All language subtitles for How.It.Really.Happened.S04E03_English

♪♪

Elizabeth: In the beginning,

I'd heard some voices and seen
helicopters and airplanes,

but by that point,
I thought maybe my family

would still look for me,
but nobody else.

It had just been so long.

It was like
I had just disappeared.

♪♪

♪♪

Welcome to
"How It Really Happened."

I'm Hill Harper.

June 2002 -- Elizabeth Smart
was a 14-year-old kid from

an upper-middle-class family
in Salt Lake City,

but in a flash,

she became the most famous
missing girl in America.

A mysterious man snatched her
from her bed

in the middle of the night

while her 9-year-old sister
watched.

News of a child being kidnapped
from the safety of her own home

struck fear in the hearts
of parents across America.

Who would have done
such a thing?

Elizabeth's dramatic saga,

with its unforeseeable
twists and turns,

stretched on for nine months.

Here's how it really happened.

♪♪

[ Rustling ]

Christian:
He came down from the mountains
up above the Smart home.

It was a nice home in a nice
neighborhood in Salt Lake City.

Normally, all the windows
in the Smart home

would have been closed at night,

but that particular night,

the window was not closed
because Lois, Mrs. Smart,

had burned some potatoes that
she had been cooking for dinner.

And she left that open
just to air it out.

He climbed in
the kitchen window,

and he knew right where to go.

Dujanovic: He walked into
the bedroom of Elizabeth Smart,

where she was sleeping next
to her sister, Mary Katherine.

Watson: He put a knife to
Elizabeth's throat and said,

"You're going to come with me.

And if you say anything,
I'll kill you."

Elizabeth: Waking up
in the middle of the night

in my own bedroom,

having this strange man
standing over me,

someone I didn't recognize,
a knife being held to my throat,

I was terrified.

And he took her out of the room
and led her out of the home.

Dujanovic: Mary Katherine,
a scared little 9-year-old girl,

just had her sister kidnapped,

but she eventually goes and
finds her mommy and her daddy.

Dobner: She wakes her father up
and says, "Elizabeth is gone,

and you're not gonna
be able to find her.

A man took her."

And that, of course,

triggers all kinds of panic
with the family.

Dujanovic: Lois and Ed Smart
don't know what's going on.

They go right
to Elizabeth's bedroom,

and sure enough, she's gone.

Winslow:
The family's frantically
searching their house.

They're tearing up
their own place.

They obviously can't find her.

Tom: They can't fathom
what's happened.

And then, as soon as they
go down and see the window...

...they know that
the worst has happened.

♪♪

In the kitchen, they noticed
that the window's open.

And saw that the window screen
had been cut,

and she reacted
like any mom would do,

with just total
and abject horror.

Winslow: She screamed.

She realized that someone
had broken into the house

and taken her daughter.

I think we were
in such disbelief

that it could
really have happened.

Tom: I got a call at just before
5:00 in the morning.

Edward calls and says
that Elizabeth's been taken

and get down
as quickly as we can.

It was just an incredibly dark,
dark experience.

There's been no mistake here

that something horrible
has happened.

Benson:
The alarm was sounded,

and from there, in that house,
just chaos.

[ Siren wailing ]

[ Heart beating ]

The latest
on a developing story,

and it involves every parent's
worst nightmare.

Police are reporting an
unusually bold child abduction

in an upscale neighborhood
of Salt Lake City, Utah.

They say
14-year-old Elizabeth Smart

was kidnapped from her bedroom

as her 9-year-old sister
watched.

My first reaction was,
"Well, this is big."

There was a lot of confusion
about what we really had.

King: An innocent girl
has been stolen

from what should have been
the safest place in the world --

her home.

Watson:
It seemed almost surreal.

What do you mean,
she was taken out of her bed

in the middle of the night,

with her sister
laying next to her?

Fennerty:
The scene was chaotic.

I'd never seen anything like it.

Police start looking
at everything.

Christian: The amount of help
that Mary Katherine

could originally give
was limited.

Poor Mary Katherine.

I mean, she's 9 years old,
scared for her own life,

scared for her sister's life.

Mary Katherine feigned
that she was asleep

while the kidnapper
told Elizabeth

to get her shoes on and
spirited her out of the room.

Dinse: She saw
a little bit of him.

She heard what he was saying.

Blitzer: The kidnapper
is described as a white male,

5'8" tall, wearing a white shirt
and a white cap.

Benson:
Mary Katherine's description
was of a man with a gun.

Even though it was a knife,

she'd imagined that
she'd seen a gun.

It was probably dark, and she
just saw something in his hand.

King: And the sister
took a while, for fear,

before reporting it,
right, Chief?

That's correct.

What they guessed
was about two hours

before she got up
and went to her parents' room.

Dinse: Time is very important
in any kind of crime,

but particularly
in an abduction event.

And if you don't get
to the person

within the first 24 to 48 hours,

usually, it's gonna become
a recovery,

as opposed to a rescue.

♪♪

Christian: Police did not really
have a lot to work with

in this investigation.

Silver:
The screen had been cut.

It was an obvious
point of entry.

We found a chair
which was outside the window.

We took some prints,
but those prints turned out

not to be of any value.

Silver: No one had saw
a vehicle leaving,

so the idea was
they probably went by foot.

Most of the things that we had
found at the house

had been ruled out
as far as being pertinent.

I think it was a difficult
investigation, for sure.

Fennerty: Elizabeth herself was
a very low-risk victim.

She just was not someone
who put herself in a position

where she would be susceptible
to being kidnapped.

So, nobody thought,
"Oh, she's just missing."

It was controlled terror
from the very beginning.

The Smart family were
a churchgoing,

upper-middle-class family.

A really close and devout
Mormon family.

Elizabeth was 14 years old.
She played the harp.

She's the second-oldest
in her family of six.

Ed: She had just talked about

preparing for the new
high-school track team.

Tom: She's obviously
a very beautiful girl.

She wasn't the center
of attention or anything.

She just kind of fit in
with one of the family.

Benson: She was
a pretty timid girl.

You'd call it something
of a late bloomer.

Elizabeth and her family
on Friday nights

would gather together
and watch a Doris Day movie.

That's what they did.

Elizabeth, if you're out there,

we're doing everything
we possibly can to help you.

You felt for her family.

They were just beside
themselves with grief

and begging and pleading
for answers.

If you have got her,
please let her go.

Please!

Benson: It was really easy
to identify with them,

to be sympathetic
with what was going on.

Dujanovic: Not knowing
where your child is,

just hoping and praying
that she comes home alive?

I would not have even been able
to get out of bed.

Tom: They were in so much deep,
horrible, dark grief.

We were just
rallying around them

to do whatever we could.

[ Sighs ]

I don't know what else to say.

What is the latest information
police have given you

about
this investigation?

That they're doing
everything in their power

to press forward
and to find Elizabeth.

Male Reporter: Investigators
have been out all day.

They say they have some clues,

but no solid leads,
as of this moment,

as to what happened
to young Elizabeth.

Dujanovic: As a detective,

you're gonna go in
and you're gonna say,

"What's the most logical reason,
what's the most logical person

to have wanted
to take Elizabeth,

and what would be
their motive?"

There's no ransom request

that we're aware of
at this point.

And as the day went on,
you were just in shock.

It was very difficult
for everyone to try to grasp.

So, obviously, at that point,
you just think,

"This doesn't make any sense."

The idea that
a complete stranger

had snuck into
a 14-year-old girl's bedroom

and taken her and kidnapped her
in the middle of the night --

preposterous.

Something was fishy
about this case.

♪♪

Male Reporter:
Authorities say Elizabeth Smart

was abducted from her bedroom
early Wednesday morning,

but they remain optimistic

that the 14-year-old girl
will be found.

Fennerty: On the way out,
he insisted that,

"I should take a pair
of tennis shoes from the closet

and put those on."

Christian: They left
through the back door.

Now, it's interesting because

the back door was one
that was not alarmed.

♪♪

Hello, I'm Tom Smart.
I'm Elizabeth's uncle.

I was working
at theDeseret News.

I've been a photojournalist
for 30-some odd years.

I knew it was important to get
this out as quickly as possible.

We're gonna search every inch
of this state and beyond

if we need to
till we bring her home.

And it exploded
as soon as word got out.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

From day one, you knew it was
going to be a big story.

Male Reporter 2:
The search for Elizabeth
continues around the clock.

This was bigger than
anything else I'd ever seen.

She's 5'6" tall,
weighs 105 pounds.

She was wearing red pajamas.

They released videos of her.

They released
photographs of her.

Hi.

Woman: Are you having fun,
Elizabeth?

Yeah.

Benson:
It was so intense.

The media was intense.

Law enforcement was intense.

There was such an urgency
to figure out

what in the world had happened
and to hopefully get her home

before it went past
that critical period of time

where she was gonna
end up dead.

Chief, what do you figure here
as a motive

if no ransom note comes?

We're not trying to draw
any conclusions now.

It's really speculation
on our part.

Many people were questioning
how this girl could be kidnapped

from her own home
in the middle of the night

without anybody hearing a thing.

Dinse:
We brought search dogs,

and the search dogs took us

to the street that bordered
the neighborhood.

And that's where the dogs ended.

So we thought that a car
may have been parked there --

She got in a car,
and they drove off.

The first people
they started looking at

were members
of the Smart family.

Maybe it was an inside job.

Fennerty: Most of the time,
we're looking for a male.

But we're looking at the father
first and going out.

Did they have a reason?
Was there a connection?

Christian:
One of the reasons, perhaps,

the Smarts had been involved
in some way

was that, at first appearance,

it looked like the screen
to the window

that had been cut
had been cut from the inside.

Dinse:
And whoever entered, if they
entered through that window,

they had to go through
that screen,

and there was no evidence
of clothing, fabric,

or anything that would have
grabbed onto the screen.

They had a home alarm system
that never went off.

Did somebody inside try to stage
what looks to be a kidnapping?

Benson: Just a lot of indicators
that whoever did this

knew the Smart house
and knew the Smart family.

Watson: And for the family to be
relatively calm

in the face of the storm.

Christian: They just weren't,
possibly, as emotional

as some people thought
they should have been

under the circumstances.

She is a harp player.

She has very strong hands.

Tom: A lot of people saw Edward
the first day and said,

"Oh, man, look at him.
He's looking so weird."

Well, you go have your daughter
kidnapped and see how you act.

Watson: And then there were
some questions about

how long did it take Ed Smart
to call investigators

before they were alerted
that she was missing.

There was some rumors
going around

that maybe he had called
a bunch of family members

before he called the police.

The pieces just didn't add up
in terms of saying

the family had nothing to do
with this.

The Smart family
was under a lot of stress.

I remember Tomwas
a lot of stress.

Keep hoping every day
is the day,

and I really, honestly,
thought that yesterday was --

was gonna be the day.

Honestly, I was just
doing whatever I can

in a very sleep-deprived world.

I can admit that,
five days into it,

I was pretty bat shit crazy.

We have a great sense of comfort

and are feeling
support all over,

and I-I think that, um...

♪♪

I'm sorry.

If I was watching me, I'd say,
"It's that guy right there."

As the investigation
went forward,

they took polygraph tests
of everyone in the family,

including Elizabeth's uncle Tom.

Lois, were you upset at all
by the polygraphing of family?

Absolutely not.

We have just
tried to follow

exactly what they've
told us to do.

By this time, it had been five
or six days with zero sleep.

So I went into the polygraph
for eight hours.

And Tom's polygraph test
came back inconclusive.

A member of Elizabeth Smart's
extended family

is under increased scrutiny
tonight

after the results
of a polygraph exam

came back as inconclusive.

I didn't fail it.
It's just inconclusive.

If somebody says,
"Well, I think you did it,"

does that bother me?

No, I don't care.

If you go for five days
with no sleep

and you go into a polygraph,

I can guarantee you,

you will not pass
your polygraph.

♪♪

♪♪

I think our investigators
are becoming very frustrated.

As we get leads
and follow them up,

most of them
aren't going anywhere.

Tom: Statistically,
if it's not in the family,

it's in the neighborhood.

And, actually,
stranger abductions

are probably the very last
on the list.

Do you jump when
the phone rings, Ed?

Yes, we all jump.
We're just waiting

for that phone call
to say, you know,

"We've got her."

Fennerty: It was tough
not getting any sign

that we were gonna
resolve this quickly.

Watson: We've seen these stories
unfold so many times,

and, unfortunately,
most of the time,

they don't have a good outcome.

Benson: She's asking him
what's going to happen,

and he wants to get away
from civilization

and get her where
he wants to get her.

Elizabeth: I really didn't know
what the definition of fear was

until that moment.

♪♪

Ed: Elizabeth, know that
we are trying to help you
in every way we can,

and please,
please hang in there.

We love you very much.

Your brothers and sister
send their love.

Be strong, Elizabeth.
Be strong.
We want you to come home.

♪♪

Male Reporter:
The desperate search
for a missing teenage girl

is underway in Salt Lake City,
Utah, this evening.

Elizabeth Smart
literally vanished

in the middle of the night.

And in a close-knit community,

it was incredibly
disturbing and scary.

The reaction was just one of,

"This could happen
to my daughter.

This could happen in our house."

O'Neal: We had a lot
of children sleeping

in their parents' rooms
at night,

scared that some bogeyman
was gonna come in

and take them from their house.

♪♪

Benson:
It was really, really fast

that people started looking
for Elizabeth.

We immediately started
search parties going everywhere.

Elizabeth's 5'6",
105 pounds.

Haberman: Ed and Lois Smart,
they were members

of the Church of Jesus Christ
of Latter-Day Saints.

They had lived in the community
for a very long time.

Dobner: It's like
one giant family,

and that really drew people
to get involved.

The level of volunteer searches
was, quite frankly, stunning.

We had hundreds the first day.
We had thousands the second day.

Watson:
The searches were intense

because we were dealing with
the Wasatch Mountain Range

and where the home sits,

right there at the base
of the mountain.

Dujanovic: I've never seen
so many people

climbing around the hills
of Salt Lake City.

And people stopped at nothing.

We had helicopters in the air
that were looking for her.

If enough people look for her,

she's gonna be spotted
somewhere.

Winslow: People were searching
in Southern Utah,

people were searching in Idaho,

doing anything they could
to find her.

♪♪

Dobner: I think that,
as journalists,

we had many, many questions.

Winslow: It defied logic.

I mean, she just had vanished
without a trace.

Where is Elizabeth?

♪♪

Elizabeth: I really didn't know
what the definition of fear was

until that moment.

He said, "I not only
will killyou,

but I will kill anyone
who tries to stop me."

Watson: There is a road
behind the family home,

at the base of the mountain.

And as they were crossing
that road,

a police cruiser
just happened to be going by.

And he pushed Elizabeth

into some of the shrubbery
alongside of the road

until that police car
had gone by.

Benson: Then he took her
into the foothills,

and they were gone.

There were so many times
that first day,

where, if luck would have gone
the other way,

we wouldn't have ever
had to have told this story.

Lois leaving
the kitchen window open

because she'd burned
part of the dinner,

the fact the door
they left through

was not connected
to the alarm system,

the near miss running into
a police car on the street.

If those things hadn't happened,

maybe Elizabeth
would not have been taken.

Elizabeth:
It seemed very unreal.

I -- I didn't know
what was going on.

She's asking him
what's going to happen,

and he's brusquely getting her
up the mountain

because he wants to get away
from civilization

and get her where
he wants to get her.

I can't imagine the fear
going through her young mind.

Was he gonna kill her?

Was he going to do
the unthinkable to her?

She pleads with him from time
to time to just, you know,

"Rape me here and kill me here,
where someone can find me,"

because she doesn't know
where he's taking her.

Elizabeth: I remember he just
looked back at me, and he said,

"Oh, I'm not going to rape
and kill you...yet."

Dobner:
There were homeless people

who the Smarts had hired
from time to time.

Tom: Within three or four days
of this all getting ramped up,

all of a sudden, they say,
"Hey, we have a suspect."

A former handyman at the Smart
home named Richard Ricci.

♪♪

Welcome back.

The taking of Elizabeth Smart

from her own home,
in her own bed,

while her parents slept had
families everywhere panicked.

Was the kidnapper
a total stranger?

Was it someone who knew
the family?

Detectives on the case
had an uphill battle

because for the most part,

Elizabeth Smart had vanished
without a trace.

Do you think, Lois,
that it had to be someone

who either knew her
or had seen her?

It's hard to know.

It's a better guess
than someone just randomly

walking by your house,
going in, and taking someone.

But I can't imagine
who would ever do it.

I can't even imagine.

Dinse:
My caution to this suspect,
if he is listening --

We are going to get you.

And if you've got Elizabeth,
you better release her now.

Winslow: Police were looking
at who kidnapped her.

Was it from a stranger?
Was it from somebody she knew?

Police did not really have
a lot to work with

in this investigation.

100 detectives continue
to work this case

from various
law enforcement agencies.

There weren't
a lot of physical clues.

Utah police detectives ran into
another dead end today.

Winslow: If there was
any potential lead,

they looked at it.

Every single one of them ended
with a dead end.

There's sort of, like,
a standard set of questions

you would start asking, like,
"Who was in the home?

Was there anybody weird
in the neighborhood?"

Roberts: We have brought to bear
a number of our assets,

including
our behavioral sciences

from the FBI Academy
in Quantico, Virginia.

We have been consulting
with them regularly.

They've been flown out here
and have been on ground.

Fennerty: The FBI has
a perfect resource.

They're commonly referred to
as profilers.

I was able to get
three of them to fly out,

and one of the things that
the profilers provided with us

was an initial assessment,

and that was that
this was a sex crime.

She felt that the abductor

would have surveilled
the place before.

The abductor would
take Elizabeth

to a pre-determined place.

The abductor would follow
this case in the media.

You know, this wasn't just
a random abduction.

This was very specific.

Typically, the abductor
and the victim

come in contact with each other,

and it's key
to just find that contact

'cause then you can
figure out who did it.

Dujanovic: At this point,
it could be anybody, right?

It could be the neighbors.

It could be somebody who maybe
had it out for the Smart family.

Who knew?

And then, on top of that,

they've got handymen working
in the home who had a record,

and that becomes a big concern
for law enforcement.

Dobner: There were people
down on their luck,

people who were homeless,
people who the Smarts had hired

from time to time to do various
handyman work around the home.

Tom: There's several.

There's a heroin addict that's
been on the road,

there's a gardener,

and all kinds of crazy leads
come up.

So we had to eliminate
all of those people.

Tom: Within three or four days
of this all getting ramped up,

all of a sudden, they say,
"Hey, we have a suspect."

Less than two weeks after
Elizabeth Smart was kidnapped,

a prime suspect emerged --

a former handyman at the Smart
home named Richard Ricci.

Dinse: Ricci was
a long-term criminal.

He'd been in and out of jail
numerous times.

He had been in and out
of the Smarts' home.

He knew the area.

Newman: And there was some theft
that had taken place

inside the Smart home,

which he turned out
to be involved in.

And perhaps
most troubling to police

was he had a Jeep that had some

what seemed to be
unexplained mileage.

Dinse:
All that circumstantial evidence

made us think
that he had a high likelihood

that he could have been
involved in her abduction.

And so he became
the logical suspect.

Benson: On paper, and
circumstantial evidence wise,

Richard Ricci looked like
a bona fide kidnapper suspect,

but then once they had fixated
on all the reasons why,

they didn't look at
all the reasons why not.

He didn't have a history
of murdering people

or kidnapping people.

Fennerty: And one
of the sergeants brought

a tape recording
of Ricci's voice

to play for Mary Katherine

to see if she recognized
the voice.

She told them, "No, that's not
the abductor's voice."

Winslow: I was thinking,
"Then why are the police

pushing this name so heavily

when the witness to the crime
said he wasn't there?"

I truly, in my heart,
my mind, and my soul,

I know that Richard did not have
anything to do with this,

and I will stand by him.

His wife, Angela, swore that
she was lying next to him in bed

that entire night.

So you know that your husband
had problems in life

and he did do
some petty stuff?

Angela: Yeah.
But never
anything like this?

Never anything like this.
Never.

And never an interest
in young children?
Never.

So, Richard Ricci, his life
just went downhill fast.

The police had wanted to see if
they couldn't make him confess.

They jailed him
on a parole violation.

They put him
in solitary confinement.

He had an hour a day when
he could go out of his cell,

and they would interrogate him.

No phone call.
No visit.

I haven't heard his voice
since July 7th.

Fennerty: Then this case
took a bizarre turn

you couldn't imagine happening.

While Richard Ricci is literally
sitting in a jail,

there's an attempted break-in

at the home
of Elizabeth Smart's cousin.

Dobner: About six weeks
after Elizabeth is taken,

her cousin is awakened
in her bedroom

at about 3:00 in the morning.

Had it not been for a picture
that was on the window ledge

that fell to the floor
and woke everyone up,

we have no idea
what would have happened.

Somebody tried
to climb in a window,

and it seems oddly familiar,

maybe even mirroring the
kidnapping of Elizabeth Smart.

Silver: It could have been
a burglar.

It could have been
somebody who is drunk

and mistakenly gone
to the wrong house.

It could have been
a lot of different things.

Watson:
The police didn't take it

as being connected to
Elizabeth Smart.

Benson: The police,

who were fixated
on Richard Ricci by this time,

weren't able to
make that connection.

They think that they already
had their man.

Newman: They were so convinced
that Ricci was a primary suspect

in this kidnapping,

they almost didn't even want
to look elsewhere.

♪♪

The man at the center of
the investigation

into the June abduction
of a 14-year-old Utah girl

is now hospitalized.

Mr. Ricci pressed
one of the intercom buttons,

informing one of
our correctional officers

that he was not feeling well.

At the end of August,
he collapsed in his jail cell.

He's rushed to the hospital

and had a brain aneurysm
and died.

Do you feel in some way that
your husband's death

was hastened because of
all of this suspicion of him?

I'm not a doctor,
but I do know

that he was under
a great amount of pressure.

I can't even begin to imagine
what someone would feel like

being accused
of such a heinous crime.

Winslow: There was a feeling
among a lot of people that,

when Richard Ricci died,

that the case
was dying with him.

The buy-in by the police
was almost complete.

Tom: The two main people
from the Salt Lake Police

come down
and meet with our family

and say they are 99.9% sure
that it is Richard Ricci.

Luckily, there were a few

who didn't completely
subscribe to that,

and in the end,
that made all the difference.

They were closing
the case on it,

and we...

we weren't.

The comment
was asked earlier to me,

you know,
"How do you keep on going?"

We just feel in our hearts

that Elizabeth is waiting
for us to find her.

♪♪

Dujanovic:
The Smarts got frustrated.

Benson: So, finally,
they decided

to take matters
into their own hands.

We're just a family trying to do
whatever we can to find her.

♪♪

♪♪

Female Reporter: Do you still
believe Elizabeth is alive?

Are you still holding out
that hope?

I-I still am holding out that
hope that Elizabeth is alive.

I know the odds
aren't in our favor.

We've got to find her,

regardless of
what the outcome is.

We've just
got to find her.

♪♪

Watson: By October,
this case felt very lost.

The leads were there,

but they were not as strong
or trickling in as fast.

I think investigators truly were
wondering where to go from here.

Richard Ricci was dead --
their main suspect.

Without any more information,

they couldn't put together
what happened.

At this point,
Elizabeth Smart --

We don't know
if she's dead or alive.

Haberman: Mary Katherine
was the main witness.

She was the only witness
to the actual crime.

She was a young girl,
9 years old.

She was incredibly
traumatized by this.

You have to imagine that
there was a sense of guilt

at being the person
who was there.

Could you have done
something more?

It's an enormous amount
of pressure and attention

and scrutiny
for a child that young.

And she's trying hard to come up
with more and more information.

Dinse: Psychologists
who deal with children

under stressful situations

pretty much say, over time,
information may come to them,

and they'll all of a sudden
come up with something

that they didn't
think of before.

They're scared, they're fearful,
and so they block things out.

And it worked just the way
the psychologist said it would.

Dujanovic: On October 12th,
all of a sudden,

Mary Katherine remembers
who her sister's kidnapper was.

Newman: A handyman
who had worked on the home,

possibly named Emmanuel,

was the guy who came
into the bedroom that night

and took Elizabeth.

Benson: So Ed and Lois took
Mary Katherine's information

to the police.

And the police were
very conservative

about how they handled it.

Dobner:
There's a drawing made,

but the police don't rush
to give it to the public.

And they encourage the family
not to talk about it quite yet.

Police are starting
to look for Emmanuel.

We had to try and figure out
who Emmanuel was,

and that was quite a process.

Watson:
The family want this sketch of
this Emmanuel person released,

and the investigators are not
on that page with them.

Female Reporter:
A lot of question about

why they didn't
take it more seriously

when Mary Katherine,

the younger sister
who was in the room

when Elizabeth was taken,
came forward.

We are now months into searching
for Elizabeth Smart.

Why not release it right away?

I'm not sure at this point
the police department

believed that, all of a sudden,

a 9-year-old remembered who
her sister's kidnapper was.

We should have gone forward

and had that image
broadcast to the public

sooner than we did.

That's one of the things
I regret the most,

was that we didn't
put that out there.

And nothing happened for months
and months and months.

♪♪

The reason that we called
this press conference

was to share with you...

Haberman:
The Smarts got frustrated

that more was
not able to be done

in order to find their daughter.

Benson: So, finally,
they decided

to take matters
into their own hands.

A few months ago,
Mary Katherine indicated

that she thought
she might know of a person

that was in her room that night.

The family called
a press conference,

andthey
the sketch of Emmanuel.

This person worked for us

for a very short period of time,
five hours.

Tom: We came out
to the public and said,

"This is who we think it is.

But let's find him."

If someone out there has
some information...

They took the reins on this
investigation at that moment.

Tom: You can look back
and second-guess everything,

but we were just a family

trying to do whatever we can
to find her.

After the news comes out
about the sketch and Emmanuel,

I do what I always do --
I write a news story about it.

And in this instance,
someone really important saw it.

After this press conference,

Tom Holbrook gets on
theDeseret News

and when he starts
reading about that,

chills go up and down his spine.

"This person, Emmanuel,
is my wife's brother.

This is Brian David Mitchell."

Watson: They immediately
call police.

That was everything.

Christian:
So, for the first time,

authorities not only
had a sketch,

they also had a name.

So, it was just
a matter of time now.

But of course, the big question
is, is she alive?

Benson: It was a forced march
all the way up to his camp,

where more horrors awaited.

During the hike,
Elizabeth finally realizes,

"Wait a minute,
I've seen this person before."

♪♪

[ Footsteps crunching ]

Dujanovic: Elizabeth Smart
left her home in red pajamas.

I don't know why that detail
has stuck out to me.

An innocent,
little 14-year-old girl,

the top of her pajamas pinned
together with a safety pin,

walking through the woods
behind their home for hours.

♪♪

Benson: It was a forced march
all the way up to his camp,

where more horrors awaited.

During the hike,
Elizabeth finally realizes,

"Wait a minute,
I've seen this person before."

She recognizes him as Emmanuel.

Male Reporter:
The man goes by "Emmanuel."

His real name is
Brian David Mitchell.

Apparently, he had done
some work in the Smarts' home.

Elizabeth: I said,
"Well, don't you realize

what you're doing?

I mean, if you get caught,

you'll spend the rest
of your life in prison."

And he looked at me again
and he said,

"Well, I know
exactly what I'm doing,

and I know what
the consequences are.

The only difference is
I'm not gonna get caught."

♪♪

Brian David Mitchell's
background is,

in a word, troubled.

He'd grown up
in a very dysfunctional home,

and it produced this young man

who didn't seem to be able
to fit into normal society.

Gardner: He dropped out
of high school

at the end of the ninth grade,

became involved
with drugs and alcohol.

So already, we see this pattern
of somewhat antisocial behavior

violating sort of laws
and norms.

Watson:
There were several red flags

that really could have
signaled the fact

that he was on a path

to doing something like this
in the future.

Newman:
About 16 years old,

his life started to turn
a little bit,

with allegations that he
had exposed himself to a child,

which landed him
in juvenile detention.

Brian had been married
twice before.

Christian: I think
there were 13 in total,

counting children
and stepchildren of his.

Dobner: We do know that
there were some allegations

of sexual misconduct,
advances that he made

on at least one
of his stepdaughters

when she was a teenager.

Man: Brian and Wanda,
open up!

Open up!

Christian: In 1985,

Brian David Mitchell married
Wanda Barzee.

Wanda had met Mitchell
in the '80s

at a divorced couples'
counseling session.

Peterson: She was a person
of considerable talent.

She was a very good
trained organist.

Gardner: And I think,
in meeting Brian Mitchell,

he presented himself as this
devout, very religious person.

And she put her hopes
in that very much.

During his marriage
to Wanda Barzee,

Brian David Mitchell kind of
showed some warning signs

that something
just wasn't right there.

His daughter had a pet rabbit
that she loved

and always wanted to be with.

And he actually cooked
the rabbit

and fed it to the daughter
for dinner one night.

Barzee and Mitchell together
become increasingly strange

and distanced from their family

because their behavior's
quite off-putting.

His ideas about religion are
getting more bizarre,

and he sort of starts
to go more deeply

into what we would call
Mormon fundamentalism.

They left their jobs
at some point

and decided to start
living off the grid.

He decides to take on the mantle

of what you might call an
Old Testament religious person.

He lets his hair
grow long and wild.

And he starts to think

that he's been ordained by God
as a prophet.

Peterson:
He began wearing robes

and preaching on the streets
and panhandling.

Dujanovic: He would make it look
like he's a man of the cloth.

He faked his way
through a lot of this.

Peterson:
He didn't want to be referred to
as Brian David Mitchell,

but as Emmanuel.

And as Emmanuel,
he received revelations,

which he wrote down in a book.

And Wanda Barzee became
his congregation of one.

He decided that he was gonna
convert to polygamy

and he was gonna have
seven wives.

And when no adult women
would marry him,

he decided
that he had a revelation.

So he came to Wanda
at some point and said,

"We have a new direction.

God is now telling me that
I need to find a young girl."

Gardner:
I think it's quite clear
that he is a pedophile

and that he was attracted
particularly to young girls.

Peterson: And he felt
that it was right

for him to go out
and grab them off the streets.

Watson: So he would go down into
Salt Lake City and panhandle.

But, really, what he was doing
was looking for a victim,

looking for his second wife,

looking for that young,
14-year-old girl.

And he found Elizabeth.

♪♪

One day,
while Brian David Mitchell

was panhandling on the street
asking for money,

Lois and the children
were in downtown Salt Lake,

and she happened to walk by him.

Brian David Mitchell says
that's the moment

he knew he was going
to kidnap Elizabeth Smart.

Peterson: She was a very cute,
innocent-looking little girl.

And that was exactly
what fit his model --

virginity, cleanliness.

She was a girl from
a devoutly religious household.

She was perfect
for what he wanted.

And he had this idea
to take Elizabeth as a wife.

Christian: Lois gave him
a little bit of money,

and she also gave him
her husband's business card

and told him that
if he was looking for work,

he should contact her husband.

Dobner: He sets his mind
at something,

and then he plots and plans
to execute it.

He came up to the house,
and he worked on the roof.

Christian: He found excuses
to get inside the home

so that he could see
the lay of the land.

He also perched himself
up in the hills above the home

so that he could
make observations

and see what
the family's routine was,

see what
Elizabeth's routine was,

all of this as part of his plan

to someday go into that home
and take her.

The idea that the Smarts
had invited people

to work on their home was
difficult to really understand.

You know, they're obviously
very gracious people,

and they wanted to help somebody
who appeared to be down and out.

Unfortunately,
with Brian David Mitchell,

they picked somebody who
turned out to be pure evil.

The hike lasted until
the very early hours,

and they reached
his ultimate campsite.

Elizabeth:
She led me into the tent,

basically preparing me
for slaughter.

Benson: It was a nightmare
beyond imagination.

Elizabeth: Just every time I
thought it couldn't get worse,

something always happened.

Christian: They would go
to Salt Lake City.

They were wearing veils
over their faces.

She was right under our nose,
and nobody knew who she was.

If the stars had been in
slightly different alignment,

this story could have
easily ended.

It didn't.

You really did wonder
at some point

whether she was ever
gonna be found.

Blitzer:
You're watching CNN.

Want to interrupt
our programming to do a report.

The Elizabeth Smart case

became one of the most
famous kidnappings

in US history.

Only the abduction of
Charles Lindbergh's baby

garnered more media attention.

Nearly three months

after Elizabeth disappeared
into the night,

the prime suspect,
Richard Ricci, died.

Almost everyone assumed
she was dead

and that we'd never find out
what happened that night.

And then there was a miracle.

The amazing details

of how Elizabeth Smart was
eventually found,

next time on part two.

Thanks for watching.

Good night.