Elizabeth Smart is revisiting the kidnapping case again.
Netflix’s new documentary, “Kidnapped: Elizabeth Smart,” released Tuesday, reveals what happened during the nine months between when the then-14-year-old Smart was abducted from her Salt Lake City, Utah, bedroom on a June night in 2002 and when she was later rescued.
Elizabeth, 38, recalls the crisis with her sister Mary Catherine, father Ed, uncles Dave and Tom, and the officers involved in the incident.
Ed’s mother Lois, who divorced in 2019, did not participate in the documentary.
“My mother played a huge role in helping me process what happened,” Elizabeth said in a statement. “But now she’s ready to leave it in the past.”
Elizabeth was kidnapped by Brian David Mitchell and became a sex slave to Mitchell and his wife Wanda Barzee. She was rescued by police on March 12, 2003.
Mitchell, now 72, was sentenced to life in prison, while Barzee, 80, was sentenced to 15 years in prison. She was released in 2018, five years early.
Here are the biggest bombshells of “Kidnapped: Elizabeth Smart.”
Elizabeth’s family were considered suspects in the case.
After Elizabeth went missing, police considered Elizabeth’s family as possible kidnappers.
“Statistically, the perpetrators of these types of crimes are often parents or family members,” said Detective Cordon Parks. “So we started watching them very closely.”
Parks said “there were several things” that made him suspicious of the Smarts.
“I heard that the alarm was inadvertently turned off,” he said. “And the windows. When I looked the first morning, there were no scratches on the exterior wall. Even if you were to sit on a chair, you would get a scratch. I couldn’t find anything. My first assessment was that this was probably not an entry point. Maybe it was a gradual entry.”
Elizabeth’s family underwent a “detailed interview” with police and underwent a polygraph test. Ed passed the test, but his younger brother Tom’s test was inconclusive.
Tom seemed to have become even more suspicious to police and the public at the time when he gave an interview in which he expressed sympathy for his niece’s abductor and described the case as “a great story in many ways, because above all it’s about a beautiful, angelic girl.”
“Anyone who saw that interview would think, ‘Tom Smart is a piece of shit and maybe he did it,'” Tom said in the document. When I came home from the interview, my wife said to me: “You’ve messed up your family.” ”
“All that mattered was finding Elizabeth,” Tom added. “We didn’t wait for them to say we were cleared. I mean, who would admit that? We knew we were clear.”
Elizabeth’s father was admitted to a psychiatric ward after the kidnapping.
Ed not only suffered from Elizabeth’s disappearance, but also from becoming a suspect in the case.
“Lois called me and I got down there and saw this tear, and she basically said, ‘Law enforcement doesn’t believe you’re telling the truth. It means you’re hiding something,'” Ed recalled.
“I was shocked and overwhelmed,” he continued. “And I couldn’t stop shaking. I had nothing to do with this. And my father said, ‘If you don’t calm down, I’m going to rape you.’ So he took me to the hospital and put me in the psychiatric ward, and I cried the whole night.”
Elizabeth remembered the terrifying night she was kidnapped.
Elizabeth recalled her experiences in detail, starting with the night she was taken.
“I remember hearing a man’s voice that night: ‘There’s a knife at your neck. Don’t make a sound. Wake up and come with me,'” she said. “I was scared. Was he going to hurt me? Was he going to kill me?”
“He took me into the backyard, and we started walking down this path, and I remember thinking, ‘Where is he taking me?'” I became worried that I was missing out on my chance to escape. I asked him if he was going to rape and kill me. Because I thought that’s what he was trying to do. I wanted it to be as close to home as possible so my parents could find me. ”
Elizabeth said Virgie greeted her when she arrived at the campsite and gave her a hug.
“Then she took off my shoes and started washing the dirt off my feet,” Elizabeth recalled. “Then she started trying to take off my pajamas.”
Elizabeth also recalled the “exact words” Mitchell said to her that night. “I hereby seal you as my wife before God and the angels as my witnesses.” After she screamed, Mitchell threatened to kill her.
“It didn’t matter what I did. In the end, he raped me,” she said. “I remember it hurt so bad. I remember begging him to stop. And after he was done, he got up, smiled like it was no big deal to him, and walked out of the tent. And I was just left on the ground.”
Elizabeth’s kidnapper had plans to take more girls.
“He said God had commanded him to kidnap seven girls,” Elizabeth said of the night she was kidnapped. “I was the first of seven. He said my sister was probably going to be one of his wives. Or so was my cousin Olivia. I was horrified.”
Elizabeth heard the search party looking for her.
Elizabeth was being held by Mitchell and Barzee in a mountain camp and was almost discovered by a search party.
“I vaguely remember hearing my name,” Elizabeth said. “It was a faint sound, but I could still hear it. (Mitchell) took me into the tent, pulled out a knife (and said), ‘If anyone comes into this camp, this is the knife I’m going to use to kill them. It’s your fault.'”
“I only heard my name called a few times and then it just disappeared,” she added. “And I didn’t hear that sound anymore.”
Elizabeth’s sister helped identify the kidnapper.
Mary Catherine was in the same room as Elizabeth at her parents’ home when she witnessed her sister being taken away. However, she could not see Mitchell and was initially unable to cooperate with the police investigation.
“I tried to remember who had taken Elizabeth away. I knew I heard the voice, but I couldn’t remember where it came from,” Mary Catherine said. “I wanted to be as helpful as I could. At one point they tried to hypnotize me, but there was so much pressure from everyone. It was hard for a 9-year-old.”
Four months after Elizabeth was abducted, Mary Catherine remembered a man named Immanuel, whom she remembered from the voice of the person who had taken her.
Immanuel is actually Mitchell, who met Lois, Elizabeth, and Mary Catherine while begging on the street. Lois gives him the money and Ed’s phone number, and the Smart family ends up hiring him to do some work from their home, which is why Mary Katherine recognized his voice.
A sketch was made about Mitchell, and his brother-in-law recognized him from an episode of America’s Most Wanted and called Tom to tell him that Mitchell was likely Elizabeth’s prisoner.
How was Elizabeth rescued?
After being taken to San Diego, Elizabeth uses God to convince Mitchell and Virzee to return to Salt Lake City.
When the trio arrived in Sandy, Utah on March 12, 2003, someone noticed Mitchell and Smart and called police. Authorities arrived and took Elizabeth aside and asked if she was Elizabeth Smart.
“My captor was right there,” she said. “I was scared. I needed the safest possible answer.” Her response to the police was, “If you say so.”
Sandy Police Sergeant Victor Quesada recalled telling Elizabeth, “For the sake of this country and my family, say you’re Elizabeth. And she looked at me and said, ‘That’s what you say.'” I had never heard such words in my life. I said, ‘I’ll take that as a yes.’ ”
Why Elizabeth decided to testify against her kidnappers
Despite being arrested in 2003, Mitchell did not go to trial until 2010. Elizabeth said she “didn’t want to face” Mitchell in court, but was determined to testify to prevent him from getting out of prison and “going after another young girl.”
“I felt like the system was rigged against me, and I thought, ‘This has been going on for almost 10 years. It has to end. I don’t care if I have to sit in court every day for months on end, whatever it is. If this is going to end, I’m going to do it,'” Elizabeth said.
“When we finally got the guilty verdict, it was like, ‘It’s time. Thank goodness. It’s over, we can put it in the past,'” she added.
Mitchell was convicted of kidnapping and transporting a minor across state lines for the purpose of sexual activity. He was serving a life sentence at a federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana, before being transferred to the Federal Correctional Facility in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania.
Barzee served time at a federal prison in Forth Worth, Texas, and then at a state prison in Draper, Utah, before being released in 2018. She was arrested in May 2025 for violating her sex offender probation by visiting two Salt Lake parks.
How old is Elizabeth Smart now?
Elizabeth Smart is currently 38 years old. She is married to Matthew Gilmore, whom she met on a mission trip. The couple wed in Hawaii in February 2012 and have three children, Chloe, 11, James, 8, and Olivia, 6.
Elizabeth has become an advocate for sexual assault survivors and a child safety activist through her work with the Elizabeth Smart Foundation.
She published a book about her abduction in 2013 called My Story.
“Kinnapped: Elizabeth Smart” is available on Netflix.
