Elizabeth Smart and her captors
Elizabeth Smart was abducted from her Salt Lake City bedroom in 2002 at the age of 14 and rescued nine months later.
Former kidnapping victim Elizabeth Smart spoke with CBS News correspondent Vinita Nair in August 2016 about her fight to stop human trafficking. She said her kidnapper, Brian David Mitchell, showed her magazines containing hardcore pornography and wanted to mimic what he saw. Smart is assisting Fight the New Drug, an anti-pornography advocacy group.
Elizabeth Smart
Elizabeth Smart, center, the subject of an intense police hunt after being abducted from her bedroom in June 2002 and rescued months later, watches as President George Bush takes part in a signing ceremony for the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act of 2006 in the Rose Garden at the White House in Washington, D.C. on Thursday, July 27, 2006. Others are unidentified.
Elizabeth Smart
Elizabeth Smart, who was reunited with her family on March 12, 2003 after being kidnapped, listens to President George Bush speak before signing a wide-ranging package of child safety measures into law in the Rose Garden of the White House, Wednesday, April 30, 2003, in Washington, D.C.
Elizabeth and Lois Smart
Elizabeth Smart, left, and her mother Lois Smart on March 12, 2003.
Elizabeth Smart and President Bush
President George Bush greets Elizabeth Smart, center, and her mother Lois Smart in the Roosevelt Room at the White House in Washington Wednesday, April 30, 2003. Bush met with the Smart family before the signing a sweeping child protection bill that encourages states to set up Amber Alert systems to find abducted children.
Elizabeth Smart
Elizabeth Smart in an undated photo. Smart is one of six children in her family.
In the middle of the night on June 5, 2002, Brian David Mitchell broke into the family’s home armed with a knife and took Smart from the bedroom she shared with her younger sister, Mary Katherine.
Elizabeth Smart
Elizabeth Smart in an undated photo.
Smart was found by police officers 18 miles from her Salt Lake City home in 200, nine months after she was taken. Smart’s kidnapping and rescue made national headlines.
Elizabeth Smart
Elizabeth Smart plays the harp in an undated photo.
Elizabeth Smart
Elizabeth Smart, right, arrives at the federal courthouse with her mother, Lois Smart, and her father Ed Smart prior to her testimony in a competency hearing for her alleged kidnapper, Brian David Mitchell, Thursday Oct. 1 2009, in Salt Lake City.
Smart, 21, was abducted from her home in 2002 and was spotted nine months later by a observant citizen walking the streets with Mitchell and his wife in Sandy, Utah.
Brian David Mitchell
Elizabeth Smart’s kidnapper, Brian David Mitchell.
Wanda Ileen Barzee
Wanda Ileen Barzee, Brian David Mitchell’s wife, was convicted with her husband for the kidnapping of Smart. Now 70, Barzee was transferred from Texas, where she was serving a federal prison term, to a prison in Utah on April 8, 2016.
Brian David Mitchell
Brian David Mitchell
Wanda Ileen Barzee
Wanda Ileen Barzee.
Wanda Ileen Barzee
Wanda Ileen Barzee was convicted in 2009 in connection with Smart’s kidnapping after pleading guilty.
Brian David Mitchell
Brian David Mitchell repeatedly raped Smart during her captivity.
Mitchell stood for trial beginning on November 8, 2010. His defense argued he was legally insane at the time of the kidnapping and imprisonment of Smart.
Wanda Ileen Barzee
Wanda Ileen Barzee received concurrent sentences in state and federal prison.
Brian David Mitchell
A handcuffed Brian David Mitchell, center.
Mitchell’s trial took place at the Frank E. Moss Federal Courthouse in Salt Lake City.
Brian David Mitchell
Brian David Mitchell during trial.
Elizabeth Smart’s sister, Mary Katherine, was able to identify Mitchell’s voice after the kidnapping as belonging to someone known to the family at the time as a man named “Emmanuel.” Emmanuel had done odd jobs around the house for money. Through a drawing made by a sketch artist seen on John Walsh’s tv program “America’s Most Wanted” Mitchell’s family made the connection and alerted police.
Brian David Mitchell
Brian David Mitchell is restrained in court.
Mitchell’s competency to stand trial was questioned repeatedly.
Brian David Mitchell
Brian David Mitchell was given a life sentence without the possibility of parole on May 25, 2011 and sent to a federal prison.
elizabeth_speaks_12_10.jpg
Elizabeth Smart addresses the media outside the federal court house following the verdict in the Brian David Mitchell trial Friday, Dec. 10 2010 in Salt Lake City.
Mitchell was found guilty for the June 5, 2002 kidnapping of Elizabeth Smart.