Posted on 03/13/2003 9:51:55 AM PST by SarahW
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The drifter suspected of snatching a 15-year-old Utah girl rescued after a nine-month ordeal was described on Thursday as a man who believed he was a prophet and who likely brainwashed the child.
Elizabeth Smart was found alive on Wednesday in what relatives described as a "miracle," and reunited with her family after police received a tip from two people in a store just miles from the girl's home where she was abducted from her bedroom last June.
The teen-ager's father, Ed Smart, told reporters he believed his daughter had been "brainwashed" by her alleged abductor, identified by police as Brian David Mitchell, a street preacher and itinerant who once did work around the Smart's home.
"I can just tell that he (Mitchell) did an absolute brainwashing job on her," Smart told ABC's "Good Morning America."
When police picked up the girl in a car in Sandy, Utah, on Wednesday, she was wearing a white veil. A woman identified as Wanda Barzee was also picked up by police.
No charges have been filed against Mitchell and Barzee and little information has been disclosed about the girl's ordeal.
Smart, who broke down at times, said the man had held his daughter at knifepoint until August in the mountains directly above their Salt Lake City home. Elizabeth heard rescuers calling her name but could not reply.
"It kills me she was there for three months, literally up in the hills (behind our house)," Smart told NBC's "Today" show.
Mitchell's stepsons, Mark and Derrick Thompson, told morning television that Mitchell and their mother, Barzee, had traded an "average life," started wearing white robes and sold their possessions to live on the street to preach and panhandle.
Mitchell's stepdaughter, Louree Gayler, said she moved out of their home in her early teens.
"Brian was always hugging me the wrong way and kissing on me and I just didn't like it over there. So I went and moved back with my dad and I haven't seen my mom since," Gayler said on morning television.
After hearing of Smart's disappearance and reports their stepfather might be involved, the Thompson brothers said they had a "gut feeling" Mitchell had taken the little girl and they scoured homeless shelters for them.
They described a bizarre life with their stepfather who had told them he was a prophet and spoke continuously of talking to angels.
Ed Smart said his daughter spent her first night back at home with family members holding them close and watching her favorite video, "The Trouble with Angels."
Investigators renewed their search for Mitchell last month based on descriptions by Elizabeth's younger sister, Mary Catherine, of the intruder who took Elizabeth away at gunpoint for their bedroom.
Smart said the reunion between the two sisters had been particularly poignant.
"It was just tears and hugs. As they fell asleep, they were hand in hand in bed. It was just the thing that I had hoped for and looked forward to," he told ABC.
Police, who said they had not recovered the black handgun believed to have been used in the kidnapping, could also not say whether the 15-year-old had tried to escape and where the trio have been since the abductionSource
In September, Mitchell appeared at a late-night party in a downtown Salt Lake City apartment, said freelance photographer Dan Gorder, who snapped shots of the wandering preacher chugging a beer. Mitchell was accompanied by two women dressed in white, veils covering all but their eyes, Gorder said.
"One woman was older, the other looked really young," said Gorder. "They never moved away from him and were looking down most of the time."
Gorder said at the time he was taking the photographs, he had no idea the younger woman was Elizabeth Smart. "It seems pretty farfetched that she would be at a party," he said. "But I wish I would have known."
Gorder said he took seven or eight photographs of the three "because they looked strange." Mitchell noticed the photographs were being taken and "did not look too happy about it," Gorder said. But the drifter -- who told more than 100 partygoers he was Jesus -- made no move to stop the 30-year-old Gorder.
Elizabeth and her alleged captors spent almost a week last October at the Salt Lake City basement apartment of Daniel Trotta, who befriended Mitchell about a year ago. Mitchell shopped at the Wild Oats health food store on 400 South where Trotta worked.Trotta said he felt sympathetic to Mitchell and invited him to sleep for a few nights at his apartment -- one block from Salt Lake City police headquarters. Mitchell showed up with Barzee and a girl he referred to as their daughter. Both women wore scarves over their heads and veils that covered most of their faces.
"It didn't cross my mind that it was Elizabeth Smart," Trotta said. "I wouldn't have suspected anything."
Although Trotta knew of Elizabeth's kidnapping, he thought she must be younger than the tall teen-ager in his apartment. The girl barely spoke, he said. He once asked her what her name was, but Mitchell interrupted him and she did not answer.
Trotta said he left his guests alone during the day when he went to work at Wild Oats, although Mitchell occasionally brought Barzee and Elizabeth to the store. The three usually slept on Trotta's living room floor, he said. Trotta noticed nothing unusual about Elizabeth or her relationship to her "parents."
Occasionally the three of them sang religious hymns to him, Trotta said.
After five or six nights, Mitchell and the others left. He told Trotta he was going to camp in the foothills for a while. He also asked Trotta not to tell anyone that.
What an incredibly sick and ignorant post.
I heard on the local news that they had a small tent.
If I find the link, I'll post it.
A person who had been "brainwashed" or who was truly suffering from Stockholm Syndrome would have been psychologically traumatized by a sudden, unexpected rescue. That's a far cry from what we're seeing in the photos of Elizabeth. The fact that a smiling Elizabeth was immediately released to her family's care would seem to argue against the "brainwashing" theory.
Maybe some street smarts are good to have in kids ---wasn't the girl who escaped her kidnapper a black city girl? Less gullible, less afraid to escape?
I know of a couple of starry-eyed Catholic families like this. They actually pick up homeless guys on the street and take them to their fashionable, 4000 square foot homes. They "talk" with them, and one woman even put one of these guys up one night. And the silly husbands just go right along with it. No thought that they could be killed in their beds.
If this foolishness is what it takes to get into heaven, I don't want to go.
One of my best friends was ordained a priest. After four years as a pastor, the bishop had to remove him because he was giving away all the collection money to homeless people, who pegged St. Patrick's in North Dallas as a "soft touch."
I doubt it, too. The whole "Stockholm Syndrome" is likely too often used as a cop-out for the truth, a convenient psy-ops out.
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