When you're out in nature, you learn to trust your instincts. You pay attention to the trail, your surroundings, and you stay alert to protect yourself from harm. But what if the biggest threat isn't the environment at all? On Park Predators, host Delia Diembra explores true crime cases that happen in national parks and remote wildernesses, the places we usually think of as safe and peaceful. Each episode reveals what happened and how much more there is beneath the surface. Listen to Park Predators now wherever you get your podcasts.
Hi, crime junkies. I'm your host, Ashley Flowers. And I'm Britt. And this week's story, well, it's a story that most crime junkies have probably heard before, or at least one that you'll be familiar with. But even if you have heard this one before, even if you think that you know it, it is worth tuning into our version for something very different in the second half of this episode.
It's an episode about a 14-year-old girl who is abducted in the middle of the night from the bedroom she shares with her sister, the bed she shares with her sister, and it rocks her family and her community and echoes across the country and around the world. The person responsible for her disappearance left behind no clues, and no one, not detectives, not her family, her friends, no one, seemed to be able to make sense of how this sweet, shy, innocent girl found herself the target of the worst kind of predator, the kind who was able to keep a little girl hidden in plain sight. This is the story of Elizabeth Smart. It's just before four in the morning on June 5th, 2002, when Ed Smart is jolted awake by his nine-year-old daughter, Mary Catherine, who is absolutely frantic, saying someone took Elizabeth. Now, it takes Ed a second to kind of, you know, shake off the sleeve. And at first, he's like, what the heck is happening here? But Mary Catherine just says it again. A man came in and took Elizabeth, a man with a gun. Initially, Ed is like...
This can't possibly be right. Mary Catherine must have had a bad dream. They're going to find Elizabeth here somewhere in the house. I mean, it wasn't that uncommon, actually, for Elizabeth, who is five years older, to get fed up with Mary Catherine's kicking or tossing and turning, whatever, and find another spot to sleep for the rest of the night, usually the couch. But Ed checks the couch, and she's not there. Ed checks all through their Utah home, the living room, the bedrooms, closets, bathrooms, everywhere, and she's nowhere to be found. And Mary Catherine really doesn't sound like a kid waking up from a bad dream. She sounds wide awake, wide awake and scared.
And that's around the time Lois makes a discovery that brings all of the chaos of the last several minutes into sharp focus. The kitchen window. Someone had cut through the screen of their kitchen window, and a side door off of the kitchen is now unlocked. But Ed knew that he had locked that door before he went to bed. Ed calls 911 and immediately springs into action, calling family and friends and neighbors and anyone that he can think of who might be able to help find Elizabeth.
Police arrive within about 10 minutes of this call, and by the time they get there, the house is already starting to fill up with people ready to help. We're talking Ed's family, Lois' family, their friends, neighbors. Like I said, they were calling everyone, even people from their church. I mean, but the house is a crime scene, right? Were police able to get what they needed for, like, physical evidence before people started arriving and disrupting everything? So it is a crime scene, yes. And this is one part of this story where there are conflicting accounts of how this really went down. I mean, in a 2017 A&E documentary called Elizabeth Smart Autobiography, police say that Ed's first calls that morning actually went to family and friends.
before he called 911. Yeah, but Ed and other members of the Smart family say that's absolutely not the case. Ed definitely called 911 first. Either way, according to the book In Plain Sight, which was actually written by Ed's brother, Tom Smart, police don't actually start restricting access to the house until close to 7 a.m. And by that time, three hours had passed and a ton of people had been in and out. So from a crime scene perspective, this is definitely contaminated. For sure.
But contaminated or not, they are able to piece together a theory about what happened that night, thanks in a big way to Mary Catherine. Sometime around 2 a.m., an intruder cut the screen on that kitchen window, the window that is right above the sink. They climbed through a 10-inch opening, walked up to the second level of the house, into the girls' room, woke up Elizabeth, and then walked her right out at gunpoint, they think, leaving through that side door in the kitchen. And no one heard any of that? No one said, oh yeah, I heard like a creak or a bang or footsteps, but I assumed it was something else. No, besides Mary Catherine, who was literally the only one like laying next to Elizabeth, no one heard a sound.
So Mary Catherine obviously heard stuff, but did she see anything? Was she able to give a description of who she saw? Anything like that? She didn't get an awesome look at the person, no, but she is able to provide the police with something. She described Elizabeth's abductor as a Caucasian man, about 5'8", and said that he was wearing light-colored clothes and a hat, but not like a ball cap, some kind of other hat that she couldn't really describe. But the other thing that Mary Catherine says is that the guy's voice sounded vaguely familiar to her. Now, she couldn't place it exactly, but she thinks that the voice was one that she had heard before. And that particular point is one that police...
jump on right away because they were already thinking that it had to be someone who knew the smarts or at least who knew their home well enough to know how to get in how to move through easily in the dark without you know disturbing a lot of stuff and how to get out without tripping the alarm wait they had an alarm they did now they admit that they didn't always set it overnight because of how often it would go off accidentally but even if it wasn't like on on all the doors still beep like pretty loudly we have this with our alarm system anytime right But apparently even that wasn't working on this particular door on this particular night. According to Anne O'Neill's reporting for CNN, the only reason that door didn't beep is because a magnet had slipped and silenced the alarm. Wait, so do police think that the slip magnet was something done as like part of the abduction or was it just a total random coincidence? They don't necessarily think it was done intentionally, but it might not be a coincidence either. What was a coincidence was the unlocked kitchen window. The smarts say they always locked the doors and the windows before bed.
But they decided to leave that one window open on this night, hoping that it would clear out the lingering smell from potatoes that had accidentally burned on the stove when they were making dinner earlier that evening. But that slip magnet on the door, honestly, that could have just been dumb luck. There were several possible exit points out of the house that night, and because he chose this one, police are wondering if their suspect knew that that particular door wouldn't sound the alarm. So maybe family or close friends, like someone that was in the smart family circle. Yep. And police tend to start their investigations with the people closest to the victim anyway, and then kind of work their way out from there.
And in this case, police are definitely considering all the possible options. Like, did the family organize the kidnapping as a way to get cash somehow? Did Elizabeth run away and stage the whole thing? Did Ed or Lois have enemies who might want to hurt them? But Ed and Lois, they give like a hard no to all of these options. Like, they weren't in any kind of financial trouble where they would need to like...
stage this for money. And again, usually when you stage a kidnapping, you're like, the money comes from you. So I don't know where they would think it would come from. Elizabeth was definitely not a runaway. And she had zero conflict going on at home, at school, anywhere. And they didn't know of a single person who might want to hurt them or Elizabeth. And I mean, there's a search going on too, right? Like an organized physical search for Elizabeth. Yeah, absolutely. Police think that whoever took Elizabeth took her on foot and likely walked up into the mountains that were right behind the smart house. So that's where the initial ground searches focus. The foothills and trails and forested mountains near the home. Now we're talking ground search by law enforcement
including canine units, helicopters, not to mention thousands and thousands of volunteers in all-terrain vehicles, in all types of foot, everything, everyone came out for this little girl. And while all of the searches definitely generated leads for police to follow up on, none of them actually panned out. So this whole time, there's almost like two investigations going on. One is this physical search for Elizabeth or for clues that might lead to her. And the other is this police investigation, which is focused more on trying to figure out who is responsible. Now, they are intertwined, but they're two totally separate questions. And at this point in the investigation, everyone is a suspect. And there's this period of time where even though Ed and Lois said like, oh, there's no reason that someone would take her, like nothing to do with the family. There's a time that like the media and the public and all the rumors around town really believe that the kidnapping was an inside job.
What was reported in the media at the time was that the window screen had been cut from the inside of the house, not the outside, which, of course, makes you immediately go to, like, this is a staged scene. Right, right. But it actually wasn't true, or at least not entirely true anyway, and definitely not a smoking gun, because, yes, police decided that there was one section of window screen that could only have been cut from the inside of the house, but they said that the person doing the cutting didn't necessarily need to have been, like, in the house completely, just that they needed to be able to stick their hand inside with the knife. But that doesn't mean that they're ruling out family. Police are systematically questioning everyone close to Elizabeth and one by one ruling them out as suspects. Ed, his brothers, other members of the extended family, and so on. And the bigger the circle gets, the circle of potential suspects, the harder it becomes to just question and polygraph everyone who may have had contact with the Smarts, period. So they need a way to narrow down this suspect pool. So investigators work with the FBI to create a profile of their suspect as a way to narrow their search. And Britt, can I have you read this to us? Sure. So this is from Tom Smart's book In Plain Sight. Quote,
When it was dark, they, they being the profilers, noted that from the outside, the home was like a fishbowl with no curtains on the windows and plenty of places for a stalker to hide in the cover of the scrub oak. Before the agents left, they came up with a profile of the person who kidnapped Elizabeth and left that profile with the task force. Their assessment was that this was a sex offense, that the crime was premeditated, and that the abductor would have taken Elizabeth to a predetermined place. They believed he would be keeping track of the case through the media, he probably had previous sexual issues, and he may have been arrested for sexual offenses such as voyeurism. End quote.
That profile doesn't match anyone in the smart circle, not even this like wider circle that they've created, which now includes like their church community, even people living in their subdivision. So they start to look at another potential circle. You see, the smart house was relatively new and there had been tons of finish work happening in the six years since. And according to a 2016 Salt Lake City Weekly story by Colby Frazier, during that time, at least 60 tradespeople and contractors and handymen had been in and out of the house working on different projects. And someone who worked on the house could totally know that the side door had an alarm that didn't work.
Not to mention knowing the layout of the house, where Elizabeth slept, all of those sort of details. Exactly. I mean, I say they narrowed their list, but even this list isn't super small. We're still talking about at least 60 people. And that's not nothing, but it is a place to start. Focusing on this list, the handyman list, as they called it, they find out that some contractors had been in there for a couple of days, maybe like a week or two. But there were others who had spent months, even close to a year, working inside and outside the Smart's house, which is more than enough time to get super familiar with the physical space, but also long enough to get to know Ed and Lois.
and more importantly, their children, who continued to live there while these renovations were going on. And it doesn't take investigators long to whittle their list of 60-plus potential suspects down to just one name. My name is Annie Elise, a.k.a. your true crime BFF and host of the podcast Serialistly. Now, I have been a true crime enthusiast forever, but I wished that somebody would break down the cases for me like a friend, giving me all the details, discussing every twist and turn. So I decided to create a podcast that does just that. Serialistly with Annie Elise is topping the charts with over 6 million weekly downloads. I do the deep dives in these cases so you don't have to, diving into all the raw details, saying what we all are thinking, and doing it in a conversational way, just like you're talking with your best friend. So join me and let's talk all things true crime. Serialistly with Annie Elise. New episodes every single week. Listen wherever you get your podcasts or watch on YouTube.
The handyman whose name immediately sticks out to investigators when they start to broaden their search for suspects is Richard Ritzi. Richard had worked at N. Lois' house for eight months back in the first half of 2001, up until almost exactly a year before Elizabeth disappeared. His name had come up several times from several different people, and Ed remembers him well. He says Richard was a good worker who came recommended by a friend, and according to comments Ed made in the Salt Lake City Weekly piece, he was incredibly friendly to the kids. Okay, so none of that is really raising alarms for me, but that usually means that you have a huge...
And then, or but, or something coming up. There's always a but. And in this case, it's a long criminal record. In fact, back when he was working for the Smart, like I said, like a year ago, he was actually out of prison on parole. Oh, do we know what he was in prison for? It was for attempted homicide and felony robbery. Oh, yeah, I see those red flags now. Yeah, according to Tom Smart's book, what had happened is Richard had actually returned fire on a police officer while he was attempting to rob a pharmacy in 1983.
But that's just one conviction. This guy has a rap sheet as long as your arm. Like, I mean, decades in and out of prison. I mean, he served 23 and a half years in all, plus the time that he spent out on parole, which he broke every single... time. And like I said, he was on parole when he was working at the smart house the year before. But Ed and Lois didn't know that. They knew him as this easygoing, likable handyman, at least until they noticed a few things had gone missing from their house, including a $1,600 bracelet that belonged to Lois. Ed said that he confronted Richard at the time and he denied having anything to do with it, but Ed could never trust him again. So that was the end of them working together. Is there anything in his criminal history that...
fits the FBI profile. Like they suggested that it was a sexually motivated crime. Anything like that? No, nothing like that. But according to that 2003 documentary, which is titled The Kidnapping of Elizabeth Smart, the Smarts weren't the only family who had stuff go missing after Richard worked on their home. In all those cases, police thought Richard was probably casing the houses while he was there working on them during the day. And then he would break in overnight to steal whatever stuff he saw.
Richard already knew the smart house. So I think what everyone's thinking is that maybe this wasn't sexually motivated after all. What if he was there to steal a few things to like pawn them for money or whatever? And Elizabeth caught him. Like she would for sure recognize him from the many, many months that he'd spent in their house. And the parole board had very clearly told him that one more violation would send him back to prison for life. So potentially Elizabeth was more like collateral damage. Right. That's exactly what they're thinking. And honestly, Richard ticks a lot of boxes for police.
Criminal history? Check. An MO that fits his past behavior? Check. Knows the neighborhood, the houses, and the smart family, including Elizabeth? Check, check, check. So on June 14th, this is now nine days after Elizabeth's abduction, police arrest Richard. Now, not for kidnapping, but for a parole violation. Now, this is a technicality, really. They're trying to get anything to really get him into custody and behind bars while they find physical evidence to add to this, like, mountain of circumstantial evidence that keeps piling up. They're looking for something that for sure connects him to Elizabeth's disappearance.
Now, the circumstantial evidence that they have includes over a thousand miles he put on his Jeep between May 28th and June 8th that he can't or won't account for. And when police search his property, they find not only Lois's missing bracelet, but also this beige golf hat that sort of matched the description of what Mary Catherine said the kidnapper was wearing that night. Remember that hat that she was like, it's not a baseball cap, it's something different. Yeah, yeah. But even in custody.
Even while he's being grilled for hours and hours by Salt Lake City police, Richard denies having anything to do with Elizabeth's disappearance. He was home with his wife all night. She backs him up, saying that he was next to her in bed during the time Elizabeth was abducted. And he's adamant, so adamant that he actually agrees to a polygraph. He agrees to give DNA and blood samples anything to help clear his name. I mean, we talked about the fact that the home was a crime scene, but was there actually any evidence to compare to all the stuff that Richard is providing?
physical proof that he was the guy who crawled to the window and abducted Elizabeth? So there was some physical evidence at the scene. Namely, there was a partial palm print on the window frame, a fingerprint on the door handle, and another partial fingerprint on the bedpost. Now, all of this is in Elizabeth and Mary Catherine's room. When they initially collected all this, police were able to determine that the fingerprint left on the door handle matched the one on the bedpost, but they aren't able to figure out who they belong to. But for sure not Richard? Yeah, yeah, like they tested Richard against this and it doesn't belong to Richard.
But this isn't enough for police to think that they got the wrong guy. In their minds, they're kind of like, well, so what? Those could have been left by anybody. I mean, it would have been nice to be able to connect Richard back to the crime scene with fingerprints. I think that would have bolstered their case. But the problem with fingerprints and what police said at the time was we can't even say for sure when these prints were left. And we can't say for sure they were left by her kidnapper. Remember, they had contractors coming in and out all the time. I was going to say, even someone who assembled the bed or moved the bed in, there's a lot of people who could have come in contact with this bed that had nothing to do with this. Exactly.
And the only way to find out who they belong to is literally to like print everyone on, you know, in all those different circles we talked about. But that's going to take so much time to rule out everyone and figure out what they mean. So in the meantime. They're still sure that they've got their guy. They just need to lay on him a little bit longer, dial up the pressure a little bit higher, and they're convinced that he's going to crack. So they cut back on anything at all that makes life tolerable for him in prison. So he gets no visits, not even with his wife and stepson, no haircuts, no shaves, no hot waters, no hot meals, no time outside in the yard. And they got Richard spending 23 hours a day in a cell alone. And according to reporting by Michael Rigby for Prison Legal News, anytime he's out of solitary confinement, he is in shackles and wearing a hood. I mean, is that...
legal? I don't know. When I was reading about this, I was like, this is straight up psychological torture. Yeah. Physical torture. No hot meals, no hot showers, a hood over your head.
I think about how we all have felt in quarantine. I think any person would crack. 1,000%. So, I mean, obviously, like you said, they would crack. They're trying to smoke this guy out. Does it work? It doesn't. I mean, not yet anyway. But in their minds, like, they don't need a confession necessarily because as all this is going on, there's a grand jury convening in Salt Lake City to look at Richard's potential involvement in Elizabeth's kidnapping. So they're really hoping that they'll at least be able to press charges and take him to court whether he gives them anything to help or not. But no matter what, Richard isn't budging. Even with all of this psychological warfare that they are waging.
on him. I mean, when I look at this, when you think about what we know about coerced confessions, I am shocked that he didn't break. Again, I am shocked that what they're doing is legal. Remind you, he's not arrested for Elizabeth's disappearance. He's arrested for a parole violation. Oh my God. I honestly had kind of forgotten that until you just said it. Like, this is a parole violation. It's scary that they can do this and it's legal.
Question mark? I mean, honestly, I can only imagine that in that position, I would have cracked as soon as I said I couldn't take a high charge, to be completely honest. Forever ago. And when you think about that, how would that have changed this story? Oh my God. Because he doesn't crack. He just keeps saying, I am not the guy. I am not the guy. And the thing is, members of the smart family aren't.
sold that Richard is their guy. And one person in particular, Mary Catherine, who, mind you, is the only witness to Elizabeth's kidnapping. She is the one who saw someone take Elizabeth. She literally said, Richard's not the guy. It wasn't his face. It wasn't his voice that she heard. And they're just like discounting that?
Well, from police's perspective, they're kind of thinking as Mary Catherine is this terrified little girl who saw a man's face or, you know, thinks she saw a man's face anyway in the middle of the night, in the dark. Plus, like, the idea of eyewitness statements not always being totally credible. Yeah. Like, you can count on them. And Richard's just an easy fit for them. He is a career criminal who would know enough to disguise his voice, maybe, to protect his identity. So whether or not she confirms him as the guy doesn't matter to them. I mean, yes, it would be great. Just like, if those fingerprints matched, that'd be great. It'd be more of a bonus checkmark. But to them, it doesn't matter. This is their guy.
Or at least it was looking that way until the morning of July 24th, nearly two months into their investigation. That's when Salt Lake City police get a call from a local sheriff's office. There had been another attempted kidnapping. What? Another cut screen, another little girl, and it was another member of Elizabeth's family.
No. Yes, what police learned is that early that morning, around 3 a.m., Elizabeth's 19-year-old cousin, Jessica, woke to the sound of a picture falling off the dresser just under her bedroom window. And when she looked, she saw something or someone trying to cut through the window screen. Now, at the time, she screamed and her dad came running, but whoever had been trying to get in got away. Now, the thing about this is the family doesn't think that Jessica was the target because she had only recently started sleeping in that room. In his book, Tom Smart says that the bedroom had belonged to Jessica's 14-year-old sister, Olivia, up until just recently when the two of them switched. Interestingly, Olivia was super close to her cousin, Elizabeth. Like Alex Stone and Emily Friedman reported for ABC that the two were considered best friends at the time. So the real kidnapper is still out there and coming after...
more young girls in the same family? Well, that's what the smart family and a handful of investigators are starting to think. But the Salt Lake City police, they're not so sure. They think that the attempted break-in at Olivia's was probably just a copycat crime. Maybe some neighborhood kids who knew Elizabeth's cousin lived there and decided to pull what would be like the most evil prank ever. Yeah, that is truly, truly...
devious and evil. Yeah, but here's the thing. If it was a prank, it would have had to have been pulled by someone very close to the investigation because the crime scenes are almost identical. I mean, police never release all the details in an open investigation. We know that. And this is true of this one, too. So very few people knew, for instance, that the kidnapper had gone into the house by propping up a chair outside the smarts kitchen window. And yet at both crime scenes, there's a chair against the house. There's a cut window screen. All of it was just virtually identical. So if you're talking about kids, I mean, what are the odds?
But police are confident that they have their guy in custody, and so they refuse to let this hiccup take them off course. But then, on August 27th, investigators get some news that knocks the wind right out of their sails. Earlier that day, just after a court appearance, their only suspect, Richard Rizzi, had collapsed in his Salt Lake City jail cell. He was rushed to the hospital where he had surgery to try and relieve pressure and bleeding in his brain. But after three days in a coma, doctors told his wife and stepson and the cops who never left his bedside that he would never wake up. And he died in the hospital on August 30th. To say that this is a blow to police's investigation would have been a huge understatement.
was their investigation. And now, from their perspective, they might never know what happened to Elizabeth, where she is, or if she's even still alive. But for the smarts and for the handful of investigators who never quite felt the kidnapping shoe fit for Richard, this is finally a chance to shift the focus of the investigation onto other options, onto other potential suspects. But do they... have any other options or potential suspects? I mean, there were other persons of interest really early on in the investigation, mostly based on tips that came in about interactions people thought Elizabeth might have had in the days before she disappeared or even strange cars in the neighborhood, that kind of thing. But they keep tracking those people down and just ruling them out. And despite a $250,000 reward for information leading to Elizabeth's safe return, there isn't much coming in.
Ed and Lois and their other five children, their lives have pretty much been on hold all this time, just stuck in this kind of horrible, heartbreaking, never-ending limbo. I can't imagine. So as summer turns to fall, the family is forced to start thinking about the fact that they might never see Elizabeth again. And that's kind of where things are on October 12th, four months after Elizabeth's disappearance, when Mary Catherine walks into her parents' bedroom one evening out of nowhere and says, I know who took Elizabeth. My name is Annie Elise, a.k.a. your true crime BFF and host of the podcast Serialistly. Now, I have been a true crime enthusiast forever, but I wished that somebody would break down the cases for me like a friend, giving me all the details, discussing every twist and turn. So I decided to create a podcast that does just that. Serialistly with Annie Elise is topping the charts with over 6 million weekly downloads. I do the deep dives in these cases so you don't have to, diving into all the raw details, saying what we all are thinking, and doing it in a conversational way, just like you're talking with your best friend. So join me and let's talk all things true crime. Serialistly with Annie Elise. New episodes every single week. Listen wherever you get your podcasts or watch on YouTube.
Mary Catherine tells her parents it was Emmanuel. Wait, what? Emmanuel? Who is Emmanuel? Well, that's what Ed and Lois are wondering too, at least for the first minute. But then slowly a memory starts to come to them. Mary Catherine is talking about this man, this street preacher Lois and the kids had run into downtown one day. He said that he'd recently lost his job. He was looking for work. And Lois was like, actually, you know, we've got a lot of work going on at our house. And here's this guy who's down on his luck. So she gave him a couple of dollars and told him to call Ed to talk about coming to work at their house, which he did. Emmanuel had only been there.
One day, not even a whole day, actually, just a few hours. He had done some yard work and helped Ed fix a skylight or something. And they planned to have him back the next day, but he just didn't show up. And that was the last that they saw or heard about him or even like thought about him. So the fact that Mary Catherine remembers him at all is just kind of bonkers to me. But like she remembers his name. She remembers the backpack that he was carrying. She remembers his voice. And she says that is the same voice that she heard in her room the night her sister was taken. I mean, as someone with a kind of bizarre memory forming brain, I get this.
But also, I have to wonder, you know, what happened that jogged her memory? Nothing. I mean, that's the wild part about the human brain. Yeah, she was reading a book. She was reading the Guinness Book of World Records, of all things. Love it. And she was, like, looking at this random picture of a strong woman staring back at her from the page. And she said suddenly it was just there, like, popped back up wherever it was hiding in her brain. And she made the connection. At the time that, like, they go forward to police about this, police make a point not to sort of, like, over-question Mary Catherine during their investigation because they didn't want to inadvertently dislodge or overwrite a memory. And they told Ed and Lois that...
this kind of thing might happen, that out of nowhere, she might just remember. And they couldn't force it. They just had to be patient. I mean, but still, it must be a pretty wild thing to hear that she has, like, not only a name, but, like, specifics about what he looked like. Absolutely. And to be honest, and Lois are sort of, I mean, they're not even sure about the whole thing. Like, could Mary Catherine be misremembering? Remember, I mean, this guy was only ever at their house one.
time and that one time was over a year before he was like in and for only a couple of hours yeah yeah ed didn't even think of him when he was even giving police like the name of the people who had been in like that contracting handyman circle for renovations like that's how far away this guy was from their memory and beyond that there are so many things about emmanuel that make him seem like such an unlikely suspect like what do you mean well the big one is that when he met the family the year before he was actually homeless he said that he went around to shelters preaching as a way to help people so if he has elizabeth Like, where would he be keeping her? And also, what was his motive? He didn't have any real connection to the family. Nothing bad happening. No fights or falling out. Just that one totally random, completely uneventful day working at the house. And then just ghosting, right? Yeah. There was no ransom demand after Elizabeth went missing. So he's not looking for money. It just wasn't adding up for police. They're not thinking that this Emanuel guy is looking like a strong suspect.
And while they do assign an officer, literally one officer, to try and track him down, that one officer is up against a beast of a task. I mean, they don't know this guy's real name. They're sure Emmanuel isn't it. And he has no fixed address. I mean, but do they have a sketch or something? Like, at least based on Mary Catherine's memory? They do produce a sketch, but it's not actually based on Mary Catherine's memory. It's based on Ed's. And the smarts, of course, are super keen to release it to the public and see if anyone can identify the guy. But the police don't want to.
Why not? Well, they say that they're worried about driving Emanuel underground by going hard with the information publicly. But in his book, Tom Smart talks about how the overwhelming majority of police feel like they had the right guy all along. They already had him. Richard was their guy. And anything else, it might just be a waste of time. And they're thinking that releasing information about Emanuel will only jeopardize the case that apparently they were still trying to make against Richard. So the Smarts wait. And they wait. And they wait some more.
The Smarts celebrate Elizabeth's 15th birthday without her. They celebrate Christmas without her. And they wait with bated breath every time that they hear remains have been discovered in and around the Salt Lake area. And they breathe a sigh of relief every time they hear it's not Elizabeth. Finally, on February 3rd, 2003, nearly eight months after Elizabeth was taken from her bed, the Smarts decide enough is enough, and they just release the sketch themselves. Ed and Lois tell reporters about Emmanuel, how he wore jeans and a work shirt, was clean-shaven, soft-spoken, talked about the Bible while he worked, but offered no real information about himself. They also mention that he was a street preacher and that he told them that he traveled from place to place a lot. You'd think a development like this would just rip through the news media like wildfire.
But that's actually not what happened. The local Salt Lake City media covered the story, and some of them ran the composite, but the news didn't make it out of Utah, really. Not yet, anyway. But then, two weeks later, an update on Elizabeth's case ran on, you know, one of our very favorite shows. Oh, geez. America's Most Wanted. And on that, they included the composite sketch. And here, I want to show you what people saw on that broadcast. Maybe you can just give us a quick description.
Yeah, so it looks like a Caucasian man, maybe in his 40s or 50s. His hair is short, maybe a little bit wavy or curly at some point in time. He's clean shaven. He has a pretty prominent nose and a rather angular or thin face. It's almost kind of blocky, too. Yeah, like a very rectangular head, if you will. I don't know if his cheekbones are very prominent or his cheeks are sunken, but there's definitely something like that going on. Yeah, and the other thing that sticks out to me about this sketch is his eyebrows. I mean, they sit really low on his forehead. So if you're looking straight on, they are just over his eyes. Yeah, yeah.
And his eyes are like maybe light colored. I can't really tell it's a black and white sketch. So, I mean, who really knows? So this goes out across the country on America's Most Wanted. And almost right away, the phone starts ringing at the Salt Lake City Police Department. On the other end is a woman named Lisa. And she's calling to say that the man in the picture, the man police are looking for, can only be one guy. Her brother, Brian David Mitchell. And when police search their system for Brian David Mitchell, what they find is that, first of all, the guy had been arrested not once, but twice during the time Elizabeth has been missing.
What? Yeah, once in Salt Lake in September 2002 for shoplifting. And then again in February 2003 in California this time for breaking into a church. But that's actually not even the wildest part of all of this because right there in the police file is a picture of Brian David Mitchell. And they are shocked at what they see. Let me send it to you along with another one as well from like around the same time frame. And in the photo from when he was arrested, he's like sitting on this shop floor. And then in the second one, he's walking down the street so you can get a better sense of what he looked like.
Oh, like, I honestly can't even believe that this is the same guy from the composite. Right? Yeah, like, he looks nothing like it. I mean, to be fair, he's also wearing, like, long robes, literally to his ankles with these big, long, baggy sleeves versus, like, the polo from the composite. He has this huge, thick beard. He has long hair. And he's wearing, it looks kind of like a, it's not quite a beanie hat. It reminds me of, like, a Christmas Story Scrooge, like, nightcap sort of hat. I can't really describe it. Or, like, maybe the kind of hat Mary Catherine would know as a hat and not be able to say.
Like, what kind? Because you're even struggling to say what kind of hat you'd call that. I'm struggling to describe it. Nine-year-old Mary Catherine definitely would probably struggle with describing it 1,000%. So, yeah, looking at this, like, no wonder police were having a hard time tracking down a manual from the sketch that they made because this looks totally different. It's not the, it's, this is not the man you're looking for. Right. According to an article in the Sunday Morning Herald, Brian David Mitchell was only clean-shaven and wearing jeans and a work shirt for, like, this very brief period of time, specifically in the months after September 11th when those attacks happened because of some comments, yep, that people were making about him looking like Osama bin Laden. Oh. On the other hand,
And this current version of Emmanuel with the hair and the beard and the robes had actually become kind of a fixture in Salt Lake City. Everyone knew this guy. They called him the Jesus Man. And he was always downtown preaching on the street and asking for money. Like before Elizabeth was taken. Oh girl, I mean before she was taken and...
after she was taken. Salt Lake City is this guy's home base. And not only that, but the last few times he'd been seen, he's had two women with him. The women never showed their faces. They wore veils that covered everything but their eyes and they never spoke. He always introduced one as his wife and the other as his daughter.
Wait, you mean Elizabeth was right there in Salt Lake City the entire time and no one recognized her? Well, I mean, there were definitely people who thought they recognized her. I mean, this one time in particular, police got a call from the public library from someone saying that there was this young woman who could be Elizabeth smart. They actually sent a detective down. And of course, he walked right up to this person wearing long robes and a veil covering her face and said, are you Elizabeth smart? But they said no. Her name was Augustine Marshall. And the man refused to allow her to lift her veil for religious reasons.
This is like a total mind F because how hard can you push when it comes to respecting someone's religious beliefs? So it's not like he just asked one time and moved on. They like questioned and kind of kept pushing. But eventually the detective who was there left. Yeah, I mean, there's nothing else they could do in that moment. Yeah. And that was the last time anyone remembered seeing the Jesus man and his wife and daughter. That at this point was like months ago. So when the updated photo of Emanuel is blasted out by America's Most Wanted in mid-February, they say that it's possible he went somewhere warmer to wait out the winter months, maybe Florida or Texas or Arizona.
So are police sure that this is their guy? Like, is there anything else about Brian David Mitchell that makes police think that he is the one who might have kidnapped Elizabeth? Well, there was this other call that came into police shortly after the America's Most Wanted episode. And this one was from a woman named Debbie. Debbie was Brian Mitchell's second wife. She had seen him or anyone in his family for a long time. And like, we're talking 18 years. And that was like since their marriage ended. But Brian Mitchell, as she describes, is a guy that not only terrorized and abused her during their marriage, but a guy who sexually abused her children as well. Oh my God.
Based on his history, Brian is much closer to the profile the FBI prepared in the early days of the investigation than anyone thought. And while it is absolutely horrifying for Elizabeth's family to think that she may have been kidnapped by a sexual predator, his ex-wife Debbie tells them something else. She says, Brian is a molester, but he is not a killer. And if he took Elizabeth, she's probably still alive. And then on March 12th, 2003, not one, but two calls come into 911 virtually at the same time. Both of them saying,
Emmanuel is here and he has Elizabeth. The Jesus man and the two women are just walking down the side of the road, but they're not in their usual robes and veils anymore. They're now in jeans and shirts. But honestly, by this time, it wouldn't have mattered what they were wearing because the residents of Utah would recognize them anywhere. It only takes two minutes for the nearest officer to arrive on the scene with Moore right behind her. She asked this guy that they think is Emmanuel, what's your name? He says that his name is Peter Marshall and he introduces his wife, Juliet, and their daughter, Augustine.
The first officer asked the man for ID and he said he doesn't have one. He says that he doesn't have anything because he doesn't need any worldly possessions because they are messengers of God. So then they asked this girl what her name is. And she says that she's his daughter, Augustine Ann Marshall. But they're not letting him off the hook. These people aren't going anywhere until they can prove this for sure.
The girl that they're talking to is wearing this grayish, ratty old wig and these dark sunglasses. Like, nothing I think they would expect. Like, she's clearly in some kind of disguise here. And when they ask her to take off her sunglasses, she says, no, she needs them because she just had some kind of eye surgery. So what they do, finally, is that they actually separate her from the other two people. And they ask her again, who are you? And she says, I know you think I'm that girl who ran away, but I'm not. But the officers can see through it. They can see how anxious this girl is.
One of the officers who was there that day says that they could literally see her heart pounding through her clothes. Oh my God. So they kept pushing. They ask her point blank if she's Elizabeth and they tell her that her family has never stopped looking for her, that they want her to come home. Everyone wants her home. And eventually, finally, the girl says, if thou say it, which they don't even really understand. But what they know is that it's not a no, which means it's close enough. So do they take her home?
Not right away. So at first, they load her into the back of a squad car and start driving toward the nearest station. But they already have Ed on the phone saying, get to the police station right away, though they don't tell him why. But within a few minutes, he arrives, and that's when everyone finally gets the news that they've been waiting for, the news that they've been hoping for and praying for. Elizabeth Smart is home. When Ed and Lois are finally reunited with their daughter, that's when the details of what really happened start to come out.
If you followed the trials of Brian David Mitchell and Wanda Barzee, if you've heard Elizabeth speak or seen any interviews she's done, if you've read her book or seen any of the documentaries made about her life, then you'll know about the nightmare she endured at the hands of her abductors and the strength and resilience she showed not only during that time, but in the nearly 20 years since her safe return. So I could tell you Elizabeth's story. I could tell you the things that were actually going on while we all made assumptions out in the public. But you know who would do an even better job than me? Elizabeth herself.
It was worrying. It made me think, will people remember me? Will I just become another name from the past that sounds familiar, that nobody really knows how they know that name? Or maybe they remember what happened, but they just give up hope. My name is Annie Elise, a.k.a. your true crime BFF and host of the podcast Serialistly. Now, I have been a true crime enthusiast forever, but I wished that somebody would break down the cases for me like a friend, giving me all the details, discussing every twist and turn. So I decided to create a podcast that does just that. Serialistly with Annie Elise is topping the charts with over 6 million weekly downloads. I do the deep dives in these cases so you don't have to, diving into all the raw details, saying what we all are thinking, and doing it in a conversational way, just like you're talking with your best friend. So join me and let's talk all things true crime. Serialistly with Annie Elise. New episodes every single week. Listen wherever you get your podcasts or watch on YouTube.
When Elizabeth is finally home, the story she tells police and to her parents is one that is truly unforgettable. I had the opportunity to hear it firsthand when I spoke with her, and she's just so candid and so real about what was truly the most traumatic experience. And honestly, I'm still processing it. Honestly, it started off just like every other night. I mean, there was nothing different about it. You know, we went to bed, everything was normal. And the next thing I remember was hearing a voice and it was a man's voice and I didn't recognize it. And I didn't think it could be real because men weren't allowed in my bedroom. And so I didn't immediately respond. I thought it just had to be part of my dream because who, who thinks that someone's going to break into their home in the middle of the night and say,
I have a knife at your neck. Don't make a sound. Get up and come with me. I could actually feel something sharp lying across my neck. I could feel someone's hand on my arm trying to pull me out of bed. And I remember opening my eyes. And sure enough, there was this dark figure standing over me. And for the first time in my life, I mean, I was truly terrified. He took me out of my bed. He took me out through my house, up through my backyard. Our backyard wasn't fenced. It was just open. It ran into the neighbor's yard, ran into a vacant lot. We went up through the vacant lot. There were some bushes. He pushed me down behind the bushes. I remember some headlights coming down the street. I immediately started thinking, this is the getaway car. He's going to take me in the getaway car. I'm never going to get away. No one's ever going to find me.
But this car, it didn't stop. And it actually passed right in front of us. But I remember seeing the word police written alongside the car. And for like that half a second, I was like, oh, it's gonna be fine. Everything's gonna be fine. But it didn't stop. It kept going. And as soon as it was around the corner, he had me running across the street and up into the mountains behind my home. I didn't actually realize how far we had run up into the mountains till much later. I think I was just so pumped full of adrenaline and fear that I just, I mean, time almost seemed to stop.
But yet the sky was starting to get lighter and the sun was coming up right as we topped over the top of this mountain and started down the other side. On the way up there, he mentioned that he had his wife waiting for us. And so for a second, I was like, oh, like maybe they just really wanted a child or maybe they had a child and she passed away and I would be about her age or maybe I look like her or like my mind kind of went to a nicer place than the reality. In the middle of the trees, the stand of trees, there's a tent set up. There were some tarps lying on the ground. This woman walked out. She was dressed different. She looked different than really anyone I'd ever seen before. And she came up to me and she hugged me and she brought me inside of the tent where she proceeded to start to undress me and sponge bathe me.
That woman, of course, was Wanda Barzee. And Elizabeth said that it was clear to her right away with that first hug that had nothing to do with comfort and everything to do with control that Wanda was not going to be any kind of mother figure, any kind of ally, that she was just as much a player in this nightmare as her husband. That first morning, Brian performed what he called a sealing ceremony. He had said that, you know, we were now married. We were now man and wife. Every reason, every excuse that I'd given him as to why this wasn't okay, why this wasn't legal. He came back and he keeps saying, it's time to consummate our marriage. Then the thought just hit me. He's going to rape me. That's what it means. He's going to rape me. And there's not a thing I can do about it. There's nothing that's going to stop him. Like he's a man. He's bigger than me. He's stronger than me. Like I literally cannot save myself right now. I mean, it was.
It was terrifying. It was horrific. And it did force me to grow up in a span of hours. I mean, I had heard the word rape before, but it always seemed like such a far away, distant word. It didn't really seem like that was a word that would ever be a part of my life or the life of anyone that I knew because nobody ever talked about it. I mean, I'd heard it on the news, but that was the news. Was that really real life? Like I think every victim would tell you that it's devastating on pretty much every level.
Like it was awful. I remember just thinking, if this is what sex is, I never want to have sex ever again. I never want to have this happen to me ever again. It just felt like emotionally so destructive that I could not protect myself. And I did grow up in a very conservative, very Christian community. And there had always been a lot of emphasis put on remaining pure, remaining chaste, remaining a virgin until you get married.
It was devastating. And it made me genuinely feel that if my parents knew what had happened to me, that they wouldn't want me. And they would just be like, well, as unfortunate as this is, we had six kids. That's a lot of kids. Now we'll only have five. And five kids, that's still a lot of kids. One of my survival mechanisms was just shutting down, was just doing what they told me. Because I just always felt like if I didn't, I would be punished for it. And I knew they were capable of it. I just...
You know, I didn't fight back. I just did what they said because I wanted to survive. And I didn't want them to hurt me more than they already had. And I didn't want them to kill me. For the first few months, Brian and Wanda kept Elizabeth from escaping by chaining her to a tree. They needed that physical restraint in the early days to keep her in one place while they established a stronger one, a psychological one.
So what my captors did is, I mean, right from the word go, they took away everything that was important to me, everything that was like a pillar in my life. I mean, they kidnapped me away from my home. So they took away my family. They took away my security. They took away my friends, my school. They took away all my freedoms.
I mean, I was 14 when they kidnapped me. I'd never drank alcohol in my life. When they first started bringing alcohol back into the camp, they would withhold food from me until I drank what they told me to drink. I mean, and I remember, like as silly as it sounds, you know, I went through the D.A.R.E. program in fifth grade and we'd all made our fifth grade pledge not to abuse drugs or alcohol. And in my mind, I was like, I'm breaking my pledge, which at that point was just silly. Like, who cares about that? Like, it just felt like I couldn't keep any pledge or any promise to anyone or to myself. And that if I wanted to survive, I just had to be willing to just...
honestly let go of who I was and do what they wanted because otherwise I wasn't going to make it. It was always a battle of emotion when it felt like I was so close and yet so far, because on one hand I did, I did just want to scream out and I want to say, I'm here, come and rescue me. But at the same time, I was dealing with like this enormous level of fear where I felt like, If I said something, I would be responsible for the death of someone else. My captors, they would never have let anyone help me. They wouldn't. They would have killed me before that happened. And they would have killed anyone they had to before that happened. I mean, I remember at one point hearing my name actually being called as searchers were out searching for me. And I mean, he was holding on to me and he had his knife in his hand and he said, it'll be your fault if anyone comes into this camp, because not only will you die, but you will first watch me kill whoever enters into this camp. And I mean, he had his knife right there, the same knife that he had kidnapped me with. I mean, it felt...
very real. And I knew he was capable of evil because I had cried and I had begged and I had pleaded with him to not rape me, you know, to not make me go naked, to not force me to do things I didn't want to do. And just none of it had ever affected him. So I knew he was capable of evil and I knew that he would do whatever he had to do to protect what he wanted. But as time went on, you know, they'd always say to me, well, if you ever do anything we don't want you to do, we'll kill you.
If you do anything we don't want you to do and we don't kill you, we will kill your family. And that felt 100% believable because they had already broken into my home. You know, the place that I thought was most safe and most secure. And they had kidnapped me. No one had stopped them. Elizabeth's captors would say that what they were doing must be endorsed by God or else why would he let it happen? How else would they remain protected even with police driving past and search parties with an earshot? How else were they able to walk around in Salt Lake City in public and not get caught?
He used to bring newspaper articles or missing flyers from down in Salt Lake back to this hidden campsite, and he'd show them to me, and he'd be like, oh, all of Salt Lake is covered in blue ribbons and light blue balloons, and these missing flyers are on every tree and every telephone pole and in the windows of every house and every shop, every grocery store. They're everywhere, but no one will ever find you. Because I have you. And everything he did just seemed to confirm that. I mean, I remember he'd always circle back once again to religion and he'd say, well, you know, God is protecting us. They won't find us. There were moments during Elizabeth's nine months in captivity when she came so close to being found. We talked about the search teams and the helicopters in the first part of this story. And even that day in the public library when someone called in a tip about someone who looked like Elizabeth, that really was her.
I remember Wanda Barzee, her hand, just clamping down on my leg as this homicide detective was questioning my captors. It was just like that physical reminder. It was almost like being kidnapped all over again and reminding me what my captors were capable of and what they would do, the lengths that they would go to, to make sure that I wasn't rescued. Wanda Barzee, she didn't say anything because I had been told that I was not allowed to speak out in public. And so to make it seem like it was part of our religion, Brian Mitchell also told Wanda Barzee that she could not speak out in public. And of course she supported that because ultimately he told her what she wanted to hear and he told her how special she was. So she went along with him and so she wouldn't speak out. So it was only him speaking for both of us. I think religion has always been a sensitive topic. And I think especially then it was a very sensitive topic and that really any form of extremism was just...
And my captor, I think he knew that and he capitalized on that. So he just kept saying, you know, this is part of my religion. This is my daughter. This is my wife. No, I cannot unveil her. I cannot show you her face. That would be against our religion. And the only people that will ever see her face are me, her father and her future husband, and you are neither. And that would be violating her if she were to show you her face. And so, I mean, he just kept on hammering that point across until finally the police officer, I mean, he was convinced and he turned around and he walked away.
It was devastating. I mean, it felt like I was so close. And then to see him just turn around and walk away, I knew that I wouldn't be let out in public again. They already planned to leave Utah, but this close call in the library really amped up the urgency. They started making plans to leave Salt Lake and head to Southern California. Now, if you're familiar with Salt Lake City, Utah, you'll know it's synonymous with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Brian David Mitchell considered himself to be a fundamentalist with the Mormon faith, but his beliefs were rooted in an earlier time, a time when polygamy was endorsed by the church. Brian called himself a prophet and went by the name Emmanuel. His wife, Wanda Barzee, he called her Hephzibah, the mother of Zion.
Elizabeth, who became Augustine to them, was the first of what they planned to be seven young wives. During the trial in 2010, according to reporting by Jennifer Dobner for NBCnews.com, Wanda said they had received a commandment from God to find and kidnap girls between age 10 and 14 years old, which was a convenient commandment considering that all these attempts to convince grown women to become his wives had all failed. I assume it was Brian David Mitchell who attempted to kidnap Elizabeth's cousin, Olivia, too. Were there other attempts? Yeah, so it actually was him who tried to break into Elizabeth's cousin's house. This was not a bad prank by someone. They probably should have paid more attention to it. And she wasn't the only target. There had been many girls stalked and followed both before and again after Elizabeth was abducted. That was actually part of the reason why they went to California. He thought he'd have better luck with his mission to kidnap young girls there.
And then once even we went to San Diego, he took me, they found a new, like it was like a dried riverbed and he hid me there and I was only let out. I mean, maybe once a week, maybe once every other week. And it was always with there. I mean, I was never let alone. I was never left alone ever during my entire nine months. I mean, there was always one of them with me, if not both of them.
While we were in California, my captors, they actually did try to kidnap another girl. Thank goodness they were not successful in it. And so they started to say, well, California is clearly not the place we need to go to kidnap a girl. We need to go somewhere else. And they were talking about these big cities like New York and Boston. And I just remember thinking, oh my goodness, like no one is ever going to recognize me there. No one found me in Utah. No one's found me in California. I mean, if I ever want to be rescued, then I need, I mean, my best chance of rescue is to get back to Utah. And even if I'm not rescued, I'm at least physically closer to my home and to my family.
Elizabeth knew that she had to get back to Utah. And so she started making a plan to get there. She knew her captors were expert manipulators. She'd had a front row seat to that over the last nine months. And so she decided to use that same approach to try and manipulate them.
I remember turning around and being like, oh, you know, I just had this feeling. Like, this feeling won't leave me alone, but it's like we're supposed to return to Salt Lake. But I know that I am just, you know, I am too wicked. Like, I'm too sinful. God would never speak to me. God would never, like, I am just too unworthy. But this feeling won't leave me alone. Do you think you could ask God if we're supposed to return to Salt Lake? Because I know He'll tell you because, you know, you're His prophet and He'll tell you. And, you know, you are His mouthpiece here on earth. I just know He'll tell you.
And honestly, if there was another miracle in all this, it was in that moment because then he turned around and he's like, oh, yeah, I think you're right. I think we should go back to Salt Lake. So they hitchhiked from Southern California back to Utah. By this time, if you remember, police knew that the guy they were looking for was Brian David Mitchell. They knew what he looked like. They had that mugshot of him from when he was caught shoplifting. Everyone was looking for Brian, looking for Wanda and looking for Elizabeth. By the time March 12, 2003 came, Elizabeth had been gone for nine months. And while everyone hoped and prayed she would come home safe, the likelihood that she was even alive after that length of time seemed really small.
Yeah, I mean, isn't it something like three quarters of kidnapping victims are killed within the first three hours? Yeah, that's definitely a stat that you hear a lot, and it is somewhat true. According to U.S. Department of Justice statistics, of the children who are going to be murdered by their kidnappers, 74% will be dead within three hours. So this was the reality on the minds of the Smart family during all those months that Elizabeth was gone, which is why her safe return to Utah and to her family after all of those months was such a huge deal, not just in Utah or even in the United States, but all over the world.
When I got home, I needed to heal. I needed to accept that my life was never going to be what it had once been. I could never go back and be the girl that I was before I was kidnapped. And so I had to really make peace with this new normal. There was no going backwards. I could only accept what was here and now. When I first got back, I mean, people always used to ask me questions. Well, why didn't you run? Why didn't you scream? Why didn't you escape? Why didn't you do something? And for years and years and years, I didn't understand why I would immediately feel so defensive when I hear the words, why didn't you? But as I got a little older, I started to realize it's not because...
I was hearing their question, but because my brain was hearing it as, you should have run. You should have screamed. You should have done more. Those words, why didn't you, seem to imply that I didn't do enough. I could sit and spend a whole lifetime thinking, well, you know, I went around and checked the doors and windows with my dad that night, but I guess we missed one window. I should have gone back and double-checked it. My dad should have gone back and double-checked it. When they were building the house, they shouldn't have put that window right there. You know, we could have avoided this whole situation if they just placed that window somewhere else. Or, I mean, you know, if I had just screamed, why didn't I scream? If I had just, you know, instead of just going with him when he told me to wake up and come with him that night when he put the knife to my neck, if I had just screamed, would he have really killed me? Or would he have turned and run and been in a rush to get out of the house? I mean, like, I could spend the rest of my life thinking that way. That would be, honestly, probably pretty easy. But...
It's done. It's over with. It happened. I'm still alive. I'm still here. And I'm not doing myself any favors by going back and blaming myself for what happened. Because at the end of the day, it was not my decision to be kidnapped. It was not my decision to be raped, to be chained up, to have food and water withheld from me. It was the decisions and choices of other people.
It took seven years for Elizabeth's case to get to trial. But when it finally did, it was her testimony that sealed the fate of her captors. In 2009, Wanda Barzee pled guilty to kidnapping and unlawful transportation of a minor and was sentenced to 15 years in prison, minus time served. As part of her deal with prosecutors, she testified against her husband, who is now serving a life sentence behind bars. Okay, so Wanda Barzee is out right now, right? She is. And I actually asked Elizabeth about that. Here's what she said.
It was a disappointment. It was a disappointment to see that she was released. And honestly, it still is because she never stood up for me. You know, she was right there watching me be raped. And she had been married before. She had a prior marriage in which she had six children of her own and they were all older than me. And yet she was still okay with watching, honestly, this little girl being raped. And so in my mind, that just makes me feel like she was every bit as guilty as Brian Mitchell.
And so for me, when she was released, I felt like it was, you know, the legal system letting me down. But I will say that it also gave me a, not that I didn't already have compassion for all of these victims who never see any form of justice or where their perpetrators just get like a slap on the wrist or nothing happens. I already had compassion for them, but I think it also gave me a greater compassion and a greater understanding for what they go through. Someone told me, you know, we have a legal system. We don't have a justice system because can you ever really replace?
What's been taken after you've been raped, after you've been kidnapped, after you've been abused? Can you ever really fix that? Can you ever really receive true restitution or compensation or have that piece of you given back your life, go back to the way it was before? You really can't. And so I feel like it just made me feel even more passionate about doing everything I'm doing now.
And what she's doing now is pretty incredible because somehow, and I don't even know how, she has turned this experience, this trauma, this tragedy into something so powerful. She has become a strong voice for survivors of sexual violence. And through the Elizabeth Smart Foundation, she and her team are doing incredible work to both prevent sexual exploitation and to support survivors. The number one comment that we get is that no one believes me, or I'm afraid to tell people because I don't think anyone will believe me, or because they know who did this and they like them, they won't believe me. I mean, it is so common. I mean, we have a whole campaign built around that. It's our November through December campaign, and it's called We Believe You. And it's encouraging the public to take this pledge because...
If you haven't experienced, I hope, I hope the majority of people listening to this podcast, I hope they haven't experienced rape or sexual violence or kidnapping or domestic abuse. I hope so much they haven't. But if they haven't, they know someone who has, whether they know they know them or not. I mean, whether that person has disclosed to them or not, they know someone. I mean, that's just how.
prevalent it is in today's society. And so our whole campaign is about trying to help educate the public on what it is to be a survivor. How can we be a better community? How can we support our victims and survivors a bit more? How can we rise above victim blaming and victim shaming? And, you know, we want everyone to jump on board and take our pledge where we pledge to believe our survivors. We believe you, where we, you know, will offer them support and where we offer them, you know, love and a safe place to fall because
We all need each other. I mean, one of our other initiatives is called Smart Defense. And, you know, it's all about helping women be able to defend themselves, but also giving them the knowledge, not just the physical training, but the knowledge to understand, you know, what's okay, what's not okay, where can rape come from? What are defend your, or stand your ground laws? You know, when is it okay to fight back? Or when is it okay to defend yourself? Or, you know, if you're in a grocery, like if you've got your armful of groceries, what do you do? And making sure it's an active part of your life.
The reality is that according to RAINN, the Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network, one in six, one in six American women will be a victim of rape or attempted rape in their lifetime. Someone is sexually assaulted every 73 seconds in this country. Oh my God. And what that means is, like Elizabeth said, even if no one has disclosed it to you, you probably know someone who's been a victim of sexual assault. Maybe that victim, that survivor is you. And if it is, I need you to stop what you're doing for just one second.
I need you to turn up the volume and I need you to listen. I need you to hear this because we all need to hear this. I just wish that every victim and survivor could understand that what's happened to you is not your choice. Even if it was a boyfriend that raped you, even if it was someone that you knew that took you, even if it was someone that you were texting with, that you met on an app and you're like, yeah, I'd love to go out with you. Like, let's meet up. Or someone that, I mean, you send a naked photo to. I mean, it is still not your fault. Just because you made these other decisions, it is not your fault for being raped. It is not your fault for being abused, for being hurt. Those decisions, those crimes lie solely.
on the perpetrator, on the person that did these things to you. And I just, I wish people could understand that because the amount of shame and self-blaming and guilt that survivors have is crippling and devastating. You are lovable and you are worthy and you have every much bit of right as everyone else to have joy and have peace and to live your life to the fullest. You deserve that. You can share what's happened to you. You don't have to be embarrassed of it. You don't have to be ashamed of it. You can speak out. And it doesn't necessarily have to be on the same level as everyone else. Maybe it's just telling one other person, but you don't need to feel like you have to keep that bottled up inside you. You can share that. You can let that out. And there are people out there who will believe you. And there are so many amazing, you know, different advocacy centers, shelters, law enforcement that are there for you to help you move forward in any way that you need help. They are there for you. Don't be afraid to ask for help. We all need each other. We all need to ask for help sometimes. You're not alone.
When Elizabeth was kidnapped back in 2002, she became everyone's sister, everyone's daughter, everyone's friend. We all knew Elizabeth and we all celebrated when she came home. We owe ourselves and our friends and our neighbors that same love. If you want to learn more about the programs and services Elizabeth mentioned today, visit ElizabethSmartFoundation.org. Despite what she's been through, Elizabeth calls herself one of the lucky ones because she survived. But not every story has a happy ending like hers. Not every case even makes headlines like hers. And not everyone makes it home.
Next week, we'll actually be bringing you one of those stories, one that unfolds in a very different way than the story we told you today. If you want to hear the full raw audio of my conversation with Elizabeth, that's actually available in our fan club. And so for more information on how to join, visit CrimeJunkiePodcast.com. There you will also find all of our source material for this episode. Be sure to follow us on Instagram at Crime Junkie Podcast. And we'll be back next week with a brand new episode. Crime Junkie is an audio Chuck production. So what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve?
When the nights grow longer, the shadows start to stir. And that can only mean one thing. Full Body Chills is back. This season, step inside original tales where every doorway leads somewhere darker, every stranger carries a secret, and nothing is ever quite what it seems. Each story takes you somewhere new, but be careful. You never know what might follow you home. So gather around, listen close, and stream Full Body Chills wherever you get your podcasts.
Growing up in a small town, I know how deeply a crime can shake a local community. And I know that what makes the headlines is rarely the full story. That's what Kylie Lowe explores on her show, Dark Down East. She digs into cases from Maine and New England using original reporting, archival records, and conversations with the people who knew them best. Each episode takes you inside the communities these stories shaped and the families who never stop searching for answers. Listen to Dark Down East wherever you get your podcasts.