Cops Release Elizabeth Smart Kidnapper Brian David Mitchell Interrogation Tapes
Aug. 7, 2011— -- Brian David Mitchell told detectives who interviewed him shortly after his arrest that he had been commanded by God to kidnap Elizabeth Smart in 2002, and that she had "a glorious experience" with him.
The interview is shown in a video newly released by the Utah District Federal Court, in which a Salt Lake City police detective and an FBI agent question Mitchell sitting around a table in an interview room.
The video was released in response to a motion filed by attorneys forThe Salt Lake Tribune and KUTV.
Mitchell, with his wild gray beard, spouts Biblical references and expounds his belief in his calling from God as the investigators try to pin him down on details about the abduction of Smart and the nine months he and Wanda Barzee held her captive.
The two-hour interview was conducted in 2003 by Salt Lake City Police Detective Cordon Parks and FBI Special Agent Jeffrey Ross hours after Mitchell was arrested in Sandy, Utah.
Smart was taken at knifepoint from her bed in the middle of the night on June 5, 2002, while her sister slept.
During Mitchell's trial last year, she told the court that Mitchell held a knife to her throat, took her to an encampment near Salt Lake City, pronounced her his wife, and raped her.
During the "nine months of hell," she testified, he raped her repeatedly, forced her to view pornography, drink alcohol and watch him and Barzee engage in sexual activity.
"I felt like because [of] what he had done to me that I was marked, that I wasn't clean, wasn't pure, wasn't worth the same," she testified. "I felt like another person would never love me."
Smart called Mitchell selfish and a "hypocrite" who raped her at every chance he got even while proclaiming himself to be God's servant.
