Police: Drifter Tried to Take Smart Cousin
March 14, 2003 -- The homeless street preacher accused of kidnapping Elizabeth Smart also tried to abduct her 18-year-old cousin, possibly to build a collection of multiple wives, police and the teens' families said today.
Brian David Mitchell, who is being held along with his wife on suspicion of aggravated kidnapping, also targeted Elizabeth's cousin, Jessica Wright, who bears a close resemblance to the 15-year-old kidnap victim, police said.
A July 24 report from the Salt Lake County Sheriff's Department says the screen on Wright's bedroom window was cut horizontally and vertically during the night and a chair was left beneath the window. Police also found a chair under a kitchen window at the Smart household after Elizabeth was taken June 5. Ed Smart, Elizabeth's father, has said he believes the kidnapper entered their home by cutting a window screen near the back door from the outside.
"We are presenting this evidence to the District Attorney and the U.S. Attorney as we speak," Salt Lake County Sheriff Aaron Kennard told a news conference. "I believe that we have solid information and solid leads that could connect the two households and the perpetrator to the two households together. … In interviewing [the] suspects and in developing evidence with Salt Lake City Police Department and with the FBI, [that] has led us to believe that the perpetrators of the Elizabeth Smart situation also had something to do with this case."
Kennard said he hopes he has enough evidence to present attempted kidnapping charges in the Wright case either Monday or Tuesday. He would not reveal what evidence allegedly ties Elizabeth's alleged kidnappers to the attempted break-in at the Wright home or how Mitchell may have learned about the cousin.
According to the report filed after the incident, Wright was awakened at 3 a.m.by the sound of pictures on her desk falling to the floor and observed a thin object sticking through the closed metal blinds of her window. The object then disappeared and she fled the room.
Wright's father, also awakened by the falling pictures, released the family dog into the back yard. The dog, the report said, immediately went to the teen's window, then went to the back fence and began barking.
The teens' relatives told ABCNEWS they had offered a $3,000 reward for any information related to the incident, but it did not generate much attention.
Investigators at the time determined that no one actually entered the Wright home and no items were missing. They treated the case as an attempted burglary and thought the attempted break-in might have been a prank.
An Obsession
Mitchell, 49, and his wife, Wanda Barzee, 57, were arrested Wednesday after police found them with Elizabeth in a Salt Lake City suburb near the girl's home. Formal charges are expected to be announced in court on Monday, when Mitchell is expected to be charged with aggravated kidnapping. Authorities did not say whether Barzee would face the same charge.
Police say Mitchell, a self-professed preacher who calls himself Emmanuel, kidnapped Elizabeth at knife-point from her Salt Lake City bedroom last June.
The motive for the abduction remains unknown, although police have said that Mitchell believes in polygamy, and some of Smart's family believe she was taken to become the man's wife.
"There was no question this guy had an obsession on her, that he wanted her," Elizabeth's aunt, Angela Dumke, told The New York Times. "That has been our feeling."
Mitchell worked for the Smarts as a handyman months before the kidnapping. Elizabeth's mother met him when he was panhandling on the streets in Salt Lake City, and the girl's father, Ed Smart, later offered him work.
Dumke told the Times that material the family was shown by FBI investigators was chilling and said it included writings by Mitchell.
"This guy is into polygamy and all that," she said.
Mitchell allegedly wrote a 27-page manifesto, called "The Book of Immanuel David Isaiah," in which he said he was a messenger of JesusChrist. One passage suggests polygamy was taken away from the people as punishment and that God would restore the "blessing" to those who truly followed Jesus.
A friend of Barzee's told the Deseret News that Barzee and Mitchell had had a revelation that they were to take seven plural wives. Vicki Cottrell, who has known Barzee for 28 years, says she visited the woman at the Salt Lake County Jail this morning and that Barzee told her the couple had been instructed to acquire younger wives because "as you get older you get set in your ways."
"Horror just struck me — because they weren't finished," Cottrell told the Deseret News.
‘Psychologically Impacted’
On Thursday, Salt Lake City police Chief Rick Dinse refused to say whether the teen had been physically or sexually abused. Elizabeth, he said, was held against her will for two months of her nine-month ordeal in a remote mountain campsite and later became "psychologically affected" by her captors.
Asked why Elizabeth apparently had not tried to escape from the street preacher and his wife, Dinse said, "There was clearly a psychological impact that occurred at some point. There is no question she was psychologically affected by this group."
Police said the investigation is active and there may be more arrests of people who may have known who Elizabeth was but did not come forward.
Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson announced today that an independent panel would be formed to look into the investigation amid concerns over the way police handled the case, and more questions that have surfaced since Elizabeth was found.
So Close, But Not Found
Investigators have begun collecting evidence from a camp site in the mountain foothills about three miles from the Smart home where police believe Elizabeth and her two captors lived from June until August 2002. Police say it is incredibly frustrating to know that despite the massive searches carried out in the area all summer, no one ever saw any signs of people camping in the remote area.
Police are still trying to piece together where Elizabeth was for the entire nine months. Mitchell was arrested in San Diego on Feb. 12 for vandalizing a church, but was released after six days. At that time Salt Lake City police had not named Mitchell as a suspect in Elizabeth's disappearance.
Other people have described meeting with Mitchell, Barzee and Elizabeth in Salt Lake City, and ABCNEWS' Good Morning America acquired video of the three sitting in a park in the city, all three wearing long white robes and the two women wearing veils and coverings on their heads.
Mitchell was excommunicated from the Mormon church, believed in polygamy and was accused by an ex-wife of being a pedophile, but police have not offered any of those accusations as a motive in the case.
"I do not want to attach his relationship with Elizabeth in that fashion," Dinse said Thursday evening. "I think it would be premature [to say] what the motive was. I'd like to stay away from that."
Ex-Wife’s Accusations
Mitchell's ex-wife, Debby Mitchell, alleged on ABCNEWS' Primetime on Thursday that she left him because he was abusing children.
Debby Mitchell said she made the allegations to police in the 1980s, but no criminal charges were ever filed against him.
When the woman heard her ex-husband's name connected to Elizabeth's disappearance, she said she was sure that if he was responsible, the girl would still be alive.
"I just figured he would keep her and hide her," she said on Primetime. "He wouldn't kill her. He's not a murderer. He murders their souls and their hearts."
Elizabeth's father said Thursday that he believed his daughter had been brainwashed, which may explain why she would not have tried to escape from Mitchell and Barzee, even though she was often in public with him, even at parties and in stores, when it seems she might have had a chance to gain her freedom.
Even when police approached the three on Wednesday and officers asked the girl if she was Elizabeth Smart, at first she was afraid to reveal her identity, instead giving her name as "Augustine."
"She just kind of blurted out, 'I know who you think I am. You guys think I'm that Elizabeth Smart girl who ran away,'" said Sandy City police Officer Bill O'Neal, one of the officers who found her. "Her heart was beating so hard you could see it right through her chest."
ABCNEWS' Bill Redeker contributed to this report.