- 8 months ago
The truth behind the headlines is more disturbing than you know... Join us as we examine the shocking revelations from Netflix's "Kidnapped" documentary about Elizabeth Smart's abduction. From dismissed evidence to near-rescues, we uncover the untold aspects of this notorious case that continue to haunt us today.
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00:00A man yelled out the name Hepzibah, and she came up to me and she hugged me.
00:08Welcome to Ms. Mojo, and today we're experiencing Elizabeth Smart's nightmarish kidnapping from her perspective.
00:14It felt like the system was rigged against me, and I thought this has gone on for almost a decade. It needs to end.
00:23Here are 10 of the biggest bombshells from Netflix's latest true crime documentary, Kidnapped.
00:28Plus, the grisly details filmmakers didn't cover, and the lingering unease it all leaves us with.
00:34Can you tell me the truth? How did Elizabeth wind up with you? Tell me the truth right now.
00:39By the power of God, she was delivered.
00:43The sole witness was disbelieved.
00:46The only person present when Elizabeth was kidnapped from her bedroom in June 2002 was her younger sister, Mary Catherine.
00:52Mary Catherine was very likely going to be the key to finding Elizabeth.
00:58The problem was, she was only nine years old, and she had just endured a trauma that made accurately recalling a memory very difficult.
01:05Anybody who has a traumatic memory will make a certain memory imprints.
01:09She was isolated in order to keep her recollection of the incident intact.
01:13The police officers didn't want me talking to anyone because it would possibly influence my memory.
01:20A number of bizarre tactics were employed as well.
01:23They even tried to hypnotize me at one point.
01:26Ultimately, police disregarded much of the information she was able to provide.
01:30I knew I'd heard the voice. I just couldn't remember where I'd heard it from.
01:35Even when she clarified that their prime suspect was innocent, investigators doubled down, presuming she was misremembering.
01:42Mary Catherine had been asleep. She would have been groggy.
01:45The reports that we have said she kept her eyes shut during the abduction.
01:51Maybe she didn't really realize it had been Riese.
01:54A false suspect died in police custody.
01:57Police zeroed in on Richard Riese, a contractor with a lengthy rap sheet who knew the layout of the home and had a wage conflict with Elizabeth's father, Ed.
02:06Give me what you know about the kidnapping.
02:09I don't.
02:09Oh, shit.
02:10Mary Catherine correctly dismissed him.
02:13I just knew it wasn't Richard Riese that night in my bedroom.
02:16But during his processing, he died of a sudden brain hemorrhage.
02:20And they said, Richard just got transported up to UMED.
02:24He collapsed in his cell and it is not looking good.
02:28It's a tragedy glossed over by the documentary that initially paints him as a villain.
02:32Richard Riese was a violent villain.
02:34What's left unreported is how he had been complaining of a headache in holding before slipping into a coma.
02:40He died trying to defend himself from false accusations and had no opportunity to speak to his family when he started feeling ill.
02:47Want me to make up some bullshit?
02:49No.
02:50Too many things that don't.
02:51Well, I don't get what it's to find out who the fuck did this shit.
02:55Years later, his wife took her own life and loved ones claim it was due to a broken heart.
03:01Police initially thought it was an inside job.
03:05In crimes involving a child's welfare, someone close to the child is often the guilty party.
03:09There's some indication that this may have been an inside job.
03:13This is evidenced by leading questions officers directed at Mary Catherine.
03:17Did his voice sound familiar to you?
03:20Yeah.
03:21Police started their investigation here and a number of red herrings sounded alarms early on.
03:27I was told that the alarm had been inadvertently left off.
03:31And the window.
03:35Investigators took issue with the way the chair had been placed to cut open Elizabeth's window screen.
03:40My initial assessment was maybe this wasn't the point of entry.
03:45Maybe it was a staged one.
03:47It became more convenient to assume her family had something to do with her disappearance and to work backwards.
03:53People would watch Ed on TV when he was talking and they would make statements like,
03:59There are no tears when he's crying.
04:01All the speculation about Ed turned out to be wildly untrue.
04:05I had absolutely nothing to do with this.
04:09Sadly, these compounding events sent him into a spiral.
04:13And my father said, if you don't calm down, I'm going to commit you.
04:16So he took me over to the hospital and put me in the psychiatric ward and I cried that whole night.
04:26Elizabeth's uncle couldn't pass a polygraph.
04:29In the documentary, Tom Smart is presented as an eccentric character who operated on the outskirts of the family.
04:35Tom was kind of a little bit on the edge of things, always getting into some trouble.
04:41We're shown numerous interview clips where he spews a stream of consciousness that actually makes him look pretty bad.
04:47Maybe one brother doesn't like another brother.
04:50Don't get me wrong on that.
04:51This family is like this.
04:53We love each other.
04:53We love each other more than any brother possibly could.
04:56It got to the point that family members became concerned he'd draw too much negative attention.
05:01We all have issues.
05:05We've been ripped apart to the core and we understand that everybody has issues.
05:09Tom was struggling to process the harrowing circumstances of his niece's kidnapping and had begun to lose his grip on reality.
05:16You know, after three or four days of that, with no sleep, you tend to collapse on yourself.
05:24He recalls hallucinating when he took his polygraph, likely the reason it came back inconclusive.
05:29I mean, I was hearing things.
05:31Ultimately, the smarts' alibis all checked out, disproving the standard to point the finger at the family first.
05:37Elizabeth was meant to be the first of seven.
05:40When Elizabeth is introduced midway through the documentary, she tells the true story of what happened the night of her abduction.
05:47He told me God commanded them to kidnap seven young girls.
05:53And I was the first of the seven.
05:54Her bedroom had been entered by Brian David Mitchell, a religious zealot who worked on their roof months prior.
06:01Lois had told him, if you need some work, here's my husband's card.
06:05And so this person helped me on the house.
06:08He was a panhandler who lived in the woods with his wife, Wanda Barzee.
06:11Their camp was located even further up the trail than where the tracking hound lost Elizabeth's scent.
06:16According to Brian, it had been prophesied that 14-year-old Elizabeth was to be one of his wives.
06:22He said, I hereby seal you to me as my wife before God and his angels as my witnesses.
06:29She recalls that Brian also threatened to make her sister or cousin his next wife.
06:34Initially, a similar crime scene generated a theory that a serial kidnapper was at large.
06:39When I went out to the scene, one of the things that I observed was that there were two chairs by the window,
06:45just like they had placed a chair up against the wall at Elizabeth's house.
06:48However, the filmmakers leave this thread hanging.
06:52The case in reference was the murder of Kelly Nelson.
06:55She had been abducted by Sally Ann Krivenek, the jealous ex-girlfriend of Nelson's new boyfriend.
07:01Ultimately, there was no connection between the two events.
07:04Nevertheless, it's terrifying to imagine what could have happened if Brian did manage to pull off a string of kidnappings,
07:10especially considering what he had already started doing to Elizabeth.
07:14Elizabeth was treated like property.
07:16Brian, an unhoused man with little real control, used Elizabeth to get that surge of power he felt was divinely owed to him.
07:24He talked non-stop about how special he was, about how difficult these things that in any other circumstance would be wrong to do.
07:34And he didn't want to do it, but he had to because God commanded him to.
07:40Elizabeth was subjected to constant sexual abuse.
07:43She was even regarded as Brian's pet.
07:45He would hold on to the cable and basically walk me like a dog.
07:50His constant threats and intense psychological manipulation, like withholding food, deterred her from attempting to break free.
07:57He used God to justify what he did.
08:01Even worse, Wanda encouraged Brian's psychotic behavior.
08:04When they trekked into town to preach, Elizabeth was dressed in a bizarre garb that obscured her appearance.
08:10In fear for her safety and the safety of her family, Elizabeth complied with Brian's orders.
08:15The thought of crying out did cross my mind, but I was 14.
08:23I had been extremely abused for months.
08:27A detective let Brian and Wanda go.
08:30While in Salt Lake City, a detective actually stopped Brian and the two women cloaked at his side.
08:36One was Wanda.
08:37The other was Elizabeth.
08:39I wanted to yell out.
08:42But Hepzibod grasped my leg.
08:44The detective mentioned that a girl had been missing and asked Brian to remove Elizabeth's shawl to help identify her.
08:50Brian refused to comply, insisting it would be a violation of his faith.
08:54The only people that will ever see her face are her future husband and myself, her father.
09:02In the end, the detective was persuaded and let them all go.
09:05I didn't feel safe enough crying out and that lifeline disappeared.
09:13It's just one of the many failures of those in charge of the case, which stalled justice and allowed Brian to hold on to his child bride for a while longer.
09:21Investigators dismissed the big break.
09:25In a sudden epiphany, Mary Catherine recognized the voice echoing in her head as Brian David Mitchell, who had been using the alias Emanuel.
09:32With Emanuel, the man who was in your bedroom?
09:37I'm not quite sure it might have been.
09:41You're not quite sure, but it might have been.
09:43She had only had two brief encounters with him.
09:46Once when she and her mother first saw him on the street, and again when he spent a single afternoon providing handiwork at their home.
09:53But investigators were not convinced, and they withheld an eyewitness sketch dictated by Mary Catherine.
09:58Our perception was, if we went public with it, we could scare the perpetrator away.
10:05It's the second time her testimony was neglected.
10:08We're not certain who Mary Catherine saw, and we're not certain that she knows who she saw.
10:13He's coming up with this new idea or this breaking news on this case, and it really is not.
10:19Police circled back to Richard Riese, concluding he was guilty and had taken secrets of the case to his grave.
10:25The police had spent thousands of man hours trying to find Elizabeth, probably more than any single thing in the history of Utah.
10:33And I think that they were done, and they believed they had their man, Richard Riese.
10:38But it gets worse.
10:40Police actually had Brian in custody for stealing beer while Elizabeth was being held in his tent.
10:45Without making the connection, they let him go.
10:48The sketch held the final clue.
10:50Speaking of the composite drawing, it remained sealed in police files for months.
10:55The smarts finally convinced detectives to go public with it.
10:58As expected, a number of tips poured in.
11:01One of those would prove to be the exact call investigators had been waiting for.
11:05Except, Uncle Tom was the one who'd fielded it.
11:08A man had recognized his brother-in-law as the eerie face from the press conference.
11:12When the individual sent a real photo to Tom, Ed immediately knew it was Brian.
11:30Brian, Mitchell's ex-wife, called.
11:33And for two hours, we sat there and talked about Brian.
11:41We found out he's a dangerous individual.
11:44Effectively, the case wasn't even cracked by the jurisdiction running the investigation.
11:49Once the smarts canvassed the town, they spoke to numerous people who had interacted with those uncanny figures cloaked in white.
11:55And she said, Tom, I think that was Elizabeth.
12:01And, um, it felt like I was struck.
12:06Finally, the trio was stopped by officers in Salt Lake City and Elizabeth was rescued.
12:11The true heroes?
12:13Elizabeth's sister, uncles, and parents.
12:1515-year-old Elizabeth Smart was found alive today.
12:19280 days after she was kidnapped.
12:21This is as if she came back from the dead.
12:22This is a story that defies all odds.
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12:40Elizabeth's kidnapping was considered an anomaly.
12:43Time and time again, we hear that this crime was inconceivable because of Elizabeth's social status.
12:49A 14-year-old Utah girl taken from her bedroom while her family was sleeping.
12:53How could it happen right in her own bedroom in an affluent community?
12:58Reporters and police comment on her angelic profile and regard her neighborhood like some kind of fortress.
13:04Our investigation revealed no boyfriends, no shady associations, no drug use.
13:09Elizabeth Smart was just a very typical 14-year-old devout Mormon girl living a very normal life in a very nice neighborhood.
13:17She came from too good of a family.
13:20She lived in too nice of a community.
13:22But if we've learned anything from true crime documentaries,
13:24it's that these serene places where you think crime won't happen are actually the places it can and will happen.
13:30Federal Heights is one of the most ritzy areas in Salt Lake City.
13:35Being among the upper echelons of society isn't an immunizer, and neither is living in a stunning town.
13:51And again, perhaps this is exactly why the case was selected for a Netflix special.
13:56An innocent girl has been stolen from what should have been the safest place in the world.
14:01Our biases may lead us to only anticipate crime in low-income areas.
14:05So, these shocking cases of terrible things happening to affluent, blonde-haired, blue-eyed white women
14:10make perfect fodder for a Netflix documentary.
14:13Once again, filmmakers inadvertently beg the question,
14:16if this was never meant to happen to someone like her, then why did it?
14:20Elizabeth, if you're out there, we're doing everything we possibly can to help you.
14:27We love you.
14:29We want you to come home safely to us.
14:31What do you think was the most shocking takeaway from Kidnapped?
14:34Let us know in the comments.
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