![]() Thousands of volunteers combed the neighborhood, looking in window wells, going through stacks of wood. It was the beginning of summer and unusually hot, the air above the valley standing still, loud crickets in the backyard that would not shut up. Like, for instance, “Why didn’t she run away or cry out for help?” And, “Why we didn’t recognize her-how was she able to stand right in front of us and become invisible?” ![]() It seemed crazy we couldn’t determine whether Mitchell was crazy, and there were other questions no one was talking about. It was like 9/11, only the news spread by telephone instead of TV-women calling women and the men saying ‘What? What happened?’ Their extended family reached back to the original pioneers and into the present day church hierarchy. Their multi-million-dollar home represented the core values of Mormon traditions. If this could happen to the Smart family, then no one was safe. She was taken from her bedroom in the middle of the night, and everyone was terrorized. I didn’t know her but my son went to grade school with her and we had a photo of the two of them together at a birthday party-she was a princess and he was a cowboy. It happened in my neighborhood, so I remember it. She was abducted June 5th, 2002, and she was gone for nine months. There, that first night, Mitchell performed a sacred wedding ceremony, and then he raped her. Salt Lake City Police Dept/Then they abducted their first virgin, Elizabeth Smart, and took her, on foot, up into the hills above her home in Federal Heights, where they had a camp in some scrub oak. His legal wife at the time, Wanda Barzee, carefully transcribed the prophesy in long hand and made copies to circulate among family and friends.īrian David Mitchell and Wanda Barzee in 2003. In the prophesy, God proclaims Immanuel to be “the one mighty and strong” called to set His house in order before the Apocalypse, a task requiring the aid of seven times seven virgin wives, plus one. “… I have raised up my servant Immanuel David Isaiah, ever my righteous right hand, to be a light and a covenant to my people-to all those who will repent and come unto me, for in my servant, Immanuel is the fullness of my gospel… So opens the 27-page prophesy of Immanuel David Isaiah, the name Mitchell adopted once he realized he was the messenger of God, the new prophet on Earth. Listen together and open your ears, for it is I, the Lord God of all the earth, the creator of all things that speaketh unto you…” “Hearken! Oh ye inhabitants of the earth. It’s about the strangest thing that’s ever happened in Salt Lake City, and it could only have happened here, in this place and time, perhaps caused by the aura emanating from the temple itself. This is why we didn’t suspect him, even when he walked around downtown with Elizabeth in tow, her face covered by a veil. ![]() ![]() We knew him as a temple moth and thought he was crazy but harmless. Or Brian David Mitchell, the man who dressed like Jesus Christ and stole 14-year-old Elizabeth Smart from her bed in the middle of the night. Or Worm, who sat naked below the Brigham Young statue with the letters W-O-R-M tattooed across his forehead. Or they pose quietly in costumes, such as the young man with his face painted silver and dressed as Little Bo Peep. ![]() They stand outside the wall yelling condemnations, calling for repentance, quoting from the Bible. Temple Square attracts religious wackos like moths to a flame. Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters. ![]()
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