Original subtitles

♪♪

Elizabeth: It's not that I didn't try escaping.

I did try, actually.

I tried several times.

They just weren't successful.

But I eventually came to a point where I was like,

"Okay, one day, somehow, I'm gonna survive this.

I'm gonna get back to my family.

But I have to do it in a way that I'll be safe."

♪♪

♪♪

Welcome to "How it Really Happened."

I'm Hill Harper.

In 2002, 14-year-old Elizabeth Smart

was asleep in her family's Salt Lake City home

when a man came into her room and took her at knifepoint.

The kidnapper, Brian David Mitchell,

also known as Emmanuel,

was a disturbed individual

who took Elizabeth to be his second wife.

For nine months,

this innocent child would experience unspeakable horrors

as the hostage of Mitchell and his wife, Wanda Barzee.

Most of that time, all three were hiding in plain sight.

This is how it really happened.

♪♪

Tonight, the stunning details we are learning

about the ordeal of Elizabeth Smart.

Police are reporting an unusually bold child abduction

in an upscale neighborhood of Salt Lake City, Utah.

Christian: Brian David Mitchell entered the Smart home,

went to the bedroom, put a knife to Elizabeth's throat.

He told her that if she made any noise or resisted him,

he would kill her and he would kill her family.

He took her out of the room and led her out of the home.

An abduction that stunned the nation.

We had no idea where she was or what happened to her.

All of a sudden, they say, "Hey, we have a suspect."

A former handyman at the smart home named Richard Ricci.

They were so convinced that Ricci was the primary suspect

in this kidnapping

they almost didn't even want to look elsewhere.

At the end of August, he collapsed in his jail cell.

He's rushed to the hospital

and had a brain aneurysm and died.

There was a feeling when Richard Ricci died

that the case was dying with him.

Watson: Is she still alive? If she is, where is she?

I can't imagine who would ever do it.

Brian David Mitchell's background is,

in a word, troubled.

Christian: In 1985, he married Wanda Barzee.

And he starts to think that he's been ordained

by God as a prophet.

Person: So, he didn't want to be referred to

as Brian David Mitchell,

but as Emmanuel.

He decided that he was gonna convert to polygamy.

Peterson: He was to take extra wives,

And he felt that it was right

for him to go out and grab them

off the streets.

Watson: And he found Elizabeth.

She was 14 years old.

She played the harp.

Ed: She had just talked about

preparing for the new high school track team.

Tom: She wasn't the center of attention or anything.

She just kind of fit in with one of the family.

Christian: She was a very cute, innocent-looking, little girl.

And that's exactly what fit his model.

And, Elizabeth, if you can hear us,

we love you, Elizabeth.

We haven't forgotten, and everybody wants you back,

and we won't stop until you're home.

♪♪

♪♪

The hike lasted until the very early hours of the morning,

when the sun was coming up,

and they reached his ultimate campsite.

The camp is probably about maybe two miles away.

It's in very, very dense oak brush.

You could be five feet away from it and not see it.

He had built kind of a lean-to dugout

down in the ground.

And that's where Wanda Barzee was waiting.

Elizabeth: The scariest thing about the camp was this woman.

I remember she came out and she had on robes

and she had on a headdress,

and she came up to me and she hugged me.

And you would think that a hug in that moment

might be comforting.

But this hug was not comforting.

This hug said, you know, "You are mine.

You will do exactly what I tell you to do.

And if you don't, I have no problem killing you."

Watson: Elizabeth was told immediately

that she was going to marry Brian David Mitchell

and that the three of them

were going to live together as a family.

Elizabeth: She led me into the tent,

where she tried to bathe me, tried to change me,

and basically, preparing me for slaughter.

Dobner: Wanda changes her from her red silk pajamas

into these robes.

Winslow: She was given a new name, Shear-Jashub,

and she was basically told this was her life,

that she was sealed to Emmanuel

and she was a sister wife to Wanda.

Elizabeth: She left the tent and he came in and that's when he raped me.

Benson: It was a nightmare beyond imagination.

Elizabeth: And then my days consisted of being raped.

I mean, not just once.

Multiple times a day.

Watson: They told her when she could eat

and when she could sleep and when she could speak.

Benson: And they put a shackle around her ankle.

And then she was just his captive.

Brian David Mitchell kept telling Elizabeth,

"I have these tremendous powers,

and if you shout out,

if you try to get away, not only will I kill you,

but I will find and kill your entire family."

She wasn't free to roam around.

She wasn't free to go to the bathroom by herself.

Much of the time, she stayed in their little shelter,

their tent that they had.

She was kept under watch all the time.

The conditions were terrible, as you could imagine.

Elizabeth: Just every time I thought it couldn't get worse,

something always happened.

Tom: Whatever she went through is more than any of us can imagine.

I'm sure it was horrid for anybody,

but for a 14-year-old girl, that's despicable.

Watson: It's evil.

♪♪

Well, we've searched these hills around here fairly thoroughly,

and we're fairly comfortable

that we don't have any evidence of the crime here.

Woman: At times, the kidnapped teen was agonizingly close to those

so desperate to find her,

close enough, even, to have been able to hear her own name

echo across those mountains.

Christian: There were several times

in the days immediately after Elizabeth's kidnapping

that it looked like

maybe help was gonna be on the way.

The third day she was in the woods,

she heard searchers yelling her name.

And she said she recognized one of the voices as her uncle.

She couldn't yell out for help.

She couldn't cry out

out of fear she would be killed.

Christian: So, she said nothing,

and eventually, that search party passed on.

The next day, the fourth day of her captivity,

she saw a helicopter.

We did flyovers with all kinds of different technologies --

infrared cameras.

And probably, we may have flown over where she was being kept.

Dujanovic: She heard the helicopter hovering close to the campsite,

hoping, I'm sure, in that moment that this would be it.

Christian: But no one in the helicopter saw anything.

So in two days, there were two near-misses,

but unfortunately, no help for Elizabeth.

♪♪

Winslow: There was a lot of psychological manipulation that was going on.

She was being told, essentially, that, you know,

"People are gonna stop looking for you.

No one's gonna find you."

I think that she felt that all hope was lost.

Elizabeth: I thought, "I'm gonna be murdered,"

because that's what happens to all the other children

I've ever seen on the news who've been kidnapped.

He felt more and more comfortable

that he had Elizabeth under his control.

Farrell: I remember seeing a man dressed in white,

and then he had two women following behind him.

She was right under our nose,

and nobody knew who she was.

We now welcome to "Larry King Live"

from Salt Lake City, Ed Smart.

He, of course, is the father of Elizabeth Smart,

who has been missing since she was abducted

from their home on June 5th.

Good grief, we're approaching three months.

♪♪

They had stayed in their camp

in the Wasatch Mountains for months.

The first two months, she was cabled.

She could not go anywhere.

Christian: They stayed by themselves as much as they could.

However, there were times

Brian David Mitchell would go down to Salt Lake City

to panhandle, get food in town.

Originally, Elizabeth was not allowed on those trips.

Benson: But as the summer wore on

and he felt more and more comfortable

that he had Elizabeth under his control --

Mitchell started taking her, as well.

She was very heavily robed.

She was veiled.

All that you could see of her were her eyes.

So, people didn't recognize her.

She was right under our nose,

and nobody knew who she was.

They would go to buy alcohol

or to go shoplifting --

"errands," quote, unquote, in Salt Lake City.

He'd come in, sometimes by himself,

sometimes with the two girls --

Just depended.

Winslow: Everybody saw them because they stood out.

But no one looked under the veil.

At some point, they have to use the bathroom.

And he allows them to go into the Hard Rock Cafe.

While Elizabeth was in the bathroom,

she was able to scribble the word "Help" inside a stall.

She talked about that moment in her book "My Story."

And then they decided to go to a party.

Farrell: In 2002, I was home in Salt Lake City

for the summer living at my dad's place.

We had a party to send me off back to school,

and I remember, you know, seeing a man dressed in white,

and then he had two women following behind him.

Man: They were wearing veils over their faces,

so the women only had their eyes shown.

Newman: They looked nothing like anybody else who's at the party.

So immediately, upon walking in the door, everybody's like,

"Who's that?"

He pretty quickly started making a ruckus.

Like, you know, sort of talking loudly

and saying things sort of proclamation-style.

So, he really sucked a lot of the attention towards him.

I remember looking at the young girl

and thinking she just seemed very kind of afraid.

Newman: Elizabeth is right there,

and all those people in the house missed it.

I think the thing that makes this case

incredibly difficult to understand

is how this 14-year-old girl,

who was, by now, nationally known,

walk around the streets of Salt Lake City

and end up at a house party

and no one know she's there?

There were always people looking for Elizabeth Smart,

but most of those searches were up in the mountains

or up in the hills.

Most people were not thinking

she's gonna show up on the streets,

the public streets of Salt Lake City.

The problem with once she had these veils on,

Elizabeth didn't look like Elizabeth anymore.

Her hair was covered, her face was covered,

and it was hard to tell who she was.

Johnson: Most of the pictures I saw of her...

[ Camera shutter clicking ]

...she looks 10 years old,

and the girl was taller than I was, and I'm 20.

Maybe we also just felt at that time

that Elizabeth Smart was no longer alive.

Statistically, Elizabeth smart should have been dead.

But she wasn't.

I think the most puzzling episode

in the whole Elizabeth Smart story

is the trip to the library.

On one of their forays down to Salt Lake City,

Mitchell and Barzee and Elizabeth

went to the library to look at maps.

They're in full robes.

The women are completely covered, except for their eyes.

While they're in there, one of the library patrons

saw them and thought,

"Could this possibly be Elizabeth Smart?"

We got a tip, came from a citizen

who saw this group of people wearing robes with a young --

what looked like a young female that might be Elizabeth.

So, police were contacted,

and a detective came.

He walks up to them, says, "I'm a detective

with the Salt Lake City Police Department,"

and starts asking some questions of Brian David Mitchell.

Now, Elizabeth had been told, "Don't say anything.

Don't say anything."

Elizabeth: I was desperate for him to recognize me,

for him to take me away, to save me.

But at the same time, I was sitting next to Barzee,

and she immediately clamped her hand down onto my leg.

And in my 14-year-old mind,

I just knew that if I did anything or said anything,

that I would be killed.

Dinse: The detective didn't know who they were,

but he did interview Brian,

and he attempted to interview Elizabeth.

Dujanovic: The officer says to Brian David Mitchell,

"We're looking for a girl.

Will you please remove the veil

so we can see if that's who we're looking for?"

Christian: Brian David Mitchell

somehow was able to convince this detective

that the women had to wear their robes

for religious purposes,

that they were not allowed to reveal their faces to strangers.

So the detective asks Mitchell,

"Look, if I convert to your religion,

will you allow me to see her?"

And Mitchell says, "No.

It takes much longer than just an instant

to convert to our religion."

Dobner: Mitchell basically talks his way out of it,

convinces him that,

"There's nothing strange going on here.

This is just our religion

and the way we believe and the way we dress,

and my daughter here can't speak to you

because she's not allowed to as part of our faith."

The detective thought she looked older than 14.

He thought she was maybe an 18-, 19-year-old.

The detective ultimately decided that it must not be her

and that he could not violate this religious concept.

Elizabeth: When he turned around and walked away,

being 100% convinced that it wasn't me,

I mean, it felt like I was being kidnapped all over again.

The incident at the public library

may have been the most pivotal moment

of the whole Elizabeth Smart saga.

Watson: You had the people right there

and could have saved her months of abuse and torture.

Oh, it was a huge mistake.

Christian: If the stars had been in slightly different alignment,

this story could have easily ended.

It didn't.

Dujanovic: It's that moment, that afternoon

that I think he's made the decision

that they absolutely have to get out of Utah.

It was clear to Brian David Mitchell that he couldn't stay.

The end of September, they get on a bus

and they go down to San Diego.

Watson: As she was leaving Utah, I can only imagine

that her hope must have sank to the point of,

"I will never come back."

Christian: It's further away from home,

and it was much less likely that she'd ever be found.

Peterson: She didn't see the posters. She didn't hear the news.

So, as far as she was concerned, she'd simply been forgotten.

Benson: He got away with it,

and she became convinced, I believe,

that he really was invincible.

You really did wonder at some point

whether she was ever gonna be found.

All Americans are praying

and hoping for safe return of Elizabeth.

♪♪

♪♪

Christian: When police realized

that Brian David Mitchell was their suspect,

it still didn't answer the question,

"Where was Elizabeth?"

Now, unknown to authorities,

Elizabeth and Mitchell and Barzee

were in Southern California.

They made their way to the San Diego area.

Christian: In many ways, the life was similar

to the way they'd been living in Utah.

They were living out in the wilderness.

They were doing some panhandling.

Elizabeth was constantly watched,

constantly being told what to do.

Then, after a number of months, on February 12th,

Brian David Mitchell is arrested after breaking into a church.

And he identified himself as Michael J. Jensen,

said he was a transient, unemployed.

He'd spent a number of days in jail

and had appeared before a judge

and was run through the court system.

Judge: On the day that you broke into the church,

where were you living at?

With these friends in Lakeside.

How do you plead to that charge, sir?

Guilty or not guilty?

Guilty.

Mr. Jensen,

where are you gonna be living when you get out of custody?

Sir, um...

I don't know that yet. Alright.

My wife and my daughter

are staying with some friends presently.

♪♪

Watson: This was truly one of those near-miss moments again,

a fail in the steps of this investigation.

Judge: I'm gonna release you from custody.

I'm gonna put you on a grant of probation.

We had checked on the 18th

to see if there was a national want

or warrant for him,

and seeing none in the database

released him subsequent to his plea.

So, that was another incident where, perhaps,

he could have been caught,

but he slipped through the cracks.

I'm deeply sorry,

and nothing like that's gonna happen again.

Judge: Good luck. Good luck.

♪♪

Elizabeth: In early March of 2003,

they were talking of new places to go,

like New York and Boston,

and all I could think was,

"We can't go to those places because if nobody found me here,

why on Earth would anybody find me there?"

She's thinking, "My best chance of being found

is to be among the people who are already looking for me."

Elizabeth: There's no way anyone's gonna find me if I don't.

Elizabeth used manipulation at this point, and it's brilliant.

She came up with an idea,

and she told Mitchell --

Elizabeth: "I have this feeling,

and I know that God would never speak to me,

but I know he'll speak to you because you're his servant.

You're practically his best friend.

Could you please ask him if we're supposed to go back

to Salt Lake?"

Christian: Mitchell, apparently,

thought maybe that wasn't such a bad idea,

and, yes, that was the way they should go.

Elizabeth: And that was how it was decided we'd go back to Salt Lake.

Winslow: Brian David Mitchell believed

that he was following some kind of divine revelation,

but what it ultimately did was lead to his capture.

They ditch the religious garb and they decide,

"Elizabeth's gonna wear a gray wig" --

puts it on a 15-year-old girl

with big, old sunglasses,

thinking, "You know what?

This is the disguise

that's gonna keep her from being discovered."

And they actually hitchhike their way across the West,

making their way back to Salt Lake City.

O'Neal: For nine months,

Brian Mitchell pretty much thought he got away with it.

If they never would have come back to Utah,

oh, I think we'd still be looking for her.

♪♪

Taylor: My husband and I pulled into the Kinko's parking lot,

and I noticed this man,

and I said,

"Isn't that that guy who calls himself Emmanuel?"

Welcome back.

Nine months into her captivity,

Elizabeth had tricked her kidnappers,

Brian David Mitchell and Wanda Barzee,

into returning to their hometown of Salt Lake City.

The trio surfaces on the streets of Utah,

dressed now in plain clothes

and seen by hundreds of people who didn't recognize them,

until a fateful encounter on the side of the road

led to one of the most unbelievable

kidnapping recoveries in American history.

♪♪

By March 2003, I can tell you that most people in the media

felt that there was no hope

for bringing Elizabeth Smart home alive.

This has been going on for months.

Searches have stalled.

Some people have forgotten.

I think for most of the word,

it wasrecovering Elizabeth Smart,

not finding her alive.

Dujanovic: And the statistics show

that it was not only improbable.

It was impossible.

♪♪

Benson: The man who called himself Emmanuel

was really Brian David Mitchell.

And now the police had this information,

so they had a lot more to go on in searching for him.

But they still elected to not

give that information to the public.

And an FBI agent named Mick Fennerty had decided

that this information was too important to just sit on.

And he had contacts with "America's Most Wanted,"

and he was able to send to them the information

about Brian David Mitchell and his description.

I said, "This is probably the guy.

Now this makes a lot of sense to me."

John Walsh, whose program is "America's Most Wanted,"

has been working with the Smarts throughout the case.

Now we had an idea what his name was.

Now we knew that he was out on the street somewhere.

Those were huge, huge clues.

Benson: So, with this information,

"America's Most Wanted" did a story about

this latest possible kidnapper

in the Elizabeth Smart case.

Good evening.

We start off tonight

with the latest news on Elizabeth Smart.

And in my heart, I said,

"You know, nobody really keeps kids this long.

If he did it, maybe she's dead

and maybe he dumped her body somewhere,

but we have to hunt this guy down,

and we'll do it 'til we catch him."

It changes everything.

♪♪

Taylor: On March 12th, my husband and I

pulled into the Kinko's parking lot,

and I noticed this man

and these two ladies come up out of the gully.

He was a man with, like, an overgrown beard,

and he was kind of scruffy-looking.

I said, "Isn't that that guy who calls himself Emmanuel?"

I recognized him because I was a very avid watcher

of "America's Most Wanted,"

and I had seen the episode where it showed Brian David Mitchell.

He was dressed pretty normally.

He had on a green T-shirt and some white pants.

I says, "Call 911."

She goes, "Are you sure?"

I says, "Yeah."

[ Telephone rings ]

The initial call was not an Elizabeth Smart sighting.

The original call was a man

who matched the description of Emmanuel,

who was shown on "America's Most Wanted."

[ Police sirens wailing ]

Elizabeth: I remember all these cars pulled up

and then the policemen jumped out of their cars

and they came over.

All three of them were being very cagey toward police.

Elizabeth: They were asking lots of questions --

Who were we? Where were we going?

Where did we come from?

There had been a whole backstory

prepared by my two captors

that they told me I should say if I was ever questioned.

The officer just instinctively thinks,

"Got to separate this girl from these adults."

O'Brien: The thing that caught my attention with her immediately

was she had a wig on.

It was this gray-hair, kind of old-lady type wig,

and a T-shirt that was tied over her head under her chin.

I said, "Okay, what's up with the wig?"

And she goes, "What wig?"

I said, "The wig that you have on your head,"

and she goes, "It's not a wig."

Dujanovic: He pushed on, thankfully,

and started asking more questions

and kind of catching her in little lies.

O'Brien: I said, "So, what's your name?"

She said, "Augustine Marshall."

I said, "Who are these people?"

She says, "That's my father, Peter,

and my stepmother, Juliet."

I could see she was looking at him, like,

checking with him to make sure that she wasn't saying anything

she wasn't supposed to say.

Elizabeth: I kept giving the answers that I'd been told to give.

O'Brien: I instantly recognized her as somebody I knew,

but I couldn't place it.

And as she's talking, I noticed --

I don't know why -- but I noticed her teeth.

and I know that sounds weird,

but I recognized her mouth.

At that point, I'm like, "Oh, my God.

I'm talking to Elizabeth Smart."

And I said, "I think I know who you are."

For a while, they're trying to get her

to say who she is, and she won't.

O'Brien: People have to remember, you know,

this is a 15-year-old girl that had been abducted,

raped, brutalized, threatened that they would murder her

and her family members

if she ever went against them.

Finally, they bring the flier out

from nine months earlier

and they hold it up next to Elizabeth

and they said, "Come on.

Come on. It's you."

Elizabeth: And then, finally, one of the officers said,

"If you're Elizabeth Smart, your family misses you so much,

and they love you so much."

I said, "Elizabeth, you know,

your parents really need to know that you're okay.

There's a lot of people worried about you.

And it's okay. You're safe.

It's time to put this to an end.

You can walk away from this right now,

and we will help you."

Elizabeth: "Don't you want to go back home to your family?"

"It's over. Are you Elizabeth smart?"

Dobner: And she comes back, in religious speak,

"If thou sayeth."

And it was just at that point that I felt like,

"Well, no matter what the consequences are, I don't care.

I want to go home."

Blitzer: You're watching CNN, the most trusted name in news.

We have some news, though,

that I want to interrupt our programming to report.

The Associated Press

is now reporting that Elizabeth Smart --

Elizabeth Smart has been found alive.

Watson: My husband and I had just gotten into the car,

and the very first thing that came on the radio was,

"Elizabeth Smart has been found."

I remember saying, "Dead or alive?"

And there was a long pause.

And the person on the other end,

the source that I was talking to,

said, "Alive."

I was stunned.

And I'm like, "Are you kidding me?"

It was, like, chills over the entire state.

We couldn't even believe it.

Elizabeth Smart has been found alive.

Thank God.

♪♪

O'Brien: Once we got her to the police department,

we asked her to take off the wig and glasses.

She did.

She looked like somebody that had been

living on the streets for nine months.

Clothes were torn, tattered.

Face was very, like, sunburned.

We contacted Ed Smart by phone.

We didn't tell him what exactly we had.

Edward calls me and says,

"Tom, I got a call to come out to Sandy.

What's going on?"

And I said, you know, "I don't know."

I had the strangest feeling that I was going down there

to try to identify Brian David Mitchell,

and not in my wildest dreams was I anticipating

walking into that room and seeing Elizabeth.

O'Brien: Me and another officer met him at the door.

We walked him back to the room where she was sitting.

They led him into the room, and that was the moment.

He saw her and just stopped.

Ed: I absolutely could not believe it.

I saw her sitting there on the sofa.

I just went up and I just grabbed her...

and held her and was crying and crying and crying.

And I said, "Is it really you?"

She said, "Yes."

It was extremely moving, extremely powerful.

Elizabeth: It wasn't until my dad was holding me in his arms

that I just finally knew that it was gonna be okay,

that I was now safe.

We're here to announce officially

that we have found Elizabeth Smart

and that she is here and well

and healthy at our station.

She's with her parents,

and we are in the process of interviewing her.

Winslow: I didn't believe it.

When we did see her, as she was led out of the police station,

her hair was in these French braids.

It was just stunning.

Dobner: The community around the Smarts' home

flooded the house with balloons,

and people showed up, family, friends.

It was like pandemonium everywhere you went.

[ Screams ] [ Laughs ]

I am so, so very glad that this has a happy ending.

King: Tonight, Elizabeth Smart is alive

and back with the family that never gave up hope.

It was just one of the most joyous things

that could ever happen.

We got what every family deserves

and hardly any of them get.

I talked to Ed,

and we had this joyous conversation.

He said, "Come out to Salt Lake City."

And I did. I flew out there.

I sat in the living room

in their great, big, beautiful house

and all the brothers were there

and all the kids and everybody.

And when she walked down those stairs,

that was incredible.

That was probably the best day I've spent on this show.

'Cause finally, we got somebody back alive.

It was fantastic.

♪♪

She said that she had spent months right up here

in the mountains, through August.

I can't believe it.

Within hours of her discovery,

these pictures from the party show up.

People start telling stories --

"Oh, yeah, I saw them in the park."

Watson: The images of her in the robes and the veils

and her being seen around town started to come out.

And then you start to think,

"How unfortunate it is that the pieces of the puzzle

were not put together sooner

to avoid this girl having to live through this horror

she lived through

right under the nose of her family."

Farrell: It felt totally surreal.

Just heartbroken that it hadn't been something that I could see.

Winslow: And a lot of people were just beside themselves,

sick that they had been so close to being able to help,

but so far away at the same time.

We've asked the court to set bail on each defendant

at $10 million.

Christian: Finally, Elizabeth Smart had been rescued.

Finally, Brian David Mitchell and Wanda Barzee

had been arrested.

But the question remained --

Would they ever be brought to justice?

Dujanovic: Immediately, you think, "He's gonna plead insanity,

and he is gonna get off the hook for this."

The case had so many twists and turns,

we had no idea the horror that was to come.

♪♪

Cooper: That reunion -- obviously, incredibly emotional,

obviously, incredibly joyful.

There's got to be a lot of ups and downs with it.

Elizabeth: For me, it was just, like, overwhelming happiness

because, I mean, I was out of that terrible situation.

I was with my family. I was with my friends.

Of course, like, I wondered, my captors --

what was gonna happen to them.

Come on in, have a seat.

Christian: There was a lot of questions

about the mental state of Brian David Mitchell.

Winslow: Prosecutors said this is a man

who was trying to collect a harem

and was abusing children.

Christian: They found out that during the time

Mitchell had Elizabeth in the mountains,

he was the one who tried to break into her cousin's home,

and the plan was apparently to kidnap the cousin, as well,

and make her his third wife.

Dobner: They brought the federal charges against him,

and then they proceeded to find someone to evaluate him

that disprove his claims of mental illness.

Initially, he was very arrogant, cocky.

He had this sense that he could argue

his way out of this dilemma.

He was a sociopath.

He lied, cheated, stole,

clearly knew that he was taking young girls,

and he knew that this was wrong.

This is a person who had a keen sense of his environment

and how to adapt to that environment

in a self-serving way.

♪ The time is far spent ♪

♪ There is little remaining ♪

Winslow: Every time he was brought into court,

there were outbursts.

Repent!

For the kingdom of Heaven is at hand!

He would sing hymns.

He would shout scriptures.

Dobner: And they would just remove him and place him in a holding cell,

where he could watch the proceedings

on a closed-circuit television.

Interestingly, every time they'd remove him

and he'd sit back there,

he wouldn't sing.

It's something that he's doing for effect.

Dobner: The conclusion was that Mitchell is what they call malingering.

So, essentially faking an illness

in order to avoid responsibility.

♪♪

Newman: I would say Wanda Barzee

is just as culpable as Brian David Mitchell

in the kidnapping.

Christian: From the time she was arrested,

there were big questions about Wanda Barzee's mental state.

She thought she was the mother of Zion.

She thought she had a personal relationship

with Johann Sebastian Bach.

It's obvious that kidnapping Elizabeth was not her idea.

But Elizabeth has said many times, in some ways,

Barzee was much worse to her than even Mitchell was.

Dobner: We know that on the night that he kidnaps Elizabeth,

he has this pang of doubt.

And Wanda is the one who tells him that,

"Well, look, you don't have to do it,

but if you truly think that this is the commandment of God,

then maybe youshould

Elizabeth: She was a mother.

She had six children.

How can you have that many children

and allow that to happen to another child?

She stepped aside and let rape and torture and abuse continue,

and not only continue, but she encouraged it.

I don't understand it.

It's despicable.

♪♪

Tonight, Elizabeth Smart in court,

testifying in excruciating detail

about her abduction and repeated rapes.

Ultimately, the case goes forward.

Elizabeth Smart was the witness.

Christian: I think a lot of people were shocked

when they heard Elizabeth's testimony.

Dobner: A lot of the really more gruesome and difficult details

were withheld early on.

Newman: All of that was really kept close to the vest,

mostly to protect her.

Dujanovic: You can't even imagine the details

until Elizabeth took the stand and told her own story.

Newman: She didn't hold anything back.

She talked about the sexual abuse.

She talked about being assaulted every day,

multiple times a day.

[ Projector slide clicks ]

Woman: She told the court...

It was compelling testimony.

It was blunt, and it condemned him.

Man: We are getting verdicts in as we speak right now.

He is guilty on count one and guilty on count two.

Gardner: He was found guilty,

it was a unanimous decision.

and sentenced to life without possibility of parole.

Elizabeth: I told Brian David Mitchell

today in court

that whether he received his just sentence here on Earth

or after this Earth life,

that one day, he will have to be responsible for his actions.

♪♪

Christian: Wanda Barzee did not go to trial, ultimately,

because she took a plea deal.

Dujanovic: She's sentenced to 15 years in prison,

and recently was released,

which was a huge controversy

because the Smart family felt

that they had several more years with Wanda Barzee behind bars.

She's on supervised probation for a period of five years,

and one of those conditions is

that she continue mental-health treatment.

And she's now in a federal halfway house.

Watson: She's a registered sex offender,

but that's very little comfort to not only the Smart family,

but also the community.

Blitzer: Joining us now, a very special guest, Elizabeth Smart.

How hard is it to re-adjust, or re-integrate yourself

back into your family after a horrible ordeal?

Elizabeth: I think I'm human.

I think everybody else is human.

We all have good days.

We all have bad days.

Yeah, there's some days when I'm like,

"Oh, geez, why did this happen?

How am I here?"

But then it passes, and I'm like,

"Right, I have something I can offer

because of what has happened to me."

Dobner: She has said her mother told her, quite specifically,

the day that she was found

not to give any more of herself to this person,

not to let him

take anything more from her than he already had.

And, you know, what amazing and sage advice.

And I think she's seemed to move forward in her life that way.

♪♪

Elizabeth: I'm not just that girl that was kidnapped.

That happened to me, but I'm so much more.

She's just a strong, strong individual.

There's no other way of saying it.

Even today, do you still feel that fear

that you experienced as a young girl?

No. I don't.

It's rather remarkable how someone can go through that

and be so resilient.

In fact, she's become a fierce advocate for others.

To raise awareness about kidnappings

and a way to raise awareness about sex assault.

I feel very strongly about trying to make a difference

so that what happened to me

doesn't happen to any other child.

I think the takeaway is that

no matter how bad something can be,

like, you can make it something good.

Woman: Do you let yourself think back on it?

Elizabeth: I have so much -- so much to look forward to.

I have a whole life ahead of me.

It's just not even worth looking back.

♪♪

Elizabeth Smart went on to graduate from high school

and college.

She's married now and has three children of her own.

In 2011, she established the Elizabeth Smart Foundation.

She travels the world educating others

on surviving kidnapping and sexual assault.

Elizabeth is also a powerful advocate of legislation

for the protection of children.

Brian David Mitchell never responded

to our request for an interview,

and Wanda Barzee declined.

Thanks for watching.

Good night.