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Elizabeth Smart’s captors claim religious revelation compelled them to kidnap

In her second day of testimony Friday in the Elizabeth Smart kidnap trial, Wanda Barzee told jurors that her husband Brian David Mitchell was compelled to abduct the then-14-year-old girl in 2002 following a religious revelation, The Salt Lake Tribune reported.

“We were told that we were to go forth in five weeks and on the night of June 4th and the Lord would open up the way for us to obtain our first wife,” she told the court.

“And when it came to be the 4th of June and Brian was supposed to go forth around midnight. And I didn’t know who the young woman was going to be. I had no idea, but it was really stressful trying to accomplish everything we were supposed to do,” the 64-year-old Barzee told jurors in the U.S. District Court in Salt Lake City.

“We were so stressed out trying to set up the new camp and it was a really heated argument and I can’t remember what it was about, but I have been thinking about it since and trying to figure it out,” Barzee said, according to the Tribune. “I just knew how drastically my life would change and having a 14-year-old girl, woman.”

Barzee testified she was “devastated” when Mitchell told her the new wife, Smart, would have to be taken by force. She also told the court that Mitchell, 57, would “stalk” young girls aged 10 to 14, hoping to make them new wives.

“He would go downtown to minister and stalk young girls. Try to find out where they lived,” Barzee said.

Smart, 23, concluded her testimony last week in the trial of her alleged kidnapper. She has said that she was forced to “marry” Mitchell and that he continually raped her during the nine months she was forced to spend with the pair.

Mitchell was removed from the court Friday, as he has been most days, for singing hymns during court proceedings.