Picture of Elizabeth and her Kidnappers in San Diego.

A woman unknowingly snapped a picture of the three here in Lakeside California. She just thought it looked so odd to see this here. She called the Rick Roberts Radio show and they contacted Utah police. Also, it seems that Emmanual spent some time in our El Cajon jail for vandizing a church. Here's the picture:

If your 7 year old was bound, starved, denied water, fed meth, forced to watch rabbits being slowly strangled while constantly being told that their parents didn't love them because if they did their parents would come and get them, and then being warned that if they told anyone who they were their parents would be killed every day for 2 months, do you still think they would try to get away at the first possible opportunity?

Or would they be so convinced of the hopelessness of escape that they wouldn't even try?

This nut-job probably left "opportunities" for her to escape in the early part of this kidnapping and then "caught" her everytime in order to break her ability to hope for escape. He probably took her in public, to specific locations, to show her that there were no signs that her parents were concerned for her. He probably made her repeat her "new name" and various other "false truths" to cloud her mind between what was real and what was false.

If people believe that he simply kidnapped her and the next day she was allowed to wander around on her own, they are a lot more naive than a 14 year old girl from Salt Lake City was at this time last year.

The tabloids did have a scandal in their papers when it first was discovered Elizabeth disappeared. Something about the Smart brothers. I forget all the gory details. The Smart family were very upset. The story never went anywhere and it was smothered. I agree they knew how to manipulate the press. The same sort of press is now returning about this bizzarr case. Watch for the National Enquirer coming out with a new twist soon.

If the "new slant" you're talking about is that this girl
may have been pregnant and was spirited away in order to have the baby, that's what I heard a few people speculate on talk radio either the day of the capture or the following day, not by the host but by some callers. They were probably led to that scenario by the very suggestive
"nine months" timeframe. "What takes nine months to happen?" one of them asked. I seriously doubt the possibility of the sheltered 14 yr. old daughter of what looks like a classically straight Mormon family getting pregnant on her own, or probably any other way. But, truly,
there are many stubbornly loose ends in this story. There may prove to be some connection between the first and primary suspect, Richard Ricci, who died in jail just a few months later, this Mitchell fellow, and the kidnapping in the few days after the disappearance of Elizabeth Smart. His truck, which had been given him vby the Smarts as payment for his work at their house, has a dubious history in the period just before and after the kidnapping, whether or not he actually committed the kidnapping. I think he and
Mitchell knew each other, and Ricci was somehow involved, wittingly or unwittingly.

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