Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore - KIDNAPPED: Elizabeth Smart

Episode Date: November 12, 2025

In 2002, 14 year-old Elizabeth Smart was kidnapped from her Salt Lake City home in the middle of the night, sparking one of America’s most intense true crime investigations. For nine months, she was held captive by a self-proclaimed prophet and his wife: hidden in plain sight. Morgan and Kaelyn trace the clues behind the Elizabeth Smart kidnapping case, the nationwide search, and the incredible survival story that inspired millions. Episode Sponsors:Stop putting off those doctor’s appointments and go to https://www.Zocdoc.com/CLUES to find and instantly book a top-rated doctor today. Rula patients typically pay $15 per session when using insurance. Connect with quality therapists and mental health experts who specialize in you at https://www.rula.com/CLUES #rulapod #sponsoredGo to https://www.Cymbiotika.com/CLUES for 20% off plus free shipping. Clues is a Crime House Original Podcast, powered by PAVE Studios. Listen wherever you get your podcasts. Don’t Miss out on all things Clues! YouTube: @CluesPod | @crimehousestudios Instagram: @cluespodcast | @Crimehouse TikTok: @Crimehouse Facebook: @crimehousestudios X: @crimehousemedia Clues is hosted by Morgan Absher & Kaelyn Moore  Instagram: @morgsyabsher | @itskaelynmoore TikTok: @twohottakes | @heartstartspounding To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I'm Dr. Hrini-Bot, host of Hidden History. Every Monday, I go where history gets uncomfortable, banished civilizations, doomsday prophecies, and events that science still can't fully explain. Listen to and follow Hidden History, available now wherever you get your podcasts. Today, we're going to dive into the story of the 2002 kidnapping of 14-year-old Elizabeth Smart. Her abduction in Salt Lake City, Utah, captured headlines across the country and sparked a month-long hunt full of wild twists and turns. investigation was slow going. But then, finally, after months of false leads and red herrings, Elizabeth's parents made a desperate gamble. That would either bring her home or cost her her life.

Hi guys. Welcome back to Clues, where we sneak past the crime scene tape to explore the key evidence behind some of the most gripping true crime cases. I'm Kayla Moore, and I'm going to be the one digging deeper into the timelines, the backstories, and the court files released on these cases. And I'm your internet sleuth, Morgan Absher. I'm the one who's diving into Reddit forums and anything else I can find online to get into those lesser-known details and pulling at threads that just don't add up. More on the case and the clues that defined it after this quick break. One of this week's partners is Peloton. There's a specific kind of joy and freedom that comes from a truly great workout, that feeling where everything just clicks. Peloton is helping you

unlock that feeling with the new Peloton Cross-Training Tread Plus, powered by Peloton IQ. It's cross-training reimagined. Peloton IQ actually personalizes your journey by planning. your workouts, tracking your progress, and even correcting your form in real time to help you unlock new versions of yourself. So let yourself run, lift, fail, try, and go. Explore the new Peloton Cross Training Treadplus at OnePeloton.com. Here we go. Do you remember this case when it happened? 2002, I was in second grade. And in Minnesota, I honestly, I don't remember hearing much about this one. I remember her face being on magazines checking out of the grocery store. I think I remember that when she was found.

Yeah. And pictures of her, like from security camera footage. I remember seeing that. But I didn't know too much about this case until diving into it for this episode, actually. I always find it interesting the urban legends and rumors and myths about a case that kind of prevail. Yeah. And I remember at the time, because also my parents talked to me about a lot of like high profile true crime cases because they just also have kind of a morbid fascination with it. Yeah. But at the time, I remember.

having dinner with my parents and them saying, you know, it was a handyman that snuck into the house and took her. Like, we're not hiring handymen anymore or whatever. And which is ultimately, I mean, we'll get into it, but that's not what happened. That was kind of a false red herring. Yeah. Rumor mill amongst the case. But that was just something that kind of persisted over time. Yeah, we'll probably talk about a few rumor mill and red herring type things. And I think there might be some use on our botched board today. We will see. Oh, absolutely. But without further ado, let's get into this case. And just as a quick reminder, if you're watching this on YouTube, you're going to see some pictures and things that help you kind of visualize this case. And if you're

listening to the audio version, you're going to find those same photos on our social media. That's at Clues Podcast on Instagram. Before we begin this episode, though, it does contain depictions of child sexual abuse. So please listen with care. All right. So. So this story starts on the evening of June 4th, 2002. It's just another Wednesday night for the smart family household. 14-year-old Elizabeth Smart spent the day kind of nagging her parents, 47-year-old Ed and 45-year-old Lois, about letting her go on vacation to a small town in Utah with her friends and their family. One of her four brothers, 16-year-old Charles, jokes that she's wasting her time.

It's going to be a boring trip anyways. Annoyed, Elizabeth shoots back, quote, hey, what if those are the last words you ever say to me? And when she says it, it's a total throwaway line, but those words would go on to haunt her brother for years. Sometime before midnight that night, Elizabeth says goodnight to her parents and her four brothers, and she heads up to her bedroom that she shares with her nine-year-old sister, Mary Catherine. It's late. It's a school night. She takes a couple of minutes to read to her sister before they go to bed.

And as Mary Catherine drifts off to sleep, Elizabeth goes and she turns off the lights. and then she falls asleep herself. But shortly, sometime before 1 a.m. on June 5th, Elizabeth is woken up by something absolutely terrifying. She feels a cold knife on her neck. And then a man's dirty beard scrapes her face as he says to her, I have a knife to your neck, don't make a sound. Get out of bed or I'll kill you and your family. Now, what do you possibly do as a 14-year-old?

She's completely paralyzed with fear. Her heart starts racing. She looks at the guy's face and she knows that he's a stranger. She doesn't recognize him and he probably means what he's saying. I mean, in her sisterly mind, she looks over at her younger sister and is like, oh my God, is she also at risk? And what she sees is that Mary Catherine is still asleep. So in Elizabeth's mind, she's like, I just have to get out of here and not wake her up and not scare her and then maybe everything will be okay. So she gets up slowly with a stranger who ends up kind of pushing her down the hallway, past her brother's rooms, and they go out of the kitchen door onto the back patio. But what's even more heartbreaking about this specific part of the story is their house had an alarm system. And the minute the door to the outside opens up, there should have been a loud, shrieking noise throughout the house that woke everyone in the family up. But there was an error when this alarm system was installed. and this particular door was not connected to the rest of the alarm system. So when they leave the house, there's no sound. No one in the house has any idea what's happening.

Which, how insane is that? The one door. Well, it makes you think, off the bat, that whoever was doing this knew about the one door that wasn't connected. A little bit of an inside job maybe. Mm-hmm. As they exit the house, the kidnapper tells Elizabeth that he's going to take her hostage. and they start walking uphill away from her house past the windows of her neighbors who are sleeping in their beds. They walk towards the Wasatch Mountains that are looming ahead of them.

And I mean, every step of the way, it's just getting darker and darker. And Elizabeth is getting farther and farther away from her home. And it just starts looking like she really is going to be taken hostage by this person. But before we continue the story, let's talk a little bit about who Elizabeth Smart is. In 2002, she was a 14-year-old girl from one of Salt Lake City's most prominent neighborhoods called Federal Heights. There's big houses there, perfectly manicured lawns, families that don't even really lock their doors. It's by all accounts, a safe community, and the people who live there are very trusting of one another. A lot of them belong to the Church of Latter-day Saints, and so does Elizabeth and her family.

They're very steeped in Mormon traditions, I would say. They don't drink alcohol. They don't drink caffeine. They go to church regularly. A bunch of the family members even went on missions to spread LDS messages. And as for the smart family dynamics, Elizabeth was the second oldest in the family. She had one sister, nine-year-old Mary Catherine, and four brothers, three-year-old William, seven-year-old Edward Jr., 12-year-old Andrew, and 16-year-old Charles. Elizabeth was described as being the most shy and well-mannered child in the house, someone who never really should.

showed a rebellious side at all. She also was very talented. She played the harp. She was even featured as a soloist at a big concert for the 2002 Paralympic Games. But success was kind of par for the course for the smart family in general. Ed Smart was a real estate and mortgage broker and a construction contractor who had been working on the family's own house for six years. They were constantly renovating and improving this house. Yeah. And when you guys see a picture of this house. I feel like when you say big house, it kind of doesn't do it justice. Yeah. This was a big house. It was beautiful. Yes. And they were always working on it too. There was a lot of renovations happening at this house because he wanted to sell it once the construction was complete.

As for his wife, Lois, she was a stay-at-home mom who managed having six children in the home. And in general, they were a very big, close-knit family. Every night they would have dinner at 6 o'clock sharp. They would go to church together. They supported each other. They were very deeply involved in their LDS congregation or ward, as they called it. And because of how close they were and how involved the family was, Elizabeth is not the only person in this story that we're going to focus on today. Actually, the next part of the story really focuses on Mary Catherine. Because even though Elizabeth thought Mary Catherine was sound asleep that night when she was taken by this stranger, it turns out she was not. No, and that brings us to our first clue, Mary Catherine's eyewitness statement. Mary Catherine had actually heard Elizabeth wake up that night, and she heard the man threaten Elizabeth. And to her, you know, it's dark, she can't hear that much, but she did think the voice sounded vaguely familiar, but she just couldn't quite place it. I mean, Mary Catherine was super scared during this, so she did stay perfectly still, hiding under the covers, and pretending to be asleep until she heard the two of them leave their bedroom.

At that point, she actually snuck out of bed and raced to the bedroom door and peaked around the doorframe, just trying to catch a glimpse of who this person could be that's abducting her sister. That's amazing as a nine-year-old. I literally just got full-blown chills. Like, to be that brave, you get out. Yes. What if he grabs you? Of course. Wow is like all that comes to mind for me.

And so she was able to get a glimpse of him at this point. He wasn't very tall about the same height as her brother Charles, who's 16. So maybe five foot six or seven. Also, just at nine years old to be like making height measurements of this person and like really getting a good glimpse at him. So you can, it's just amazing. I know. She also was able to see that he wore light colored clothes, a light colored hat, and carried a bag of some kind with him, maybe a backpack or a small duffel bag.

She did have a hard time getting a glimpse of his face because it was so dark and how scared she was of being seen. Like she didn't want him to come back and get her. So she didn't stare for too long and wasn't really able to come up with a description of his face. Mary Catherine waited a little while in their room after this, just kind of frozen and terrified that the man might come back for her too. So finally, at 3.58 a.m., about three hours after Elizabeth was taken, she ventured out of her room and ran to wake up her parents. So as soon as Mary Catherine tells her parents what happened, they both immediately spring out of bed.

Lois ran to the kitchen, and that's when her heart dropped. She saw that one of the windows was actually open in the kitchen, and someone had cut a hole in the mesh screen with a knife, and that's how they entered the house. At 401 a.m., Ed called 911, and 12 minutes later, the first patrol officer arrived. Meanwhile, Ed and Lois start making really frantic phone calls. Ed dialed his entire family, as well as friends and fellow members of their LDS church. The entire community starts leaving into action to support the smarts, which is fantastic in some ways and very helpful, but it can hinder an investigation in others. It definitely can. I mean, we see this another case. cases like John Bonnet Ramsey. Absolutely, where people just start coming over and moving stuff around.

By 4.30 in the morning, so that's only like 30 minutes later, church members start showing up to the home with flashlights and they just want to help in any way they can. Wow. Detective Corden Parks, who was one of the homicide detectives that was called to the scene, said, quote, it was an absolute mess. We got there and the house was full of people. Even worse, police didn't clear the house right away. They actually didn't start tracking. visiting visitors until almost three hours later. Yeah, I see you marking the botch board. I'm getting ready. They don't get people out of the house. It's 6.54 a.m. before they start getting people to just leave the house so they can start investigating. But by that point, dozens of people, some are unidentified. They don't know everyone that was in the house. But they had already trampled through this crime scene. Yeah, a lot of contamination. The crime lab would later find that photos taken by state investigators did not match the initial photos taken by the first responding police officers, which means so much stuff was moved around.

I mean, there was flour in the kitchen that got moved. There was a knife in the kitchen that got moved around. Any footprints that the perpetrator may have left were destroyed by other people that were walking through the kitchen. The contamination that occurred in the first few hours after the kidnapping would go on to haunt the investigation. for months and ultimately really, really set it off on the wrong foot. Now, there was crucial evidence like fingerprints that were erased and footprints that were gone. The whole thing is a disaster right off the bat. But there's a couple things that they did have to work with. So let's focus on those for now. Yeah. And this brings us to clue number two, which is that cut window screen. They also were able to get a partial palm print on the window frame and a few fingerprints on the back door handle and a the bedpost in Elizabeth's room. In the upcoming days, police would try to run those prints through every database that they had. None were a match to anyone on file. So they started to worry that foul play was involved. The police began their search on foot pretty much right away. Canvas

neighborhoods stopped at homes up to a mile away. They also brought in canine units to try to follow Elizabeth Scent away from the house. And they led these dogs all along the neighborhood streets, throughout all the foothills of the mountains, half a mile away. But unfortunately, the crowds of people who were out there helping made it extremely hard for the dogs to hold on to Elizabeth Scent for very long, which I'm like, you almost want to give it a mark. But again, people were trying to help. They were so quick acting. I know. I'm like, I don't know. What do you guys think on the botched board on that one? It's so hard because you don't have any foresight when you're in the midst of a tragedy. Oh, it's just chaos. If there's one thing I've learned,

it's you just have to start treating it like a crime scene immediately. Even if you're not sure what happened, just preserve the area, try to not move anything and try to not have people go into the area and contaminate it. Like, you're not necessarily thinking of a bloodhound isn't going to be able to track scent because my friends are in the kitchen right now, but it absolutely hinders that part of the investigation. It definitely did here. And because of this, they couldn't determine which general direction Elizabeth had gone. So investigators were going to have to look elsewhere for clues.

Which is so sad because they left on foot. Yeah. I mean. So they should have been able, you know, like a dog should have been able to just track exactly where they went. I know. I mean, we've talked about it. Dogs are so, so good. There's dogs now that can be on a boat and search for a body underwater.

Like, I get, you know, the panic. and you never know how you're going to react in a situation like this, but it really did hinder the investigation and just really wiped away potential scent trails and evidence. Totally. And the crowds were definitely not helpful at the beginning, but as the investigation starts moving throughout the day, they kind of turn it around and start helping a little bit more. By 1030 that morning on Wednesday, June 5th, just six hours after the kidnapping, there's more than 450 volunteers that have shown up to the smart home to help search for Elizabeth.

That is a lot. By Thursday evening, that number has grown to 1,800 people. Friends pooled together $250,000 as a reward for Elizabeth's safe return. Neighbors across the street offered their house to be this operational headquarters for the investigation. By Friday, June 13th, which was a week after the kidnapping, more than 8,000 people had joined the efforts to find Elizabeth. That's in addition to the operations carried out by 33 fixed-wing aircrew. craft, seven helicopters, and 150 ATVs. They have mobilized so much for this investigation. I mean, that's a massive, massive response. Massive. It's one of the benefits of living in a community like that, honestly. Like living in a small community where people really show up for

each other can have like this kind of insane benefit. By that point, just about a week into the kidnapping, the police have received over 3,000 tips from the public. And that's when they start really kind of sorting through these tips to see if there's anything of value in them. This episode is brought to you by Instacart. I have a four-month-old at home, which means I don't leave the house unless I absolutely have to. Going to the grocery store is a really big deal for me these days, which is why I love Instacart so much. I hate grocery shopping. I always forget things. I get overwhelmed. I have decision paralysis or I shop hungry and then I get way too much, which is why I love to use Instacart. Keep me out of the store. I can sit at home reading

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Perfect for recording. Refresh your every day with luxury you'll actually use. Head to quince.com slash clues for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada, too. That's Q-U-I-N-C-E.com slash clues for free shipping and 365-day returns. Quince.com slash clues. So as police followed an abundance of leads, detectives began really looking through the smart family

and their connections and everyone who knew them to see if there was anyone who might have had motive. Because we talked about this before, but a lot of abductions end up being committed by members of the victim's family. That, unfortunately, is, like, way too common. Yeah. In this case, the kidnapper had used one of the three doors

in the house that weren't connected to an alarm, which, again, we brought up earlier, kind of suggests that someone had some sort of understanding of this house. It was maybe an inside job done by someone in the family or close to the family, whatever. This is just what the police are going off of at first. And for a little while, the police entertained the idea that maybe Elizabeth's father Ed was somehow involved, which feels like it's a little bit out of left field, but they started kind of looking at his business. He had to be a little bit of, what they described as a complicated business that involved multiple real estate, mortgage, and contracting companies. He would also buy and sell cars. If you're looking at all these companies,

I guess from a financial standpoint, it was a lot of cash that was moving from one place to another all the time. And so the police started thinking maybe there's something illegal happening within his business and he's just moving money around to cover stuff up. A little money laundering? Money laundering. So it's really all the police had to go off of. And they took all of that into consideration. But at the same time, Ed is being so cooperative in the investigation. He's also very much a grieving father throughout all of this. And detectives just decided that there was no way he was involved. Everything they looked into didn't really add up to him staging a kidnapping of his own daughter. Yeah. And that, I feel like that could be another thing that becomes a mark on

the botch board. When you look at, you know, this investigation and at this point in time, it really did feel like police only were honing in on family and talking about the rumor mill with this one, there were statements put out that the window had actually been cut from the inside. That window screen, people started speculating even further on there that someone in the family has to be involved, even though that's not true. It was 100% cut from the outside. So it just wasn't off to a great start. I know. It's weird. How many somewhat parallels are to the John Bonnet Ramsey case, too, where you have brothers in the family and they're like, what if one of the brothers accidentally hurt her and now the family has to cover it up? But I do remember that that's what they were looking at a lot of first.

Eventually, though, police do rule out the family as being suspects. But at the same time, they also understood that their time was really running out on this case. Some stats that we found were 40% of stranger abductions, which I looked into this stat earlier this year. There's about if you kind of do the math, call it 3,000 strangers. abductions of children throughout the year in America, which almost 400 million people in this country, that's not a lot. Three thousand kids get abducted by complete strangers every year. These are known as stereotypical kidnappings. And in 40% of those 3,000 cases, the child dies. It's almost 50%. Like, it's almost half, which is just terrifying. Yeah, it's less than 1,500

kids, so it's incredibly rare, but it's terrifying. In almost 90% of the call it 1,500, cases, the child is murdered within the first 24 hours. So every hour that passes in one of these investigations is absolutely vital. And that basically means that every hour they don't find Elizabeth, her odds of survival are decreasing dramatically. The police start turning their attention into other people in the family's orbit to see if anyone else maybe has motive. The first day she was missing, her dad Ed had given the police a list of everyone that he knew. Think friends, family, employees, casual acquaintances, truly everyone. And when the police were going through this list, there's actually a name that stands out to them pretty much right

away. Remember, Ed was a general contractor over the years. He hired a bunch of construction guys to do nitty-gritty work on his properties, including in the house that he lived in. And one of them was, and this is what I was talking about with my parents, was a 48-year-old handyman named Richard Richard Recy. And when the police start looking into Richard, they find out that he had a pretty checkered past that Ed really didn't know much about. Turns out he dropped out of school in 1969 when he was 15 years old and he joined the Navy, but he got discharged for hepatitis, not his fault. Ever since then, he had been in and out of jail, though, for various burglary related offenses. He also suffered from heroin addiction and he stole from people he knew to kind of

feed that habit. He had only been out of prison for less than six months when he met Ed in early 2001. Richard came very recommended by a contractor friend of Ed's, and Ed didn't really do a background check on him. But that's because he and Lois were kind of in their community scene as being very generous and very trusting by nature. They always saw the good in people. And as far as Ed could tell, Richard had turned his life around. He was engaged now. He had known hardship, but he really got his life together, at least from what Ed could see. And also, Ed learned that Richard had actually lost an eight-year-old son to a drunk driver years back. So, Ed offered Richard a job doing carpentry work, as well as other odd jobs around the house.

When he learned that Richard didn't have a car, he even offered to give Richard his white Jeep Cherokee as payment for his work. But in early June 2001, so about a year before the kidnapping, Ed ended up firing Richard for theft. And that brings us to clue number three, the missing bracelet. As you mentioned, about a year before Elizabeth was kidnapped, Lois had been digging through her jewelry box when she discovered that her favorite pearl bracelet was missing. On June 8, 2001, they ended up going to the police and reporting the theft. And Ed knew that three of his contractors had been working on the house when the bracelet disappeared. including Richard. So he actually confronted all of them. But each one denied having anything to do with the

theft, Richard most of all. He told Ed that the police had given him a polygraph to prove he hadn't stolen the bracelet and that he had actually aced it. Except this was a lie. The police never polygraphed anyone in relation to the theft. And so of course this is like a really big leap to go from potential theft to kidnapping, but at this point, police were willing to follow any lead they had. However, Richard's alibi about where he was on June 4th and 5th in the hours when Elizabeth was taken, seemed to check out. On the 4th, he had worked a normal shift at a nursery and then watched his 11-year-old stepson get tutored by LDS missionaries. He cooked dinner for his family and actually invited those missionaries to join them. Later, after his stepson went to bed, he and his wife, Angela,

had stayed up watching TV. And Angela confirmed all of this. The missionaries confirmed all of this. But Angela said that she did take a heavy sleeping aid that night, the night Elizabeth disappeared, which meant that Richard could have been out of the house that night around 1 a.m. and she just wouldn't have known it. And when police kind of look into where they live and, you know, could it be possible, it did seem possible. He could have traveled the 30 minutes from his home in Shadow Ridge Estates to Elizabeth's home in Federal Heights, kidnapped her, stashed her somewhere, and then returned home without his wife Angela noticing.

So on June 14th, they call Richard back in for questioning, and at this time they take a blood sample. hoping that Richard will test positive for alcohol and be in violation of his parole. They basically want to get him in custody for something so that they can search his trailer and force him to answer even more of their questions. And Richard's blood did end up coming back positive for alcohol, so two hours later, they arrest him. Police do end up searching Richard's home, and they find other items stolen from the Smart's house, actually, which included a wine. goblet filled with sand from a family trip, which to investigators, like, this is so weird. It doesn't really have any monetary value. It looks like it's just a keepsake from their vacation.

So they kind of wonder, why would Richard have this? Is this some sort of trophy for taking Elizabeth? Like, what does this even mean? And because of finding this, they go on to search Richard's father-in-law's home nearby, which turned up a machete that they think, could have been used to cut the screen and a light-colored gulf cap, which was important at the time because Mary Catherine said that the kidnapper was wearing some sort of light-colored hat. So maybe this was it. So by now, Richard is looking pretty suspicious to investigators. And it makes even more sense it could be him because he knew the layout of the home. You know, he had been working there. He could potentially know details about the broken alarm system

and how those doors weren't connected. And it seemed like maybe Richard had a pretty solid motive. And that was backed up by his own words even. Because apparently, he had once told a friend that he would sooner kill a witness than end up back in jail. So after a week and a half of searching, it looked like the police finally had a solid lead. This could be their guy.

But they still needed to find Elizabeth. police ended up interrogating Richard for 22 hours straight. And you've seen some of this interrogation. Yeah, the clips you guys from this, like it is so intense to one point where like Richard like stands up from the like the table and is just like irate. And like the investigator kind of recoils back. Well, we'll put a clip in here for you guys. Oh, you should want to hear some fucking shit. I want you to make up some bullshit.

No, I don't want you to make up bullshit. Well, there's too many things that don't. Well, I don't get wicks. Find out who's going to fucking this shit. Well, that's what I'm working on you. You've got five or six guys working on. I've got 80. But why aren't you fucking coming up with something?

I'm sitting in this room talking. I've taken life. I've given blood. I've done every fucking thing you guys that. But you didn't pass. It seems like he was under intense pressure. He ends up at this time admitting to stealing the bracelet, amongst other things from Ed and Lois.

And the police end up asking also about the Jeep, the one that Ed gave him. And there's a reason why they do that. Richard had apparently dropped his Jeep off for repairs sometime in May of 2002. But he picked it up on May 30th before the repairs were finished. Richard then brought it back on June 8th, three days after the kidnapping. And the mechanic said that Richard was acting really odd when he did this. It was not his usual loud self.

The mechanic said the Jeep. was covered in mud like it had been off-roading and had about a thousand extra miles on it. That is a lot in just a few days. Yeah, it looks really weird. And the mechanic did say he also saw Richard take a machete out of the truck, which objectively is wild. If it's walking like a duck and quacking like a duck, you start to think, oh, that's a duck. Richard, though, says that all of this was complete nonsense. He said that he did not take the truck from the mechanic during that time.

He said that the mechanic was either mistaken or was straight up lying. He repeatedly declared that he had nothing to do with Elizabeth's abduction. And desperate to prove his innocence, he ended up begging to take a polygraph test and he passes it. As for forensic examination of the Jeep, it comes back clean. Contrary to what the mechanic said, the crime lab didn't find any signs of the Jeep going off road. But the police, now with this in their head, if it's true or if it's not true, the police have still heard. it. And so they still believe that Richard knows something about what happened to Elizabeth. He was the only suspect that they had with any means motive, any opportunity. So they decided to

keep him in custody until they could get him to talk more. But then, just seven weeks after Elizabeth's kidnapping, Richard starts seeming like a less likely suspect because it appears the kidnapper tried to strike again. Hey, before we jump back into the show, let's take a quick break. But not just any break, this is a refreshing break with Snapple. We all know about Snapple's iconic real facts, so let's take a minute to go over some of my favorites. Snapple Real Fact, 964, it is illegal in the United Kingdom to handle salmon in suspicious circumstances. Snapple Real Fact 1013, it is illegal to sing off-key in North Carolina. Snapple Real Fact 2033, Americans consume 150 million hot dogs on July 4th.

Snapple Real Fact 705. Every ton of recycled paper saves about 17 trees. So grab a snapple, take a second, and enjoy the moment. Because let's be honest, this might be the most refreshing part of your day. Snapple. Make your break more interesting. All right, now let's get back to clues. One of this week's partners is Grooons. I'm using Spring as a reset button. I'm changing at my routines, getting back to being consistent, and really focusing on my health this year. That is where Grooons comes in. Grooons are a convenient, comprehensive formula packed into a snack pack of gummies a day. This isn't a multivitamin, a greens gummy, or a prebiotic.

It's all of those things, and then some, at a fraction of the price. And a bonus, it tastes great. I love Grooons. I took a bunch of the packs on my trip to New York recently, and I just had them as snacks throughout the day. It is a daily snack pack of gummies, because you actually can't fit the amount of nutrients Grooons does into just one gummy. Plus, it makes it a fun treat. Getting a daily treat is non-negotiable for me. And it includes

six grams of prebiotic fiber. And you can feel good about Grooons because their ingredients are backed by over 35,000 research publications. So if you're ready to try Grooens for yourself, save up to 52% off with code Clues at grooens.co. That's code Clues at g-r-un-s.c-o. This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever think about switching insurance companies to see if you could save some cash? Progressive makes it easy. Just drop in some details about yourself and see if you're eligible to save money when you bundle your home and auto policies. The process only takes minutes and it could mean hundreds more in your pocket. Visit progressive.com after this episode to see if you could save. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates,

potential savings will vary, not available in all states. At 3 a.m. on the morning of July 24th, 18-year-old Jessica Wright was jolted awake by the sound of a picture frame crashing on the floor in her bedroom. Jessica was Elizabeth's cousin, living about 20 miles south of the smart home. When Jessica looked toward her window, she saw something absolutely horrifying. There was a knife blade cutting through the window screen from the outside. Someone was trying to break into her room using the exact same method that they had used. used to kidnap Elizabeth. But this time, the intruder ended up being stopped. The window had a security screw that prevented it from opening fully, and Jessica, when she sees this happening,

starts screaming. And that wakes up the whole house. The would-be intruder ends up fleeing into the night. And when the police arrive, they discover that there's actually a chair propped outside the window. And that's what the person was using to try and climb into the house. They dusted for prints, but they didn't find anything useful. And despite the obvious connection to Elizabeth's case, many of the officers on the scene thought it must have been a prank. And Morgan is grabbing the watchboard. They didn't do too much with this. They really thought it was a hoax and did not care that this happened at all, even with a similar MO. Horrible. Honestly, the cousin of someone who was just kidnapped in the exact same one.

Come on. She saw someone cutting through with a knife. A prank might tap on the window. But to cut through a screen with a knife, again, the same method? Come on, guys. Batched. After police questioned some of the family and some of the neighbors, they file a report and then they just move on from it. But then a month after that, there's this other kind of shocking twist in the case. On August 27th, Richard Recy went to a court hearing regarding his involvement. afterwards he was brought back to his cell where he told a guard that he was having trouble breathing. He ended up collapsing and fell into a coma that day. Two days later, on August 30th, Richard died from a brain aneurysm. And that was really the death of the only lead police had. Up until his death, he'd maintained his innocence in Elizabeth's kidnapping. The police did not necessarily believe him, but now they had lost any chance of proving that it was him. Yeah, and they were going on the news being like, it's very important

he stays alive. Like, they were still, as this man is in the hospital, going out and publicly being like, well, he better not die because this is all we got. Like, it was, the coverage was crazy. And it seems like after he dies, the case really cools off. They're like, I don't know, we had one guy and he died, so what do you want us to do about it? Out of leads now. Sorry, guys. crazy. The family, though, even despite this, they keep going. They keep trying to keep this case alive. And I will say the smart family, like, kudos to them. They were very good about kind of doing their own PR for the case. Like they went on talk shows. They did everything they could to get Elizabeth's name out there. So as many people as possible knew about this case. And it did start working for a while. A lot of people started hearing about this case. But, I mean, without the support of the police, there's really not much you can do. And they were, their hands were really tied. And one thing I think that was interesting that the smarts kind of said around this time is like all of these rumors were coming out. All of these red herrings were coming out.

And they were like, we don't care. We don't care if people think it's someone in our family. We know it's not, but people are still talking about the case. We would rather them talk, even if they're saying, I guess even if they're saying horrible things. We'd rather them just say something about this case. Exactly. Which is such a heartbreaking position to be in. and it seems like over time they started losing a little bit of hope that Elizabeth was ever going to be found.

But then there's this revelation that happens if you want to talk about that. Yeah, this is clue number four for us, which is Mary Catherine's revelation. So on October 12th, 2002, four months after Elizabeth's kidnapping, Mary Catherine is sitting in her bedroom, flipping through the pages of a Guinness World Record book. and something just dawns on her. Mary Catherine at this point remembered where she had heard that voice from, the voice that had taken Elizabeth,

it's now dawning on her who it is. So that very same night, she goes to her parents and she goes, I know who took Elizabeth. And she tells them that it was a man named Emmanuel. So from here we kind of jump back in time. We jump back to November 2001, just before Thanksgiving. Lois and Elizabeth were downtown near the Salt Lake Temple

when they encountered an unhoused man panhandling on the street. He was well-spoken, seemed like he was just kind of down on his luck, and he told Lois that his name was Emmanuel. He asked for some money, and Lois ended up giving him $5. Lois ends up striking up more of a conversation with him, though, and at this point finds out that they are both deeply religious people. They talk about Jesus for quite some time, and Lois ends up telling him that if he needed any way,

work, he should call her husband, Ed. And so a few days later, Emmanuel took her up on that offer. Ed told Emmanuel that he needed help fixing a skylight in the roof and doing a little bit of yard work. He ended up coming by for about five hours. Ed paid him $40 and sent him on his way. And Emmanuel never came back. Never called again. That was it. That was the only interaction. He was such a blip in the smart family's life that Ed hadn't even thought to include him on that list of everyone that he gave to police. Oh, absolutely, because why would you? I wouldn't. He never called again, five hours?

That's it? It's forgettable. But that night, that memory of Emmanuel working on their home came back to Mary Catherine. Unfortunately, police had a very hard time believing her story. the more they questioned her, the less confident she became about him, which, okay, she's nine. Like, of course you're going to prod her and interrogate her. Like, anyone would doubt themselves, let alone a nine-year-old. So, I don't know, maybe that's a mark.

Plus, like, the more investigators look at this, there's no motive that they could think of. What motive would he had? He barely knew the family. And so even if he was somehow responsible, All they had was a first name, a manual. But that brings us to clue number five, the new sketch. Since Ed and Lois Smart had only interacted with Emmanuel briefly, months before the kidnapping, it made the task of putting together a sketch pretty difficult for them.

And Ed was not happy with the first composite police used. He felt like it looked nothing like the man that they had hired. But then in November 2002, a new sketch artist arrived, at the Salt Lake City Police Department looking for work. And this artist puts together what Ed and Lois describe as the perfect representation of Emmanuel. One, that is just exactly as they remembered. And Ed is actually so confident in this new sketch that he wanted it released to the public immediately. He felt like this was their best chance at finding him and bringing Elizabeth home. But the police resisted. Their argument was,

that they didn't want to let Emmanuel know that they were on to him, which, yeah, oh, yeah, put a botched mark on the board. I know it's so tough because I understand not wanting to tip someone off that you're looking for them. You have one name. One name. I know, but if, yeah, I could see how if a man, well, whatever, saw his face everywhere, he'd be like, oh, I'm just going to change my look. Or change my look. Yeah. I'll still mark it as botch because his whole investigation is botched.

but I mean, but what are you going to do with it then? Do you take it and go door to door? The community needs to look out for this guy. Exactly. We now know what he looks like. You now have an idea. You might have someone else in the community that has also hired Emmanuel and knows weird. We already know how tight this community is. Like there's probably so many other people who have seen this person. Exactly. So why not put it out there and generate potential leads when you really have nothing at this point? I know. Well, regardless of what? the smart family wants, the detectives at this point choose to keep the sketch internal. And they even warned Ed not to share any details with the public.

This really strained the family's relationship with police even further. I mean, at this point, they had been looked at themselves. Yeah. Things weren't moving. It had gone cold. Like, it just felt like the family wasn't really being listened to. I know. And now the police are literally telling them to keep their biggest lead a secret.

Yeah, and Ed, you know, he seemingly puts his faith in them. He bites his tongue, does what they asked of him, and was just going to let police do their job while he waited for news of Elizabeth. And he waited and waited some more. Meanwhile, again, the family is continuing to be told by police, do not even breathe a word of this lead that we have. Like, keep it to yourselves, hold on to it. But as weeks go by, Ed starts getting increasingly. fed up with all of the broken promises that the police have made. By this time, the smarts had actually developed a relationship with John Walsh from America's Most Wanted. And as the father of a son who

was kidnapped, John understands their pain and he wants to help the smarts in any way that he can. So Ed confides in John and tells him about the sketch that the police have, but that they don't want to share it with the public. And Walsh decides he's going to take this into his own hands. I have the chills. You guys, John Walsh went wild. Yeah. He really did. He went off the rails. He goes a little bit off the rails. But he knows this type of investigation probably better than the police that were investigating it because not much happened in that community. No. And this is kind of his life mission ever since his son was abducted and killed. Like this. He knows this. Yes. Well, towards the end of December in 2002, John Walsh goes on the Larry King Live show and he breaks the news to America that there is a sketch of a suspect. it's not anyone they've heard of before.

And a future episode of America's Most Wanted is going to profile the suspect. This was so crazy to me when I read this. Oh, then he just did this. He just went off the rails, did it. And then everyone's like, Ed, Ed, Ed, and Ed was like, yeah, I didn't know he was going to do that. Sorry. Ed was pretty surprised when this happened. He didn't know that this segment was going to air.

And he wasn't really ready to go public with the information yet. We have a quote here from him that said, I didn't know Walsh was going to do that. I'm surprised. He said what he said. We were working with the police. And so you can tell that still deep in his heart, Ed is hoping that the police pull through and continue this investigation. And seemingly he didn't want to like piss the police off to where they didn't care about Elizabeth's case anymore. Which isn't that insane that as you're dealing with the disappearance of your daughter, you're also playing the politics game of who am I rubbing shoulders with? Who am I pissing off? Who am I? And all you want to do is find your daughter. I know. Towards the end of January, though, Ed does come around and he decides that the family's done waiting. On January 31st, 2003,

the smarts decide to defy the police and they're just going to show this sketch of Emmanuel to the public. On February 3rd, they host a press conference where Ed and Lois explained to reporters how they had met Emmanuel, and they talk about everything they know about him. They said that the deceased Richard Reesie was most likely innocent, and they ask for the public's help in identifying Emmanuel. And you know what? This gamble really pays off for them because on February 7th, just three days after this press conference, an LDS Temple employee in Salt Lake City named Tom Holbrook sees a picture of this sketch. And what do you think happened? I mean, this is what we were talking about with a community this small.

He gets home from work and he shows his article to his wife, Lisa. And they both know the man in that sketch very, very, very well. Because, quote, Emmanuel was Lisa's brother. Brian David Mitchell. Who is Brian David Mitchell, though? Brian David Mitchell was born in Salt Lake City in October of 1953. He was one of six children. His father was a mostly absent kind of wannabe preacher with pretty bizarre ideas and a very violent streak.

As a kid, Brian was described as being a loner and an attention seeker. In high school, he was actually sent to Juvie because he exposed himself to a four-year-old neighbor. He also has a track record of stealing, of drinking, of using drugs. At 16 years old, he dropped out of school, and then three years later, he got his girlfriend pregnant and he married her. It is weird now going through his information again, how many similarities he has to Charles Manson. I don't know how much you know about Manson's backstory, but it's like really similar. Wow. They ended up splitting up after they had their second child together.

And rather than go through the process of fighting for custody of the children, he just abducted them and fled. to New Hampshire. And while he was there, the 20-year-old took LSD for the first time. And at least according to him, he has this kind of spiritual epiphany when this happens. Yeah, acid will do that to you. Well, acid and mental illness will do that to you. Although he had not been a religious person like his parents, this acid trip awakened something in him. And he decides after this moment that he has been called back to the Mormon faith. Brian decides he's going to return to Salt Lake City, and he's going to start attending regular meetings at the LDS Church. In 1981, he marries a woman named Debbie Woodridge. She had three daughters from her previous marriage,

and they broke up in 1985 after Debbie suspected that he was sexually assaulting her children. Hours after this divorce is finalized, 32-year-old Brian married a 39-year-old woman named Wanda Barsey. Just like Brian Wanda was also a very religious person. She was raised in the LDS church. Her connection to God was the only reliable thing in her life. It seems like everything else around her was chaos. She was prone to these very violent mood swings. She sometimes would go days on end without sleeping.

She would have blowout fights with her previous husband. But it seemed like Brian saw something in her that he maybe also saw in himself. He was kind of like the. Wanda whisperer in a way. Because when she would have these really intense mood swings and maybe would get violent, he would just lay his hands on her head and he would utter a blessing. And this would like immediately calm her down. Whatever he asked her to do after this, she would give. And wherever he went, she would follow. But, I mean, as you can imagine, he starts leading Wanda down a very dark path once he realizes kind of the power that he has

over her. In the late 1980s, Brian becomes more interested in fringe Mormon and libertarian groups, ones that talked a lot about prophecies. They preached that the apocalypse was near, that someone strong and mighty would come and rescue the Mormon church from sin. Sometime around 1993, Brian has this epiphany, and he really becomes convinced that he is the anointed leader foretold in all of these prophecies. after this he quits his job he grows out his beard he spends most of his time preaching his own personal take on Mormon scripture he also changes his name to Emmanuel and that's significant in the Mormon church because it's another word for Jesus I have here that it's from the

Hebrew word that means God with us and you know with him being a prophet his wife becomes the wife of a great prophet and she takes on the name Hefzeba they start putting on robes. They pretty much abandon the children, and they travel cross-country as these really like traveling preachers. They beg for money. They stay with family and friends wherever they can. And the rest of the time, they're just sleeping in their cars or somewhere out in the woods. When Lois Smart met Brian in November of 2001, he was panhandling near an LDS temple.

By that point, he had alienated almost all of his family and friends. all of them were also Mormon, but they just didn't belong to this extreme sect that he belonged to. Even his mom, who had tolerated his rants for years, ended up taking a restraining order out against him in April of 2002 after he and Wanda became abusive. That incident was less than two months before Elizabeth Smart disappeared. And since then, Brian's family had not wanted anything to do with him. They didn't know where he was. They didn't really care to find out. They were not interested.

but then in February of 2003, they open up their newspapers and see his face splashed there. On February 7th, which, I mean, if we're keeping track now, it's eight months after Elizabeth Smart's abduction. Brian's sister, Lisa, calls 911, and she tells them that she believes the kidnapper is her brother. The Salt Lake City Police Department took down her statement and investigated, once again, pretty quietly, choosing not to share any information about Brian with the media or the smart family. They didn't even tell the FBI, the people at the FBI that were working on the case with them, at least not officially. But then on February 13th, FBI Special Agent Augustus McFennerty found out about this new lead after one of the detectives casually mentioned it in conversation, either accidentally or offhanded or. Yeah, that seems purposeful.

Maybe he was trying to like let them know. Yeah, which can we just brief thing and why? I'm adding a botch to that. You have the FBI involved in this. You now have a suspect who travels across the country panhandling as a preacher. FBI can cross state lines. Utah police cannot. Like, you have the FBI. Use them as a resource. But we, I mean, I've talked about this on hearts outst pounding in cases. There's, sometimes there's like an ego clash between the FBI and police where everyone wants to be the one that solves the case. And certain departments want to say, like, we solve this without the help of the FBI. So they will have.

hide information from each other so that the other one doesn't beat them to solving the case. That's not what's important here. Getting that person home. It's a child who's missing. Literally. A child. Yeah. Come on. Fenerdy jumps on this information and he just takes Brian's name and runs it through every database that he can get a hold of essentially. In addition to Brian's criminal record, which he finds, he also finds a photo of Brian. Agent Fenerdy knows that at this point the Salt Lake City detectives were in charge of Elizabeth's case. But, he's not just going to sit there and watch them continue to botch the whole thing. Like Ed and Lois, he believed that the quickest way to do that was to just take everything he had to the public and ask for their help.

So he really puts his career out on the line and he makes another risky gamble. He went around to the detectives at SLCPD and he bypassed the detectives at the Salt Lake City Police Department and he just gives the photo directly to Elizabeth's family. Which, like, that in itself probably could have gotten him fired. That was a big risk. Yeah. Or just, like, have the case completely taken from them. Like, no more information is going to be shared with them. And it kind of is divine timing because the Smart family was about to make a big move of their own.

Over the past several months, Ed Smart was working with John Walsh, again, the host of America's Most Wanted. And they were really working on putting together just a full episode all about Elizabeth's kidnapping. And on February 15th, 2003, that episode airs. And it has an unexpected addition because now they have Brian Mitchell's name and his face. And the reaction that they got from this episode was just incredible. Yeah. The police lines started flooding with calls about Brian. People reported hundreds of sightings of him all across the country, which, I mean, makes sense because he was traveling all across the country.

And through these tips. that come in, the police learned that Brian had really been under their noses pretty much this entire time. At 10.30 p.m. on June 4th, 2002, that is just a few hours before Elizabeth's abduction. Brian had shoplifted a case of beer from a gas station near her home. And then after the kidnapping, Brian had been spotted many times in Salt Lake City. And in a lot of these sightings, he was not alone. In early August, two months after the kidnapping, eyewitnesses saw him at an all-you-can-eat buffet. In the area, he had two women with him, both wearing white Muslim robes, basically burqas, and they didn't say anything. The only part that was visible of either of these women were their

eyes. And in the weeks that followed, Brian just continued to really not hide at all. He was panhandling on street corners, his face just out in the public amongst that tight-knit community. He was seen buying booze from convenience stores. He would do his laundry at public laundromats in the area. He also was using a lot of opportunities to preach his own version of Mormonism that he had basically come up with. But as he was doing this, he had two companions the entire time, these two women that followed him everywhere, two restaurants, to homeless shelters, convenience stores, and even the downtown library. At the end of August, Brian and these two women even spent five days in an apartment one block

away from the police station. Brian brought the women to a party once, and there's a photo of this too, which we're going to pull up and I want to talk about it. But during this party, the two veiled women stood in silence while Brian got so drunk that he had to be thrown out of it. And I have it here, Morgan. You can see this is very clearly Brian and Elizabeth. Yeah. So you have three people in the photo. You have seemingly a woman on the left, completely veiled, just the small strip of eye, a little bit of forehead showing a normal partygoer in the middle and Brian on the right in a similar like matching robe, but not

covering really any of his face, except he's got like a cap on. But if you saw these people walking about, you would just think, yeah, like they're extremely religious and they have matching outfits. And in this photo, there's, I mean, he's with what looks like a young girl who has this thousand-yard stare. She looks like the shell of a human being. Yeah, very shell-shocked. Very shell-shocked. So after this party on September 27th, he gets stopped for shoplifting again by police, but because This is only a misdemeanor. They let him go. And not long after that, Brian reappeared in Lakeside, California, just outside of San Diego.

No one remembers exactly when this happened, but he set up a tent in a public park and he lived there with an older woman and a teenage girl. I imagine the one that we saw in the photo. And he claimed to people who stopped and talked to him that they were his wife and his daughter. All of this time, the three of them were seen wearing robes, but the women were not wearing babies. at this point. Their faces were exposed. On February 12, 2003, only three days before the America's most wanted episode aired. Brian was arrested after getting drunk, breaking into a church, and passing out on the floor. He was released on February 18th on probation three days after the episode aired. The judge who led him out obviously had not seen this episode because, I mean,

Brian's face was all over it. Yeah, missed that one. For the next two weeks, the police hunted for this man who had just been in front of their face the entire time. Hiding in plain sight. They had to use so many resources to find this guy that they could, they literally had in custody, like what 12 times we just talked about? Crazy. At 12.51 p.m. on Wednesday, March 12th of 2003. 281 days since Elizabeth's abduction.

Multiple people spotted Brian and his two companions near a bus station in Salt Lake City. This time, I mean, the episode had aired weeks prior at this point. And at this point, the two women he's with are not wearing veils and they're not wearing ropes. They're just in jeans and t-shirts. They were reported looking like they hadn't slept in a while, but other than that, they just looked like everyday people. Two separate couples that were driving in cars recognized Brian from this episode, and they immediately called 911. And two minutes later, a patrol car pulled up alongside Brian and the two officers, question the trio. They asked Brian for his name, and he just pulls a name out of the air. He says

his name is Peter Marshall. He'd given that name a couple times before, but it was just made up. He told the police that, you know, he and his family were messengers of God since they were on this holy mission. They didn't really need a driver's license or other forms of ID, so they just didn't have any of those things on them. The cops become immediately suspicious of this. They had been looking at flyers with Brian and Elizabeth's faces on them for months, the teenage girl that they were looking at that was with Brian seemed pretty uncombed. It didn't really look like she had showered in a while. And they could see that she was wearing what looked like a wig because it was a different color from hair that was poking out from underneath. There was blonde strips of hair that

were poking out. And even with that, they could tell that she looked familiar. One of the patrol officers ends up turning to the other and says, hey, that looks like Elizabeth Smart. However, when they asked the teenager her name, she insisted that it was Augustine Marshall. So then they just start asking her more questions. They ask about her age, her birthday, her social security number.

She ends up telling them that she was from Miami, Florida. And one of the officers, kind of thinking on his feet, asks her to give a Miami area code. And she can't do it. She can't think of one. So at this point, a couple more cops start showing up. And they reassured the girl, you're safe, but they know that

she's not giving a real name. So they start pressing her. Like, what's your real name? What's your real name? She doesn't give them a name other than the one that she keeps giving them Augustine. Finally, one of the officers just leans in and he asks her one more time, pretty gently. He says that her parents miss her and they love her and they wanted her home. And the girl starts crying essentially and she can barely speak but she does whisper if thou sayeth there's a couple different reports on what she says according to elizabeth she said if thou sayeth but i know there's some reports that say she just said i am elizabeth i watched a interview clip from one of her biography shows that she did and yeah she was almost talking in the way that brian mitchell talks

which was almost like in verses and kind of not. Yeah, prophetic. Yeah. And so she did, she wanted to tell them, but like was so scared. And so that was like as close as she could get. Right. She was terrified at the time. So the police end up bringing her to a station separately from Brian and from the other woman who at this point they know is Wanda.

And she just sits there for a long time in this really small empty room. But then the door opens and her father walks in. And he looks at her matted hair and her shaggy clothes. And he just runs towards her and holds on to her. And he starts crying filled with this unimaginable sadness and relief. And he says, Elizabeth, is that really you? Even he, looking at her, could not believe his eyes. But she had finally come home.

Now, even though this is a very happy ending to the story, Elizabeth is still in complete shock as this is going on. Yeah. After a medical exam, though, the police let her go straight home that night. She arrived a little after 9 p.m. She watched a movie with her family. And then she crawled into bed next to her sister, Mary Catherine. And for the first time in nine months.

Nine months. She slept peacefully that night. However, the ordeal was far from over because there was still the matter of her kidnappers who needed to go to jail. They needed to be prosecuted for their. crimes. And in order to do that, Elizabeth was going to have to testify. Which brings us to our clue number six, Elizabeth's testimony. Elizabeth's statement really reveals the true horror of everything that she had endured. After Brian Mitchell led her up into the mountains that first night, they arrived at a campsite

where Wanda was waiting. The first thing Wanda did was wash Elizabeth's feet, preparing her for what they were calling a wedding ceremony, especially Brian, like Brian called this a wedding ceremony. Brian actually told Elizabeth that she was going to be his second wife, and then he sexually assaulted her. He ended up giving her a new name as well, which was Shirjeshab. And Elizabeth does testify and say that she was allowed to pick her middle name so long as it was biblical and she chose Esther. Shortly after all of this, they padlocked a long steel cable around Elizabeth's ankle and hooked it to a tree to keep her from running off. And by long, this cable was about 20 feet, so she was on a pretty short leash. Over the next few days,

Elizabeth actually heard search parties calling her name. The voice was so close. close that when she talks about it, she is like, it sounded like my uncle. And I heard it twice, but then nothing. And anytime searchers would get close, Brian took out his knife and told her that if anyone even came close to the camp, he'd kill them. So she stayed silent and eventually the sounds disappeared. Each time Brian took it as a sign that God was giving him a hand, helping him on this mission. And the next couple of months were kind of a blur for her. Elizabeth didn't see anyone but Brian and Wanda during that time. Brian assaulted her daily while Wanda stayed outside the tent. He told Elizabeth that she was Wanda's handmaiden. Elizabeth learned that basically meant her

enslaved person. Wanda forced her to do backbreaking manual labor around their can. Meanwhile, Brian spent a lot of time drinking and doing drugs. And he would also force Elizabeth to join him, which for a young Mormon girl is a huge deal. They don't drink alcohol. No, I know. I read a little bit about just all of the things he was forcing her to do went against her Mormon values. And that was really hard for her. Yeah, she talks about that a lot because, I mean, purity culture is so.

so promoted. It's just like the standard. Like there is no sex before marriage. So to then have that taken from you and be assaulted, I mean, she was dealing with a lot of feelings about that. And it was, it was tragic. And then the drinking. And he kind of justified all this by saying that, like, because I'm this prophet, a clean soul purified by God, he could do anything he wanted because he always had God's blessing. And as a part of God's plans, He needed more wives. And, you know, maybe this is my hot take for the day. Like, it just seemed like he was going to do everything in his power to break her.

Like, anything she cherished as, like, a part of her and a belief she followed, like, he was going to make sure that got crushed. Yeah, even taking her name. Even taking her name. You are not Elizabeth anymore. You are this thing that I've christened you. Yeah. I did actually just look up the name that she was able to pick Esther is still is very synonymous with courage in the Bible. So she at least was able to like have that.

Have something. Yeah. This treatment was so terrible. In some accounts I've seen from her, like she was starved for days at a time, wasn't really given any water. I mean, it was horrendous. And Brian just kept talking about how God wanted him to marry seven virgins who would bear divine offspring. And after Elizabeth, he still needed to take six more. So one day Brian is talking to Elizabeth about how his mother had taken a restraining order out against him,

and he happened to mention the neighborhood where his mom lived. And without thinking, Elizabeth just kind of blurts out that her 15-year-old cousin Olivia also lived in that neighborhood, in that area. And Brian's eyes just lit up. And so soon after, he told her and Wanda that Olivia would be his next. wife. And sure enough, on July 24th, Brian attempted to kidnap Olivia from her bedroom. But again, the media kind of played a role in this a little bit because they initially reported that the 18-year-old cousin, Jessica, was supposed to be the target. Right, right. But that wasn't the case. It wasn't the case. But also, investigators didn't really take that whole

thing seriously. They thought it was a hoax. Meanwhile, it is the guy. It's the guy who has Elizabeth trying to take her cousin as his next wife. And it wasn't really until Elizabeth was saved that police did learn about what a close call that break-in was. And getting caught during that break-in didn't really slow Brian down either. He actually got a lot bolder. And that's when he started bringing Elizabeth into Salt Lake City.

He would dress her in those robes and veils so no one would see her face. Meanwhile, she was walking right past people who knew her, friends, family. family members, people who had been out searching for her for months. And this is one of those close call encounters that just makes your blood run cold. There was an incident in a library where multiple people had gone on the tip line and said, hey, I think Elizabeth Smart is in this library right now with someone, like you guys should go check it out, multiple people. And so the

officer goes to the library, goes up to Elizabeth and Wanda while Brian's in the bathroom and is, you know, asking, are you Elizabeth smart? Can you take off your veil? Because of course, her face is covered. And just in the nick of time, Brian comes back, you know, makes up this story that she can't take it off. It's against her religion. And so the detective leaves. You know, the guy's talking calmly. He's collecting. doesn't seem to be panicked. Religious freedom. Yeah.

There's nothing I can do. Meanwhile, that was Elizabeth. It was her right there. Four months after she was abducted. And it was five months later, nine months total. Yeah, wow. They finally, you know, saved her. Does she talk about that?

She does. I mean, she was so, so terrified. And like, under the table, I believe it was Wanda, was like squeezing her leg to not say anything. And, you know, Brian had so much fear instilled over her that, like, I will kill your family. I'll hurt people. I'll take another bride. Like, just all this stuff.

So one thing that Elizabeth talks about in a thread on Reddit, it is actually from the R-slash-I-AmA subreddit. And so it's titled, I'm Elizabeth Smart Abduction Survivor and Advocate, Ask Me Anything. Looking back at all of this and this close call, a lot of people start to call her a Stockholm syndrome survivor. They're like, she had Stockholm syndrome. She wanted to be with them. When they found her nine months later, she didn't say her name. Thou sayeth. She didn't want to be saved.

But there was also rumors that she said, I love him. A lot of rumors about that. Oh, when the cops were trying to take her away, she was like, no, but I love him. And I don't think that ended up actually happening. No. And so in this subreddit, someone asks her this question. What misconceptions about your abduction would you like to make people more aware of? And Elizabeth replies, I couldn't just run away.

I couldn't just scream out. Everything I did, I did to survive. I never suffered from Stockholm syndrome. I never identified with my captors or cared about them. Every decision was made with survival in mind. Yeah, that's so interesting because what I was saying earlier about rumors and myths that have persisted about this case. One of them being that she was obsessed with. them, that she really cared about them, that she was saying, I love him. And then also the idea that

I was really scared when I was a little kid hearing about this case, because the idea that he gave her a new name, it was said that she had forgotten her own name, that if you call someone by the wrong name for long enough, that they'll forget their own identity. But also that seems like that was not the case either. Like they really painted her. She was very with it. She knew what was going on. She knew she had to protect herself. It wasn't that she was so. in love with this couple. No, not at all. And I'm going to get to it in a minute here, but, you know, she does say in the same post,

she's like, I learned about them. I studied them in order to be able to escape somehow, some way, safely. Like, she was very with it, very smart. And so after this close call at the library, Brian decided to take them to California. But California was a disaster. They were unhoused, nearly starving, living in these makeshift camps around San Diego. Him and Wanda constantly fought, fought about Elizabeth, how Brian was spending too much time with Elizabeth. And so even in her accounts, she describes, like, kind of using that jealousy Wanda had against Brian to keep her safe.

And so in order to keep the peace with Wanda, he actually created. like a schedule. So he would be with Wanda in the morning and Elizabeth in the afternoon and night. And there were instances where Brian would try to assault Elizabeth during the day. And Elizabeth would be like, Wanda would be upset. And he was like, well, Wanda's not going to know. She's like, no, I'm going to tell Wanda. And he's like, oh, okay, you're right.

So, like, again, very smart and with it and using, you know, things she learned and studied to her advantage. And so after his arrest for breaking into that church in February, Brian declared it was time to move the trio again. And he talked about other big cities, New York, Philadelphia, Boston. But Elizabeth knew that moving further away from home would make it less likely that she would be able to escape or someone would recognize her. and so she again used her smarts to manipulate him. So while Brian and Wanda were arguing about where to go next,

she knelt down and said a silent prayer to God. Let this plan work and I'll never manipulate anyone ever again. And then she made her move. She announced that she had a feeling that they should return to Salt Lake City. Was it a sign from God? Only Brian could answer that because he was the, the prophet. She flattered Brian's ego calling him God's best friend. Then she suggested that Brian should use his great position to ask God for permission. Brian bought this completely. It was kind of everything

he wanted to hear. And after a few minutes of prayer, he told her that Salt Lake City was indeed their next destination. He had to go back to get another wife. And at the end of February, after nearly five months in California, Elizabeth succeeded in manipulating her captor. It was really this desperate gamble and it paid off because it led her right back to where they were able to get her. And she essentially saved her own life in that move because minutes after they stepped off that bus in Salt Lake City, Brian and Wanda were arrested. After the arrest took place, one of the biggest questions that police had for Brian was why, why Elizabeth? Why out of all the young woman that he could have chosen, did he pick a 14-year-old from Federal Heights? And he said that he first saw Elizabeth when he came by the house in November of 2001, and that is when he became obsessed with her.

He then stalked her until he could find a way to take her. And his really, really the only criteria he had for his wives were that they were Mormon and that they were virgins. prosecutors really thought they had a rock-solid case against Brian and Wanda. They had Elizabeth's testimony that she had given. They had all of the physical evidence, and they had Wanda who eventually started cooperating with them. But they were hit with this legal challenge that ended up really delaying the justice in this case for years. Both Brian and Wanda's defense attorneys claimed that their client suffered from severe mental illness and that they weren't sane enough to stand trial. In January of 2004, a court found. that Wanda was indeed incompetent, and they transferred her to a Utah State Hospital.

But a few months later in July of 2005, a state judge issued the same ruling for Brian. Multiple psychiatrists diagnosed them with all of these different mental health conditions, including delusional disorder, paranoid schizophrenia. And this really created a legal nightmare in the case and really getting justice for Elizabeth. For years, the case was stuck in limbo. Brian would disrupt competency hearings by singing hymns and delivering these religious rants in the courtroom. It seemed like he knew the less sane he sounded, the more time he could buy himself. The whole prosecution hinged on whether Brian was actually delusional or whether he was acting and manipulating the entire, like, team, I guess.

And Wanda, who had been taking medication for her condition, she started refusing it. However, in June of 2006, the prosecutors got permission to forcibly medigate her with antipsychotics. And in 2008, she was finally deemed competent enough to stand trial. Maybe it was because of the medication, or maybe she finally understood what her future was going to look like. But in 2009, Wanda pleaded guilty to kidnapping and unlawful transportation of a minor across state lines. She agreed to testify against her husband in exchange for a lighter sentence. her statements confirmed everything that Elizabeth had already said to the police. And with her cooperation in hand, prosecutors really turned their attention to Brian.

So finally, in 2010, Brian was also deemed competent enough to stand trial. But instead of following Wanda's example, he decided that he was going to plead not guilty to all of this by reason of insanity. Elizabeth, however, was not going to see him take the easy way out of this. It had been seven years at this point since her rescue, almost eight since her abduction, and Elizabeth was finally ready to face her captors and share her story with the world. Now, in November of 2010, Brian's trial finally began. From the beginning, no one denied that he was responsible for the crime, but the question became if he was legally sane at the time that he committed the crimes. He was facing life in confinement either way, but a verdict in his favor would mean that he was. he would spend most of that time in a hospital rather than a prison.

The defense team was trying to argue that he was a paranoid schizophrenic, and he had this imaginary mission from God that he was on. And the prosecution claimed that he was actually, in fact, just a master manipulator who was using religion to justify the horrible, horrible acts he was committing. And during this time in the trial, Brian was turning it into an absolute circus. The judge removed him multiple times. His erratic behavior was exactly what his lawyers wanted the jury to see, though, because that was just going to basically prove that he was suffering from the mental illness that they kept insisting he was. But luckily, the antics that he was pulling in the courtroom were not really the highlight of this trial.

The highlight was really Elizabeth. She really had to work through a lot of her trauma. Elizabeth had really, against all odds, gone on to live an amazing life since she was released. She had finished high school. She finished college. She majored in harp performance. She said that music helped her heal. In 2009, she visited France as a Mormon missionary, and that's where she met her future husband, Matthew. By the time the trial had began for Brian, she had really grown into being this strong-willed adult. And she was determined to see Justice Dunn. She took the stand in the trial and really did not shy away from any of the horrible. details about captivity. She was not going to hide anything. She wanted everyone to know exactly what had happened to her the entire time she had been held captive. All of the stuff that you were saying earlier too. She had already testified saying a lot of this, but she had to, you know, go up on that stand and relive all of it. And well, what's interesting too about this is on that Reddit thread,

like she even says, like, I was so scared about people knowing exactly what happened to me. But still, she overcame it and she shared everything. I know. I was reading about this one case actually that happened in Canada where parents decided to not press charges against a woman because there's someone 10 at the time that this happened. And a lot of people were judging the parents like, why wouldn't you press charges? People forget that the child has to testify. You are asking your child to relive all of this trauma for the world to see. All of that stuff becomes public record.

Everyone's going to know what happened to them. It's embarrassing. They don't necessarily always stay anonymous. So, like, I definitely understand when people don't want to go through the whole thing again. And at 14 years old, she was asked to do it at 14, 15 years old. So it's just incredible. It's really incredible to be that brave. And in December of 2010, the jury ends up rejecting the insanity defense and found Brian

guilty on all accounts of everything. Kidnapping and unlawful transportation of a minor across state lines, with the intent to engage in sexual activity. In May of 2011, Brian was sentenced to two life terms in federal prison without the possibility of parole. As for Wanda, she was already serving part of her 15-year sentence. And Wanda was actually released in 2018, but was soon re-arrested because she violated her parole. Part of her release agreement as a registered sex offender was that she was ordered to stay away from parks and from schools. Yeah.

But this idiot gets an apartment near an elementary school pretty much right afterwards. Come on. She was arrested in 2025 again because she fed ducks at a park because God told her to do it. Whatever. I don't. I have no idea what is going on with this woman. PSA don't feed ducks bread. It can cause them to die.

Oh, yeah. She probably was feeding ducks bread. I mean, just to add salt to all of this, but just, I don't know. She can't listen to instructions because she just thinks that God is giving her all these messages. What is important, though, in all of this is that after nearly a decade of legal battles, Elizabeth Smart finally had some justice. But her story doesn't end with Brian's conviction. In a lot of ways, this is just the beginning of a very important and proactive life that she was about to live. Rather than retreating from public life, she chose to become a full-time advocate for missing children and survivors of abuse.

And it is really incredible to see the work that she's been doing. She started the Elizabeth Smart Foundation and began delivering around 80 speeches a year to audiences across the country. And her message is always the same. Quote, never be afraid to speak out. Never be afraid to live your life. Never let your past dictate your future. And I just, I want to say too, that I love that she also says, never be afraid to live your life because she was kidnapped in such a specific and rare way that would make people even afraid to hire someone to help out on their house. Yeah.

But she's like, just don't, don't be afraid to live your life. Yeah. There is one other comment I really want to highlight. And someone asks her, in your opinion, as a child's advocate, what are some practical common sense steps parents can take to help keep their children safe and avoid abuse? And again, like, it was such a crazy fluke. And yeah, there's nothing like you can do in a lot of these cases. But she does say, one, make sure your child knows that they are loved unconditionally. And make sure your child knows what unconditionally means.

Two, make sure that your child understands that no one has the right to hurt them or scare them in any way. It doesn't matter what that person may be. Family, friend, religious leader, community leader, doesn't matter. And three, should anyone hurt your child? or threaten them in any way, they need to tell you. Yeah. Like she is just like all of her comments on this subreddit. And I'll make sure it gets linked in the description for you guys.

It's just really, really powerful. I remember my parents telling me that when I was little, which actually is probably because of Elizabeth's fart, but the whole idea of like, if someone makes you uncomfortable, you're not going to be in trouble. I don't care what you did. If you did drugs with this person and they made you uncomfortable, you can tell us you are not in trouble.

Like you just, what's important is I. you tell us. And I love that because I think a lot of it was maybe these strict rules that she had grown up with that she was so ashamed to come forward because she didn't want people to know that she had drank alcohol and done drugs and like was assaulted by this strange man because, you know, that's like that's going to reflect poorly on her. And it's going to be hard for her to rejoin the community. Because she's not an adult. She doesn't understand the context. And she's coming from a place where abstinence is preached. And she describes a situation that really scared her about talking about everything where someone said, if you have sex before marriage, you're chewed

up gum and who's going to want chewed up gum? Yeah. And think about how scarring that is at that young age and now you're chewed up gum. And so she talks about how, you know, sex before marriage should be talked about and that it actually maybe shouldn't be abstinence. And again, go read some of her responses on this this Reddit post. I know it's better to hear it coming from her too, as someone who's lived it to be like, you're not chewed up gum. Like I promise you even like she's still, she like went on to do Mormon missions. She like still is a practicing member of the church.

She is still a practicing member. I mean, she said that her faith helped her heal. Like she's still very active. Mission trip. She met her husband. I mean, it's amazing that she, because I didn't read about this part until we were doing the research, but the idea that she. prayed to God and then pretty much immediately afterwards they went back to Salt Lake City and he was

arrested. I am very amazed that throughout all of this it almost made her stronger in her faith. I think that's really beautiful. Yeah. Elizabeth ended up going and speaking in front of Congress to advocate for legislation including a national sex offender registry, which it's crazy because it didn't exist at the time, but now it's like, it's just anonymous. Her efforts to get the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act of 2006 passed, and this gave social workers access to a national crime database which allowed them to share reports of child abuse with other agencies. This database could have helped the police zero in on Brian sooner based on his ex-wife's allegations against him. It also provided grant money for programs dedicated to preventing

crimes against children. Elizabeth also used her own notoriety to challenge some deeply held beliefs within her own Mormon community that we were talking about. One of the things she talked about was how not only, like, is sex before marriage discouraged, but sex education in schools is discouraged. And when it's taught, they tend to use an abstinence-only approach. And she've always felt like those beliefs created stigma for victims of sexual assault. Because in that sense, if it's violated, you've lost your purity, even though that's not the case when you're assaulted at all. And it's really these That's sparked a national conversation about how we talk to young people about sexuality and consent. And Elizabeth continues to use her own story as a way to teach resilience. She published a memoir called My Story in 2013, followed by a book called Where's the Hope in 2018. One of the reasons why I keep going back to this story is because it's also just a way to highlight Elizabeth and the amazing work that she's done. Because I think more people need to know about the work that she's actively doing. Absolutely. And also I want to give a shout out to like Elizabeth is a huge hero in this story. But her sister Mary Catherine also being the one two months later, identify a guy she knew for just a few hours as a nine-year-old.

Just to have that memory and be like, oh my God, I know who did it. And to be right and to trust her gut even when she was being questioned by police and that's so scary. I know. What's going to happen if I'm wrong? is incredible. So just she's she's another big hero to me in this story. Absolutely. I mean, hearing her talk is it's just crazy and to get out of bed. I mean, as we as we were going through this, I'm like, oh my God, she's nine and being so brave and like she's so brave. Trying to get any information she can to hopefully save her sister. And yeah, she ultimately did. It was a nine year old girl and a 14 year old girl who really did more than even the FBI. I know. And I do just want to

take a note. Like, I know a lot of people are questioning, like, well, why didn't that detective have her take down her veil? And I know there are, you know, religious protections. However, he could have called in a female officer because under the laws in this country, you can have someone take down their veil, but you have to provide reasonable accommodations and do it correctly. That could have been done. There were a lot of tips that came in, reporting, seeing them together outside of the library experiences. There's actually a thread, and it's on R-slash Salt Lake City, and it's titled, Hold Up, Elizabeth Smart's Kidnapper was a well-known local, and everyone knew this guy.

He was known as, like, the panhandler Jesus guy, because he made himself look like Jesus. And there's multiple people on the subreddit that said, I actually reached out to the tip line, and I said, I saw them on a train. And I was helping as a part of the search with Shriners early on. And we were not in the area at all that I saw them in. And like so many people were really trying to help. And it's like it's hard. They were failed so many times.

And it's so hard, right? Like you're getting 3,000 tips. Not all of them are going to be credible. But like better systems should be put in place so that when you do get good reliable tips, you can follow them. And you can bring someone home sooner and safely. And I just think, you know, all of this is kind of a testament to like, there's better ways to do this. And I think God Elizabeth was smart and learned these tactics and got herself out essentially because it could have been very bad. And with that, do we want to go to our missing person of the week?

Yes, because clearly getting the word out is important. Yes. This week we wanted to highlight the case of Matthew Spencer. This came in from a listener. We're reading your comments when you're suggesting missing people to come. cover. Matthew is described as being 28 years old when he disappeared, white, and his last known address was in Spanaway, Washington. So on August 5th of 2025, Matthew Spencer was driving from Las Vegas to Houston, Texas. His vehicle was last seen by an ALPR camera and flagstaff that same

day. His vehicle is a silver Hyundai Tucson with a Washington license plate, C.JM. 2235. His last contact with family was on August 6th and he has not been heard from since. His last internet activity indicated that he broke down somewhere between Belmont and Williams off the I-40. If you have any information on Matthew's location, you can contact the Coconino Sheriff's Department at 9-28-774-4523, the Flagstaff Police Department at 928-774-14-14 or Silent Witness at 9-8-7-7-4-6-1-1-1. And that is all we have for this week's episode. Thank you guys so much for joining us. This was obviously a big case to cover,

but now we just want to hear from you all. Thoughts, feelings, feedback, theories, anything. Feel free to leave notes in the comments. We read a lot of them. And again, this is, you know, a well-covered case, but it's still so important to highlight and raise awareness and talk about all that Elizabeth is doing. in terms of advocacy. So it's a big one. And again, at Crimehouse, we really value your support.

So please, again, share those thoughts on social media. Remember to rate, review, subscribe and follow clues, help others discover our show. And if you're hungry for even more content, we've got you covered. For more exclusive content, monthly bonus episodes, early access, and ad free listening, join our Crimehouse Plus community on Apple Podcasts. We're going to be back next week with another case to unravel. And until then, keep searching. you next time on clues. Bye guys. Bye. Capture your favorite summer feeling with Pandora Jewelry. Discover a collection inspired by the sunshine, freedom, and moments that make the season

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