My Story

In this memoir, Elizabeth Smart recounts her kidnapping at age fourteen, the nine months she spent in captivity, her rescue, and her path to recovery.

Smart opens with a scene from November 2001 in downtown Salt Lake City. She was shopping with her mother, Lois Smart, and younger sister when they passed a beggar near a department store. Lois gave the man five dollars, and Elizabeth smiled at him briefly. She later learned that the man, Brian David Mitchell, had been studying her carefully and decided she would be his target.

Two days before the kidnapping, moved by a Sunday school teacher's challenge to commit her life to God's service, Elizabeth knelt alone at home and prayed, asking God to use her however He saw fit. As Mitchell later forced her up the mountain at knifepoint, she wondered whether the abduction could be God's answer, but concluded that God can bring good from evil without willing such acts.

Smart provides background on Mitchell: a long history of criminal behavior including a teenage conviction for pedophilia, multiple marriages, and child abuse charges. He married his third wife, Wanda Barzee, on the day his second divorce was finalized; Barzee gave up parental rights to her six children to be with him. Mitchell adopted the persona of a religious prophet and wrote his own scripture. Professional analysis determined he was not clinically insane but a manipulative pedophile who used religion to control others. He prepared for months, doing handiwork at the Smart home to learn its layout, purchasing cable and padlocks, and establishing a remote camp in the mountains above Salt Lake City.

On the night of June 4, 2002, Mitchell descended the mountain carrying a serrated knife, found a kitchen window left slightly open, cut the screen, and climbed inside. He entered Elizabeth's bedroom and held the knife to her throat, whispering that he would kill her and her family if she made a sound. Elizabeth's nine-year-old sister, Mary Katherine, was sleeping beside her and witnessed the abduction but was paralyzed with terror. Mitchell forced Elizabeth out of the house and up the steep, trailless mountainside. A police car drove past without stopping while they hid behind bushes. During the climb, Elizabeth recognized Mitchell as the man her family had hired for odd jobs.

Mary Katherine, frozen with fear for hours, finally ran to her parents' room before dawn and told them Elizabeth was gone. Her father, Ed Smart, searched the house while Lois discovered the cut screen and called 911. A massive search effort followed: Volunteers flooded the neighborhood, a website received over a million hits per day, and Ed began daily media appearances to keep the case alive.

At the mountain camp, Barzee forced Elizabeth into a white linen robe. Mitchell performed a crude marriage ceremony and, despite Elizabeth's protests that she was just a child, raped her. He continued raping her daily, sometimes multiple times, for the next nine months.

Afterward, Elizabeth lay alone feeling shattered and worthless. Her religious upbringing, which emphasized sexual purity, compounded her shame, though she recognized the assault was not her fault. Then she remembered her mother once telling her that God and her parents would always love her no matter what. This memory became the turning point: Elizabeth resolved to survive at any cost and reasoned that her captors were older and that she could outlive them. Mitchell secured a steel cable around her ankle, tethering her to the camp.

During the first weeks, several near-rescues ended in disappointment. Elizabeth heard a voice calling her name from the canyon below, but Mitchell threatened to kill anyone who approached. A search helicopter hovered directly above the camp but moved on without investigating. Each failure devastated Elizabeth and emboldened Mitchell, who interpreted the escapes as divine confirmation of his mission.

Camp life followed a grim routine. Water was scarce, and food often ran out. Mitchell forced Elizabeth to drink alcohol during mock sacraments, threatening to withhold food and sleep until she complied. He subjected her to constant indoctrination, claiming he was God's prophet commanded to take seven young wives. In a rare moment when Elizabeth was allowed to discuss her family, she mentioned her cousin Olivia. Mitchell seized on this and attempted to kidnap Olivia on July 24 but fled after alerting the household. Elizabeth was consumed with guilt but overwhelmed with relief.

A fight between Mitchell and Barzee precipitated their first joint trip into the city. Mitchell drank heavily and became too incapacitated to return, so the trio permanently relocated to a lower camp. Elizabeth was never cabled again; Mitchell's psychological control through death threats against her family had replaced physical restraint. He began taking Elizabeth and Barzee into Salt Lake City disguised in robes and thick veils. Their strange appearance invited avoidance, and on early outings no one recognized Elizabeth.

At the Salt Lake City Public Library, however, a man called police after noticing Elizabeth. A homicide detective asked Mitchell to remove her veil. Elizabeth desperately wanted to be saved but was paralyzed by fear as Barzee dug her nails into Elizabeth's thigh under the table. Mitchell claimed Elizabeth was his daughter and that their religion forbade revealing her face. The detective walked away.

As winter approached, Mitchell moved them eight hundred miles to San Diego, California. They took a Greyhound bus to Lakeside, a small town east of the city, where Mitchell set up camp. Elizabeth was allowed out only once a week and subsisted on cactus fruit, discarded bread, and food from Dumpsters. Mitchell attempted to kidnap another girl in the nearby town of El Cajon but fled when he found a man sleeping in the room by the sliding door he planned to use.

Mitchell got drunk, stole medication, broke into a church, and was arrested, spending seven days in jail while Elizabeth and Barzee were stranded without food or water. A sudden rainstorm saved them from dehydration. After his return, Elizabeth devised a plan to return to Utah, where she believed she had a better chance of being recognized. She appealed to Mitchell's ego, telling him she had a spiritual feeling they should go back and asking him, as God's prophet, to pray about it. He agreed. She suggested hitchhiking, framing it as a spiritual trial while privately calculating that exposure to strangers would increase her chances of being identified.

The journey back took several days of walking and hitchhiking. A truck driver brought them from Las Vegas to Orem, Utah. On the morning of March 12, 2003, while walking along State Street, they were surrounded by police cars. One officer separated Elizabeth from Mitchell and spoke gently: "Are you Elizabeth Smart? Because if you are, your family has missed you so much since you were gone! They want you back. They love you. They want you to come home" (275). Elizabeth finally answered: "I am Elizabeth" (275).

At the police station, her father burst through the door and embraced her. The family reunited in tears. That evening, Lois told Elizabeth the best punishment for Mitchell was for Elizabeth to be happy, to move forward, and never give him another second of her life. Smart describes this as the most important advice she has ever received.

In November 2010, Mitchell stood trial in federal court. The jury rejected his insanity defense, and he was convicted and sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole. Barzee received fifteen years in federal prison.

Smart closes by reflecting on her recovery. She never pursued professional counseling, instead finding healing through horseback riding, playing the harp, maintaining her faith, and practicing gratitude. She finished high school, attended Brigham Young University (BYU), served a church mission in Paris, and married Matthew Gilmour, a fellow missionary from Scotland, in February 2012. She founded the Elizabeth Smart Foundation, dedicated to child safety advocacy and preventing sexual exploitation.