← Drop Dead Serious With Ashleigh Banfield
Drop Dead Serious With Ashleigh Banfield
Elizabeth Smart: Exclusive Interview | "Epstein-Maxwell Case Echoes Mine"
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- [00:00]
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- [01:00]
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- [01:36]
Ashley Banfield
Hey everyone, I'm Ashley Banfield and this is drop dead serious. Most people outside of Utah never think about Wanda Barzee. I mean honestly, why would they? But inside Utah, her name still sends a chill. Wanda Barzee along with her unhinged homeless husband Brian David Mitchell were living in a tent when Brian decided it was time to take on another wife. A celestial wife. And he convinced Wanda it was a good idea to kidnap 14 year old Elizabeth Smart from her bed. The Smarts had taken pity on Brian David Mitchell and they had offered him some handyman work around their home. So he was, you know, milling about and got a good look at their young daughter Elizabeth. And that's when he hatched a sadistic plan to steal her from the smart family and make Elizabeth his additional wife all along, convincing his aging and mentally ill wife Wanda that she'd still be wife number one. Elizabeth would just be a celestial wife. And Wanda could still be a part of everything that happened with Elizabeth. And when I say everything, I mean everything, including the first night they stole her from her bed. Elizabeth would report to the police that Brian stripped her naked that night, anointed her with oil in a strange religious ceremony, and then raped her while Wanda held her down. Elizabeth said it happened not very far up the hill from her home in the woods, and that she could hear the voices of the search parties calling her name. That couple held Elizabeth captive for nine horrifying months. And every single day of that ordeal, Brian David Mitchell sexually assaulted Elizabeth, sometimes multiple times a day. And Wanda Barzee helped him do it, sometimes even holding her own body up against Elizabeth's during the assaults. Brian Mitchell is now serving a life sentence behind bars. But Wanda Barzee, nope. She's now free and she's living as a registered sex offender among the very community that she once terrorized. And take a look at this. She's been smiling in her photos all. All these years because this is what a registered sex offender does. They check in and they get re photographed. And Wanda Barzee thinks it's all just delightful. Smiling in every single one as though she hasn't a care in the world. Elizabeth now says that the perverted partnership of that homeless couple, Wanda and David, calls to mind another sick and twisted couple from the opposite end of the wealth and power spectrum. Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell. Here's the difference. Her captors were poor and sick and homeless. And Elizabeth came from a wonderful family in a beautiful part of town. They lived wholesome, you know, churchgoing lives. They had a million dollar home. They were perfect kids, smart and accomplished and perfect parents who did everything right. And they were afforded all of these things that so many other people aren't. Nobody ever questioned Elizabeth except to say she was a victim of these horrible people.
- [05:14]
And if Jeffrey and Ghislaine's victims had been treated the same, things might have been different. But they weren't.
- [05:24]
Jeffrey and Ghislaine picked their victims very specifically from a certain socioeconomic background, from a certain family background, so that people wouldn't ask questions. They weren't from church going families like Elizabeth Smarts. They were from different families in different parts of Florida. And Jeffrey and Ghislaine knew where the Pickens were good. And consequently, Elizabeth points out, so astutely that so much of the blame somehow, in a twisted way, falls on the victims. Somehow they need to be questioned as to why they were even there. But they were kids, just like Elizabeth. Elizabeth has a new book coming out in just a couple of days. I'm recording this on December 1st. The book is called Detours, Hope and Growth After Life's Hardest Turns. And she's decided to write an essay about Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein and how similar their crimes were. The crimes that were perpetrated against her by Wanda and David, the poor homeless couple. Earlier on my News Nation show, I had a chance to talk to Elizabeth about this, about her epiphany and coming out to talk about Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell and make that comparison to the trauma that she went through, especially when it comes to one of Jeffrey Epstein's victims who died. Here is my conversation with Elizabeth Smart, 23 years since she was abducted.
- [06:55]
Ashley Banfield (Interviewer)
Well, I'm not gonna lie. I was a little bit surprised when I saw you weighing in on the Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell case. And as I thought through it, it made perfect sense. But I was so curious as to when it sort of dawned on you the thesis that you've posited and when you decided to come up publicly with it.
- [07:15]
Elizabeth Smart
I mean, I would say right from the start I was invested in this case and I have followed it and I felt like the conn.
- [07:25]
Was really pretty apparent from the start. But I guess it was in more recent time that I felt like I needed to say something. I mean, with Virginia passing away earlier this year.
- [07:39]
I just felt more needed to be done. And this case where these lists of names were going to be released and then the na and then just so much back and forth, I just felt like this is not fair, this is not right. It shouldn't matter what your background is. You shouldn't be able to hide, you shouldn't be able to. To buy your safety.
- [08:01]
Ashley Banfield
Yeah.
- [08:01]
Ashley Banfield (Interviewer)
And Virginia Giuffre, we should remind people that she came into being known as a public entity, as an adult. But she was 17 when that photograph was taken with Prince Andrew's arm around her bare midriff and Ghislaine Maxwell smiling in the background. This, you've got to Remember, is a 17 year old girl who was already ensconced in this life, being flown all around the world and being, you know, asked to service Jeffrey Epstein's male friends, allegedly Prince Andrew Bing among them. She died by suicide this year. And this was like a heartbreak to you. Tell me a little bit more about how you were affected by the news of her death.
- [08:44]
Elizabeth Smart
It felt like. I mean, I felt like we had failed her. I feel like so many victims when they come forward, when they try to share their stories, especially if it's against respected people in the community, they are put on trial in the court of public opinion. And part of me just feels like we really failed her. I mean, were we there the same way that communities have come together? For me, I've had so many people over the years say to me things like, I prayed for you. I searched for you. I remember exactly where I was the day that you were rescued. And that support has honestly helped me so much in my life. Nobody's ever turned to me and been like, I don't actually think you were kidnapped. I actually think you ran away. No one's ever said that to me. But what were the comments that were said to Virginia? I mean, did she feel that same support, or did she feel like people were tearing her apart or. She wasn't really a child. 17 is just so close to being an adult. It's not really a child. Well, actually, 17 is still a child. And that wasn't her first, like, her first encounter at 17. I mean, are you saying that I was an adult? 14, 15. That's not that different than 17. I mean, 17 is still a child.
- [09:57]
Ashley Banfield
Yeah.
- [09:58]
Ashley Banfield (Interviewer)
What do you attribute this to? Because we all saw the pictures of Brian David Mitchell and Wanda Barzee. They were just this frantically scattered homeless couple, rife with all sorts of mental illnesses and just, you know, plagued with criminal intent in what they did to you.
- [10:16]
Ashley Banfield
These were the first, some of the.
- [10:17]
Ashley Banfield (Interviewer)
First, if not the first, mugshots that came out. Do you ascribe sort of the economic difference in the strata between these two and Jeffrey and Ghislaine, who were literally top of the A list, you really.
- [10:33]
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- [12:34]
Elizabeth Smart
Honestly haven't thought too much about their side and the economic differences between them. Other then I feel like it did play a role in in their cases. I feel like it has made a role in Ghislaine. I feel like it's played a role in her case and but beyond that, no.
- [13:01]
I feel like maybe because like it looked like I came from a really nice upper class family. I think that could have played a role in why people maybe believed my story and supported me a bit more than Virginia.
- [13:18]
Ashley Banfield (Interviewer)
It's heartbreaking to think that kids are kids, you know, no matter who their families are. I mean I always cite your case, Elizabeth. When a child goes missing and parents are questioned because nobody believes that the bogeyman can just come into a house and steal a child. But the bogeyman came to your house and stole you. It happens. It's happened multiple times in my career. I've covered it. And, you know, the bogeyman doesn't have to take you from your bed. They can take you from anywhere. They can take you from a school ground, which is what so many of Epstein's victims were taken from. They were taken from cheerleading practice. They were taken from, you know, their high school friends were co opting them into it, thinking they were doing the right thing or at least trying to protect themselves. I want to ask you just something personal if I can, because even when we were producing the story today, the producer who I worked with on this story, Michelle, we had a conversation about how we would present it because we.
- [14:08]
Ashley Banfield
Didn'T want to hurt you.
- [14:10]
Ashley Banfield (Interviewer)
Telling the story of Barzee and her crimes and showing those mug shots. We were worried how it would be for you to see that and process it right before I was interviewing you. And it made me realize you're seeing it on the news all the time. She just made the news last week. How do you process this stuff? Even 23 years later?
- [14:31]
Elizabeth Smart
I certainly am not.
- [14:35]
Happy about seeing her pictures in the news. I.
- [14:41]
There is a level of disappointment, I feel like when it comes to her case specifically and knowing that she has been released and she's out, I also have to remind myself that it's really only about one in every thousand predators that actually is successfully prosecuted. And so when I think of that, I am happy. Happy. I don't know if that's the right word, but I feel lucky that my case got something some kind of. Again, I hesitate to use the word justice, but it was prosecuted, and so many victims never get that. And then I also have to remind myself that this is my life and I only get one shot at life. And do I really want to live my life being upset or angry or scared, knowing that Wanda Barzee is out there and in the news. And maybe I'm just that stubborn. But I don't want to live my life unhappy. I mean, I want to have a wonderful life. I want to be happy. I want to do all the things I want to do.
- [15:43]
Ashley Banfield
You know, I spent a lot of time in Utah after Elizabeth was abducted. I sat with her parents. I interviewed her parents. I remember the mood among the media and the police when it came to her parents. People just didn't believe that kids could be snatched from their beds in the middle of the night. It must be the family. And that is always where, usually rightly so. The curiosity lies and the questions lie and the suspicions lie. It's usually someone Within a family or someone the child knows, knows. But in the case of the smarts, none of the above. It was the boogeyman and the life. They went through, the scrutiny, they went through, the cruelty that they went through with the press, with the public. I think maybe the only bright spot is that social media wasn't around, right? Google was just kind of getting going. And, you know, in 2002, we just didn't have the same shared experience online, for better or for worse that we do now. And still, I can tell you from being there, it was horrendous. There were newspapers that had just cruel and insulting headlines without any proof that some people were going and buying up in bulk just to get them off the stands. It was something else. And then I remember learning for the first time what the strategy is when a child goes missing. There are groups that come in to help the affected family right away to strategize, right? And one of the key strategies is to hold back photos. Don't, don't just give all the photos of the child out right at once, because the media will run them all. And then a week later, when there's no movement in the story, they will move on to other stories and that story will not be highlighted again. And we all know that it is us, the public, that can help solve these crimes. Spot the child, spot the perpetrators. That's how Elizabeth's captors were caught. That's how Elizabeth was rescued. Somebody finally thought they recognized something in this story in front of them and ask some questions, right? So the strategy is to dole out some photos in the first few days, then fresh photos days after that, and to hold back as long as you can to keep the story alive in the press. I remember learning that for the first time in the Elizabeth Smart case. And then I remembered when the photos ran out, and I remembered when the media was packing up. I think I was there for five weeks straight in Salt Lake City. And it was just so incredibly sad to see that there was no resolution. And there likely wouldn't be, because that is usually how these stories end. If you don't find that child within the first 48 hours, first few days, first few weeks, the chances you're going to find that child are slim to none. And that's how everybody kind of left that story. And then nine months later.
- [18:30]
My God, America's Most Wanted did the feature. And Elizabeth Smart, if you can believe it, had a veil over her face because that's what Wanda and David made her do. They walked her in plain Sight all through downtown Salt Lake City. For weeks and weeks and weeks on end, a police officer was right in front of her saying, what's your name? And Elizabeth Smart was so terrorized by this horrendous couple, she gave a fake name. There is her savior, a police officer right in front of her. And she was so terrified what Brian David Mitchell would do to her. With the help of Wanda Barzee, she gave the police officer a fake name. But the police officer kept going. I said, I don't, I don't. I don't think you're telling me the truth. I don't think that's your name. What's your name? And eventually she said her name and she was rescued. But that tells you the power that these people can have over kids. They had her for nine months. They abused her physically and mentally for nine months. And today she is a remarkable young woman who is able to impart her wisdom on so many others who could really benefit from it. Want to also let you know I have dropped another episode that I am really proud of.
- [19:47]
It is the story that launched my career in true crime. Honestly, almost 40 years ago, it was my first true crime story. And to this day, it remains the worst. It remains the one that haunts me the most. It remains the most inexplicable. The Barbie and Ken murders. Carla Homoca and Paul Bernardo, a young married couple with everything, you know, fairy tale wedding, good jobs, good money, came from good families and they were serial murderers and rapists together. And I covered the case. And from that moment on, I knew where I was headed. So I hope you will check that story out. It's definitely got a different take. If you've heard the story before, I want to take you back to me living it and the things that I knew and heard that never made the papers. Hope you'll check it out. It's called the Barbie and Ken Killers. You should see it in the list below and I would love to hear your comments on it also. Like and subscribe and leave comments and tell me your thoughts what you'd like me to cover. I actually did a story based on one of our members. Suggestions, questions? She wanted to hear it. I said, my, my. Your wish is my command. And away we went. That one is another great story. You should check it out. It's a Canadian story. Two little kids, Jack and Lily Sullivan, disappeared from their home. Two little kids disappeared from their trailer without a trace. And the parents pass all of the lie detector tests and it is bad, baffling to the police. So check that story out as well. I'm hoping that that will have a good resolution. As we go into winter, it's getting harder and harder to look for them. Thank you so much for listening. Thank you so much for watching. I'm Ashley Banfield and remember, the truth isn't just serious, it's dropped. Dead serious.
- [21:39]
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