Episode 229 | Historical Events — Mysterious Events
In this Mystery episode we focus on the Elizabeth Smart kidnapping — fourteen-year-old Elizabeth Smart abducted at knifepoint from her Salt Lake City bedroom by Brian David Mitchell on June 5th, 2002, and held captive for nine months. Mitchell moved through public spaces with Smart and was reported to police multiple times during those nine months. In August 2002, officers interviewed Smart in a Salt Lake City library while she was in Mitchell's presence. She did not disclose her identity. She was returned to Mitchell.
We trace the investigation's focus on the wrong suspect, the five months it took to fully act on nine-year-old Mary Katherine Smart's identification of "Emmanuel," and the specific moment that freed her: a police officer separating Mitchell from the two women with him, creating the conditions under which Smart could identify herself. Mitchell was convicted in 2010 and sentenced to two life terms. Elizabeth Smart has spent the years since explaining why she didn't disclose her identity when officers were present — not because she failed, but because the psychological mechanisms of captivity don't work the way we assume. Her foundation works to ensure those mechanisms are better understood.
