Kidnappers had psychological hold over girl - police

Kidnapped teenager Elizabeth Smart, trapped in the hills above her anguished family’s home for the first two months of her disappearance, may have been kept from escaping or crying out for help by the growing influence of her captors, police said.

Elizabeth, part of a devout and affluent Mormon family, was 14 when she vanished from her bedroom in Salt Lake City, Utah, on June 5.

Frightened at first by her abduction at knifepoint, Elizabeth was forced to depend on her captors during her nine-month disappearance, authorities said. When found by police on Wednesday, the 15-year-old vehemently denied her identity when asked if she was Elizabeth Smart and told officers that the couple she was with were her parents.

“There is clearly a psychological impact that occurred at some point,” Police Chief Rick Dinse said.

“There is no question that she was psychologically affected.”

Dressed in a wig, veil and sunglasses, Elizabeth told the police officers who picked her up with Brian Mitchell and his wife, Wanda Barzee, that her name was Augustine.

Police questioned her aggressively about her identity, Officer Bill O’Neal said. He said she became agitated when officers asked her to remove her wig and sunglasses, and told them she recently had eye surgery.

“We took her aside ... she kind of just blurted out, ‘I know who you think I am. You guys think I’m that Elizabeth Smart girl who ran away,”’ O’Neal said. “Her heart was beating so hard you could see it through her chest.”

The group was taken to the Sandy police station in handcuffs.

Police said Elizabeth never asked about her family at that point.

Salt Lake police briefly outlined Elizabeth’s movements over the last nine months, saying she spent the first two held by Mitchell and Barzee close to home in Dry Creek Canyon, a popular hiking area searched many times last summer.

In October, the three rode a bus to San Diego, and returned to the Salt Lake area on Wednesday, the day of their capture in the suburb of Sandy, police said.

Hours after she vanished, Elizabeth had heard one of her uncles calling out her name but was unable to respond, her family said.

On Thursday, her family and friends focused on what many were calling a miracle: Elizabeth, taken from her bed in the middle of the night, was home again, playing the harp and watching her favourite movie, The Trouble with Angels.

“Elizabeth is happy, she is well, and we are so happy to have her back in our arms,” said her beaming father, Ed Smart.

Amid the joyful reunion, however, was a growing list of questions: Why didn’t police find Mitchell, the shaggy-haired drifter accused of kidnapping the girl, sooner? Above all, what happened to Elizabeth since she vanished last June?

Ed Smart said he had not pressed his daughter for details of her captivity.

Elizabeth was discovered when two couples called police after recognising Mitchell from a sketch of a handyman called Emmanuel who worked at the Smart house. He and Barzee remained jailed Thursday on suspicion of aggravated kidnapping.

Mitchell, a 49-year-old panhandler and self-proclaimed prophet for the homeless, was often seen in downtown Salt Lake City and sometimes lived in a tepee in the foothills above the city.

For much of the time she was gone, it now seems clear that Elizabeth was hiding in plain sight, sometimes swathed in robes and veils.

She may also have spent time in a flat a block from a Salt Lake City police station, and attended a party in the company of her apparent abductors. Merchants and transients near San Diego said they first noticed the three last fall and may have seen them again as recently as two weeks ago.

The three largely kept to themselves, and the man known as Emmanuel claimed the girl was his daughter, they said.

“She didn’t seem like she was kidnapped. She acted like she was part of the family,” said Richard Mason, a 45-year-old homeless man.