Utah Cops Admit Mistakes In Smart Case

The man who led Salt Lake City police in the search for Elizabeth Smart clearly regrets that the investigation was not more aggressive, reports CBS News Correspondent Jane Clayson.

"At the time, I thought I was making the best choice, but now in hindsight I wasn't," says retired police investigator Corey Lyman. "And so, absolutely, I have regrets."

Lyman says, "I wish I could do it over. I kind of go through this emotional 'Could this have been over so much sooner?'"

Police have acknowledged that they made mistakes in their nine-month effort to find Elizabeth, fixing on the wrong suspects and withholding a composite sketch of the man now being held in her abduction.

"Hindsight is 20-20 vision. If we had to go back over it again, I think every one of (our investigators) would say, 'I wish we had gone public with that ... earlier,'" Salt Lake Police Chief Rick Dinse said Thursday.

Fifteen-year-old Elizabeth was found outside Salt Lake City this week with drifter Brian David Mitchell and his wife. Police are investigating the couple in her abduction nine months ago.

Police sources say Mitchell may also have tried to kidnap Elizabeth Smart's 18-year-old cousin, Jessica Wright, a month after Elizabeth was abducted. As police piece together Mitchell's activities during the nine months of Elizabeth's absence, a story of missed opportunities emerges.

The suspected kidnapper was known on the street as self appointed street preacher practicing a fundamentalist form of Mormonism – including polygamy – so extreme he was excommunicated by the church.

"He appeared on the streets three years ago and since that time he's been known as the preacher man and a lot of our homeless friends have just tried to avoid him," said Pam Atkinson, director of a Salt Lake City homeless shelter.

Mitchell's own family paints a picture of a man with few endearing qualities. Ex-wife Debbie Mitchell says she can easily imagine him brainwashing Elizabeth.

"Inside our home he was very controlling and very abusive and cruel he did some cruel things," she says.

Debbie Mitchell's daughter Rebecca says her stepfather turned her childhood into a world of hurt.

"He was constantly hitting my mom beating her up. He molested me and my siblings for the entire time they were married," Debbie Mitchell says.

Mitchell's influence over Elizabeth appears to have been strong. Even when she was safe in the hands of police on Wednesday, she continued to insist she was part of Mitchell's family.

Victor Quezada of the Sandy, Utah, police department said he told her, "'We think that you're Elizabeth.' But she kept denying it. She said she was Augustine."

Mitchell was actually in police hands twice during Elizabeth's kidnapping – once in Salt Lake City on shoplifting charges and then in San Diego for breaking into a church. In a court appearance there, Mitchell implied Elizabeth was his daughter.

"My wife and daughter are staying with some friends presently and I'll be there too," Mitchell said in court. "We're staying with some friends in the Lord Jesus Christ. I'm a minister for the Lord."

Police fielded more than 16,000 tips in their search for Elizabeth Smart, but it was just one — from Elizabeth's younger sister — that really mattered in the end.

In October, 9-year-old Mary Katherine Smart recalled that the intruder who took her older sister from their shared bed most likely was Mitchell, a one-time family handyman then known only as Emmanuel.

But police focused on Richard Ricci, who died Aug. 30 of a brain hemorrhage and had insisted he had nothing to do with Elizabeth's disappearance.

Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson proposed an independent review of the way the case was handled "just to resolve any questions that may be lingering."

Asked if police performance was lacking, Elizabeth's father, Ed Smart, said Thursday: "I believe that some mistakes have been made, but I know that they were trying."

"We learn by our mistakes," he said. "We don't have professional kidnap policemen, so we do our best."