Mormon True Crime episodes will drop on Saturday from now on... not usually this late. Think of this week as a two-fer Sunday.
Elizabeth Smart was fourteen years old when Brian David Mitchell entered her Salt Lake City home, held a knife to her throat, and kidnapped her from the bedroom she shared with her younger sister.
For the next nine months, Mitchell and his wife, Wanda Barzee, held Elizabeth captive while Mitchell declared himself a prophet, claimed continuing revelation from God, “sealed” Elizabeth to himself as a plural wife, gave her priesthood blessings, renamed her, and repeatedly used Mormon doctrine and religious language to justify his control and abuse.
Drawing from Elizabeth's account of her captivity and testimony from Brian David Mitchell’s federal trial, we follow the kidnapping from the Smart family home into the mountains above Salt Lake City, through the search for Elizabeth, Mitchell’s attempts to take additional girls, the move to California, and Elizabeth’s eventual return to Utah.
The question that would eventually dominate Mitchell’s prosecution was how much did he understand about what he was doing? The answer we want to know: how much did he believe his own garbage?