Elizabeth Smart’s kidnapper was arrested in San Diego, but doc left out shocking detail

The new Elizabeth Smart documentary on Netflix leaves out a major detail, as her abductor, Brian David Mitchell aka Emmanuel, was actually arrested for a second time while she was being held captive.

Kidnapped: Elizabeth Smart follows the case of the now-38-year-old, who was abducted from her bedroom when she was just 14 years old. For the next nine months, she was held hostage and sexually abused every day.

The documentary reveals that while she was restrained, Brian David Mitchell was arrested for shoplifting beer in Salt Lake City and let go, because nobody knew he was a wanted person. However, it completely left out that he was actually arrested a second time.

Credit: Netflix

When Emmanuel and Hephzibah forced Elizabeth to leave Salt Lake City and travel to San Diego, Emmanuel was arrested for vandalising a church and held in jail for six days, ABC News reported at the time. This happened on 12th February, just a month before the teenager was found.

Mitchell was using a different name, not Emmanuel, so the California police force had no idea that he was wanted for questioning. He pleaded guilty to the charge and was released.

At the time, Salt Lake City Police Chief Rick Dinse revealed that officials didn’t raise a multi-state bulletin for the abductor because he didn’t have a violent criminal background, so there wasn’t enough evidence for him to be considered a suspect.

Credit: Netflix

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If both police forces had collaborated, Elizabeth could have been found a lot earlier and relieved of her suffering. The former lead investigator on the case, Cory Lyman, told ABC News he really “struggles” with that thought.

“I go over that in my head, as does everybody else in the task force [in the investigation]. What could we have picked up on? What did we miss? What did we do wrong? What should we have thought out better? Those kind of questions,” he said.

Eventually, Mitchell and his partner Wanda Barzee were arrested after they returned to Salt Lake City. An eyewitness called police claiming they had seen the wanted man, and Elizabeth was freed.

Kidnapped: Elizabeth Smart is available on Netflix now. For all the latest Netflix news and drops, like The Holy Church of Netflix on Facebook. 

Featured image by: Netflix