Frustrated With Police, Family Turns to 'America's Most Wanted' [Elizabeth Smart]

Salt Lake City Police Chief Rick Dinse on Thursday rebutted criticism about not pursuing Brian Mitchell vigorously enough

SALT LAKE CITY, March 13 For a man now described as being at the center of one of the most intense missing-person cases in years, Brian D. Mitchell did not exactly try to blend into the scenery.

With a veiled Elizabeth Smart and his wife in tow, Mr. Mitchell showed up at a downtown block party here, a grocery store, a restaurant, even living for about a week just one block from the Salt Lake City police headquarters, numerous witnesses say.

Throughout much of last summer, while the police and volunteers were looking day and night for Elizabeth after her kidnapping, it turned out she was moving among them in the open, dressed in the most flamboyant of outfits, and at times even camped just three-and-a-half miles from the Smart home. Mr. Mitchell was stopped by the police several times, and later arrested in San Diego on a burglary charge all while still holding Elizabeth captive, the authorities said.

Dan Gorder, a freelance photographer, took a picture of the odd-looking group, dressed in white robes that looked like hospital gowns, at a big outdoor party in downtown Salt Lake City last September, just three months after 14-year old Elizabeth was kidnapped from her home near Salt Lake City. The police said late today that they believed Elizabeth was indeed one of the people in the picture.

"They stood out in the crowd that's for sure," Mr. Gorder said. "When I took their picture, they didn't seem to be really happy with it, but they didn't do anything."

He said that Elizabeth, who stayed close to the adults and never spoke, had not appeared to be threatened. "She could have just walked away or said something," Mr. Gorder said. "She definitely had the opportunity to walk away."

A few weeks before the party, in late August, the three were spotted at a suburban restaurant where Mr. Mitchell, with his long beard and flowing robe, and his wife, Wanda I. Barzee, 57, were so well known that the restaurant workers had a nickname for them.

"We called them Jesus and Mary," said Erin Ptaschinski, 17, a waitress at Souper Salad, in Midvale, about 10 miles south of Salt Lake City.

Ms. Ptaschinski said a girl she now believed was Elizabeth Smart came in only once with the couple, last August, and stayed about two hours, regularly getting up to get her own food at a salad bar. On the door of the restaurant was a poster of Elizabeth at the time, perhaps, the most sought person in America.

"She could have run at that point or told us who she was," Ms. Ptaschinski said. "She just got her food and walked back to the table. She was never physically restrained."

The Salt Lake City police chief, Rick Dinse, said Elizabeth "was psychologically affected by this," but would not elaborate on whether she had begun to identify with her captors. Elizabeth's father, Ed Smart, said he believed she was "undoubtedly brainwashed."

A supervisor at the restaurant, Lindsey Dawson, also went up to the table to talk to the three people in white robes.

"It was creepy, because all you could see was her eyes," said Ms. Dawson, referring to Elizabeth. Usually, the group was allowed to eat free, workers said.

The two restaurant workers said they never realized who the vagrants were until a few weeks ago, when Tom Smart, an uncle of Elizabeth, came into the restaurant with a poster of Mr. Mitchell and his wife.

"I told him about the encounter last summer, and Tom said, `Is there anyway that could have been Elizabeth?' " Ms. Dawson said. "I said: `Yes. Very likely.' "

Mr. Mitchell, 49, was a self-proclaimed prophet who called himself Emmanuel, and was well known on the streets of Salt Lake City as a panhandler and preacher among the homeless. He was formerly active in the Mormon church, and has been married three times, according to records. He has lived in a half-dozen residences in the Salt Lake area in the last 14 years. Mr. Dinse said he was "a self-proclaimed polygamist."

Mr. Dinse also said, "his criminal background is very minor."

Mr. Mitchell first came to the Smart home in 2001, after he was hired to do some day labor at the house. He worked only one day, for about four hours, doing some roof repair work and raking leaves. He seemed gentle and soft-spoken, said Ed Smart, and talked about of his religious beliefs.

Just after the kidnapping, on June 5, Mr. Mitchell and Elizabeth camped in the mountains near the Smart house. At times, Elizabeth even heard searchers calling her name, Mr. Smart said.

Late last summer, the police say, Mr. Mitchell was moving all around Salt Lake City. At the block party in early September, other people approached the three and asked about the small, veiled girl.

"I went up to Mitchell and asked, `How come she can't even look at people?' " said Ron Lewis, 37, a banquet crew leader who was at the party. "I said, `What's up with a religion that won't even let women speak?' " said Mr. Lewis, who told his story to the police today.

"Her eyes were all I saw of Elizabeth," Mr. Lewis said. He said at times, Mr. Mitchell and his wife held Elizabeth's hand.

"He must have really done a job on her, because all she would have had to do was to say her name," Mr. Lewis said. Later in the party, Mr. Mitchell made a scene, shouting from atop a chair, and was asked to leave, he said.

"He was shouting at the top of his voice, `I am the word of God,' " Mr. Lewis said.

The three were also seen, repeatedly, at the Wild Oats Natural Market Place, near downtown. Mr. Mitchell was a regular customer, before and after the kidnapping, clerks there said.

"The three of them must have come in about three times," said Wally Cromar, 24, who works at the store. "We'd never seen him with a second girl before." They three were dressed in the usual white flowing robes, the faces of the women veiled.

"We get a pretty diverse group of people in here hippies and vegans so you try not to think about people being strange," Mr. Cromar said.

It was at the Wild Oats that Mr. Mitchell became friends with another clerk, Daniel Trotta, who invited the three to come stay with him in his small studio apartment. They stayed for about a week last October, neighbors and relatives of Mr. Trotta's said.

His apartment is just over a block from the Salt Lake City police department headquarters. During the week at his apartment, Elizabeth spoke occasionally about school, but never told Mr. Trotta her real name, he said.

Bret Benge, a 35-year hair stylist who works next door to Mr. Trotta's apartment, recalled seeing "Emmanuel" and two women there last year.

"You know, Daniel and I didn't agree on that," he said. "I didn't really like the guy, Emmanuel, but we didn't talk about it that much. I saw the three of them over here and at a party with Daniel last fall and at Wild Oats."

Mr. Benge said he did not think it was odd that he had failed to recognize Elizabeth Smart. "I never bothered to look at them real well," he said. "They were always wrapped up."

But he questioned how Elizabeth could have been oblivious to the search going on for her. "She walked right in to Wild Oats and there were posters on all the doors," he said. "It's weird. It's a strange situation."

Mr. Mitchell spent much of last year in San Diego, police said today, and was arrested at least once, and was videotaped by a number of merchants.

San Diego County Sheriff's officials said today that Mr. Mitchell was arrested last month in the burglary of a church across the street from a homeless shelter. When arrested, he gave the name Michael Jenson, said Lt. Doug Clements of the sheriff's office.

He was held for six days, then released after pleading guilty to misdemeanor vandalism.

Others spotted the three people throughout San Diego County.

"All the skateboarders saw them," said Mike Gardner. "The women always had veils on."

Mr. Mitchell and the two robed women were seen at Wrigley's supermarket, outside San Diego.

"He was the one in charge," said Widad Dermody, a clerk. "I'd ask how you doing? And only he would answer."

The police said they believed Mr. Mitchell had moved through three states: California, Nevada and Utah. They say he arrived back in Utah on Wednesday, the day of his arrest, at a time when his face had been widely shown on a television show, "America's Most Wanted."

The last official address for Mr. Mitchell in Salt Lake City, an address which he used to register to vote in late 2001, is for a run-down house in a quiet neighborhood near a school and a Mormon church. A neighbor two doors down, Jason Kirchner, said he had never seen Mr. Mitchell at the house, but had seen him downtown.

"I saw him at a food festival, Taste of Utah, last year," said Mr. Kirchner. "He had those flowing robes on. I gave him some curry. And then when I saw that face on the news I turned to my wife and said, `That's the guy we gave the curry dish to.' "

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God bless John Walsh and his show, America's Most Wanted. I saw him on TV today saying he looked at a picture of Adam and said "We saved one, Adam. You didn't die in vain." It was very sweet. He's quite a guy.

Police believe Mitchell and Barzee kept Elizabeth at the campsite for at least two months -- perhaps until they became convinced she felt "psychologically imprisoned" by them and would not try to flee. Then, in August, they descended into the city, and the sightings began.
    University of Utah student Brendan Kawakami was mountain biking up Dry Canyon last August when he saw Mitchell walking with two women "in robes and burkas. They were polite. They smiled," he said. Like almost everyone who encountered them, Kawakami suspected nothing. "You don't see what you're not looking for," he said.
    That same month, employees spotted the trio at Souper Salad, a salad-buffet restaurant in Midvale. Mitchell and Barzee were regulars at the place, although this was the first time they had been seen there since the kidnapping.
    Employees were surprised to see Barzee and the teen-age girl with them wearing veils, since Barzee had never worn one before.
    "They were eating as much as they could," said staffer Lindsey Dawson, who noted the women kept their veils on throughout the meal. "We had no idea [it was Elizabeth]. You don't think a girl who's been kidnapped is going to be in plain sight, in a restaurant."
    In late August or early September, a Salt Lake City man videotaped the threesome sitting on a picnic table in Liberty Park.
    Later in September, the trio attended a now-famous party near the University of Utah. And in October, they spent almost a week at the downtown Salt Lake City apartment of a grocery store cashier who had befriended Mitchell.
    Sometime in October, police believe Mitchell took Barzee and Elizabeth by bus to Southern California, perhaps in search of warmer weather.
    There they apparently settled in Lakeside, a middle-class suburb some 15 miles east of San Diego, where a handful of residents have reported seeing them between November and February.
    For several days they frequented a Lakeside convenience store, Wrigley's Market, where they chatted among themselves and bought snack cakes. Noted store owner Asaad Rabban: "She didn't seem like she was forced to go with them."
    Police have searched a Lakeside campsite they believed the trio used. Mitchell also spent six days in the San Diego County Jail after being arrested Feb. 12 for breaking into a church.
    This week, for reasons police cannot explain, the threesome returned to Utah.

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In some ways, it was almost as if she never had left.
After spending nine months in the mountains and the desert, on the streets of Salt Lake City, San Diego and who knows where else, Elizabeth Smart eased into her first 24 hours back home doing the things she always has.
She fooled around with her harp, missing a few notes along the way. She watched her favorite movie. She tussled with her brothers and sisters. And she slept in her own bed.
"It's amazing how good she looks," said her uncle Tom Smart.

Added Angela Smart Dumke, Ed Smart's sister: "It's such a close nuclear family. There's no way she could have had exposure to [Mitchell]. I can't imagine Elizabeth going anywhere without her mother [Lois Smart] knowing."
However, family members were astounded by the condition in which Elizabeth was returned to them. She even appears to have survived with her sense of humor intact.
"Last night when we got home . . . everyone had been pleading her to play the harp. She struggled with a few pieces and said, 'Well, it's been nine months,' " said Ed Smart.

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They thought they had their man already, and were not inclined to consider any other possibilities. Unfortunately, it's not that uncommon.

One gets the sense that police, becuase they are forced to use PC methods in dealing with street people, were less agressive than thwey should have been..I'd be curious if the SLC police have been sued recently by any homeless advocacy groups...

Augustine, she said. Her name was Augustine.
    Wearing a wig, a veil and sunglasses, Elizabeth Smart insisted to the police officers who questioned her on State Street in Sandy on Wednesday that she was Brian David Mitchell's daughter, that they were from Florida.
    "I know who you think I am," she told the officers. "You guys think I'm that Elizabeth Smart girl who ran away."
    The officers persisted, at one point moving Elizabeth away from Mitchell and his wife, Wanda Barzee. Behind the sunglasses, her eyes welled with tears. The officers could see her heart visibly pounding beneath her T-shirt. They pressed, and finally the teenager relented.
    "Thou sayest," Elizabeth said after being asked yet again if she was the missing teenager.
    A day after Elizabeth Smart returned to her family, ending a nine-month ordeal that gripped the state and made headlines worldwide, there is an explanation as to why she did not make a break from her captors.
    She couldn't.
    Police and her family said Elizabeth was psychologically traumatized -- even brainwashed -- by the homeless couple now in custody for her kidnapping.
    "I have no doubt about that," said Ed Smart, Elizabeth's father. "I have no doubt that she feared for her life when she left [her bedroom]."
    Experts are putting a name to Elizabeth's behavior while in captivity -- Stockholm Syndrome, in which victims become emotionally attached to and allied with their captors. Experts also are drawing comparisons with another well-known kidnap victim: Patricia Hearst.
    "People are in disbelief that she couldn't have run to a phone and gotten help," said Doug Goldsmith, director of The Children's Center, a counseling service in Salt Lake City. "That's a misunderstanding of the tremendous psychological trauma of being held hostage in a situation like she was in."
    Hearst, long married to Bernard Shaw and mother of two daughters, appeared on "Larry King Live" on Thursday night to offer insights about how reality shifts for a hostage and what lies ahead for Elizabeth Smart.
    "It's going to take awhile," Hearst said of the healing process. "She still believes that her kidnappers have some kind of control over her and it is going to take at least a couple of weeks being away from them and back safely with her family before she realizes that they have no more powers, that she's truly safe."
   A granddaughter of publisher William Randolph Hearst, the then-19-year-old was taken at gunpoint from her Berkeley, Calif., apartment in February 1974 by a group known as the Symbionese Liberation Army. For two months she was kept, blindfolded, in a closet. She was repeatedly raped and beaten.
    By April she had a new name -- Tania -- and seemed -- to a skeptical public -- a willing participant in the army's criminal escapades. Freed in September 1975, she served 23 months in prison for her role in a bank holdup; President Clinton pardoned Hearst in 2001 as he left office.
    Like Hearst, Elizabeth's family has said their daughter was never out of sight of at least one of her two captors. For two months, they kept her in an isolated camp in a canyon northeast of her home. They then began traveling around Utah and at least two other states. Still unknown is what Mitchell, who called himself David Emmanuel Isiah and believed himself a messenger of God, told Elizabeth or how he frightened her into compliance.
    The trio used the line -- "We are messengers of the Lord, Jesus Christ" -- repeatedly when picked up by police this week.
    Experts said classic conditions for brainwashing appear to have been present -- an environment controlled by a zealot who uses loaded language and professes mystical powers or access to a higher power.
    "She had no contact with family, friends and lived, literally behind the veil, so to speak," said Rick Ross, executive director of the Ross Institute in Jersey City, N.J., and an expert in destructive cults and movements.
    "What he may have set up in her mind is that everyone and everything outside their small family group was evil and threatening, and even her future, her salvation and safety depended on him for safety and guidance."
    She did what was necessary to survive, the experts theorized.
    "Because you have been so abused and so robbed of your free will and so frightened, you come to a point where you believe any lie your abductor has told you," Hearst told King. "You don't feel safe, you think that you will be killed if you reach out to get help. You believe that your family will be killed. You're not even thinking about trying to get help anymore."
    Now that she has returned to her family, the hard work begins -- for her and them. That said, the odds of a full and rapid recovery, experts said, are in Elizabeth's favor.
    "The security and support [trauma victims] receive from their families is what allows [these] victims to recover," Goldsmith said.
    In the short term, it would not be surprising for Elizabeth to show concern for her former captors -- to even relate good experiences she had while with Mitchell and Barzee, the experts said.
    Surrounded by strong family support, she will be free to "gradually unfold and relax and reveal what happened and what went on in the group," Ross said, and to accept a new reality.
    Her parents and siblings also are likely to experience diverse emotions: grief, relief, anger, sadness and, overwhelmingly, joy.
    The Smarts have not said whether Elizabeth is receiving counseling, but that is likely -- and necessary, experts said.
    "Right now, there is a honeymoon phase," said Georgia Hilgeman-Hammond, executive director of the Vanished Children's Alliance in San Jose, Calif. She speaks from experience: her daughter, then 13 months, was snatched in 1976; the girl was recovered in Mexico five years later.
    The Smarts face the hard task of working back into everyday life and regaining a sense of security about letting Elizabeth be a normal teenager, Hilgeman-Hammond said.
    They also will have to help Elizabeth cope with emotional triggers -- seeing a homeless person, for example -- that reignite terror, Hilgeman-Hammond said.
    If her captors are put on trial, Elizabeth -- as well as members of her family -- would likely have to relive and retell stories of the past nine months, which is helpful to some victims but traumatizing for others.
    The crush of media attention will make it hard for the Smarts and Elizabeth to regain a sense of normality, and it is likely Elizabeth will never be just another Utahn again.
    "It's really important, given what we can assume is a fragile state of mind, that people leave her alone," Goldsmith said. "She didn't ask to become the new 'American Idol.' That is not her personality. Because you know about her through the media doesn't mean you know her, and that she wants to walk through town hugging everybody."
    Echoes Hilgeman-Hammond: "I hope we can give this family some space. It's going to take them time to heal. There is a lot of strength in the human spirit. People can heal and develop a new, normal life."

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Since the morning he allegedly snatched Elizabeth Smart from her bedroom at knifepoint, Brian David Mitchell has been in police custody twice -- first in Salt Lake City in September after allegedly shoplifting beer and other supplies from a downtown grocery store.
The responding Salt Lake City officer noted in his report that Mitchell used the alias "Immenuel." Mitchell initially said he was called "Go with God," but eventually provided his real name.
But apparently no connection was made to Mitchell when, one month later, the Smart family urged police to search for a wandering preacher who called himself Emmanuel, based on a tip from daughter Mary Katherine, the sole witness to Elizabeth's abduction.
Last month, the vagabond preacher was jailed in San Diego County for six days after breaking a church window -- apparently in search of a place to sleep.

Mitchell never did replace career criminal and former Smart handyman Richard Ricci at the "top of the list" of potential suspects. Just hours before Elizabeth was found alive, police clung to their theory of the crime -- that the late Ricci had grabbed the girl during a botched burglary.
Dinse defended the police focus on Ricci, saying investigators followed the evidence. He also defended investigators' decision -- which was opposed by the Smart family -- not to release a composite sketch done in October of Mitchell to the media.
"Hindsight is 20/20 vision," Dinse said. "All the investigators would say, 'I wish we had gone public with the sketch.' "

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But,but ,but the Police chief said it was do to the police that she was found.

Added Angela Smart Dumke, Ed Smart's sister: "It's such a close nuclear family. There's no way she could have had exposure to [Mitchell]. I can't imagine Elizabeth going anywhere without her mother [Lois Smart] knowing."

Of course Elizabeth had exposure to Mitchell. Her own MOTHER brought him to the home!!!

The 9 year old daughter had enough exposure to know his name and what he looked like.

Denial is not just a river in Egypt.

For several weeks, residents of a rural town noticed the bearded man in a long tunic who walked the streets and preached the Gospel. Two women silently followed him, covered in robes and veils.

Authorities confirmed Thursday that Mitchell had been in police custody in California for six days last month.
Using the name Michael Jensen, Mitchell was arrested by San Diego County Sheriff's deputies on Feb. 12 for vandalizing a church in Lakeside, an unincorporated community 25 miles east of San Diego.

"They were always very pleasant," said Richard Mason, a 45-year-old homeless man. "She didn't seem like she was kidnapped. She acted like she was part of the family."
The three sometimes ate lunch next to the lake, where on Thursday mothers played with children and passers-by fed sandwich bread to ducks and geese. The woman and girl would keep their veils on even when eating.

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" They also will have to help Elizabeth cope with emotional triggers -- seeing a homeless person, for example -- that reignite terror, ..."

or polygamous marriage.

Brings to mind David Brin's "The value - and empowerment - of common citizens in an age of danger."

Following America's worst single day of violent death in this century, pundits have engaged in a relentless tag-team shouting match. Security experts call for new government powers and tighter restrictions, while civil libertarians shout back that we should courageously accept risk in order to prevent "Big Brother" from peering into our lives. While they jostle for air time, both groups are foisting some rather unsavory shared assumptions.
- that there is a basic, zero-sum tradeoff between safety and freedom... we can only augment one by diminishing the other,
- that the tragedies happened because of a "security breakdown" requiring stringent fixes by a protective government,
- that only professionals have a role to play in coping with 21st century dangers.
Amid all the noise and posturing, nobody proposes enhancing the one thing that actually worked well on that awful day.
What appears to have worked, was the initiative and resourcefulness of common men and women.

According to the official Superior Court audio recording of the February 18 sentencing--obtained exclusively by The Smoking Gun--Mitchell told Judge Charles Ervin that his bust "turned me right around and, and I know I need to do what the Lord wants me to do with my life...I am deeply sorry and...nothing like that's going to happen again."
Below we've prepared a transcript of the sentencing hearing. Along with Mitchell--who was arrested and charged under the alias Michael Jenson--and Judge Ervin, an unidentified court clerk, Deputy District Attorney Leon Schorr, and Mitchell's lawyer, David Lamb, can be also heard on the tape. Where we've been unable to understand portions of the tape, we marked those segments with the symbol UI, for unintelligible.

Clerk: We're ready on Michael Jenson, number [UI].
Ervin: People versus Jenson 191.
Clerk: Yes, your honor, I believe that Mr. Jenson is going to plea then, to the uh, to the, uh, 594, your honor.
Ervin: Alright, as to count one sir. Violation of penal code section 594(a)(b)(2)(A) misdemeanor vandalism. How do you plead to that charge sir, guilty or not guilty?
Mitchell: Guilty.
Ervin: Are you pleading guilty to that offense because on or about February 12 of this year you unlawfully damaged and destroyed somebody's property? The amount that your damage was, was less than $400?
Mitchell: Yeah.
Ervin: Guilty plea is accepted as to count one. The balance of the charge is dismissed in light of the plea. Are you ready for sentence?
Lamb: Yes, your honor.
Ervin: Is there any legal cause why judgment should not now be implosed, imposed?
Lamb: No, your honor.
Ervin: People, uh, Mr. Lamb do you wish to be heard?
Lamb: No, your honor.
Ervin: People wish to be heard?
Schorr: No, your honor.
Ervin: Mr. Jenson, where you gonna be living when you get out of custody?
Mitchell: Sir, um, I don't know that yet.
Ervin: Alright.
Mitchell: Um, my wife and my daughter are staying with some friends presently in, uh, Lakeside and, uh, I'll be, I'll be there, too. We're staying with some friends in the Lord Jesus Christ. Uh, I'm a minister for the Lord and, uh...
Lamb: Where you living? Do you have a place to stay?
Mitchell: With, with these friends.
Ervin: On the day that you broke into the church where were you living at?
Mitchell: With these friends.
Ervin: Alright. I'm gonna release you from custody. I'm gonna put you on a grant of probation. Now you just told me that you're a minister for Jesus Christ, and I appreciate that. But if you're going into the Presbyterian church or any of those churches out there in Lakeside for the purpose of ministering and they don't want you on the property. If you don't have permission on the property, that's gonna be a violation of the charge of burglary that I'm sure Mr. Lamb's gonna discuss with you momentarily. Also, if you're going into those churches you're breaking the window and you're going in there because you don't have a place to live, that likewise could be a violation of the law. You understand that?
Mitchell: I do, your honor. And that, that was the worst night and the worst week of my whole life. I, I had, I had for the first time in 22 years I got drunk that night and, uh, and the whole night was just a nightmare and, and it's, and, and I, this week in jail has, uh, been like, uh, Jonah getting swallowed by the whale. It's, it's turned me right around and, and I know I need to do what the Lord wants me to do with my life and, and, and uh, and uh, and I am, I am deeply sorry and, and, uh, nothing like that's gonna happen again.
Ervin: The imposition of sentence is suspended for a period of three years on the following terms and conditions: he is to violate no laws. No same or similar offenses. Minor traffic offenses are excepted. He is to make full restitution for the window or any property that might have been broken at the Presbyterian church, and the record should reflect that it is Lakeside Presby, 9908 Channel Road, Lakeside, California. He is to pay a fine in the amount of $150 and a $100 state restitution fund fine. Fine is deemed satisfied by his time in custody, nine days. Seven actual and two 4019 PC good time, work time credits, for a total of nine days. Do you understand the terms and conditions of your probation, Mr. Jenson?
Mitchell: Yes, I do your honor.
Ervin: And do you accept them?
Mitchell: Yes, I do your honor.
Ervin: Good luck.

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Trapped in the hills above her anguished family's home for the first two months of her disappearance, Elizabeth Smart may have been kept from escaping or crying out for help by the growing influence of her captors, police said Thursday.

Frightened at first by her abduction at knifepoint, Elizabeth was forced to depend on her captors during her nine-month disappearance, authorities said. When found by police, the 15-year-old vehemently denied her identity when asked if she was Elizabeth Smart and told officers that the couple she was with were her parents.

"There is clearly a psychological impact that occurred at some point," Police Chief Rick Dinse said. "There is no question that she was psychologically affected."

Salt Lake police briefly outlined Elizabeth's movements over the last nine months, saying she spent the first two held by Brian Mitchell and Wanda Barzee achingly close to home in Dry Creek Canyon, a popular hiking area searched many times last summer.

In October, the three rode a bus to San Diego, and the group returned to the Salt Lake area on Wednesday, the day of their capture in the suburb of Sandy, police said.

Hours after she vanished, while in Dry Creek Canyon, Elizabeth had heard one of her uncles calling out her name but was unable to respond, her family said.

On Thursday, her family and friends focused not on what could have been, but on the astounding event many were calling a miracle: Elizabeth, taken from her bed in the middle of the night, was home again, playing the harp and watching her favorite movie, "The Trouble with Angels."

"Elizabeth is happy, she is well, and we are so happy to have her back in our arms," said her beaming father, Ed Smart.

Sierra Smart said she and several other cousins in the devout and affluent Mormon family spent about three hours with Elizabeth during her first full day at home. "She's like totally talking, totally casual," said Sierra, 22. "She got all new clothes. She gave a fashion show."

Amid the joyful reunion, however, was a growing list of questions: What about Mitchell, the shaggy-haired drifter accused of kidnapping the girl? Why didn't police find him sooner? Above all, what happened to Elizabeth during the long span since she vanished last June?

Ed Smart said he had not pressed his daughter for details of her captivity.

"What is going to come out is going to come out," he said. "I don't have it in me to try and make this harder for her than it is."

Asked how she had changed, he said she had returned home "really a young woman."

Dressed in a wig, veil and sunglasses, Elizabeth told the police officers who picked her up with Mitchell and his wife, Barzee, that her name was "Augustine."

Police questioned her aggressively about her identity, Officer Bill O'Neal said. He said she became agitated when officers asked her to remove her wig and sunglasses, and told them she recently had eye surgery.

"We took her aside ... she kind of just blurted out, `I know who you think I am. You guys think I'm that Elizabeth Smart girl who ran away,'" O'Neal said.

"Her heart was beating so hard you could see it through her chest," he added.

The group was taken to the Sandy police station in handcuffs; police said Elizabeth never asked about her family.
Elizabeth was discovered in suburban Sandy when two couples called police after spotting Mitchell walking down the street, recognizing him from a sketch of a handyman called "Emmanuel" circulated by the Smart family. He and Barzee remained jailed Thursday on suspicion of aggravated kidnapping.
Mitchell, a 49-year-old panhandler and self-proclaimed prophet for the homeless, was often seen in downtown Salt Lake City and sometimes lived in a tepee in the foothills above the city.
Dinse said Mitchell considered himself a polygamist, but "I do not want to attach his relationship with Elizabeth in that fashion."
Authorities in California disclosed Thursday that he had been arrested and held for six days in San Diego County last month for vandalizing a church.
A fingerprint check done after the arrest indicated he was also known as Mitchell, but deputies had no reason to keep him in custody, sheriff's spokesman Chris Saunders said. Mitchell pleaded guilty and was released on probation Feb. 18.
"If we had to do it over again, there's really nothing different we could have done because Salt Lake City authorities didn't identify him as a suspect until March 1," Saunders said.
For much of the time she was gone, it now seems clear that Elizabeth was hiding in plain sight, sometimes swathed in robes and veils.
She may also have spent time in an apartment a block from a Salt Lake City police station, and attended a party in the company of her apparent abductors. Merchants and transients in Lakeside, near San Diego, said they first noticed the man and two females last fall and may have seen them again as recently as two weeks ago.
The three largely kept to themselves, and the man known as Emmanuel claimed the girl was his daughter, they said.
"They were always very pleasant," said Richard Mason, a 45-year-old homeless man. "She didn't seem like she was kidnapped. She acted like she was part of the family."
Many who spoke to Mitchell said he passed out religious fliers and attempted to preach to them.
Clay Ruis, 47, said he asked once Mitchell if the women wore veils — even while eating — because they were Muslim. "He said, 'No. The women are veiled to protect them from the sins of the world,'" Ruis recalled.
Daniel Trotta, who says he unknowingly sheltered Elizabeth and the drifter couple in a Salt Lake City apartment for several days last fall, claims the girl never expressed fear and had opportunities to escape or at least call police.
Authorities have refused to confirm Trotta's account.
Police were besieged with thousands of tips and calls in the days after Elizabeth's disappearance. They focused much of their investigation on handyman Richard Ricci, 48, hired by the Smarts to help remodel their home.
Authorities said Ricci was a promising lead — he had an extensive criminal record and ultimately admitted stealing jewelry and other items from the Smarts. But Ricci steadfastly denied any involvement in Elizabeth's disappearance. He was in jail for a parole violation when he died last August after suffering a brain hemorrhage.
As the case grew cold, the Smart family grew frustrated at the lack of progress.
Their 10-year-old daughter, Mary Katherine, had offered a promising lead in mid-October. She told her parents another handyman who had worked at the house may have been the man she saw in the bedroom that night — "Emmanuel."
On Thursday, Smart sounded forgiving of police. He had previously accused them of acting slowly in pursuing Mitchell and concentrating too much on Ricci. Now, he said, all that matters is Elizabeth's safe return.
"I believe that some mistakes have been made," he said. "But we learn by our mistakes and we move forward. I believe that they tried to do their best."
Smart acknowledged making one mistake himself — hiring Mitchell to work on his house in November 2001.
"When I was up there on the roof with him, I never could have guessed," Smart said. "He was so soft-spoken; he was so quiet. I never would have guessed that such an animal would have existed behind such a person."

source

Random thoughts:

If this is a case of Stockholm syndrome, is this the quickest recovery on record? Whatever happened to the guy in a Polo shirt, white golf jacket and cap and hair on the back of his hands (or were Mitchell's white flowing robe and chest-length beard simply mistaken for the nattily-dressed kidnapper described by the little sister)? Whatever happened to the (reported) fact that the window screen was cut from the inside?

I will not speculate as to what really happened, but there are too many improbabilities and impossibilities in the "official" or family version of what happened to accept it at face value.

Chief Moose's all over the country.

Random thought back at ya:

Maybe Elizabeth's uncle flashing that flashbulbs in her face a million times so we can see all the happy, intimate moments of a traumatized girl, shocked her back into reality.