“I’m not just that girl that was kidnapped. That happened to me, but I’m so much more,” Elizabeth Smart told CNN’s Anderson Cooper in 2013.
A new Netflix documentary premiering January 21 has renewed interest in one of the most closely followed kidnapping cases in American history. Smart was 14 when she was kidnapped from her Salt Lake City home in 2002 and rescued nine months later.
Now 38, she has spent more than two decades turning her trauma into action, becoming an outspoken activist for child safety and survivors of sexual abuse.
“Kidnapped: Elizabeth Smart” revisits her heartbreaking experience through interviews with Smart, family members and others, featuring never-before-seen material, according to the filmmakers.
In the two decades since her rescue, Smart has built a life centered on family and advocacy. She married Matthew Gilmour, a native of Scotland, in Hawaii in 2012. The couple met while doing missionary work in France and have three children: Chloe, James and Olivia.
Through the Elizabeth Smart Foundation, which she founded in 2011, Smart advocates for victim support and abuse prevention. The organization offers empowerment programs like Smart Defense and Smart Talks to educate and support survivors of sexual assault and abduction. She has testified before Congress and played a key role in promoting legislation, including the AMBER Alert and Adam Walsh Act.
Smart launched the Smart Defense initiative after she said she was assaulted on a flight to Utah, expanding her mission to include practical self-defense education. She has authored two books: “My Story” in 2013 and “Where There’s Hope: Healing, Moving Forward and Never Giving Up” in 2018.
Not everyone in her family wanted to revisit the painful past for the documentary. “Some members of my family want to leave things in the past. And personally, that’s OK with me. I want to respect their wishes,” Smart told Netflix. But for her, sharing the story serves a purpose. “As time passed, I began speaking publicly about what happened, I just felt like it needs to serve a purpose. It needs to bring some good in the world,” she says in the documentary.
Smart: I have seen worst of humanity
Smart: I have seen worst of humanity
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“I have good days, I have bad days, but I’ve developed a better relationship with myself,” she says in the documentary. “My inner voice has changed from ‘you should have done this,’ or ‘you could have done that,’ to ‘you’ll make it through this. You could finish this. You’re strong. Keep going. You can survive anything that comes your way.’”
On the night of June 5, 2002, Brian David Mitchell dragged 14-year-old Elizabeth Smart from her bedroom in her family’s Salt Lake City home. Her 9-year-old sister, Mary Katherine Smart, pretended to be asleep as Mitchell threatened her older sister with a knife.
Mitchell brought Elizabeth to a mountainside camp where his wife, Wanda Barzee, was waiting. The sexual abuse began that day and continued throughout her nine months in captivity, Smart said. “I realized that I had something that was worth surviving for,” Smart told documentary makers of her resolve to survive and return to her family.
Elizabeth Smart’s father, Ed Smart, went on telivision to make a desperate plea to his daughter’s kidnappers in June 2002.
Elizabeth Smart’s father, Ed Smart, went on telivision to make a desperate plea to his daughter’s kidnappers in June 2002.
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Authorities launched a nationwide manhunt with thousands of volunteers joining the search. The breakthrough came when Mary Katherine suddenly remembered whose voice she had heard that night — a drifter known as “Immanuel” who had once worked at their home. Police released a sketch that appeared on “America’s Most Wanted.”
On March 12, 2003, Smart was found alive, walking down a street with Mitchell and Barzee in Sandy, Utah, just five miles from her home.
In the years since her rescue, the people at the center of the case have moved forward in different ways.
Mary Katherine’s memory proved to be the key to solving the case, though it took months to surface. “I was 9 years old when Elizabeth was taken. I missed not having my sister. She was my best friend,” she says in the documentary.
Four months after the abduction, while flipping through the Guinness World Records, the name suddenly popped into her head. “I knew immediately that’s who was in my bedroom … That’s the man who kidnapped Elizabeth,” she recalls.
Now living a private life, Mary Katherine is a special education teacher who recently earned her master’s degree in applied behavior analysis. She’s working toward becoming a licensed Board Certified Behavior Analyst. In a rare 2023 news appearance, she said, “I love working with kids. I love behavior.”
She married John Paul O’Brien in Salt Lake City in 2020, according to a wedding registry website cited by TV Insider.
The abduction remains something she continues to process. “I’m still trying to find my own process of moving forward. Time is a big thing. As time moves on, things get better, and you learn how to cope,” she said while offering advice to families of the University of Idaho students killed in 2022.
Ed and Lois Smart
Throughout their daughter’s nine-month disappearance, Ed and Lois Smart were a constant force, making regular media appearances to keep the search in the headlines. “If you can hear me, Elizabeth is the sweetest girl. She’s an angel,” Ed Smart told reporters in June 2002. “Please let her go.”
After Elizabeth’s rescue, the couple co-authored “Bringing Elizabeth Home: A Legacy of Faith,” released in October 2003. Both became advocates for child safety and survivor support.
Ed served as executive director of the Elizabeth Smart Foundation and president of the Surviving Parents Coalition. He currently serves as a director at Youth Futures Utah, a nonprofit providing shelter and support for unhoused youth, and continues making media appearances to support families of abducted children.
Lois Smart worked alongside Ed to advocate for the passage of the National Amber Alert system. She now works as a public speaker using her platform “to inspire and educate others,” according to her All American Speakers bio. She was among the few family members who declined to participate in the Netflix documentary.
In 2019, Ed Smart announced he is gay, saying it took most of his life to accept his sexual orientation. “I tried to suppress that; it’s not me, not who I am. I tried to put that out,” he told CNN. Ed and Lois divorced in 2019, according to records obtained by The Salt Lake Tribune.
Elizabeth Smart’s testimony proved crucial to bringing her captors to justice. She testified vividly about her nine months in captivity during Mitchell’s trial in 2009 and 2010, describing the ordeal as “my nine months in hell.”
“I didn’t want to face him, but at the same time, if he was released, he would definitely go after another young girl,” Smart said. “So, when the verdict finally came in as guilty, I mean, it was, it was just like, it is about time. Thank goodness it’s done, and I can leave it in the past.”
Mitchell was found guilty in December 2010 of kidnapping and unlawful transportation of a minor with intent to engage in sexual activity. On May 25, 2011, he was sentenced to life in prison, where he remains today.
Barzee pleaded guilty to kidnapping and unlawful transportation of a minor and agreed to cooperate against Mitchell. She was sentenced to 15 years in prison in 2010 but was released on September 19, 2018, after her time in federal custody was counted toward her state sentence.
Smart expressed disappointment at Barzee’s release. “It is incomprehensible how someone who has not cooperated with her mental health evaluations or risk assessments and someone who did not show up to her own parole hearing can be released into our community,” she said in a statement.
Barzee was arrested in Salt Lake City last May after visiting two public parks, which she is barred from as a registered sex offender.
