She could have been saved so much sooner.
Elizabeth Smart, the young Mormon girl kidnapped in 2002 and held hostage for nine months, was spotted by a homicide detective two months into her ordeal, when her captors became confident enough to walk around town with her.
Smart recounts her horror in her new memoir, “Elizabeth Smart: My Story” (St. Martins), out Tuesday.
From the moment she was taken from her house in Salt Lake City in the dead of night on June 5, 2002, Smart was tortured, starved and raped daily by Brian David Mitchell, with the help of wife Wanda.
In the early days of her captivity — she was held in a tent-like compound in the woods — Smart had reason to hope she’d be found.
Just days into her captivity, she heard a search party calling her name, and was sure she had recognized her uncle’s voice. She was too terrified to call out: Mitchell had told her he would kill her and her family if she did.
The searchers moved on.
Then, a few days later, she heard a helicopter hovering over the compound. Again she was sure they had seen the tent, and again the search party moved on.
But her greatest chance for rescue came in August, when Mitchell and his wife took Smart, wearing a full veil, to the Salt Lake City Public Library. He had broken her down so thoroughly that he was sure she’d never make a break for it.
He wanted to look at maps to find a new place to live, and they sat at a table on the second floor.
A detective approached and asked to see her face. Mitchell declined, repeatedly, and Elizabeth didn’t speak.
Another seven months would go by before Mitchell, again out in public with Smart, was stopped by police, four of them this time.
One of them addressed Mitchell’s charge directly.
“Are you Elizabeth Smart?” an officer asked.
For the first time since her abduction, Smart writes, she felt safe.
“I am Elizabeth,” she said.