Brian David Mitchell took Elizabeth Smart from her bedroom in Salt Lake City at knifepoint in the early hours of June 5, 2002, and walked the fourteen-year-old up into the hills to a camp in the woods where his wife was waiting. Wanda Barzee washed the girl's feet and ordered her to change out of her pajamas into a robe, and when Elizabeth refused, Barzee warned that Mitchell would rip the pajamas off her. Mitchell then performed a ceremony he called a marriage and raped her. Barzee killed no one, and her convictions are for kidnapping, not murder. Her part was to keep the captivity going for nine months.
For the summer Elizabeth was held at the campsite, not far from her own home, tethered between two trees by a metal cable. In July, about a month after the abduction, the couple tried to take her cousin as well. In September the three of them rode a bus to California and spent the autumn and winter around San Diego, moving between campsites and eating at homeless shelters. At home the case had stalled until October, when Elizabeth's younger sister Mary Katherine, the only witness to the abduction, told her parents she thought the man might have been "Immanuel", a drifter who had done an odd job at the house the year before. Police released a sketch in February 2003.
On March 12, 2003, people in Sandy, Utah, recognized the trio walking down a street, Elizabeth and Barzee with white veils over their faces. Elizabeth was recovered alive, and Mitchell and Barzee were arrested. Utah charged Barzee with aggravated kidnapping six days later and set bail at $10 million.
Then the case stopped for years. In January 2004 a Utah court found Barzee mentally ill and not competent to stand trial and sent her to the Utah State Hospital, where she stayed after a second finding in August 2005. The state legislature took up a bill in 2006 to let prosecutors seek forced medication to restore a defendant's competence, and in June 2006 Third District Judge Judith Atherton ordered Barzee medicated with antipsychotic drugs against her will. She had refused medication on religious grounds. A federal indictment for kidnapping and unlawful transportation of a minor followed on March 5, 2008.
Doctors at the Utah State Hospital reported in the fall of 2009 that her competence had been restored, and the plea negotiations began. She pleaded guilty in federal court that November to kidnapping and unlawful transportation of a minor across state lines, and agreed to testify against Mitchell. In the state case, prosecutors dropped the kidnapping and sexual assault charges in exchange for a plea of guilty but mentally ill to conspiracy in the attempted abduction of Elizabeth's cousin, Olivia Wright. In February 2010, the month she entered it, her own children appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show and described her as a monster who had abused and brainwashed them. On May 21, 2010, in back-to-back hearings, she was sentenced to fifteen years in federal prison and one to fifteen years in Utah, the terms to run concurrently. "I know the gravity of my crimes and how serious they are," she told U.S. District Judge Dale Kimball. "I'm just so sorry again for all the pain and suffering I caused upon the Smart family." Kimball credited her with the seven years already spent in custody and ordered five years of supervision after her release and registration as a sex offender; Judge Atherton gave no credit on the state term, leaving any further time to the parole board. Lois Smart, Elizabeth's mother, who had not spoken publicly before, turned to face her in the federal courtroom. "Wanda, what you did to our family and to our girl Elizabeth was wrong," she said. "It was wrong and it was evil." Elizabeth, then serving a church mission in Paris, felt the fifteen years were not enough, her father said. Barzee testified against Mitchell, whose insanity defense a federal jury rejected when it convicted him on December 11, 2010.
The release became its own fight. Barzee finished the federal term in Texas and was returned to Utah on April 8, 2016. She skipped her state parole hearing in June 2018, and on July 2 the Board of Pardons and Parole denied parole and kept her release date at January 29, 2024, refusing to count her federal years against the state sentence. Her lawyer, Scott Williams, argued that the judges had run the two sentences concurrently because she had cooperated in the case against Mitchell. On September 11 the board reversed itself, saying it was required to credit the federal time, and announced that her sentence would end eight days later. Elizabeth Smart, who had welcomed the June decision, called the decision incomprehensible and said Barzee remained a danger.
Barzee walked out of the Utah State Prison on September 19, 2018, at seventy-two, after fifteen years in custody. She was placed under five years of federal supervision, ordered into mental health treatment and barred from contacting the Smart family, and she was required to follow Utah's rules for registered sex offenders, which keep them out of parks. Her relatives would not take her in; a federal judge ordered emergency housing in a Salt Lake City motel and she moved to a halfway house a week later. Her daughter obtained a protective order against her that October.
In April 2025 she was seen feeding ducks at Liberty Park in Salt Lake City. She was arrested on May 1, 2025, after admitting to police that she had gone there, and to Sugar House Park, because God had commanded her to.
June 5, 2002: Brian David Mitchell abducts Elizabeth Smart, fourteen, from her Salt Lake City bedroom and takes her to a camp where Wanda Barzee is waiting.
March 12, 2003: people in Sandy, Utah, recognize the three; Elizabeth is recovered alive and Mitchell and Barzee are arrested.
January 2004: a Utah court finds Barzee not competent to stand trial and sends her to the Utah State Hospital.
June 2006: Judge Judith Atherton orders her medicated against her will.
March 5, 2008: a federal indictment charges her with kidnapping and unlawful transportation of a minor.
November 2009: with her competence restored, she pleads guilty in federal court and agrees to testify against Mitchell.
February 2010: she pleads guilty but mentally ill in the state case to conspiracy in the attempted abduction of Olivia Wright.
May 21, 2010: she is sentenced to fifteen years in federal prison and one to fifteen years in Utah, to run concurrently.
December 11, 2010: a federal jury convicts Mitchell after she testifies against him.
April 8, 2016: having finished the federal term, she is returned to Utah.
July 2, 2018: the parole board denies parole and keeps her release date at January 29, 2024.
September 11, 2018: the board reverses itself and credits her federal time.
September 19, 2018: she is released from the Utah State Prison at seventy-two.
May 1, 2025: she is arrested after admitting she had gone to Liberty Park and Sugar House Park.