Elizabeth Smart calls decision to free captor ‘incomprehensible’
By Tamar Lapin
New York Post
September 11, 2018
One of Elizabeth Smart’s abductors is getting out of prison next week — a decision that the kidnapping victim says is “incomprehensible.”
Wanda Barzee will be free Sept. 19, announced the Utah Board of Pardons in a surprise decision Tuesday.
Barzee, now 72, admitted to aiding her self-proclaimed-prophet husband Brian David Mitchell kidnap a then-14-year-old Smart at knifepoint from her bedroom in Salt Lake City in 2002.
The teen was forced to “marry” Mitchell in a sham ceremony and was raped nearly every day for the next nine months.
The couple was arrested in 2003, and Barzee pleaded guilty in federal court in November 2009.
Three months later, she pleaded guilty to state charges for the attempted kidnapping plot of Smart’s cousin, Olivia Wright, in July 2002 — just a month after she and Mitchell had nabbed Smart.
In 2010, Barzee was sentenced to consecutive 15-year sentences for the federal and state charges. She was released from federal prison in Texas in 2016 and returned to Utah to serve her state sentence.
The parole board had denied Barzee an early release in June, declining to include her eight years in federal prison as time served and calculating her sentence as lasting through January 2024.
But Tuesday, it reversed its decision.
“Upon further review and advice from legal counsel, the board must count time spent in federal custody toward Ms. Barzee’s state sentence,” wrote Greg Johnson, the director of administrative services
Smart, who is now 30 and a child-safety activist, said in a statement that she was “surprised and disappointed” to learn that one of her tormentors would be free next week.
“It is incomprehensible how someone who has not cooperated with her mental-health evaluations or risk assessments and someone who did not show up to her own parole hearing can be released into our community,” Smart said.
Smart, who is married and a mom of two, said she appreciated the support she’s received and vowed to address how Barzee was released so the same thing doesn’t happen again.
Once released, Barzee will be under federal supervision for five years.
Mitchell, 65, is serving a life sentence in federal prison for kidnapping and sexual assault.
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