http://www.msnbc.com/news/884413.asp
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| Questions raised after teen’s ordeal | | | Elizabeth Smart was ‘married’
to drifter, police, FBI sources say |
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| Elizabeth Smart, right, at home with her family Thursday. Click ''Play'' below the image to hear her father, Ed Smart, describe telling his wife that Elizabeth was alive.
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| | | NBC, MSNBC AND NEWS SERVICES |
| | SALT LAKE CITY, March 13 — Elizabeth Smart was home Thursday, playing the harp and watching her favorite movie, “The Trouble with Angels,” the day after she was rescued from a terrifying ordeal that lasted nine months. Police and FBI sources told NBC News that on the night she was abducted from her bedroom in June, Elizabeth was “married” in a bizarre religious ceremony to the drifter with whom she was found Wednesday. |
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View scenes from the return of Elizabeth Smart. |
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“ELIZABETH IS HAPPY, she is well, and we are so happy to have her back in our arms,” her beaming father, Ed Smart, said Thursday afternoon.
Amid the joyful reunion a growing list of questions arose: Why did it take so long for police to find Brian David Mitchell, the shaggy-haired drifter accused of kidnapping Elizabeth? And what happened to her during the nine months she was gone, during which she turned 15?
Mitchell, 49, and his wife, Wanda Barzee, 57, remained in the Salt Lake County Jail for investigation of aggravated kidnapping. No charges had been filed by Thursday evening, but Salt Lake City Police Chief Rick Dinse said no other arrests were expected.
Ed Smart said he had not asked Elizabeth specific questions about her ordeal because he did not want to traumatize her further.
But sources with the FBI and the Salt Lake City police told NBC News on condition of anonymity Thursday night that Elizabeth had been interviewed for about an hour and was providing remarkably clear details of her experiences. Her information has led police to witnesses who have corroborated her stories, they said.
FBI sources said Elizabeth confirmed that she had been forced into a “polygamist relationship” with Mitchell. The sources did not elaborate, but an FBI official who spoke with Elizabeth described “a Patty Hearst-like situation,” a reference to the 1974 kidnapping of the newspaper heiress who was “brainwashed” into sympathizing with her radical captors.
The sources said Mitchell, who left the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the late 1990s, was “strongly” extremist in his religious views and had been preaching to officers during his interrogation. Law enforcement sources said he appeared to know a good deal about the law.
The sources said Mitchell was articulate and smart and did not believe he had done anything wrong. He saw himself as a “prophet” who was paid by God, they said. |
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HELD NOT FAR FROM HOME |
Elizabeth also told her family that she had been kept in hills near her home through August, her father, Ed Smart, told NBC News in an interview.
Separately, Chris Thomas, a spokesman for the Smart family, said Elizabeth had indicated that she could not escape because “she had two people with her at all times.”
Mitchell had once done work at the Smarts’ home, and police had been searching for him after Elizabeth’s younger sister said in October that he looked like the man she said kidnapped Elizabeth.
Mitchell, Barzee and Elizabeth were stopped Wednesday in Sandy, Utah — just 20 miles south of Elizabeth’s home — after several people called police saying they recognized Mitchell.
Sandy Police Chief Stephen Chapman said that when officers questioned Elizabeth on the street with the two others present, they had to ask her for her name several times. At first, he said, she claimed to be their child; police sources later told NBC News that Elizabeth initially tried to convince police that her name was Augustine Marshall and that she was from Florida.
“It took some time before we could actually determine that it was her,” Chapman said. “Under the circumstances, that was probably very normal.”
Dinse said Elizabeth’s captors appeared to have exercised psychological influence over her.
“There’s no question that she was psychologically affected by the connection with this group,” he said at a news conference Thursday afternoon.
SHE HEARD SEARCHERS
Elizabeth told her family that she had been kept in the nearby hills through August, Ed Smart said said on NBC’s “Today” show, and that she had heard searchers “calling her name.” Mitchell was known to have a teepee in that area.
Elizabeth was returned home about 8:20 p.m. Wednesday (10:20 p.m. ET). Relatives said a hospital check revealed that Elizabeth was in good condition.
Wanda Barzee and Brian David Mitchell in their police booking photos taken Wednesday.
The teen’s disappearance from her bedroom June 5 sparked a massive search and nationwide media attention. She was found after two couples called police separately Wednesday to report that they had seen a man resembling Mitchell after having seen a profile on “America’s Most Wanted.”
Meanwhile, a Salt Lake City man, Daniel Trotta, 24, told The Associated Press that he believed Elizabeth, Mitchell and Barzee had stayed in his basement apartment for nearly a week in October. Trotta, who had befriended Mitchell at the health-food store where he worked and invited the couple to stay because they had no home, went to police Sunday after he, too, recognized Mitchell on “America’s Most Wanted.”
SUSPECT SPOTTED OCCASIONALLY Federal and Salt Lake County investigators and prosecutors planned to meet before deciding what charges to file and in what jurisdiction. The case could go to federal court if Elizabeth was taken out of Utah during the ordeal, as investigators believe.
The jurisdictional questions could range from coast to coast. Chip Burrus, the FBI’s special agent in charge in Salt Lake City, said late Thursday afternoon that agents had found what they believed to have been a camp Mitchell pitched in San Diego, while police told NBC News that they were investigating reports that Elizabeth may have been taken on road trips as far away as Georgia.
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| | | March 13 — Police said Elizabeth Smart initially denied her identity, addressing officers in what they described as “Bible-speak.” NBC’s Jim Avila reports. |
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Without elaborating, Burrus also said search warrants had been executed in Montana.
A reporter, Mike Carter of The Seattle Times, told MSNBC that he had received information that Elizabeth had been stopped by police “in other states” and that the girl “gave fake names in those states.”
The San Diego County (Calif.) Sheriff’s Department, meanwhile, released a statement Thursday night saying Mitchell was arrested on burglary charges Feb. 12 in Lakeside, where he was using the alias Michael Jerry Jenson.
Mitchell pleaded guilty to misdemeanor charges and was released Feb. 18. Because a check showed no outstanding warrants and Utah authorities had not yet identified Mitchell as a suspect in Elizabeth’s abduction, there was no reason to hold him, the statement said.
Relatives have described Mitchell as a
self-appointed prophet for the homeless. He was a familiar figure around Salt Lake City, wearing long robes and a beard and carrying a staff as he preached and panhandled, the Deseret News newspaper reported.
People at a local homeless shelter and several at the Salvation Army told the newspaper that they could not remember exactly the last time they saw him but figured that it had been only about a month ago.
It was not the only time Mitchell — and possibly even Elizabeth — had been spotted in Salt Lake City since Elizabeth disappeared.
A Deseret News staff member encountered Mitchell last summer trying to tear down a “Kidnapped!” poster of Elizabeth that was on display in the paper’s first-floor windows, the newspaper said. When the staffer told him to stop, Mitchell told her that “they found the guy,” but he disappeared before she could return with colleagues to interview him.
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| | | March 13 — Rudy and Nancy Montoya, joined by the police chief of Sandy, Utah, tell how their 911 call led to Elizabeth Smart. |
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In August or early September, Nanda Sookhai was videotaping a landmark at Salt Lake City’s Liberty Park. Three people sitting at a picnic table in the video resemble Mitchell, his wife and Elizabeth, the Salt Lake Tribune reported Thursday.
The Tribune also reported that in September, Mitchell appeared at a late-night party in a downtown Salt Lake City apartment, where Dan Gorder, a freelance photographer, snapped shots of the wandering preacher drinking a beer.
Mitchell was accompanied by two women dressed in white, one significantly younger than the other, who were both wearing veils covering all but their eyes, Gorder told the newspaper.
SISTER’S RECOLLECTION THE KEY Elizabeth’s mother, Lois Smart, said in February that she met Mitchell in downtown Salt Lake City when he asked her for money. She gave him $5 and hired him to help her husband repair their roof in November 2001. He worked at the home for about five hours before vanishing. Seven months later, Elizabeth disappeared.
Elizabeth’s sister, Mary Katherine, 10, told police that Elizabeth was seized in front of her by a man who may have entered the house by cutting a window screen near the back door. As Mary Katherine pretended to be asleep, the man threatened to hurt Elizabeth if she did not keep quiet, she said.
The Smart family started paying more attention to Mitchell when Mary Katherine said in October that she thought Mitchell could have been the one she said took Elizabeth.
The family circulated an artist’s sketch of the man Feb. 3, and shortly after that Mitchell’s sister called law enforcement and provided a photograph of her brother. That photograph and the profile soon appeared on “America’s Most Wanted.”
Dinse, the Salt Lake City chief, said police had been “aggressively seeking” Mitchell but had never been able to find him.
The top potential suspect in the kidnapping, Richard Albert Ricci, a handyman who once worked in the Smart household, died Aug. 30 after suffering a cerebral hemorrhage. He said he had nothing to do with the kidnapping.
Ricci’s widow, Angela, called it a “joyous day for us and the Smarts.” Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson, meanwhile, met with city attorneys to discuss an internal investigation of the police department, mayoral spokesman Joshua Ewing told the Deseret News.
Dad pleads for national Amber Alert NBC’s Ashleigh Banfield and Jim Avila, MSNBC.com’s Miguel Llanos and Alex Johnson and The Associated Press contributed to this report. | | | What's on MSNBC TV? | | | | | | | | | Thursday prime time: The Elizabeth Smart case | | | | | | | | | | | |
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