Elizabeth Smart says she awoke to knife on neck
Katherine told of her sister being taken at gunpoint..the gun changed to a knife when the window mesh was slashed..forensics that seem to have disappeared showing the mesh slashed from inside.SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — Elizabeth Smart remembers not being able to make out the threat, only the feel of a cold knife at her neck.
As the then-14-year-old lay in bed alongside her baby sister, the man repeated: "Don't make a sound. Get out of bed and come with me, or I will kill you and your family." She was his hostage, he told her.
"I was shocked. I thought I was having a nightmare. It was just indescribable fear," Smart, now 23, told jurors yesterday on the first day of testimony in the federal trial of Brian David Mitchell, the man accused of kidnapping her in June 2002.
That night, they fled up the hills above her home, with Smart in her red pajamas and tennis shoes, and the knife to her back.
Very thoughtful abductor who tells Elizabeth to put on her tennis shoes...tennis shoes are good for walking up hills .
Her younger sister — a baby blanket wrapped around her head and neck — rushed to their mother, telling of the kidnapping.
Elizabeth told of a gun and Elizabeth did not go rushing she waited several hours before alerting her parents to this ' alleged kidnapping'
"It was utter terror," their mother, Lois Smart, testified earlier yesterday. "It was the worst feeling, knowing that I didn't know where my child was. I was helpless."
Nine months later, motorists spotted Elizabeth Smart walking in a Salt Lake City suburb with Mitchell.
His attorneys did not dispute the facts of the abduction. But during opening statements, they said the prosecution's allegation that he was a calculating person who planned the kidnapping was wrong.
Known as a homeless street preacher named "Immanuel," Mitchell was influenced by a worsening mental illness and religious beliefs that made him think he was doing what God wanted, his attorneys said.
Mitchell, who has a long graying beard to the middle of his chest and hair to the middle of his back, was again removed from the courtroom Monday for singing hymns, so he's watching and listening from a holding cell.
Mitchell has been locked up for seven years I am not surprised he has long hair and a long beard...he had to look the part of a 'demon' in preperation for this farce. Photograph in bar as to how Mitchell and Wanda looked when they met their fate...how they must have regretted ever meeting the Smarts.
Smart's mother testified that she and her children ran into Mitchell downtown and that she offered him a job doing handyman work at the family's home. One of her sons encouraged her to give him money, she said.
Yes, and the mother said he was well spoken and clean cut...(see photograph in bar )she would not have invited him into the home looking the way he does today. More than 100 drifters worked in the Smarts home...showing little concern for the well being of their children.
"He looked like a clean-cut, well-kept man that was down on his luck," she said. "I gave him $5."
Later, the family hired Mitchell to help fix a leaky roof, Lois Smart said. It was the only job he did for the family.
"I do remember having a conversation with him, hoping that he would do more work. He seemed fine," she said.
Yes, he seemed fine because he was fine which is why Elizabeth took a shine to him
Elizabeth Smart described how Mitchell came into her bedroom. She had left a kitchen window open because her mother had burned potatoes for dinner.
Thats convenient is'nt it...she left a window open...but we have Ed saying they checked all doors and windows each night but he did not put the alarm on in case the children moved around at night activating the alarm. However, Elizabeth now states that they make sure the alarm is on every night ,so does this mean everyone must keep very still at night so as not to activate the alarm?
"I remember him saying that I have a knife to your neck, don't make a sound, get out of bed and come with me or I will kill you and your family," she said.
From Katherine a blatant lie, even Lois in her statement slipped up and said a gun... after all this time they still cannot get their story straight and what a story it is as Uncle Tom has told us.It is just that ' a story' pure fiction.
Smart said she got up and he grabbed her arm, and took her into a closet. He stopped her when she reached for slippers and told her to wear tennis shoes.
A little bit of dramatics here.....we are to believe, he broke into the house, came up the stairs, not before slashing a window with a gun/knife depending on what you believe from the Smarts mouths. They then both went into a closet (bathroom) and he told her what shoes to wear...he must have let go of her arm at this point so she could tie the laces on her tennis shoes. They then left the house without waking anyone.
After leaving the house, Smart said, they hiked three to five hours up a dry streambed and over a mountain to a campsite. As they made their way, the man shed the stocking he used to cover his face. And she remembered him as the carpenter.
"The name Immanuel just came to me," Smart said.
At the campsite, Mitchell's now-estranged wife, Wanda Eileen Barzee, embraced Smart, took her into a tent, sat her down on a bucket and washed her feet.
Wanda this gentle woman who washed Elizabeths feet..then according to Smart turns into a rapist...give me strength, a decent lawyer would rip Elizabeths case apart.
Barzee also told her to take off her pajamas and underwear and put on a robe or "she would have the defendant come in and rip them off," she said.
How would Barzee know Elizabeth had underwear on under her pyjamas????? and if she did,. pretty bizarre wearing underwear to bed....or is this a Mormon thing to do?
Smart said Mitchell entered the tent wearing a similar robe and married them by twisting lines from a Mormon religious rites into a marriage ceremony, known a sealing.
Elizabeth was just a kid and we can see from the photograph Wanda was a woman and a pretty woman at that ,much more attractive than Elizabeth...Elizabeth was a very plain fourteen year old rebel...I do not believe for one moment Mitchell found her attractive , let alone married the child..he felt sorry for her thats all , they both did ,the big mistake they made was giving in to her whims they should have taken her back home that night.
"He said, 'What I seal on this earth will be sealed to me in the hereafter and I take you to be my wife,"' she said, adding that she screamed and he threatened to put duct tape across her mouth.
"He proceeded to fight me to the ground and force the robes up," Smart said quietly, pausing, "where he raped me."
"I begged him not to. I did everything I could to stop him. I pleaded with him not to touch me, but it didn't work."
Mitchell shackled her ankle to a heavy metal cable, which was attached to a cable strung between two trees, making it impossible for her to flee, she said. She was tethered for about six weeks, despite promising Mitchell that she would not run away.
Amazing, and where is the scar on her leg from being tethered for such a long period of time...again look at the photograph of the day she returned home...rosy cheeked and very,very happy...she had been on an adventure. Where do rape victims go when found? straight to the hospital for checks..pregnancy , disease and of course proof of rape...Elizabeth went home and played her harp.
Lois Smart said she was awakened by daughter Mary Katherine, who was 9 at the time and slept with Elizabeth. With the baby blanket wrapped around her head, she looked like "a scared rabbit," her mother said.
"She said a man has taken Elizabeth with a gun and that we won't find her. He took her either for ransom or hostage," Lois Smart recalled Mary Katherine, now 18, saying.
Lois Smart said she went to the kitchen and immediately noticed the window was open and the screen was cut in a U-shape.
"My heart sank," she said. Then, she yelled to her husband, Ed: "Call 911. She's gone."'
Yes once again the 911 call where is it ? has anyone heard it? of course not , the people of America have been taken for a ride.
The morning after the kidnapping, Smart said she cried and Mitchell explained to her that he had been planning the abduction since first meeting the family. "He said that I was very lucky, that I had been called by God to be his wife," she said.
Then, she said, she decided to try to survive. "No matter what it took, I was going to live," she said.
Elizabeth Smart is serving a French mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but plans to resume her music studies at Brigham Young University next year.
Mitchell, 57, faces life in prison if he is convicted of kidnapping and unlawful transportation of a minor across state lines with the intent to engage in criminal sexual activity. He is accused of taking Smart to California.
Of course Mitchell will never be free, he may talk and tell what really happened...but then again who would believe him against the word of the 'Mormon girl' which is why they could not afford for the trial to be held anywhere but Saltlake, under complete Mormon control.
A parallel state case, where he is charged with aggravated kidnapping and aggravated sexual assault, stalled after he was twice deemed incompetent to stand trial. A state judge declined to order forced psychiatric treatment.
Mitchell, however, was ruled competent for a federal trial.
And you call this American justice.
