Girl kidnapped by ‘prophet’ is reunited with her family

A 15-YEAR-OLD girl kidnapped at gunpoint from her bedroom nine months ago has been dramatically reunited with her parents in Utah.

Elizabeth Smart was snatched from her affluent home in Salt Lake City by a self-styled prophet for the homeless, who wanted to take her as a second wife.

As Elizabeth, wearing braids and a big smile, hugged her tearful parents, investigators arrested the drifter and his wife on suspicion of kidnapping.

Sharp-eyed residents had spotted the three on Wednesday as they walked down a street only 20 miles from her home. She had her 10-year-old sister, Mary Catherine, sleeping next to when she was abducted.

Mary told police at the time that an armed man had taken Elizabeth and threatened to kill her unless she kept quiet.

The terrified younger girl then waited several hours before raising the alarm.

A Smart family spokesman said yesterday that the abducted teenager had never had an opportunity to try to escape, or even just cry out for help.

“She said there was no way, she had two people with her at all times,” Chris Thomas said.

Elizabeth’s wealthy property broker father Ed said yesterday that he had not yet asked his daughter about the details of her ordeal: “Physically she is OK. I know that she has been through brainwashing. For her to have gone through the past nine months has just been horrible, absolutely horrible.”

Police in the Salt Lake City suburb of Sandy arrested Brian Mitchell, a drifter who once worked for the Smarts, and his wife, Wanda Barzee.

They swooped after receiving two calls just seconds apart from two couples who saw a man and two females wearing bedraggled veils and carrying bedrolls and bags. Elizabeth, Barzee and Mitchell, who is also known as Emmanuel, were all wearing wigs when they were stopped, officers said.

Barzee’s stepdaughter, Louree Gayler, was 12 when her mother married Mitchell. She said they prayed for hours and expected her to do the same, and that she felt uncomfortable and went to live with her father after three years.

“There could have been a little bit of a brainwashing, they’re very good at that,” Gayler said. “Or there could have been drugs involved.”

She said Elizabeth may have been kidnapped to “give my mum back something she lost” when Gayler left home.

“Elizabeth resembles me at 15,” she said.

Asked if her stepfather was sexually abusive, she said there were “hugs, kisses that were kind of uncalled for” and she was sometimes uncomfortable with the way he stared at her.

“He shot a dog in front of us, made me eat my own rabbit for dinner, things like that,” she said.

One police source sad the bearded drifter wanted Elizabeth to become his second wife.

“It was a religious thing,” the officer said. “This guy just wanted another wife, and God told him this was the one.”

Ed Smart broke down in tears as he described the joy he felt when he was reunited with his daughter at police headquarters.

“It is nothing but a miracle,” he said. “I just held her, held her all the way home.”

Elizabeth’s uncle, Dave Smart, said she appeared well fed. She was examined at a hospital before being taken home.