Benedict Sanderson, Cordon Parks, Cory Lyman, documentaries, Ed Smart, Elizabeth Smart, Jared Parkinson, Kidnapped: Elizabeth Smart, movies, Netflix, Nicea DeGering, reviews, Salt Lake City, Tom Smart, true crime, TV, Victor Quezeda
January 22, 2026
by Carla Hay
Culture Representation: The documentary series “Kidnapped: Elizabeth Smart” features a predominantly white group of people (with one Latino) discussing the case of Elizabeth Smart, who was 14 years old when she was kidnapped from her Salt Lake City home in June 2002 and found in March 2003.
Culture Clash: Police investigators and the Smart family were often at odds with each other because the police followed suspicions that turned out to be incorrect.
Culture Audience: “Kidnapped: Elizabeth Smart” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in true crime documentaries about very famous kidnapping cases about children who were found and returned home safely.
So much has already been reported and said about the Elizabeth Smart kidnapping case—one of the most well-known and remarkable kidnapping cases of the 2000s—that yet another documentary about the case seems redundant. “Kidnapped: Elizabeth Smart” doesn’t reveal much new information, but this true crime documentary has the benefit of exclusive interviews with several members of the Smart family, including Elizabeth, her father Ed and her rarely interviewed sister Mary Katherine, the person who provided the crucial clues that led to finding Elizabeth and Elizabeth’s kidnappers.
Directed by Benedict Sanderson, “Kidnapped: Elizabeth Smart” uses a lot of the same techniques that are in many other true crime documentaries: ominous music as people describe the crime and investigation; snippets of re-enactments with actors silently playing the roles of the real people involved in the case; and a “whodunit” storytelling format that reveals the perpetrators when the documentary is at least half over. The “whodunit” aspect of the documentary is dragged out and seems unnecessary because it’s common knowledge that Elizabeth Smart’s kidnappers (spouses Brian David Mitchell and Wanda Ileen Barzee) were caught and sent to prison.
In 2003, Barzee pleaded guilty to kidnapping, sexual assault and burglary. She received 15 years in prison and was released in 2018. Mitchell faced the same charges and pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. In 2010, after years of delays for Mitchell’s trial, Mitchell was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison without parole.
Only viewers who know nothing about this case will be affected by the fake suspense that the documentary tries to build. For people already familiar with the Elizabeth Smart kidnapping case, the main reason to watch this documentary is to get the perspectives of Elizabeth and the other people who were involved in the case. Elizabeth and Ed each has a separate memoir about the kidnapping ordeal, and they have given numerous media interviews and spoken extensively about the case, while Mary Katherine has not.
It’s mentioned in the documentary that Lois Smart (Elizabeth and Mary Katherine’s mother) no longer wishes to publicly speak about the case because she wants to put it behind her. What the documentary doesn’t mention is that Ed and Lois got divorced in 2019, after Ed came out as gay. Based on what is shown in the documentary, Ed is still very close to Elizabeth and Mary Katherine, who do not talk about their siblings in the documentary.
Elizabeth Smart was born on November 3, 1987, in Salt Lake City, the city where she and her siblings were raised. She is one of six children born to Ed and Lois Smart, who raised the children in their Mormon faith. Elizabeth and Mary Katherine are the only sisters of their siblings. Elizabeth Smart’s name is now Elizabeth Gilmour (she married Matthew Gilmour in 2012), but she uses her maiden name Elizabeth Smart for her career, which includes being an activist for child safety and survivors of violent crimes, as well as being a TV personality.
The Smart family, by all accounts, is a tight-knit and loving family, with no history of dysfunction or abuse. In the documentary, Ed describes Elizabeth in her childhood as “fiercely competitive, especially with her brothers. As far as her inner strength, she just had a really strong spirit.” Mary Katherine says Elizabeth was her best friend in her childhood and someone she looked up to as a role model.
The basic facts of the case have been widely reported and are repeated in the documentary: On June 5, 2002, Elizabeth was kidnapped in the early-morning hours from the bedroom that she shared with Mary Katherine, who witnessed the kidnapping but pretended to be asleep. Mary Katherine said that the kidnapper (who had a knife) was a man whose voice she recognized, but she could not immediately identify the kidnapper by name. The kidnapper told Elizabeth that if she made a sound, he would kill Elizabeth. A kitchen window screen in the house had been cut and was believed to be the way the kidnapper entered the house.
There was widespread media coverage of the kidnapping because it’s rare for a stranger to kidnap a child from inside the child’s home. Suspicion first fell on the men in the Smart family, who all had solid alibis and were eventually cleared as suspects. In the documentary, Ed mentions that the stress of being under suspicion caused him to have a mental breakdown, and his father put him in a psychiatric facility for a brief period of time.
Suspicion then shifted to Richard Ricci, a contractor who had recently done work on the Smart family house. Ricci had a long criminal record since the early 1970s, including convictions for attempted homicide, felony burglary, aggravated robbery and third-degree theft. He refused to give an alibi for the time period when Elizabeth was kidnapped. Ricci was arrested, but he insisted that he had nothing to do with the kidnapping. Mary Katherine also told police that Ricci was not the kidnapper. On August 30, 2002, Ricci died of a brain aneurysm while he was in jail for this arrest.
In the documentary, Mary Katherine says that being the only witness to the kidnapping was a terrifying and isolating experience. She talks about how she was afraid to go to sleep at night. And before Elizabeth was found, police told Mary Katherine not to talk to anyone outside of her family and law enforcement about what she witnessed because it could possibly influence her memory. Mary Katherine was left to cope on her own proverbial “lonely island,” she says. Mary Katherine also underwent hypnosis (which didn’t work) to try to help her remember the name of the man she saw kidnap Elizabeth.
And then, in October 2002, Mary Katherine says she was looking at something to do with the Olympics that year when she suddenly remembered the name of the man who had the voice of the kidnapper. The Smart family knew him as Emmanuel, but his real name was Brian David Mitchell. He was an eccentric vagrant who called himself Emmanuel David Isaiah, dressed in white robes, and preached Christianity.
Several months before Elizabeth’s kidnapping, Mitchell had done some repairs on the house for a few hours. Mary Katherine remembered that she, Elizabeth and her mother Lois met him by seeing him preaching on the street. Lois offered to give him this temporary job and gave Ed’s business card to Mitchell so that Ed could make the arrangement. According to Ed, Mitchell started but never completed the work he was hired to do, and Mitchell didn’t go back to the home to get paid for the work that he had done.
Even though Mary Katherine had identified the kidnapper, police investigators were skeptical because Ricci (who was now deceased) was still considered to be the main suspect. Many people also were skeptical that Elizabeth was still alive. However, the Smart family, led by Ed, didn’t give up hope and took it upon themselves to spread the word in the media and in the general public that “Emmanuel” was a person of interest. The TV series “America’s Most Wanted” was very instrumental in helping with this media coverage.
Mitchell’s brother-in-law called in a tip to the Smart family to tell them that he thought Mitchell was the kidnapper. This brother-in-law said that Mitchell matched Mary Katherine’s description of Emmanuel, and Mitchell was weird enough to possibly be involved in the kidnapping because Mitchell had been accused of (but not arrested for) sexually abusing his former stepdaughter, who was underage at the time. Eventually, police began to help with this search of the man who called himself Emmanuel, who was later confirmed to be Mitchell.
Perhaps the most memorable aspect of this kidnapping is that Elizabeth had been in Salt Lake City during most of her kidnapping and was hiding in plain sight. Mitchell and Barzee forced Elizabeth to wear white robes where she was completely covered, except for her eyes, when they went out in public. Barzee wore the same type of robe too. Mitchell’s robes did not cover up his face.
Before Mitchell and Barzee were identified as the kidnapping suspects, people who saw the three of them out on public assumed that trio wore the robes for religious reasons, not because one of them was kidnapped. In the rare occasions that Mitchell and Barzee allowed Elizabeth to speak to anyone, the spouses stayed close enough to Elizabeth to monitor and control what she could say. If anyone asked, the kidnapper spouses claimed that the teenage girl with them was their daughter.
Elizabeth was too afraid to reveal her true identity when they were out in public because Mitchell had threatened to kill her family if she did. Mitchell and Barzee lived in a tent in a mountainous wooded area of Salt Lake City during most of Elizabeth’s kidnapping. However, all three of them would go into the urban area of the city for food, drinks and supplies.
In the documentary, Elizabeth talks about a day when she, Mitchell and Barzee heard searchers calling Elizabeth’s name from a distance in the woods. The kidnapper couple hid Elizabeth in the tent until the searchers left the area. It was one of many “close calls” where Elizabeth could have been rescued if the circumstances had been different and if the people looking for her had persisted in ways that would lead to finding Elizabeth.
Elizabeth (who describes Mitchell as “looking like Rasputin”) went public years ago about how Mitchell raped her every day, multiple times a day, during her kidnapping. She says she resisted this sexual assault until it was obvious she couldn’t escape it, as long as Mitchell and Barzee kept watch over her 24 hours a day. Mitchell and Barzee often kept Elizabeth tied up, such as being tied to a tree, to ensure that she couldn’t escape.
At the time that Elizabeth had been kidnapped, she was a virgin with no dating experience. Her innocence was brutally stolen from her. Elizabeth says in the documentary that for many years after this trauma, she was afraid of men who were strangers. She says that even though she knows being raped wasn’t her fault, it took her a long time not to feel shame about it.
In the documentary, Elizabeth says that before Mitchell raped her for the first time, he told her: “I hereby seal you to me as my wife, as God and angels as my witnesses.” After Mitchell raped her, Elizabeth remembers: “He got up and smiled, like it was no big deal to him,” even though he saw blood running down her thighs because of this rape. “More than anything, he loved power,” Elizabeth says. “He loved feeling like he was in control.”
Mitchell, who called himself a prophet of God, used religion as his excuse for his horrific crimes. Elizabeth says that Barzee was a willing accomplice who encouraged Mitchell to harm Elizabeth. According to Elizabeth, Mitchell repeatedly told her that Elizabeth was one of seven girls he planned to kidnap and make his “wives.” Mary Katherine and her cousin Olivia were among those Mitchell said were on his list.
In June 2002, while former kidnapping suspect Ricci was in jail on suspicion for the kidnapping, there was a break-in of the home of one of Ed’s brothers, with a bedroom window screen cut in a similar manner to how the kitchen window screen was cut in Ed and Lois’ house. It was later revealed that Mitchell had broken into the house with the intent of kidnapping Elizabeth’s cousin Jessica Wright, who was 18 at the time. Mitchell left when he heard the family’s dog barking.
Elizabeth was almost discovered when she, Mitchell and Barzee went to a public library, and a police officer (whose name is not mentioned in the documentary) asked Elizabeth to remove the part of the robe that covered her face. The cop suspected that she might be Elizabeth, who did not speak during this encounter. Instead, Mitchell convinced the police officer that it was against his family’s religion for women and girls to expose their faces in public, so the police officer backed off.
This near-discovery unnerved Mitchell, who then briefly relocated to the San Diego area with Elizabeth and Barzee. However, in the documentary, Elizabeth describes how she convinced Mitchell to move them all back to the Salt Lake City area, by appealing to his ego and saying that God was speaking to Mitchell to go back to the Salt Lake City area. The tactic worked.
On March 12, 2003, Elizabeth was rescued by police when the trio was stopped by police officers on a street in Sandy, Utah. The police had responded to calls from concerned citizens about this odd-looking trio who matched the description of Elizabeth and her suspected kidnappers. Victor Quezada, a police sergeant who was the one to get Elizabeth to identify herself, is interviewed in the documentary. He is one of the heroes in this story.
Another law enforcement officer who is interviewed in the documentary is Cory Lyman, who was a Salt Lake City police captain at the time of the kidnapping. However, Lyman didn’t finish the working on the case because he accepted a job offer to be police chief of Ketchum, Idaho, while Elizabeth was still missing. In the documentary, Lyman admits to making mistakes that affected the case, such as initially assuming that someone in the Smart family and Ricci were the most likely suspects. He describes his joy and relief when Elizabeth was found. Elizabeth and other members of the Smart family also describe in the documentary what they were feeling after Elizabeth was rescued.
Other people interviewed in the documentary are Ed’s brothers David Smart and Tom Smart; Salt Lake City police detective Cordon Parks, who interviewed Mitchell after Mitchell’s arrest; Jared Parkinson, a Salt Lake City resident who said he interacted with Mitchell when he saw Mitchell, Barzee and Elizabeth at a Salt Lake City bar; and TV journalist Nicea DeGering. The most compelling interviews are with Elizabeth, Ed and Mary Katherine, who are the biggest heroes in this story for not giving up hope and for pushing forward in ways that made a difference when law enforcement made missteps in the investigations.
The main takeaways from watching the documentary are how Elizabeth Smart is an inspiring survivor and how important it is for a kidnapped person’s loved ones to enlist help from the public when police investigations stall or move too slowly. Although the police investigations helped in this case, the mistakes made in the investigations also caused setbacks for the case. Ed and the rest of the Smart family never gave up hope and did things responsibly to help the investigations in areas where the police were reluctant to help. “Kidnapped: Elizabeth Smart” is also a cautionary tale for people to be more observant and pro-active about suspicious activity that could be connected to a crime and/or could save someone’s life.
Netflix premiered “Kidnapped: Elizabeth Smart” on January 21, 2026.