Brian David Mitchell

Brian David Mitchell was born on October 18, 1953, in Salt Lake City, Utah, the third of six children in a Mormon household. His father was a social worker and his mother a teacher. From an early age, Mitchell exhibited troubling behavior: he was referred to juvenile authorities at fifteen for being cruel to his mother and siblings, and dropped out of high school at sixteen. He fathered children young, dabbled in drugs, and at one point took his children to West Virginia to live with a Hare Krishna community before placing them in foster care in 1983. ^[1]

By the 1990s, Mitchell had reinvented himself as a self-styled street preacher calling himself "Emmanuel" or "Immanuel," wandering Salt Lake City in flowing robes and claiming divine authority. He married Wanda Barzee in 1985, and together they embraced an increasingly extreme religious worldview. Mitchell produced a rambling religious manifesto called "The Book of Immanuel David Isaiah," which outlined his belief that God had commanded him to take seven wives. ^[2]

On June 5, 2002, Mitchell broke into the Smart family home in the Federal Heights neighborhood of Salt Lake City and abducted fourteen-year-old Elizabeth Smart at knifepoint. He had previously done handyman work for the family. Mitchell and Barzee held Smart captive for nine months at a makeshift campsite in the Wasatch foothills, and later moved her to San Diego and other locations. Throughout her captivity, Smart was repeatedly sexually assaulted. She was often in public but disguised in robes and a veil. ^[3]

Smart was rescued on March 12, 2003, after being recognized walking with Mitchell and Barzee in Sandy, Utah. Mitchell's trial was delayed for years by competency hearings and his disruptive courtroom behavior, including constant singing. He was ultimately found competent and convicted by a federal jury on December 10, 2010. On May 25, 2011, U.S. District Judge Dale Kimball sentenced Mitchell to life in prison without the possibility of parole. ^[4] He remains incarcerated at Federal Correctional Institution Lewisburg in Pennsylvania. ^[5]