how did elizabeth smart get kidnapped

Elizabeth Smart was kidnapped in the middle of the night on June 5, 2002, when a man broke into her family’s home in Salt Lake City, Utah and took her from the bed she shared with her younger sister at knifepoint.

What happened that night

• In the early hours of June 5, 2002, Brian David Mitchell entered the Smart family home through an unlocked kitchen window and made his way to the bedroom Elizabeth shared with her 9‑year‑old sister, Mary Katherine.

• He woke 14‑year‑old Elizabeth, held a knife to her throat, and told her to get up quietly and follow him or he would kill her and her family.

• Mary Katherine woke up, saw a man in the room, but pretended to be asleep out of fear; hours later she ran to tell her parents that Elizabeth was gone.

Who took her and why

• The kidnapper was Brian David Mitchell, a self‑proclaimed street preacher who had briefly worked at the Smart home doing handyman work months earlier, which is how he knew the house and its layout.

• Mitchell’s motive was rooted in his claimed “religious” delusions; he later said he believed he was commanded to take Elizabeth as a plural wife, and he subjected her to repeated sexual abuse and control during captivity.

• His wife, Wanda Barzee, assisted him before and after the kidnapping and participated in holding Elizabeth captive.

How he got her out of the house

• After forcing Elizabeth out of bed, Mitchell led her quietly through the house and out into the yard, threatening her with the knife if she resisted or made noise.

• He then marched her, still in her nightgown, on a steep several‑mile hike into the foothills behind the Smart home to a hidden camp in a canyon outside Salt Lake City.

• At the camp, his wife Barzee performed a so‑called “marriage” ceremony, after which the prolonged abuse and captivity began.

Aftermath and later perspective

• Elizabeth was held for about nine months in makeshift camps in Utah and later in California, repeatedly raped, threatened with death, and sometimes taken into town disguised in a veil and robes so people would not recognize her.

• She was rescued on March 12, 2003, when two people recognized Mitchell and Barzee from media coverage and called police; officers stopped them in Sandy, Utah and confirmed the girl with them was Elizabeth.

• As an adult, Elizabeth Smart has spoken publicly about the kidnapping, emphasizing how coercion, fear, and threats kept her compliant, and she now advocates for child safety and survivors of sexual violence.

TL;DR: Elizabeth Smart was kidnapped when Brian David Mitchell, a drifter who had once done handyman work for her family, broke into her Salt Lake City home at night, woke her at knifepoint from the bed she shared with her sister, threatened to kill her family if she resisted, and forced her out of the house and up into a hidden mountain camp where he and his wife held her for nine months.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.