Crime Junkie - SURVIVED: Elizabeth Smart

Episode Date: March 8, 2021

Elizabeth Smart was abducted at knifepoint in the middle of the night from her bedroom in Salt Lake City, Utah, in 2002. She was 14 years old. For more than 9 months, she was held captive by a predator – one who kept her hidden in plain sight.To learn more about the programs and services Elizabeth mentioned please visit https://www.elizabethsmartfoundation.org/ For current Fan Club membership options and policies, please visit https://crimejunkieapp.com/library/. Source materials for this episode cannot be listed here due to character limitations. For a full list of sources, please visit https://crimejunkiepodcast.com/survived-elizabeth-smart/ 

Hi, Crime Junkies. I'm your host, Ashley Flowers. And I'm Brett. And this week's story, well, it's a story that most Crime Junkies have probably heard before, or at least one that you'll be familiar with. But even if you have heard this one before, even if you think that you know it, it is worth tuning in to our version for something very different in the second half of this episode. It's an episode about a 14-year-old girl who is abducted in the middle of the night from the bedroom she shares with her sister, the bed she shares with her sister. And it rocks her family and her community

and echoes across the country and around the world. The person responsible for her disappearance left behind no clues and no one, not detectives, not her family, her friends, no one seemed to be able to make sense of how this sweet, shy, innocent girl found herself the target of the worst kind of predator, the kind who was able to keep a little girl hidden in plain sight. This is the story of Elizabeth Smart. It's just before four in the morning on June 5, 2002, when Ed Smart is jolted away by his nine-year-old daughter, Mary Catherine, who is absolutely frantic, saying someone took Elizabeth. Now, it takes Ed a second to kind of, you know, shake off the sleep. And at

first, he's like, what the heck is happening here? But Mary Catherine just says it again. A man came in and took Elizabeth, a man with a gun. Initially, Ed is like, this can't possibly be right. Mary Catherine must have had a bad dream. They're going to find Elizabeth here somewhere in the house. I mean, it wasn't that uncommon actually for Elizabeth, who is five years older to get fed up with Mary Catherine's kicking or tossing and turning, whatever, and find another spot to sleep for the rest of the night, usually the couch. But Ed checks the couch, and she's not there. Ed checks all through their Utah home, the living room, the bedrooms, closets, bathrooms, everywhere, and she's nowhere to be found.

And Mary Catherine really doesn't sound like a kid waking up from a bad dream. She sounds wide awake, wide awake, and scared. And that's around the time Lois makes a discovery that brings all of the chaos of the last several minutes into sharp focus. The kitchen window. Someone had cut through the screen of their kitchen window, and a side door off of the kitchen is now unlocked. But Ed knew that he had locked that door before he went to bed. Ed calls 911 and immediately springs into action, calling family and friends and neighbors and anyone that he can think of who might be able to help find Elizabeth. Police arrive within about 10 minutes of this call. And by the time they get there, the house is already

starting to fill up with people ready to help. We're talking Ed's family, Lois's family, their friends, neighbors, like I said, they were calling everyone, even people from their church. I mean, but the house is a crime scene, right? Were police able to get what they needed for like physical evidence before people started arriving and disrupting everything? So it is a crime scene. Yes. And this is one part of this story where there are conflicting accounts of how this really went down. I mean, in a 2017 A&E documentary called Elizabeth Smart Autobiography, police say that Ed's first calls that morning actually went to family and friends. Like before he called 911. Yeah, but Ed and other members of the

Smart family say that's absolutely not the case. Ed definitely called 911 first. Either way, according to the book, In Plain Sight, which was actually written by Ed's brother Tom Smart, police don't actually start restricting access to the house until close to 7 a.m. And by that time, three hours had passed and a ton of people had been in and out. So from a crime scene perspective, this is definitely contaminated for sure. But contaminated or not, they are able to piece together a theory about what happened that night, thanks in a big way to Mary Catherine. Sometime around 2 a.m., an intruder cut the screen on that kitchen window, the window that is right above the sink. They climbed through a 10-inch opening,

walked up to the second level of the house into the girl's room, woke up Elizabeth, and then walked her right out at gunpoint, they think, leaving through that side door in the kitchen. And no one heard any of that? No one said, oh yeah, I heard a creak or a bang or footsteps, but I assumed it was something else. No, nothing. Besides Mary Catherine, who was literally the only one laying next to Elizabeth, no one heard a sound. So Mary Catherine obviously heard stuff, but did she see anything? Was she able to give a description of who she saw, anything like that? She didn't get an awesome look at the person, no. But she is able to provide the police with something. She described Elizabeth's abductor as a Caucasian

man, about 5'8", and said that he was wearing light-colored clothes and a hat, but not like a ball cap, some kind of other hat that she couldn't really describe. But the other thing that Mary Catherine says is that the guy's voice sounded vaguely familiar to her. Now she couldn't place it exactly, but she thinks that the voice was one that she had heard before. And that particular point is one that police jump on right away, because they were already thinking that it had to be someone who knew the smarts, or at least who knew their home well enough to know how to get in, how to move through easily in the dark without disturbing a lot of stuff, and how to get out without tripping the alarm. Wait,

they had an alarm? They did. Now they admit that they didn't always set it overnight because of how often it would go off accidentally. But even if it wasn't on-on, all of the doors still beeped pretty loudly. We have this with our alarm system anytime one of our doors is beep, beep, beep, beep, right. But apparently even that wasn't working on this particular door on this particular night. According to Ann O'Neill's reporting for CNN, the only reason that door didn't beep is because a magnet had slipped and silenced the alarm. Wait, so do police think that the slip magnet was something done as like part of the abduction or was it just a total random coincidence? They don't necessarily think it was done

intentionally, but it might not be a coincidence either. What was a coincidence was the unlocked kitchen window. The smarts say they always locked the doors and the windows before bed, but they decided to leave that one window open on this night hoping that it would clear out the lingering smell from potatoes that had accidentally burned on the stove when they were making dinner earlier that evening. But that slip magnet on the door, honestly, that could have just been dumb luck. There were several possible exit points out of the house that night. And because he chose this one, police are wondering if their suspect knew that that particular door wouldn't sound the alarm.

So maybe family or close friends, like someone that was in the smarts family circle. Yep. And police tend to start their investigations with the people closest to the victim anyway and then kind of work their way out from there. And in this case, police are definitely considering all the possible options. Like, did the family organize the kidnapping as a way to get cash somehow? Did Elizabeth run away and stage the whole thing? Did Ed or Lois have enemies who might want to hurt them? But Ed and Lois, they give like a hard no to all of these options. Like they weren't in any kind of financial trouble where they would need to like stage this for money. And again, usually when you stage a kidnapping, you're like, the money

comes from you. So I don't know where they would think it would come from. Right, right. But it was definitely not a runaway. I mean, she had zero conflict going on at home, at school, anywhere. And they didn't know of a single person who might want to hurt them or Elizabeth. And I mean, there's a search going on too, right? Like an organized physical search for Elizabeth. Yeah, absolutely. Police think that whoever took Elizabeth took her on foot and likely

walked up into the mountains that were right behind the smart house. So that's where the initial ground searches focus, the foothills and trails and forested mountains near the home. Now we're talking ground search by law enforcement, including canine units, helicopters, not to mention thousands and thousands of volunteers in all terrain vehicles in all like types of foot. Everything, everyone came out for this little girl. And while all of the searches definitely generated leads for police to follow up on, none of them actually panned out. So this whole time, there's almost like two investigations going on. One is this physical

search for Elizabeth or for clues that might lead to her. And the other is this police investigation, which is focused more on trying to figure out who is responsible. Now they are intertwined, but they're two totally separate questions. And at this point in the investigation, everyone is a suspect. And there's this period of time where even though Ed and Lois said like, Oh, there's no reason that someone would take her like nothing to do with the family. There's a time that like the media and the public and all the rumors around town really believe that the kidnapping was an inside job. What was reported in the media at the time was that the window screen had been cut from the

inside of the house, not the outside, which of course makes you immediately go to like, this is a staged scene. But it actually wasn't true, or at least not entirely true anyway, and definitely not a smoking gun. Because yes, police decided that there was one section of window screen that could only have been cut from the inside of the house. But they said that the person doing the cutting didn't necessarily need to have been like in the house completely, just that they needed to be able to stick their hand inside with the knife. But that doesn't mean that they're ruling out family. Police are systematically questioning everyone close to Elizabeth and one by one, ruling them out as suspects, Ed,

his brothers, other members of the extended family, and so on. And the bigger the circle gets, the circle of potential suspects, the harder it becomes to just question and polygraph everyone who may have had contact with the smarts, period. So they need a way to narrow down this suspect pool. So investigators work with the FBI to create a profile of their suspect as a way to narrow their search. And Britt, can I have you read this to us? Sure. So this is from Tom Smart's book in Plain Sight. Quote, when it was dark, they, they being the profilers, noted that from the outside, the home was like a fishbowl with no curtains on the windows and plenty of places for a stalker to hide in the cover

of the scrub oak. Before the agents left, they came up with a profile of the person who kidnapped Elizabeth and left that profile with the task force. Their assessment was that this was a sex offense, that the crime was premeditated, and that the abductor would have taken Elizabeth to a predetermined place. They believed he would be keeping track of the case through the media. He probably had previous sexual issues, and he may have been arrested for sexual offenses such as voyeurism. End quote. That profile doesn't match anyone in the smart circle, not even this like wider circle that they've created, which now includes like their church community, even people living in their

subdivision. So they start to look at another potential circle. You see, the smart house was relatively new and there had been tons of finish work happening in the six years since. And according to a 2016 Salt Lake City Weekly story by Colby Frazier, during that time, at least 60 tradespeople and contractors and handymen had been in and out of the house working on different projects. And someone who worked on the house could totally know that the side door had an alarm that didn't work, not to mention knowing the layout of the house, where Elizabeth slept, all of those sort of details. Exactly. I mean, I say they narrowed their list, but even this list isn't super small.

I mean, we're still talking about at least 60 people, and that's not nothing, but it is a place to start. Focusing on this list, the handyman list as they called it, they find out that some contractors had been in there for a couple of days, maybe like a week or two. But there were others who had spent months, even close to a year, working inside and outside the smarts house, which is more than enough time to get super familiar with the physical space, but also long enough to get to know Ed and Lois, and more importantly, their children, who continue to live there while these renovations are going on. And it doesn't take investigators long to whittle their list of 60 plus potential suspects down

to just one name. The handyman whose name immediately sticks out to investigators when they start to broaden their search for suspects is Richard Rietzi. Richard had worked at Ed and Lois' house for eight months back in the first half of 2001, up until almost exactly a year before Elizabeth disappeared. His name had come up several times from several different people, and Ed remembers him well. He says Richard was a good worker who came recommended by a friend, and according to comments Ed made in the Salt Lake City Weekly piece, he was incredibly friendly to the kids. Okay, so none of that is really raising alarms for me, but that usually means that you have a huge and then or butt or something coming

up. There's always a butt. And in this case, it's a long criminal record. In fact, back when he was working for the smarts, like I said, like a year ago, he was actually out of prison on parole. Oh, do we know what he was in prison for? Mm hmm. It was for attempted homicide and felony robbery. Oh, um, yeah, I see those red flags now. Yeah, according to Tom Smart's book, what had happened is Richard had actually returned a fire on a police officer while he was attempting to rob a pharmacy in 1983. But that's just one conviction. This guy has a rap sheet as long as your arm, like I mean, decades in and out of prison. I mean, he served 23 and a half years and all plus the time that he spent

out on parole, which he broke every single time. And like I said, he was on parole when he was working at the smart house the year before. But Ed and Lois didn't know that they knew him as this easygoing, likable handyman, at least until they noticed a few things had gone missing from their house, including a $1,600 bracelet that belonged to Lois. Ed said that he confronted Richard at the time and he denied having anything to do with it, but Ed could never trust him again. So that was the end of them working together. Is there anything in his criminal history that fits the FBI profile? Like they suggested that it was a sexually motivated crime. Anything like that? No, so nothing like that. But according

to that 2003 documentary, which is titled The Kidnapping of Elizabeth Smart, the smarts weren't the only family who had stuff go missing after Richard worked on their home. In all those cases, police thought Richard was probably casing the houses while he was there working on them during the day. And then he would break in overnight to steal whatever stuff he saw. Richard already knew the smart house. So I think what everyone's thinking is that maybe this wasn't sexually motivated after all. What if he was there to steal a few things to like pawn them for money or whatever? And Elizabeth caught him. Like she would for sure recognize him from the many, many months that he'd spent in their house. And the parole

board had very clearly told him that one more violation would send him back to prison for life. So potentially Elizabeth was more like collateral damage. Right. That's exactly what they're thinking. And honestly, Richard ticks a lot of boxes for police, like criminal history, check, an MO that fits his past behavior, check, knows the neighborhood, the houses and the smart family, including Elizabeth, check, check, check. So on June 14th, this is now nine days after Elizabeth's abduction, police arrest Richard. Now, not for kidnapping, but for parole violation. Now, this is a technicality really, they're trying to get anything to really get him into custody and behind bars while they find physical evidence to add to

this like mountain of circumstantial evidence that keeps piling up. They're looking for something that for sure connects him to Elizabeth's disappearance. Now, the circumstantial evidence that they have includes over a thousand miles he put on his Jeep between May 28th and June 8th that he can't or won't account for. And when police search his property, they find not only Lois's missing bracelet, but also this beige golf hat that sort of matched the description of what Mary Catherine said the kidnapper was wearing that night. Remember that hat that she was like, it's not baseball cap. It's something different. Yeah, yeah. But even in custody, even while he's being grilled for hours and hours by Salt Lake City police, Richard denies having

anything to do with Elizabeth's disappearance. He was home with his wife all night. She backs him up saying that he was next to her in bed during the time Elizabeth was abducted. And he's adamant, so adamant that he actually agrees to a polygraph. He agrees to give DNA and blood samples anything to help clear his name. I mean, we talked about the fact that the home was a crime scene, but was there actually any evidence to compare to all the stuff that Richard is providing, like physical proof that he was the guy who crawled to the window and abducted Elizabeth? So there was some physical evidence at the scene. Namely, there was a partial palm print on the window frame, a fingerprint on the door handle, and another partial fingerprint on the bed post.

Now all of this is in Elizabeth and Mary Catherine's room. When they initially collected all of this, police were able to determine that the fingerprint left on the door handle matched the one on the bed post, but they aren't able to figure out who they belong to. But for sure, not Richard? Yeah, yeah, like they tested Richard against this and it doesn't belong to Richard. But this isn't enough for police to think that they got the wrong guy. In their minds, they're kind of like, well, so what? Those could have been left by anybody. I mean, it would have been nice to be able to connect Richard back to the crime scene with fingerprints. I think that would have like bolstered their case. But the problem with fingerprints and what police said at the time

was we can't even say for sure when these prints were left. And we can't say for sure they were left by her kidnapper. Remember, they had contractors coming in and out all the time. I would say even someone who assembled the bed or moved the bed in, like there's a lot of people who could have come in contact with this bed that had nothing to do with this. Exactly. And the only way to find out who they belong to is literally to like print everyone on, you know, in all those different circles we talked about, but that's going to take so much time to rule out everyone and figure out what they mean. So in the meantime, they're still sure that they've got their guy. They just need to lay on him a little bit longer,

dial up the pressure a little bit higher, and they're convinced that he's going to crack. So they come back on anything at all that makes life tolerable for him in prison. So he gets no visits, not even with his wife and stepson, no haircuts, no shapes, no hot waters, no hot meals, no time outside in the yard. And they've got Richard spending 23 hours a day in a cell alone. And according to reporting by Michael Rigby for prison legal news, anytime he's out of solitary confinement, he is in shackles and wearing a hood. I mean, is that even legal? I don't know. When I was reading about this, I was like, this is straight up psychological torture. Physical torture, no hot meals, no hot showers,

a hood over your head. I think about how we all have felt in quarantine. I think any person would crack. 1000%. So I mean, obviously, like you said, they would crack. They're trying to smoke the sky out. Does it work? It doesn't. I mean, not yet anyway. But in their minds, like they don't need a confession necessarily, because as all this is going on, there's a grand jury convening in Salt Lake City to look at Richard's potential involvement in Elizabeth's kidnapping. So they're really hoping that they'll at least be able to press charges and take him to court, whether he gives them anything to help or not. But no matter what, Richard isn't budging even with all of this psychological warfare that they are waging on him. And I mean, when I look at this, like when you

think about what we know about coerced confessions, I am shocked that he didn't break. Again, I am shocked that what they're doing is legal. Remind you, he's not arrested for Elizabeth's disappearance. He's arrested for a parole violation. Oh my God, I honestly had kind of forgotten that until you just said it, like this is a parole violation. This is it's scary that they can do this and and it's legal? Question mark? I mean, honestly, I can only imagine that in that position, I would have cracked as soon as they said I couldn't take out George to be completely honest forever ago. And when you think about that, how would that have changed this story? Oh my God, because he doesn't crack. He just keeps saying, I am not the guy. I am not the guy. And the thing is,

members of the smart family aren't sold that Richard is their guy. And one person in particular Mary Catherine, who, mind you, is the only witness to Elizabeth's kidnapping. She is the one who saw someone take Elizabeth. She literally said, Richard's not the guy. It wasn't his face. It wasn't his voice that she heard. And they're just like discounting that? Well, from police's perspective, they're kind of thinking as Mary Catherine is this terrified little girl who saw a man's face or, you know, thinks she saw a man's face anyway in the middle of the night in the dark. Plus, like the idea of eyewitness statements not always being totally credible. You can count on them. And Richard's just an easy fit for them. He is a career criminal who would

know enough to disguise his voice, maybe to protect his identity. So whether or not she confirms him as the guy doesn't matter to them. I mean, yes, it would be great just like if those fingerprints match, that'd be great to be more of a bonus check mark. But to them, it doesn't matter. This is their guy. Or at least it was looking that way until the morning of July 24th, nearly two months into their investigation. That's when Salt Lake City police get a call from a local sheriff's office. There had been another attempted kidnapping. What? Another cut screen. Another little girl. And it was another member of Elizabeth's family. No. Yes. What police learn is that early that morning around 3am, Elizabeth's 19 year old cousin, Jessica,

woked to the sound of a picture falling off the dresser just under her bedroom window. And when she looked, she saw something or someone trying to cut through the window screen. Now at the time she screamed and her dad came running, but whoever had been trying to get in got away. Now the thing about this is the family doesn't think that Jessica was the target because she had only recently started sleeping in that room. In his book, Tom Smart says that the bedroom had belonged to Jessica's 14 year old sister, Olivia, up until just recently when the two of them switched. Interestingly, Olivia was super close to her cousin, Elizabeth. Like Alex Stone and Emily Friedman reported for ABC that the two were considered best friends at the time.

So the real kidnapper is still out there and coming after more young girls in the same family? Well, that's what the smart family and a handful of investigators are starting to think. But the Salt Lake City police, they're not so sure. They think that the attempted break in at Olivia's was probably just a copycat crime. Maybe some neighborhood kids who knew Elizabeth's cousin lived there and decided to pull. What would be like the most evil prank ever? Yeah, that is truly, truly devious and evil. Yeah, but here's the thing. If it was a prank, it would have had to have been pulled by someone very close to the investigation because the crime scenes are almost identical. I mean, police never release all the details in an open investigation.

We know that. And this is true of this one too. So very few people knew, for instance, that the kidnapper had gone into the house by propping up a chair outside the smart's kitchen window. And yet at both crime scenes, there's a chair against the house. There's a cut window screen. All of it was just virtually identical. So if you're talking about kids, I mean, what are the odds? But police are confident that they have their guy in custody and so they refuse to let this hiccup take them off course. But then on August 27th, investigators get some news that knocks the wind right out of their sails. Earlier that day, just after a court appearance, their only suspect, Richard Ritze, had collapsed in his Salt Lake City jail cell. He was rushed to

the hospital where he had surgery to try and relieve pressure and bleeding in his brain. But after three days in a coma, doctors told his wife and stepson and the cops who never left his bedside that he would never wake up. And he died in the hospital on August 30th. To say that this is a blow to police's investigation would have been a huge understatement. Richard was their investigation. And now from their perspective, they might never know what happened to Elizabeth, where she is, or if she's even still alive. But for the smarts and for the handful of investigators who never quite felt the kidnapping shoe fit for Richard, this is finally a chance to shift the focus of the investigation on to other options, on to other potential suspects.

But do they have any other options or potential suspects? I mean, there were other persons of interest really early on in the investigation, mostly based on tips that came in about interactions people thought Elizabeth might have had in the days before she disappeared or even strange cars in the neighborhood, that kind of thing. But they keep tracking those people down and just ruling them out. And despite a $250,000 reward for information leading to Elizabeth's safe return, there isn't much coming in. Ed and Lois and their other five children, their lives have pretty much been on hold all this time, just stuck in this kind of horrible heart-breaking, never-ending limbo.

Can't imagine. So as summer turns to fall, the family is forced to start thinking about the fact that they might never see Elizabeth again. And that's kind of where things are on October 12th, four months after Elizabeth's disappearance, when Mary Catherine walks into her parents' bedroom one evening out of nowhere and says, I know who took Elizabeth. Mary Catherine tells her parents it was Immanuel. Wait, what? Immanuel? Who is Immanuel? Well, that's what Ed and Lois are wondering too, at least for the first minute.

But then, slowly a memory starts to come to them. Mary Catherine is talking about this man, this street preacher Lois and the kids had run into downtown one day. He said that he'd recently lost his job, he was looking for work, and Lois was like, actually, you know, we've got a lot of work going on at our house. And here's this guy who's down on his luck. So she gave him a couple of dollars and told him to call Ed to talk about coming to work at their house, which he did. Immanuel had only been there one day, not even a whole day, actually, just a few hours. He had done some yard work and helped Ed fix a skylight or something.

And they planned to have him back the next day, but he just didn't show up. And that was the last that they saw or heard about him or even, like, thought about him. So the fact that Mary Catherine remembers him at all is just kind of bonkers to me. But, like, she remembers his name. She remembers the backpack that he was carrying. She remembers his voice. And she says that is the same voice that she heard in her room the night her sister was taken. I mean, as someone with a kind of bizarre memory forming brain, I get this. But also, I have to wonder, you know, what happened that jogged her memory? Nothing. I mean, that's the wild part about the human brain. Yeah, she was reading a book.

She was reading the Guinness Book of World Records of all things. Love it. And she was, like, looking at this random picture of a strong woman staring back at her from the page. And she said suddenly it was just there, like, popped back up wherever it was hiding in her brain. And she made the connection. At the time that, like, they go forward to police about this, police make a point not to sort of, like, over question Mary Catherine during their investigation because they didn't want to inadvertently dislodge or overwrite a memory. And they told Ed and Lois that this kind of thing might happen, that out of nowhere, she might just remember and they couldn't force it. They just had to be patient.

I mean, it would still, it must be a pretty wild thing to hear that she has, like, not only a name, but, like, specifics about what he looked like. Absolutely. And to be honest, Ed and Lois are sort of, I mean, they're not even sure about the whole thing. Like, could Mary Catherine be misremembering? Remember, I mean, this guy was only ever at their house one time and that one time was over a year before. He was, like, in and out. For only a couple of hours. Yeah. Yeah, Ed didn't even think of him when he was even giving police, like, the name of the people who had been in, like, that contracting handyman circle for renovations. Like, that's how far away this guy was from their memory. And beyond that, there are so many things about Immanuel that make him

seem like such an unlikely suspect. Like, what do you mean? Well, the big one is that when he met the family the year before, he was actually homeless. He said that he went around to shelters preaching as a way to help people. So if he has Elizabeth, like, where would he be keeping her? And also, what was his motive? He didn't have any real connection to the family. Nothing bad happening. No fights or falling outs, just that one totally random, completely uneventful day working at the house. And then just ghosting, right? Yeah, there was no ransom demand after Elizabeth went missing. So he's not looking for money. It just wasn't adding up for police. They're not thinking that this Immanuel guy is looking like a strong suspect. And while they do assign an

officer, literally one officer to try and track him down, that one officer is up against a beast of a task. They mean they don't know this guy's real name. They're sure Immanuel isn't it. And he has no fixed address. I mean, but do they have a sketch or something? Like, at least based on Mary Catherine's memory? They do produce a sketch, but it's not actually based on Mary Catherine's memory. It's based on eds. And the smarts, of course, are super keen to release it to the public and see if anyone can identify the guy. But the police don't want to. Why not? Well, they say that they're worried about driving Immanuel underground by going hard with the information publicly. But in his book, Tom Smart talks about how the overwhelming majority

of police feel like they had the right guy all along. Like they already had him. Richard was their guy and anything else that might just be a waste of time. And they're thinking that releasing information about Immanuel will only jeopardize the case that apparently they were still trying to make against Richard. So the smarts wait, and they wait, and they wait some more. The smarts celebrate Elizabeth's 15th birthday without her, they celebrate Christmas without her, and they wait with bated breath every time that they hear remains have been discovered in and around the Salt Lake area. And they breathe a sigh of relief every time they hear it's not Elizabeth. Finally, on February 3rd, 2003, nearly eight months after Elizabeth was taken from her

bed, the smarts decide enough is enough. And they just release the sketch themselves. Ed and Lois tell reporters about Immanuel, how he wore jeans and a work shirt, was clean-shaven, soft-spoken, talked about the Bible while he worked, but offered no real information about himself. They also mentioned that he was a street preacher and that he told them that he traveled from place to place a lot. You'd think a development like this would just rip through the news media like wildfire, but that's actually not what happened. The local Salt Lake City media covered the story and some of them ran the composite, but the news didn't make it out of Utah really, not yet anyway. But then two weeks later, an update on Elizabeth's case ran on, you know,

one of our very favorite shows. The OGs. America's Most Wanted. And on that, they included the composite sketch. And here, I want to show you what people saw on that broadcast. Maybe you can just give us like a quick description. Yeah, so it looks like a Caucasian man, maybe in like his 40s or 50s. His hair is short, maybe a little bit wavy or curly at some point in time. He's clean-shaven. He has a pretty prominent nose and a rather like angular or thin face. Like his- It's almost like kind of like blocky too. Yeah, like a very like rectangular head, if you will. I don't know if his cheekbones are very prominent or his cheeks are sunken, but there's definitely something like that going on. Yeah, and the other thing that sticks out to

me about this sketch is his eyebrows. I mean, they sit like really low on his forehead. So if you're like looking straight on, they are just over his eyes. Yeah, yeah. And his eyes are like, maybe light colored. I can't really tell it's a black and white sketch. So, I mean, who really knows. So this goes out across the country on America's Most Wanted and almost right away, the phone starts ringing at the Salt Lake City Police Department. On the other end is a woman named Lisa, and she's calling to say that the man in the picture, the man police are looking for, can only be one guy. Her brother, Brian David Mitchell. And when police search their system for Brian David Mitchell, what they find is that first of all, the guy had been arrested not once,

but twice during the time Elizabeth has been missing. What? Yeah, once in Salt Lake in September 2002 for shoplifting. And then again, in February 2003 in California this time for breaking into a church. But that's actually not even the wildest part of all of this, because right there in the police file is a picture of Brian David Mitchell. And they are shocked at what they see. Let me send it to you along with another one as well from like around the same time frame. And in the photo from when he was arrested, he's like sitting on this shop floor. And then in the second one, he's walking down the street so you can get a better sense of what he looked like. Oh, like I honestly can't even believe that this is the same guy from the composite. Right?

Yeah, like he looks nothing like it. I mean, to be fair, he's also wearing like long robes, literally to his ankles with these big long baggy sleeves versus like the polo from the composite. He has this huge thick beard, he has long hair, and he's wearing, it looks kind of like a, it's not quite a beanie hat. It reminds me of like, like a Christmas story, Scrooge like nightcap sort of hat. Or I can't really describe it. Maybe the kind of hat Mary Catherine would know is a hat, but not be able to say like, what kind because you're even struggling to say what kind of hat you'd call that. I would say I'm struggling to describe it. Nine year old Mary Catherine definitely would

definitely would probably struggle with describing it 1000%. So yet looking at this, like no wonder police were having a hard time tracking down a manual from the sketch that they made because this looks totally different. It's not this, it's, this is not the man you were looking for. Right. According to an article in the Sunday Morning Herald, Brian David Mitchell was only clean shaven and wearing jeans and a work shirt for like this very brief period of time, specifically in the months after September 11th when those attacks happened because of some comments, yep, that people were making about him looking like Osama bin Laden. On the other hand, this current version of a manual with the hair and the beard and the

ropes had actually become kind of a fixture in Salt Lake City. Everyone knew this guy. They called him the Jesus man and he was always downtown preaching on the street and asking for money like before Elizabeth was taken. Oh girl, I mean before she was taken and after she was taken. Salt Lake City is this guy's home base and not only that, but the last few times he'd been seen, he's had two women with him. The women never showed their faces. They wore veils that covered everything but their eyes and they never spoke. He always introduced one as his wife and the other is his daughter. Wait, you mean Elizabeth was right there in Salt Lake City the entire time and no one recognized her? Well, I mean there were definitely people who thought they recognized

her. I mean this one time in particular police got a call from the public library from someone saying that there was this young woman who could be Elizabeth smart. They actually sent a detective down and of course he walked right up to this person wearing long robes and a veil covering her face and said, are you Elizabeth smart? But they said no. Her name was Augustine Marshall and the man refused to allow her to lift her veil for religious reasons. And this is like a total mindfuck because how hard can you push when it comes to respecting someone's religious beliefs? Right. So it's not like he just asked one time and moved on. They like questioned and kind of kept pushing but eventually the detective who was there left. Yeah, I mean there's nothing

else they could do in that moment. Yeah and that was the last time anyone remembered seeing the Jesus man and his wife and daughter. That at this point was like months ago. So when the updated photo of Immanuel is blasted out by America's Most Wanted in mid-February they say that it's possible he went somewhere warmer to wait out the winter months maybe Florida or Texas or Arizona. So are police sure that this is their guy? Like is there anything else about Brian David Mitchell that makes police think that he is the one who might have kidnapped Elizabeth? Well there was this other call that came into police shortly after the America's Most Wanted episode and this one was from a woman named Debbie. Debbie was Brian Mitchell's second wife. She had seen him

or anyone in his family for a long time. I mean like we're talking 18 years and that was like since their marriage ended. But Brian Mitchell as she describes is a guy that not only terrorized and abused her during their marriage but a guy who sexually abused her children as well. Oh my god. Based on his history Brian is much closer to the profile the FBI prepared in the early days of the investigation than anyone thought. And while it is absolutely horrifying for Elizabeth's family to think that she may have been kidnapped by a sexual predator, his ex-wife Debbie tells them something else. She says Brian is a molester but he is not a killer and if he took Elizabeth she's probably still alive. And then on March 12th 2003 not one

but two calls come into 911 virtually at the same time. Both of them saying Emmanuel is here and he has Elizabeth. The Jesus man and the two women are just walking down the side of the road but they're not in their usual robes and veils anymore. They're now in jeans and shirts but honestly by this time it wouldn't have mattered what they were wearing because the residents of Utah would recognize them anywhere. It only takes two minutes for the nearest officer to arrive on the scene with more right behind her. She asks this guy that they think is Emmanuel, what's your name? He says that his name is Peter Marshall and he introduces his wife Juliet and their daughter Augustine. The first officer asks the man for ID and he says he doesn't have one. He says that

he doesn't have anything because he doesn't need any worldly possessions because they are messengers of God. So then they ask this girl what her name is and she says that she's his daughter Augustine and Marshall. But they're not letting him off the hook. These people aren't going anywhere until they can prove this for sure. The girl that they're talking to is wearing this grayish ratty old wig and these dark sunglasses. Like nothing I think they would expect. Like she is clearly in some kind of disguise here and when they ask her to take off her sunglasses she says no she needs them because she just had some kind of eye surgery. So what they do finally is that they actually separate her from the other two people and they ask her again who are you and she

says I know you think I'm that girl who ran away but I'm not but the officers can see through it. They can see how anxious this girl is. One of the officers who was there that day says that they could literally see her heart pounding through her clothes. Oh my god. So they kept pushing. They ask her point blank if she's Elizabeth and they tell her that her family has never stopped looking for her. That they want her to come home. Everyone wants her home and eventually finally the girl says if thou say it. Which they don't even really understand but what they know is that it's not a no which means it's close enough. So do they take her home? Not right away. So at first they load her into the back of a squad car and start driving toward the nearest station but

they already have Ed on the phone saying get to the police station right away though they don't tell him why but within a few minutes he arrives and that's when everyone finally gets the news that they've been waiting for. The news that they've been hoping for and praying for. Elizabeth Smart is home. When Ed and Lois are finally reunited with their daughter that's when the details of what really happened start to come out. If you followed the trials of Brian David Mitchell and Wanda Barzee if you've heard Elizabeth speak or seen any interviews she's done if you've read her book or seen any of the documentaries made about her life then you'll know about the nightmare she endured at the hands of her abductors and the strength and resilience she showed not only

during that time but in the nearly 20 years since her safe return. So I could tell you Elizabeth's story. I could tell you the things that were actually going on while we all made assumptions out in the public but you know who would do an even better job than me Elizabeth herself. He was worrying it made me think well people remember me well I just become another name from the past that sounds familiar that nobody really knows how they know that name or or maybe they remember what happened but they just give up hope. When Elizabeth is finally home the story she tells police and to her parents is one that is truly unforgettable. I had the opportunity to hear it firsthand when I spoke with her

and she's just so candid and so real about what was truly the most traumatic experience and honestly I'm still processing it. Honestly it started off just like every other night I mean there was nothing different about it you know we went to bed everything was normal and the next thing I remember was hearing a voice and it was a man's voice and I didn't recognize it and I didn't think it could be real because Ben weren't allowed in my bedroom and so I didn't immediately respond I thought it just had to be part of my dream because who who thinks that someone's going to break into their home in the middle of the night and say I have a knife at your neck don't make a sound get up and come with me. I could actually feel something sharp lying

across my neck I could feel someone's hand on my arm trying to pull me out of bed and I remember opening my eyes and sure enough there was this dark figure standing over me and for the first time in my life I mean I was truly terrified. He took me out of my bed he took me out through my house up through my backyard our backyard wasn't fenced it was just open it ran into the neighbor's yard ran into a vacant lot we went up through the vacant lot there were some bushes he pushed me down behind the bushes I remember some headlights coming down the street I immediately started thinking this is the getaway car he's gonna take me in a getaway car I'm never gonna get away no one's ever gonna find me but this car it didn't stop and it actually passed right in front of us

but I remember seeing the word police written alongside of the car and for like that half a second I was like oh it's gonna be fine everything's gonna be fine but it didn't stop it kept going and as soon as it was around the corner he had me running across the street and up into the mountains behind my home I didn't actually realize how far we had run up into the mountains till much later I think I was just so pumped full of adrenaline and fear that I just I mean time almost seemed to stop but yet the sky was starting to get lighter and the sun was coming up right as we topped over the top of this mountain and started down the other side on the way up there he mentioned that he had his wife waiting for us and so for a second I was like oh like maybe they just really

wanted a child or maybe they had a child and she passed away and I would be about her age or maybe I look like her or like my mind kind of went to a nicer place than the reality in the middle of the trees the standard trees there's a tent set up there were some tarps lying on the ground this woman walked out she was dressed different she looked different than really anyone I'd ever seen before and she came up to me and she hugged me and she brought me inside of the tent where she proceeded to start to undress me and sponge bathe me that woman of course was Wanda Barzee and Elizabeth said that it was clear to her right away with that first hug that had nothing to do with comfort and everything to do with control that Wanda was not going to be any kind

of mother figure any kind of ally that she was just as much a player in this nightmare as her husband that first morning Brian performed what he called a sealing ceremony it said that you know we were now married we were now man and wife every reason every excuse that I had given him as to why this wasn't okay why this wasn't legal uh he came back and he keeps saying it's time to consummate our marriage then the thought just hit me he's gonna rape me that's what it means he's going to rape me and there's not a thing I can do about it there's nothing that's gonna stop him like he's a man he's bigger than me he's stronger than me like I literally cannot save myself right now I mean it was it was terrifying it was horrific and it did force me to grow up in

a span of hours I mean I had heard the word rape before but it always seemed like such a far away distant word it didn't really seem like that was a word that would ever be a part of my life or the life of anyone that I knew because nobody ever talked about it I mean I'd heard it on the news but that was the news was that really real life like I think every victim would tell you that it's devastating on pretty much every level like it was it was awful I remember just thinking if this is what sex is I never I never want to have sex ever again I never want to have this happen to me ever again it would just felt like emotionally so destructive that I could not protect myself and I did grow up in a very conservative very Christian community and there had always been a

lot of emphasis put on remaining you know remaining pure remaining chased remaining a virgin until you get married it was devastating and it made me genuinely feel that if my parents knew what had happened to me that they would they wouldn't want me and they would just be like well as unfortunate as this is you know we had six kids that's a lot of kids now we'll only have five and five kids that's still a lot of kids one of my survival mechanisms was just shutting down was just doing what they told me because I just always felt like if I didn't I would be punished for it and I knew they were capable of it I just you know I didn't fight back I just did what they said because I wanted to survive and I I didn't want them to hurt me more than they already had

and I didn't want them to kill me for the first few months Brian and Wanda kept Elizabeth from escaping by chaining her to a tree they needed that physical restraint in the early days to keep her in one place while they established a stronger one a psychological one so what my captors did is I mean right from the word go they took away everything that was important to me everything that was like a pillar in my life I mean they kidnapped me away from my home so they took away my family they took away you know my security they took away my friends my school they took away all my freedoms I mean I was 14 when they kidnapped me I'd never drink alcohol in my life when they first started bringing alcohol back into the camp they would withhold food from me

until I drank what they told me to drink I mean and I remember like as silly as it sounds you know I went through the dare program in fifth grade and we'd all made our fifth grade pledge not to abuse drugs or alcohol and in my mind I was like I'm breaking my pledge which like at that point was just silly like who cares about that like it just felt like I couldn't keep any pledge or any promise to anyone or to myself and that if I wanted to survive I just I just had to be willing to just honestly let go of who I was and do what they wanted because otherwise I wasn't going to make it it was always a battle of emotion when it felt like I was so close and yet so far because on one hand I did I did just want to scream out and I wanted to say I'm here come and rescue me

but at the same time I was dealing with like this enormous level of fear where I felt like if I said something I would be responsible for the death of someone else my captors they would never have let anyone like help me they wouldn't they would have killed me before that happened and they would have killed anyone they had to before that happened I mean I remember at one point hearing my name actually being called as searchers were out searching for me and I mean he was holding on to me and he had his knife in his hand and he said it'll be your fault if anyone comes into this camp because not only will you die but you will first watch me kill whoever enters into this camp and I mean he had his knife right there the same knife that he had kidnapped me with I mean it felt

very real and I knew he was capable of evil because I had cried and I had begged and I had pleaded with him to not rape me you know to not make me go naked to not force me to do things I didn't want to do and just none of it had ever affected him so I knew he was capable of evil and I knew that he would do whatever he had to do to protect what he wanted but as time went on you know they'd always say to me well if you ever do anything we don't want you to do we'll kill you if you do anything we don't want you to do and we don't kill you we will kill your family and that felt 100% believable because they had already broken into my home you know the place that I thought was most safe and most secure and they had kidnapped

me no one had stopped them. Elizabeth's captors would say that what they were doing must be endorsed by God or else why would he let it happen how else would they remain protected even with police driving past and search parties with an earshot how else were they able to walk around in Salt Lake City in public and not get caught. He used to bring newspaper articles or missing flyers from down in Salt Lake back to this hidden campsite and he'd show them to me and he'd be like oh all of Salt Lake is covered in blue ribbons and light blue balloons and these missing flyers are on every tree and every telephone pole and in the windows of every house and every shop every grocery store they're everywhere but no one will ever find you because I have you

and everything he did just seemed to confirm that I mean I remember he'd always circle back once again to religion and he'd say well you know God is protecting us they won't find us. There were moments during Elizabeth's nine months in captivity when she came so close to being found. We talked about the search teams and the helicopters in the first part of this story and even that day in the public library when someone called in a tip about someone who looked like Elizabeth that really was her. I remember Wanda Barzee her hand just clamping down on my leg as this homicide detective was questioning my my captors. It was just like that physical reminder was almost like being kidnapped all over again and reminding me what

my captors were capable of and what they what they would do the lengths that they would go to to make sure that I wasn't rescued. Wanda Barzee she didn't she didn't say anything because I had been told that I was not allowed to speak out in public and so to make it seem like it was part of our religion Brian Mitchell also told Wanda Barzee that she could not speak out in public and of course she supported that because ultimately he told her what she wanted to hear and he told her how special she was so she went along with him and so she wouldn't speak out so it was only him speaking for both of us. I think religion has always been a sensitive topic and I think especially then it was it was a very sensitive topic and that really any form of

extremism was just avoided and my captor I think he knew that and he capitalized on that so he just kept saying you know this is part of my religion this is my daughter this is my wife no I cannot unveil her I cannot show you her face that would be against our religion and and the only people that will ever see her face are me her father and her future husband and you are neither and that would be violating her if she were to show you her face and so I mean he just kept on hammering that point across until finally the police officer I mean he was convinced and he turned around and he walked away and it was it was devastating I mean it felt like I was so close and then to see him just turn around and walk away I knew that I wouldn't be let out in public again

they already planned to leave Utah but this close call in the library really amped up the urgency they started making plans to leave Salt Lake and head to southern California now if you're familiar with Salt Lake City Utah you'll know it's synonymous with the church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Brian David Mitchell considered himself to be a fundamentalist with the Mormon faith but his beliefs were rooted in an earlier time a time when polygamy was endorsed by the church Brian called himself a prophet and went by the name Emmanuel his wife Wanda Barzee he called her Hepsiba the mother of Zion Elizabeth who became Augustine to them was the first of what they planned to be seven young while my god during the trial in 2010

according to reporting by jennifer dobner for nbcnews.com Wanda said they had received a commandment from god to find and kidnap girls between age 10 and 14 years old which was a convenient commandment considering that all these attempts to convince grown women to become his wives had all I assume it was Brian David Mitchell who attempted to kidnap Elizabeth's cousin Olivia too like were there other attempts yes so it actually was him who tried to break into Elizabeth's cousin's house this was not a bad prank by someone they probably should have paid more attention to it and she wasn't the only target there had been many girls stalked and followed both before and again after Elizabeth was abducted that was actually part of the reason why they went to

california he thought he'd have better luck with his mission to kidnap young girls there and then once even we went to San Diego he took me they found a new like it was like a dried river bed and he hid me there and I was only let out I mean maybe once a week maybe once every other week and it was always with their I mean I was never let alone I was never left alone ever during my entire nine months I mean there was always one of them with me if not both of them while we were in California my captors they actually did try to kidnap another girl thank goodness they were not successful in it and so they started to say well California is clearly not the place we need to go to kidnap a girl we need to go somewhere else and they were talking

about these big cities like New York and Boston and I just remember thinking oh my goodness like no one is ever going to recognize me there no one found me in Utah no one's found me in California I mean if I ever want to be rescued then I need I mean my best chance of rescue is is to get back to Utah and even if I'm not rescued I'm at least physically closer to my home and to my family Elizabeth knew that she had to get back to Utah and so she started making a plan to get there she knew her captors were expert manipulators she'd had a front row seat to that over the last nine months and so she decided to use that same approach to try and manipulate them I remember turning around and being like oh you know I just have this feeling like this feeling

won't leave me alone but it's like we're supposed to return to Salt Lake but I know that I am just you know I am I am too wicked like I'm too sinful God would never speak to me God would never like I am just I am just too unworthy but this feeling won't leave me alone do you think you could ask God if we're supposed to return to Salt Lake because I know he'll tell you because you know you're his you're his prophet and he'll tell you and you know you you are his mouthpiece here on earth I just know he'll tell you and honestly if if there was another miracle in all this it was in that moment because then he turned around he was like oh yeah I think you're right I think we should go back to Salt Lake so they hitchhiked from Southern California back to Utah by this time if you

remember police knew that the guy they were looking for was Brian David Mitchell they knew what he looked like they had that mug shot at him from when he was caught shoplifting everyone was looking for Brian looking for Wanda and looking for Elizabeth by the time March 12 2003 came Elizabeth had been gone for nine months and while everyone hoped and prayed she would come home safe the likelihood that she was even alive after that length of time seemed really small yeah I mean isn't it something like three quarters of kidnapping victims are killed within like the first three hours yeah I mean that's definitely a stat that you hear a lot and it is somewhat true according to US Department of Justice statistics of the children who are going to be murdered by their

kidnappers 74% will be dead within three hours so this was the reality on the minds of the smart family during all of those months that Elizabeth was gone which is why her safe return to Utah and to her family after all of those months was such a huge deal not just in Utah or even in the United States but all over the world when I got home I I needed to heal I needed to accept that my life was never going to be what it had once been I could never go back and be the girl that I was before I was kidnapped and so I had to really make peace with this new normal there was no going backwards I could only accept what was here and now when I first got back I mean people always used to ask me questions well why didn't you run why didn't you scream why didn't you you know why

didn't you escape why didn't you do something and for years and years and years I didn't understand why I would immediately feel so defensive when I hear the words why didn't you but as like a little older I started to realize it's not because I was hearing their question but because my brain was hearing it as you should have run you should have screamed you should have done more those words why didn't you seem to imply that I didn't do enough I could sit and spend a whole lifetime thinking well you know I went around and checked the doors and windows with my dad that night but I guess we missed one window I should have gone back and double checked it my dad should have gone back and double checked it when they were building the house they shouldn't have put that

window right there you know we could have avoided this whole situation if they just placed that window somewhere else or I mean you know if I had just screamed why didn't I scream if I had just you know instead of just going with him when he told me to wake up and come with him that night when he put the knife to my neck if I had just screamed would he have really killed me or would he have turned and run and been in a rush to get out of the house I mean like I could spend the rest of my life thinking that way that would be honestly probably pretty easy but it's done it's over with it happened I'm still alive I'm still here and I'm not doing myself any favors by going back and blaming myself for what happened because at the end of the day it was not my

decision to be kidnapped it was not my decision to be raped to be chained up to have food and water withheld from me it was the decisions and choices of other people. It took seven years for Elizabeth's case to get to trial but when it finally did it was her testimony that sealed the fate of her captors. In 2009 Wanda Barzee pled guilty to kidnapping an unlawful transportation of a minor and was sentenced to 15 years in prison minus time served. As part of her deal with prosecutors she testified against her husband who is now serving a life sentence behind bars. Oh okay so Wanda Barzee is out right now right? She is and I actually asked Elizabeth about that here's what she said. It was a disappointment it was a disappointment to see that she was released

and honestly it still is because she never stood up for me you know she was right there you're watching me be raped and she had been married before she had a prior marriage in which she had six children of her own and they were all older than me and yet she was still okay with watching honestly this little girl being raped and so in my mind that just makes me feel like she was every bit as guilty as Brian Mitchell and so for me when she was released I felt like it was you know the legal system letting me down but I will say that it also gave me a not that I didn't already have compassion for all these victims who never see any form of justice or where their perpetrators just get like a slap on the wrist or nothing happens I already had compassion for them

but I think it also gave me a greater compassion and a greater understanding for what they go through. Someone told me you know we have we have a legal system we don't have a justice system because can you ever really replace what's been taken after you've been raped after you've been kidnapped after you've been abused can you ever really fix that can you ever really receive true you know restitution or compensation or have that piece of that piece of you given back your life go back to the way it was before you really can't and so I feel like it just made me feel even more passionate about doing everything I'm doing now and what she's doing now is pretty incredible because somehow and I don't even know how she has turned this experience this trauma this tragedy

into something so powerful she has become a strong voice for survivors of sexual violence and through the Elizabeth Smart Foundation she and her team are doing incredible work to both prevent sexual exploitation and to support survivors. The number one comment that we get is that no one believes me or I'm afraid to tell people because I don't think anyone will believe me or because they know who did this and they like them they won't believe me I mean it is so common I mean we have a whole campaign built around that it's it's our November through December campaign and it's it's called we believe you and it's encouraging the public to take this pledge because if you haven't experienced I hope I hope the majority of people listening to this

podcast I hope they haven't experienced rape or sexual violence or kidnapping or domestic abuse I I hope so much they haven't but if they haven't they know someone who has whether they know they know them or not I mean whether that person has disclosed to them or not they know someone I mean that's just how prevalent it is in today's society and so our whole campaign is about trying to help educate the public on what it is to be a survivor how can we be a better community how can we support our victims and survivors a bit more how can we rise above victim blaming and victim shaming and you know we want everyone to jump on board and take our pledge where we pledge to believe our survivors we believe you where we you know will offer them support and where we offer them you

know love and a safe place to fall because we all need each other I mean one of our other initiatives is called smart defense and you know it's all about helping women be able to defend themselves but also giving them the the knowledge not just the physical training but the knowledge to understand you know what's okay what's not okay where can rape come from what are defend your or stand your ground laws um you know when is it okay to fight back or when is it okay to defend yourself or you know if you're in a grocery like if you've got your arm full of groceries what do you do and making sure it's an active part of your life the reality is that according to rain the rape abuse and incest national network one in six one in six American

women will be a victim of rape or attempted rape in their lifetime someone is sexually assaulted every 73 seconds in this country oh my god and what that means is like Elizabeth said even if no one has disclosed it to you you probably know someone who's been a victim of sexual assault maybe that victim that survivor is you and if it is I need you to stop what you're doing for just one second I need you to turn up the volume and I need you to listen I need you to hear this because we all need to hear this I just wish that every victim and survivor could understand that what's happened to you is is not your choice even if it was a boyfriend that raped you even if it was uh someone that you knew that took you even if it was someone that you were texting with that

you met on an app and you're like yeah I'd love to go out with you like let's meet up or someone that I mean you you send a naked photo to I mean it is still not your fault just because you made these other decisions it is not your fault for being raped it is not it is not your fault for for being abused for being hurt that those decisions those crimes lie solely on the perpetrator on the person that did these things to you and I just I wish people could understand that because the amount of shame and self-blaming and guilt that survivors have is crippling and devastating you are lovable and you are worthy and you have every much bit of right as as everyone else to have joy and have peace and to live your life to the fullest you deserve that you can share what's

happened to you don't have to be embarrassed of it you don't have to be ashamed of it you can speak out and you doesn't it doesn't necessarily have to be on the same level as everyone else maybe it's just telling one other person but you don't need to feel like you have to keep that bottled up inside you you can share that you can let that out and there are people out there who will believe you and there are so many amazing you know different advocacy centers shelters law enforcement that are there for you to help you move forward in any way that you need help they are there for you don't be afraid to ask for help we all need each other we all need to ask for help sometimes you're not alone when elizabeth was kidnapped back in 2002 she became everyone's sister everyone's

daughter everyone's friend we all knew elizabeth and we all celebrated when she came home we owe ourselves and our friends and our neighbors that same love if you want to learn more about the programs and services elizabeth mentioned today visit elizabeth smart foundation dot org despite what she's been through elizabeth calls herself one of the lucky ones because she survived but not every story has a happy ending like hers not every case even makes headlines like hers and not everyone makes it home next week we'll actually be bringing you one of those stories one that unfolds in a very different way than the story we told you today if you want to hear the full raw audio of my conversation with elizabeth that's actually

available in our fan club and so for more information on how to join visit crimejunkiepodcast.com there you will also find all of our source material for this episode be sure to follow us on instagram at crimejunkiepodcast and we'll be back next week with a brand new episode crime junkie is an audio chuck production so what do you think chuck do you approve