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In the Netflix documentary Kidnapped: Elizabeth Smart, out Jan. 21, Smart recalls the night she was abducted from her bedroom in Salt Lake City, Utah, by Brian David Mitchell, who believed he was following a call from God.
Smart was kept captive and repeatedly sexually assaulted by Mitchell for nine months. On March 12, 2003, she was found walking on the side of a highway with Mitchell and his wife.
Kidnapped: Elizabeth Smart covers the months-long search for Smart, featuring members of her family and law enforcement officers who worked on the case. Smart also appears, speaking about how she recovered from the kidnapping and reflecting on her life today.
Here’s a look at the major milestones in the case.
The night Elizabeth Smart was kidnapped
Among the most chilling parts of the documentary are the details of the night that Smart was kidnapped. Her younger sister, Mary Katherine, was also in the bedroom and became the only witness to the abduction. “That night Elizabeth and I said our prayers together and went to sleep,” she says in the film. “The next thing I remember, there was a man in our bedroom telling Elizabeth if she screamed, he would kill her. I was paralyzed.”
Smart remembers waking up and realizing there was a knife at her neck. “I was terrified,” she says. “Was he going to hurt me? Was he going to kill me? I was hoping my parents would wake up, but nobody came.”
Mary Katherine was in shock, but eventually mustered up the courage to go to her parents’ room and tell them that her sister had been taken away. At first, their parents thought Mary Katherine was just having a nightmare, but then they found a broken screen that indicated someone must have broken into the house.
Smart says she was led through her backyard and up a trail by a man who went by Emmanuel David Isaiah—later identified by his real name Brian David Mitchell—who reassured her that he wasn’t going to rape and kill her. They reached a tent in the woods, and his…
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