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shy
Crypt Keeper
Australia
265 Posts |
 Posted - 15 March 2003 : 12:37:26
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The discovery of Elizabeth Smart has sparked new hope for families of missing Bay Area children.
Smart was found Wednesday near her Salt Lake City home, after being missing for nine months. She was with a man and a woman who were in custody on suspicion of kidnapping.
Ilene Misheloff vanished 14 years ago in Dublin, when she was walking home from school. Fliers with her picture are still posted in store windows.
Tuesday's news of Smart's homecoming struck a bittersweet note for
Ilene's mother, Maddi Misheloff. Tuesday was also Ilene's 28th birthday. But Maddi says that she knows her search is not in vain.
"It reaffirms that this can happen. It's not impossible. A lot of people would say it's not likely, and that may be true. But clearly, it's not impossible," said Maddi Misheloff. "Some people may say that you're wasting your time, it's not worth it, she couldn't possibly be alive after all this time -- well, yes, she can."
Dublin's police chief has reopened the Miseheloff case, and assigned a full-time detective to review all the evidence.
Shy
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Friends will help you move. Real friends will help you move bodies!
shy@shyscyberchamber.com
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shy
Crypt Keeper
Australia
265 Posts |
Posted - 15 March 2003 : 12:40:25
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Man Found With Smart a Homeless 'Prophet'
Thu Mar 13, 7:41 AM ET Add U.S. National - AP to My Yahoo!
By PAUL FOY, Associated Press Writer
SALT LAKE CITY - The drifter found with Elizabeth Smart was a downtown
fixture who panhandled on the streets, said he was a prophet for the
homeless and lived in a teepee on the outskirts of town.
Brian Mitchell, known to the Smart family as "Emmanuel," was also "capable" of kidnapping a child, his stepson, Mark Thompson, told The Associated Press on Wednesday.
Mitchell, 49, was booked with his wife, Wanda Eileen Barzee, into the Salt Lake County Jail for investigation of aggravated kidnapping. He was also being held on an outstanding arrant for retail theft.
The Smart family said in February that Mitchell resembled the man
Elizabeth's younger sister had seen abduct Elizabeth from their bedroom last June.
Elizabeth's mother, Lois Smart, has said she met Emmanuel in downtown Salt Lake City when he asked for money. She gave him $5 and hired him to help her husband work on the roof of their home in November 2001. He worked for about five hours and the family didn't see him again, she said.
Mitchell's sister called law enforcement with his identity after the Smart family held a news conference Feb. 3 to circulate a sketch of him clean-shaven, Thompson said.
Photographs released by Mitchell's family show him with a long beard.
Mitchell was frequently seen in downtown Salt Lake City, wearing white
pants, a robe-like tunic and a brimless white hat that resembles a puffy turban or baker's toque. One of the photos provided to law enforcement shows him in such a hat.
He often panhandled and preached to the homeless downtown before Elizabeth's disappearance last June. He and Barzee sold their belongings and started living on the streets in the late 1980s.
Mitchell's family said he often spent time in a teepee in the mountains outside Salt Lake City.
Elizabeth told her family that Mitchell took her to San Diego at one point over the past nine months. Witnesses reported seeing him in California around the Christmas holidays.
Mitchell attended Skyline High School in the 1970s, married and had four children. He and his wife divorced and he married Barzee in the late 1980s, The Salt Lake Tribune reported Thursday.
The couple had been Mormons but were excommunicated, said Michael Otterson, spokesman for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Barzee's daughter Louree Gayler, who was 12 when her mother married
Mitchell, said her new stepfather made her uncomfortable and after three years she went to live with her father.
She speculated that perhaps Elizabeth was kidnapped to "give my mom back something she lost.
"Elizabeth resembles me at 15," Gayler told the Tribune.
She told CBS's "The Early Show" that Mitchell and Barzee prayed for several hours a day and expected her to do the same. She said he was abusive "to a degree."
"He shot a dog in front of us, made me eat my own rabbit for dinner, things like that," she said.
Asked if her stepfather was sexually abusive, she said there were "hugs, kisses that were kind of uncalled for." She said she was sometimes uncomfortable with the way he stared at her.
Gayler's brother, Mark Thompson, 32, said his mother "freaked out" when Gayler left home, Thompson told The New York Times. "I remember her saying, 'How dare my baby leave me?' Maybe she felt like she needed to replace a child."
Thompson said his mother carried around dolls for years, pretending they were alive. He said she had also been forcibly removed from a hospital - as recently as last year - "for touching other people's kids."
Police initially suspected handyman Richard Albert Ricci, who had also
worked at the Smart home, but he was never charged in the Smart case. Ricci died after suffering a brain hemorrhage in August while in prison on an unrelated parole violation. He had denied any involvement in Elizabeth's disappearance.
Shy
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Friends will help you move. Real friends will help you move bodies!
shy@shyscyberchamber.com
ICQ : 41364914
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shy
Crypt Keeper
Australia
265 Posts |
Posted - 15 March 2003 : 12:42:19
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SALT LAKE CITY (March 14) - After nine months of shabby living under bridges and in tents with a self-styled prophet and his wife, Elizabeth Smart returned to her million-dollar home alive - but not unchanged.
When stopped by police, she readily lied about her identity and said the two drifters were her parents. The 15-year-old was nervous and agitated when asked to remove her sunglasses and gray wig and never asked about her family once the truth emerged.
''There is clearly a psychological impact that occurred at some point,'' Salt Lake Police Chief Rick Dinse said Thursday. ''There is no question that she was psychologically affected.''
Police briefly outlined Elizabeth's movements, saying she was snatched from her bed at knifepoint on June 5 and spent her first two months with Brian Mitchell and Wanda Barzee achingly close to home. She was held in a tent in Dry Creek Canyon, a popular hiking area within two miles of the Smart's house. The area was searched many times last summer.
Hours after she vanished, Elizabeth heard one of her uncles calling out her name but was unable to respond, her family said.
In October, Elizabeth and her captors rode a bus to San Diego and spent the winter there. They sometimes slept under a highway bridge and ate lunch next to Lindo Lake.
The trio returned to the Salt Lake area on Wednesday, wearing dirty clothes and disguises and carrying bedrolls and bags. They were arrested within hours when two couples recognized the bearded and bedraggled Mitchell and called police.
When officers approached the teen, Sandy Officer Bill O'Neal said, ''she kind of just blurted out, 'I know who you think I am. You guys think I'm that Elizabeth Smart girl who ran away.'''
Smart told police her name was ''Augustine'' and that her cheap black sunglasses protected her eyes while they healed from surgery. When they asked why she wore a wig and T-shirt for a head scarf, she became angry and upset.
''Her heart was beating so hard you could see it through her chest,'' O'Neal said.
Handcuffed and loaded into a separate police car from Mitchell and Barzee for the ride to the station, Smart began to cry.
''We kept telling her, do this for your family, do this for yourself. Do the right thing - we know you're Elizabeth Smart,'' said Sergeant Victor Quezada.
Smart responded with a biblical quote, ''Thou sayest.''
The teen may have picked up the religious reference from Mitchell, a 49-year-old panhandler and self-proclaimed prophet for the homeless who called himself Emmanuel. The trio were seen wearing long white robes, with Barzee and Smart often veiled and following silently.
Mitchell was excommunicated from the Mormon church and considered himself a polygamist, Dinse said, but added, ''I do not want to attach his relationship with Elizabeth in that fashion.''
Elizabeth's beaming father, Ed Smart, credited his daughter's return to the power of prayer.
''God lives - he is there, he answers prayers, and the prayers of the world have brought Elizabeth home,'' he said Thursday. ''I am so thankful, I'm so thankful and feel so blessed to have this miracle happen to us.''
''Elizabeth is happy, she is well, and we are so happy to have her back in our arms,'' Smart said.
Elizabeth seemed to adjust well on her first night home, struggling to play a few tunes on the harp and watching her favorite movie, ''The Trouble with Angels.''
Sierra Smart said she and several other cousins in the devout and affluent Mormon family spent about three hours with Elizabeth during her first full day at home. ''She's like totally talking, totally casual,'' said Sierra, 22. ''She got all new clothes. She gave a fashion show.''
Ed Smart said he had not pressed his daughter for details of her ordeal.
''What is going to come out is going to come out,'' he said. ''I don't have it in me to try and make this harder for her than it is.''
Smart may have been kept from escaping or crying out for help by the growing influence of her captors, police said. Investigators have not talked to her since Wednesday evening and have no immediate plans to interview her again, Dinse said.
''That is subject to the information that we develop. We will work with her family about that,'' he said. ''We did have a productive day yesterday. She's a very bright, very smart young lady who answered our questions very articulately. She was very helpful in our discussion with her.''
Mitchell and Barzee remain jailed Friday on suspicion of aggravated kidnapping.
Smart was hidden in plain sight, using other names and coming into contact with several people, Dinse said.
Authorities in California disclosed Thursday that Mitchell had been arrested and held for six days in San Diego County last month for vandalizing a church.
A fingerprint check done after the arrest indicated he was also known as Mitchell, but deputies had no reason to keep him in custody, sheriff's spokesman Chris Saunders said. Mitchell pleaded guilty and was released on probation Feb. 18.
''If we had to do it over again, there's really nothing different we could have done because Salt Lake City authorities didn't identify him as a suspect until March 1,'' Saunders said. Ed Smart criticized police for focusing too much on another possible suspect and failing to act quickly on a tip from Elizabeth's younger sister that ultimately led to Mitchell. But he also sounded forgiving.
''I believe that they tried to do their best,'' he said.
Dinse acknowledged investigators were slow to release a sketch of Mitchell.
''Hindsight is 20-20 vision,'' he said. ''If we had to go back over it again, I think every one of (our investigators) would say, 'I wish we had gone public with that ... earlier.''
Shy
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Friends will help you move. Real friends will help you move bodies!
shy@shyscyberchamber.com
ICQ : 41364914
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Discovery of Elizabeth Smart
