Elizabeth Smart Found Alive and Well
Posted March 12, 2003

Fifteen-year-old Elizabeth Smart, kidnapped at gunpoint last June from her home in Salt Lake City, has been found alive today at 1:00 MST. Two different women called police with tips that they had seen Brian David Mitchell, a handy man who had worked at the Smart’s house and was a prime suspect in the case, at the corner of 10200 South and State Street in Sandy, a Salt Lake City suburb. Police stopped his car and he was accompanied by an identified woman and Elizabeth.

No attempt was made by the suspect to get away or hide his identity. The witnesses had seen Mitchell’s picture in the media and recognized him.

Elizabeth was taken to the Salt Lake Police Department where she was reunited with her father, Ed, who didn’t stop hugging her and crying for 30 minutes.

“Miracles do exist,” said the girl’s uncle, Tom Smart.

Elizabeth was wearing a wig when the police pulled over Mitchell, usually known as Emmanuel.

Police said they have followed up on more than 16,000 leads from the public.

The Smart family has never given hope up they would find Elizabeth. The Salt Lake area has been plastered with billboards of her picture, and they have made a concerted effort to work with the media to keep the story alive. For several months after Elizabeth’s kidnapping they held daily press conferences.

Mary Katherine, Elizabeth’s ten-year-old sister who was in the bedroom they shared the night Elizabeth was kidnapped, was the only witness to the crime. In October she came to her parents and said she thought the kidnapper looked like a handy man the Smarts had hired in November 2001 for a day to work on their home.

Mitchell’s former wife, Debbie, had also contacted the Smart family with her suspicions that her ex-husband was involved with the kidnapping.

Wednesday morning’s Salt Lake Tribune reported that the Smarts had become frustrated with the progress of the police because they seemed to dismiss Emmanuel as a suspect and said as much publicly.

Ed Smart, Elizabeth’s father, told the Tribune, “They said if we go public it could scare him off. I say the public can be very helpful.”

According to reports Emmanuel was a drifter, a common sight on the corners in Salt Lake City, sometimes wearing a robe, and often panhandling. Police doubted that he could have committed the crime because he had no car.

Where has Elizabeth Smart been the last nine months? Apparently she told police that she was in the backcountry not far from her home early on when the massive searches were underway. It appears as if she has also spent time in Florida and San Diego and was “dragged all over the country.”

News reporters are calling the safe return of Elizabeth Smart an aberration. It rarely happens that a child missing for this length of time is found.

A news conference on the case will be held this evening at 7:00 Eastern Standard Time and will be broadcast live on CNN and FOX News.

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