2009, and Mitchell, in 2010, were eventually convicted. Her abduction and recovery were widely reported and were the subject of a made-for-television movie and a published book. He was held in the Salt Lake County Jail following his sentencing on May 25, 2011. On August 31, he was transferred to federal prison to begin serving a life sentence for his crimes.[1]
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Ed and Lois Smart resided in the affluent neighborhood of Federal Heights in Salt Lake City, Utah with their six children.[2] On the evening of June 4, 2002, the family attended an award ceremony at Elizabeth's school. After the family returned home and got ready for bed, Ed made sure the doors were all locked, but he did not turn on the alarm. "If the children got up and moved [in the night], it would set the alarm off. And so we just said we’re not going to bother with it," Lois later explained.[3]
In the early hours of the morning, Brian David Mitchell broke into the home and came to the bedroom that Elizabeth shared with her 9-year-old sister, Mary Katherine.[4] While Mary Katherine pretended to be asleep,[5] she watched the abduction,[6] and later gave these statements as to what happened:
By listening to the creaking floor as Elizabeth and Mitchell walked, Mary Katherine thought she could tell where Mitchell and Elizabeth were. So when it seemed safe, Mary Katherine hopped out of bed to tell her parents. But she froze in terror when she nearly ran into Mitchell and Elizabeth as they seemed to be looking into her brothers' bedroom.[15] Fearful that she had been spotted by the abductor, she crept back into her bed. "I thought, you know, be quiet, because if he hears you, he might take you too, and you're the only person who has seen this," Mary Katherine said in a later interview. "I was, like, shaking."[9] She hid for an undetermined amount of time. Investigators later concluded that she may have been hiding over two hours before she felt safe enough to come out.[16]
Just before 4 a.m., Mary Katherine came to her parents' bedroom and woke them up. She told them Elizabeth was gone, but her parents thought she was having a bad dream. Ed went from room to room, and didn’t find her. Mary Katherine told him, "You’re not going to find her. A man came and took her. He had a gun."[17] Still, the parents found this hard to believe until Lois spotted a screen window downstairs that had been cut with a knife.[18]
That morning, Ed went on television and asked the kidnapper to return his daughter.[19] A massive search for Elizabeth began.[10]
According to Smart's October 1, 2009 US federal court testimony, after Smart had gone to bed on June 4, 2002, a man Smart identified as Brian Mitchell had entered her bedroom and had "placed his hand on my chest and then put the knife up to my neck. He told me to get up quietly and if I didn't then he would kill me and my family. He was whispering, but it was still loud enough it could wake someone. He was dressed in sweats, sweatshirt, stocking cap, tennis shoes." After Smart had been led to Mitchell's camp in the woods, a woman Smart identified as Wanda Barzee "eventually just proceeded to wash my feet and told me to change out of my pajamas into a robe type of garment. And when I refused, she said if I didn't, she would have Brian Mitchell come rip my pajamas off. I put the robe on. He came and performed a ceremony, which was to marry me to him. After that, he proceeded to rape me."[20]
It was later revealed during court testimony that Mitchell repeatedly raped Smart, sometimes multiple times daily and forced her to watch pornographic films. He often forced her to drink alcohol to lower her resistance.
A massive regional search effort, organized by the Laura Recovery Center, looked for Elizabeth in the days immediately following her abduction. Up to 2,000 volunteers a day were dispatched to the area surrounding her home trying to find any trace of the missing girl.[21] Word spread quickly as an impromptu coalition of websites facilitated the distribution of information about Elizabeth Smart with flyers that could be downloaded for printing or immediately circulated online by email or Internet fax. Volunteers combed the hills near her family's home and extended the search using search dogs and aircraft. After many days of intensive searching, the community-led search was closed by the local volunteers and efforts were directed to other means of finding Elizabeth.
Although police had an eyewitness, Mary Katherine's report was not very helpful to investigators. Furthermore, there was almost no significant forensic evidence such as clear fingerprints or DNA samples to help identify the abductor, hindering the investigation. A search using bloodhound dogs was unsuccessful in following Mitchell and Elizabeth's path on foot. Police questioned and interviewed hundreds of potential suspects including one individual, Bret Michael Edmunds, a 26-year-old drifter who was pursued across the country but ultimately was cleared of suspicion in the case after being located in a West Virginia hospital suffering from a drug overdose. One by one, the leads that were pursued often put at-large criminals back in prison, but they did not produce the desired result of finding Elizabeth.
Ultimately, the Salt Lake City police signaled that their prime person of interest was Richard Ricci, being held in custody for unrelated reasons. Ricci, a handyman hired by the Smarts, was on parole for a 1983 attempted murder of police officer Mike Hill. He was charged with felony burglaries of homes in the area similar in circumstances to the break-in at the Smarts. Ricci later died in jail from a brain hemorrhage a few weeks after he refused to provide a confession to Utah corrections officers.[22] With his death, it seemed that all leads were exhausted. Upon discovery of the actual kidnappers, Ricci's widow issued a statement expressing relief at Smart's safe return and her husband's innocence.
The Smarts and their extended family persistently maintained a presence in the local and national media, in order to keep Elizabeth's name in the press, providing the media with home videos of her as a teenager and as a child, and created a website to serve as a resource center.
After several months, a breakthrough came in October 2002, when Mary Katherine suddenly remembered where she had heard Mitchell's voice, telling her parents "I think I know who it is: Emmanuel."[23]
The Smarts sought to help unemployed people in the community by paying them for odd jobs or handy work around the property.[24] Mitchell, who called himself "Emmanuel", had been the one who informed many homeless people that the Smarts would hire them, and also worked for them himself one day. He worked at the Smarts' home for five hours, helping on the roof and raking leaves.[25][26][27][28] He was clean, soft-spoken, well-groomed, caucasian, 5'8″ tall, with dark hair, and was "about 45 years old". It seemed clear that "Emmanuel" was not his real name, but had something to do with his self-proclaimed calling as a prophet of God and minister to the homeless. Lois and some of the children had met him downtown as he was asking for spare change.
Mary Katherine now identified "Emmanuel"/Mitchell as the man who had abducted her sister. When this was reported to the police, they had doubts as to its reliability. Mary Katherine had barely heard the suspect's quiet voice and for only a few minutes, and had just come out of a sleep. When it was reported several months later that she thought it was the voice of a man she had only met briefly and more than a year before, the police did not consider it a worthy lead.
Tensions developed as the parents accused the police of not thoroughly following up on this lead. The family used the services of sketch artist Dalene Nielson [29] to draw "Emmanuel's" face from memory. In February, this drawing was released to the media, with the assistance of John Walsh, who revealed it in an appearance on Larry King Live and on his own series, America's Most Wanted. The drawing was recognized by Emmanuel's family, who reported his actual name, Brian David Mitchell, to the police, and provided them with contemporary photographs of Mitchell.
On March 12, 2003, just over nine months after the abduction, Mitchell, who was now wanted by police for questioning, was spotted traveling with two companions in Sandy, Utah, by an alert biker who had heard of the kidnapping on America's Most Wanted the night before, and alerted police. The companions were Elizabeth Smart—disguised in a gray wig, sunglasses, and veil — and Wanda Ileen Barzee. Smart was finally recognized by the officers during questioning, and was promptly reunited with her family. Mitchell and Barzee were taken into custody as suspected kidnappers.
Brian David Mitchell, (born October 18, 1953) and his wife Wanda Ileen Barzee were indicted by a Utah grand jury. Mitchell's trial on these charges was initially postponed following a court ruling that he was not mentally competent to stand trial.
For several months, Mitchell and Barzee were held on US$10 million bond awaiting the outcome of mental competency tests. Prosecutors said that Mitchell and Barzee kidnapped Elizabeth to be Mitchell's "second wife", held her against her will in the foothills near Arlington Hills until October 8, and then took her to California, where they stayed until March 5.[30]
In January 2004, Barzee was found incompetent to stand trial on charges including kidnapping, sexual assault, and burglary. On July 26, 2005, Mitchell was also found incompetent to stand trial, facing the same charges. A district judge ordered him held until he was deemed fit for trial.[31][32] Barzee's condition had not improved since she was found incompetent to stand trial. Barzee also refused to take medication "that might restore her mental competence."[33]
In February 2006, a bill went before the Utah legislature to allow prosecutors to apply for forcible medication on defendants to restore their competence to face trial. Permission to forcibly medicate Wanda Barzee was also sought, relying upon the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Sell v. United States (2003), which permits compulsory medication when the state can demonstrate a compelling interest is served by restoring a person's competence and that medication would not harm the person or prevent him from defending himself. In June 2006, a Utah judge approved the forcible medication of Barzee so that she could stand trial.
On December 18, 2006, Mitchell was again declared unfit to stand trial in the Utah state courts after screaming at a judge during a hearing to, "forsake those robes and kneel in the dust." Doctors had been trying to treat Mitchell without drugs, but prosecutor Kent Morgan said after the scene in court that a request was likely to be made for permission to forcibly administer drugs.
On December 12, 2008, it was reported that Mitchell could not legally be forcibly medicated by the State of Utah to attempt to restore his mental competency, also claiming that it is "unnecessary and needlessly harsh," and therefore a violation of the Utah state constitution, to prolong trial proceedings to this length.[34]
In early October 2009, a third competency trial for Mitchell was underway, with Elizabeth Smart testifying. As Mitchell’s third competency hearing moved forward, both Mitchell and Barzee remained incarcerated at Utah State Hospital (a psychiatric hospital), where Barzee was still being medicated until she was competent to stand trial.[35]
Most recently, the U.S. Attorney's Office retained Dr. Michael Welner, a noted forensic psychiatrist and the chairman of The Forensic Panel in New York City, to address questions related to Mitchell’s competency to stand trial.[36] The report written by Dr. Welner, which exceeded 200 pages in length, had provoked objections from the defense as well as motions to exclude witnesses.[37] However, on November 16, 2009, U.S. District Judge Dale A. Kimball denied the motions of the defense, ruling that Dr. Welner’s methodology on the case "represents the best practices in forensic psychiatry and psychology".[38]
On November 17, 2009, Wanda Barzee, the wife of Elizabeth Smart's captor, was sentenced to 15 years for her role in the kidnapping. Her husband, the captor, was still considered as unfit to stand trial.[39] However, on December 1, 2009 a psychiatric nurse who observed Brian David Mitchell stated she believes Mitchell has faked psychiatric symptoms and behaviors to avoid prosecution and remain at a state hospital.[40]
Barzee is currently serving her 15-year sentence at the Federal Medical Center, Carswell in Texas, which holds female inmates in need of special medical and mental health services; she is scheduled for release in 2016.[41]
The issues surrounding Brian David Mitchell's competence to stand trial revolved around his revelations and whether in following them made him incompetent and/or insane. In the federal trial his insanity defense was based on his propensity to receive revelations from God, as he claims, and then to act out according to what he is told by those revelations, something which met the standard for an insanity defense according to his lawyers.[42] However other people, especially Elizabeth Smart and Wanda Barzee as well as other lay witnesses, testified that Mitchell used these so called revelations only to manipulate others and for self gratification.
Utah State Competency Hearing
Mitchell was declared incompetent to stand trial by Salt Lake City District Judge Judy Atherton on July 26, 2005, who ordered he be retained until he becomes competent to stand trial. The ruling was based on expert psychological reports, mainly from Dr Jennifer Skeem, who found Mitchell to be a paranoid schizophrenic with little grasp of reality who could not rationally assist counsel in preparing a defense nor did he understand the legal proceedings against him.[43] The same Judge rejected forcibly medicating Mitchell due to the reported low probability of a positive outcome. Mitchell was committed to a psychiatric prison hospital in Salt Lake City. He was again found "incompetent to stand trial" on December 18, 2006.
Federal District Court Competency Hearing
In 2008 US Attorney Brett Tolman commenced federal proceedings to prove Mitchell's competency to stand trial before the statutes of limitations expired for a federal kidnapping case. His strategy was based on both expert witness testimony, mainly from New York forensic psychiatrist Michael Welner, an associate professor of psychiatry at NYU School of Medicine and chairman of The Forensic Panel, plus many lay witnesses including Elizabeth Smart and staffers who attended to Michell in the State Hospital.[43] The use of lay witnesses testifying as to his competence was a new legal strategy utilized in hearings to determine competence and has established a precedent. Several defense motions to stop lay witnesses testifying and to move the trial outside of Utah were rejected.[44] The hearing commenced in October 2009, with Smart giving early testimony, and continued throughout November and December 2009.
The mental health professionals who found Mitchell incompetent (over time) include: Richart DeMier, a court appointed forensic psychologist from the U.S. Medical Center for Federal Prisoners in Springfield, Missouri, who said Mitchell was not making rational decisions about his criminal defense and specifically stated, "If he believes he's going to be miraculously delivered from prison by God in two years time, that's not a rational thought process." He concluded that Mitchell is a paranoid schizophrenic who is incompetent partly due to Mitchell's belief "that he is divinely ordained to fulfill a special role at the end of the world, putting himself on par with Jesus or God"; Dr. Paul Whitehead, a Utah State Hospital psychologist, who found him incompetent in 2005 diagnosing him with a delusional disorder;[45] forensic psychologist Stephen Golding, who concluded Mitchell to have a delusional disorder with deviant sexual behavior and paranoia;[45] and Dr Jennifer Skeem, a psychology professor from the University of California-Irvine who found Mitchell incompetent to stand trial for the Utah state process in 2004, finding that he has a rare delusional disorder. She wrote in her 2004 report for Judge Atherton that Mitchell believes that "he would be held in jail for seven years until a day of judgment when he would be rescued by God and reunited with Smart and his now-estranged wife, Wanda Barzee"[45] which would be during 2010, counting from the time of Mitchell's arrest.
Michael Welner, a psychiatrist from New York City, found Mitchell competent to stand trial, finding that he suffers from a range of disorders, including pedophilia, anti-social and narcissistic personality disorders, but that he was neither psychotic nor delusional.[46] Dr Welner was critical of other mental health professionals who did not research the level of acceptance and the roles played by revelations, prophets and prophesies in religions of the Latter Day Saints movements or Mormonism which Mitchell was a part of.[47] His conclusions included the fact that Mitchell can control situations and that "Lust trumped religion" for Mitchell. [48] He also noted that Mitchell is used to operating in a parallel world of concealment and obfuscation just as most polygamist breakaway groups from the modern LDS church do. In his conclusions, he also compared Mitchell's behavior to that of pedophile Catholic priests who "routinely and dramatically distort their relationship with God" to justify their sexual acts.[49]
In this third competency hearing, this time before Judge Dale Kimball of the U.S. Federal Court for the District of Utah, Mitchell was found competent to stand trial on March 1, 2010,[50] with Kimball's describing Mitchell as an "effectively misleading psychopath" who has manipulated people into thinking him incompetent.
Mitchell's criminal trial on federal kidnapping charges began on November 8, 2010.[51]
During the trial both the prosecution and the defense accepted that Mitchell had kidnapped and assaulted Ms. Smart repeatedly but the defense claimed that he was insane at the time and therefore not guilty by reason of insanity. Many stipulations were presented and many lay witnesses were called covering Mitchell's alleged sanity and his alleged insanity. The defense relied most of all on the testimony of two mental health professionals, Dr. Paul Whitehead and Dr. Richard DeMier. Dr. Whitehead is the clinical director of the forensic unit at the Utah State Hospital and studied Mitchell extensively since his arrest in 2003 and concluded that Mitchell suffered from a delusional disorder which made him both incompetent to stand trial and not responsible for his crimes.[52] Dr. DeMier testified that Mitchell suffers from both grandiose and paranoid delusions which he characterized as bizarre however he offered no opinion as to what Mitchell's mental health was at the time of the crimes between 2002 to 2003 because he only analysed his mental state as of 2008.[53]
Prosecutors presented many lay witnesses for rebuttal to the insanity defense. A total of seven lay witnesses were called to testify on December 3, 2010 regarding Mitchell's cruelty and religious beliefs including his two former step daughters who testified that Mitchell abused them long before he claimed to be "Immanuel" or a prophet.[54] Also testifying was a former Mormon missionary who said that he met and spoke to Mitchell in San Diego during the time he had Elizabeth Smart with him describing Mitchell as very well behaved and very polite.[55] A US Marshal who escorted Mitchell into the courtroom each day testified that Mitchell only sings inside the court room. The officer also said that Mitchell spent his time in the nearby holding cell following proceedings, napping or exercising. Mitchell's behavior outside the courtroom changed only when his wife Wanda Barzee testified with Mitchell standing as close as possible to the monitor, not moving during the duration of her time on the stand.
Then a Utah psychiatrist, Dr. Noel Gardner, testified during five hours that he disagreed with defense experts and claimed that Mitchell is not delusional nor sincere in his religious beliefs and was only a pedophile. Gardner evaluated Mitchell in 2003 and found him to have narcissistic personality disorder but was competent for trial. The prosecutions last witness was Dr Welner, a forensic psychiatrist from New York City, who spent more than 1,600 hours working on a report on Mitchell, and charged the U.S Attorney's Office nearly $750,000 for all his work. His 206-page report is believed to be the most extensive study of Mitchell to date and lists 210 sources of information, including interviews with Smart and Mitchell's estranged wife, Wanda Barzee. Dr Welner testified that Mitchell does not suffer from a mental illness, but rather pedophilia, anti-social personality disorder and narcissistic personality disorder[56] adding that to know Brian Mitchell is to be fooled by Brian Mitchell. Amongst other things he testified that Mitchell would abandon his revelations when it suited him which showed they weren't sincere and that Mitchell used blessings to control his wife and used threats and force as a way to control Elizabeth Smart. He noted that although Mitchell could repent for not following his own revelations, Wanda could not and would be eternally damned if she disobeyed him.[56]
The defense then called as its rebuttal witness a third forensic psychologist Dr. Stephen Golding, an emeritus professor at the University of Utah, who rejected most of Dr. Welner's testimony and disputed several point by point arguments made earlier by the prosecution's expert witnesses. He stated that a study Dr. Welner used did not have enough scientific backing to be considered reliable. He also stated that delusions can wane and vary over time so it was irrelevant what Mitchel's behavior was during isolated incidents. He was also critical of Dr. Welner for claiming that Mitchell's ability to learn chess whilst in custody was proof of a non-delusional mind, claiming that the thought was simply a myth and not backed up by any research.
However the jury ended up deliberating for only about five hours, a relatively short time given the amount of evidence they needed to cover, rejected the insanity plea and returned guilty verdicts on both counts early on Friday, December 10, 2010.
On May 25, 2011, Judge Dale Kimball sentenced Mitchell to life in prison.[57] Mitchell is currently serving his life sentence at the United States Penitentiary, Tucson, a high security federal prison.[58]
In October 2003, Elizabeth Smart and her parents were interviewed for a special segment of Dateline NBC. The interview, conducted by the Today show's Katie Couric, featured Elizabeth's first interview with any media outlet. Couric questioned Elizabeth's parents about their experiences while Elizabeth was missing, including the Smarts' personal opinions concerning Elizabeth's captors. Couric then interviewed Elizabeth about school and her life following her kidnapping.
Shortly after the Dateline interview, Elizabeth Smart and her family were featured on The Oprah Winfrey Show, where Winfrey questioned the Smarts about the kidnapping. Elizabeth disclosed that Mitchell forced her to keep a diary and to write in it daily. She knew he would read the entries she made, so she wrote such things as: "I like it here. They are nice to me." But below the entries in English, she wrote in French things such as: "I hate it here. I hate them. I want to be back with my family."
In July 2006, legal commentator and television personality Nancy Grace interviewed Elizabeth Smart, purportedly to talk about pending legislation on sex-offender registration, but repeatedly asked her for information about her experience. In response to the questioning, Elizabeth told Grace, "I really am here to support the bill and not to go into what -- you know, what happened to me." When Grace persisted, asking Elizabeth what it was like to see out of a burqa her abductors forced her to wear, Elizabeth stated: "I'm really not going to talk about this at this time ... and to be frankly honest I really don't appreciate you bringing all this up." Grace then gave a non-apology apology, but did not pursue further questioning about the incident.[61]
Elizabeth also revealed that after her experience, she has more compassion for the homeless. Asked if she felt sorry for her captors, she stated that she was not referring to them and that they were homeless by choice and she had no compassion for their condition or what they did to her. But she went on to say, "It's hard to be cold. It's hard to not have enough to eat."
Smart appeared on the E! network program "Young, Beautiful & Vanished: 15 Unthinkable Crimes" in 2009,[62] speaking briefly about her time in captivity and her return home.
The Smart family published a book, Bringing Elizabeth Home, which was used as the basis of the television movie The Elizabeth Smart Story that aired November 9, 2003 on CBS. The Smarts claimed they wanted to avoid subjecting their daughter to the limelight, but that after realizing it was inevitable, they decided it would be preferable to allow a film authorized by them to be created, rather than allowing an unauthorized version to surface.[63][64]
A lawyer for Mitchell said the national broadcast of the television film would further delay justice and considered filing a motion. The piece characterizes Mitchell and Barzee as deranged religious zealots, and provides no background on either of them. Elizabeth's uncle Tom Smart co-authored a book with Deseret News journalist Lee Benson, titled In Plain Sight: The Startling Truth Behind the Elizabeth Smart Investigation, criticizing the investigation process by the Salt Lake City Police Department, as well as noting the media influences that led to her successful recovery.[65]
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