In the 1990s and 2000s, we had a series of high-profile child-abduction and child-murder cases, from Jaycee Dugard to JonBenét Ramsey, from Polly Klaas to Caylee Anthony to the Cleveland captives Michelle Knight, Amanda Berry, and Gina DeJesus. Each of these stories received breathless, national coverage, fueled by the emerging dominance of tabloid TV and the 24-hour cable cycle. (Cases involving missing or murdered minority children—and teens and young adults—were largely ignored, leading the late great journalist Gwen Ifill to coin the term “Missing White Women Syndrome.”)
The incredible saga of the kidnapping and eventually the rescue of Elizabeth Smart was among the most widely covered of these stories—and it has been revisited in multiple books, documentaries, and specials, as well as the TV dramas “Bringing Elizabeth Home” (CBS) and “I Am Elizabeth Smart” (Lifetime). Now comes the Netflix documentary “Kidnapped: Elizabeth Smart,” and while there’s no new ground to be covered—Elizabeth’s captors were long ago brought to justice—it’s still a journalistically thorough and fascinating look back at the story, highlighted by present-day interviews with Elizabeth, her little sister Mary Katherine (who witnessed the abduction) and Elizabeth’s father, Ed Smart. (Elizabeth’s mother, Lois, declined to be interviewed.)
Not that director Benedict Sanderson shies away from the occasional dramatic flourish; we often get extreme close-ups showing interview subjects, in order to intensify their feelings as they recall their pain, and the pound-the-point home score isn’t subtle. And, as is the case with many of these true-crime documentaries, in addition to the catch-up interviews, the audio of 911 calls, the police interrogation videos, the home movies, and the archival news footage, there’s the occasional dramatic re-creation. (By now, there are hundreds of actors whose resumes include non-speaking, often shadowy or silhouetted portrayals of Menacing Intruder or Fleeing Victim.)
“Kidnapped: Elizabeth Smart” starts by laying out the basic facts of the case, with a title card saying, “In 2002, 14-year-old Elizabeth Smart was abducted from her bedroom as she slept. The only witness was her nine-year-old sister, Katherine.” Ed and Lois Smart were devoted members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and they lived with their six children in a sprawling house nestled in the foothills of the affluent Federal Heights neighborhood of Salt Lake City. Their seemingly idyllic world was shattered in the dead of night on June 5th, 2002, when a man entered the bedroom shared by Elizabeth and Mary Katherine. “[He told] Elizabeth if she screamed, he would kill her,” recalls Mary Katherine. “I was paralyzed. I just couldn’t believe what was happening.” That recollection makes for an absolutely chilling moment.
Remarkably, nine-year-old Mary Katherine said she recognized the voice of the man who took Elizabeth, which only served to bolster the feeling among law enforcement and the media that, in cases such as this, you have to look closely at family members. (Nicea DeGering, a reporter who covered the story, says, “I remember thinking, is this a real kidnapping?”) With the neighborhood mobilizing to search for Elizabeth, the national media swooping down on Salt Lake City, and some 40,000 leads pouring in, the investigation focuses on Elizabeth’s father, Ed, who sounds anguished to this day when he says, “To have your daughter go missing is horrendous. And then to be a possible suspect — I was beyond words.” Ed’s brother, Tom Smart, doesn’t help with his talk of the family trait of “monomaniacal behavior.” Eventually, however, investigators believe they’ve found their man in Richard Ricci, a violent felon who had been hired for one day to do some handyman work around the house.
Here’s the thing, though. Mary Katherine maintained it wasn’t Ricci’s voice she heard that night—and in fact, Elizabeth had been kidnapped by the delusional and monstrous Brian David Mitchell, who believed himself to be some kind of messenger of God, when he was more like the devil on Earth. Along with his wife Wanda Barzee, Mitchell held Elizabeth captive in a tent deep in the woods, with Mitchell repeatedly raping Elizabeth, psychologically abusing her and threatening to kill her if she tried to escape.
We’re about 40 minutes into “Kidnapped: Elizabeth Smart” when the story pivots and rewinds to Day 1, this time telling what happened through Elizabeth’s viewpoint. (Cue the obligatory behind-the-scenes moment where we see the crew setting up to interview Elizabeth, with the director off-camera saying, “Shall we begin?”) Says Elizabeth, “That night, I remember a man’s voice: ‘I have a knife at your neck. Don’t make a sound.’ ” From that point forward, the documentary takes us through episodes of heartbreak and frustration—on more than one occasion, Elizabeth was almost able to break free, but was too terrified to speak up, and quite understandably so—until the miraculous moment when law enforcement finds a young girl in the company of Mitchell and Barzee, asks her if she’s Elizabeth Smart, and the reply comes, “Thou sayeth.”
Elizabeth Smart is married with three children. She has become a fierce and admired advocate for survivors. In the doc, she says, “I wanted [other survivors] to know they had nothing to be ashamed of. I wanted them to know they weren’t alone…My inner voice has changed from, ‘You should have done this,’ or, ‘You could have done that,’ to, ‘You can finish this. You’re strong. Keep going.’ ” She is the hero of her own life story.
