The Story of Elizabeth Smart

04

Chapter Four-Dark Night

June 4, 2002

The mountains east of Salt Lake City, Utah

Having walked the trail many times now, I know that Brian David Mitchell must have moved very quickly down the mountain, which is surprising, given the fact that it was a very dark night. I remember even now how the heavy trees that lined the narrow path sucked up most of the moonlight. The mountains are full of coyotes—I heard them almost every night once we were in the upper camp—and it is likely that some of them watched him from the ridge as he made his way toward the city. The maples and oaks along the trail are very thick, with occasional outcroppings of granite that drop into narrow depressions where the winter snows melt off, but it was early summer when he came to get me, and the ground was dry and packed. A gentle stream, hardly more than a trickle, ran through the bottom of the canyon and he would have been forced to move among the peppermint and watercress in order to follow its path.

As he moved down the mountain, no man saw him pass.

Behind him, high up on the mountain, the other one was waiting to receive me with a dirty bed and clean linen robes.

Coming down the mountain is pretty easy, and can be done in as little as an hour. You follow a narrow canyon that drops sharply from the east to join a well-established trail that runs for about half a mile toward the city. But although you can come down from the mountain fairly quickly, going back is much more difficult and the going is always slow. The mountain is very steep and the way is not well marked. So Brian David Mitchell was in a hurry, for he knew that on that night, it would take us many hours.

For one thing, it would still be dark. And he would have to guide me, knowing I would be looking to escape. He knew that he could make me hold the flashlight, allowing him to keep the knife at my back, but it would be awkward to move together, keeping his hands gripped tightly around my arm. Worse, he knew we could not go back up the same trail that he had used to come down. We’d have to go on the backside of the mountain. There, the mountain was very steep and, without a trail to follow, the brush and trees would be so thick we’d end up crawling on our hands and knees.

Yet it was absolutely essential that we make it back to camp before the sun was up. Before the darkness gave way to the summer light, he would have to have taken me up to where I could be hidden and no one could hear me if I screamed.

*

A little after one A.M., Mitchell neared the bottom of the mountain. There, the trail widened, allowing him to move more quickly.

Everything he wore was black: black sweats, black gloves, black stocking cap and beard. All of this allowed him to blend into the darkness like the shadow of a ghost.

He balanced two military-green sacks across his back. I remember them very clearly. They were tied together with a strand of material and bounced uncomfortably as he moved. As he came off the Wasatch Mountains, the lights of Salt Lake City would have slipped into view. From my house, the valley spreads south and west, neat rows of streetlights that line up in an almost perfect grid. Brigham Young was nothing if not a visionary, and the city is designed along streets that run in neat north-south and east-west rows. To the north, an edge of the mountain to the west hides the northern portion of the valley. As he hiked down, Mitchell surely had to stop to take a break. He was not a young man. And though he seemed to be a fanatic about exercise, he suffered from poor nutrition and inferior hygiene. He and Barzee had skipped many meals, leaving him a little thin. And the alcohol and drugs he had pounded into his body would not have helped him catch his breath. But as tiring as it was to come down from the mountain, it would be much worse climbing back up. It seemed we would stop every few minutes so he could urinate and rest.

Breaking from the streambed, he would have been able to quicken his pace. Here, the lights of the city would have helped illuminate his path, and the moon wouldn’t have been so obscured by the thick trees. Just before two A.M., he stood on the empty streets above the city.

He was almost to my house.

I lived on the east bench of the city, almost as high as any of the houses were allowed to be built. My neighborhood—beautiful homes, some new, some older—looked down on the University of Utah, the capital and downtown buildings, and the Mormon temple and towering skyscrapers situated around the city center.

In the darkness, it must have taken him a moment to get his bearings. But he had studied the scene many times before, and even in the darkness he knew exactly where to go.

Breaking from the foothills, the terrain is bare, with only June grass, rock, and weeds. The first of the houses lie just below the trail. A ribbon of asphalt winds down toward the city. Streetlights line the road. But at two o’clock in the morning, there would have been few, if any, cars. Mine was a quiet neighborhood. A quiet city, even. No one saw him as he hunched beside the road.

He crossed Tomahawk Drive, then dipped through an empty lot to avoid another house before turning north again, bringing himself to look down on my backyard. It backed up to a steep part of the hill and was heavy with bushes and trees. A small storage shed was positioned along the hillside, nestled among the brush. He hid his bags in the weeds, then crept down a narrow path of flat stones to step onto the grass of my backyard.

My house was dark inside. He first circled around, looking for a point of access. Finally, after making sure no doors had been left unlocked, he moved across the patio, past a row of empty windows toward the patio door. Stopping at a narrow window on the left side of the patio, he took out a knife. Long. Deadly. A serrated blade. He carefully cut the screen and pushed against the glass. Earlier in the evening, my mother had burned something on the stove and my dad had left the window open just a crack to air things out. The window pushed back on its hinges. He was able to get into the house!

Mitchell later told me that for a moment he had hesitated.

“If God wants me to do this, He will allow it,” he said to himself.

Mitchell knew that once he climbed through the window, he would be treading on very dangerous ground. From where he was on the patio, he was looking at trespassing. Criminal mischief. Attempted burglary, if the prosecutors really got on a roll. He would have claimed, of course, that he was nothing but a hungry beggar desperate to find a little food. If he’d been caught outside on our patio, he’d spend a few days in jail and nothing more.

But once he crawled through the open window, everything would change. If he was caught inside the house, especially with the knife, that would be impossible for the prosecutors to ignore.

And once he made his way toward my bedroom … that would be a completely different deal.

Yes, he understood the repercussions.

But he did not turn away.

The window was too high, so he leaned an iron patio chair against the wall. Standing on the chair, he shimmied through and dropped onto the kitchen floor.

The house was quiet.

No barking dog. No sounding alarm. Again, he was surprised.

If God wants this … rolled around inside his head again.

Somewhere in the house, a clock ticked. Maybe in the kitchen? Maybe somewhere down the hall?

He moved through the kitchen and into the hallway.

The front door was on his right. A wide stair on his left. He turned. The stairway rose before him. He moved up the stairs and headed down the hall. Which bedroom was I in? In the darkness, he couldn’t tell! He reached out for the nearest door and slowly pushed it open. Soft light fell upon the bed along the wall. My little brother was sleeping there.

He quietly shut the door, then moved a couple steps farther down the hallway until he stopped outside my bedroom door.