Bringing Elizabeth Home (15 page)

Here's the letter that went to each of our children in their Christmas Boxes of Love:

Dear Children:
2002
has been a year which we could never have anticipated. Trials of heartache, growth and a test of our faith pushed us beyond anything we have experienced in this life. Life will never be the same. We have learned how precious life is and how important each of you are in our lives. The most precious gift in life is represented in this box. It is not something that you can see, smell, or eat. It will not wear out or decay with time. It will not be forgotten and is not tangible (physical). It has been shared with us by our Heavenly Father and His son our brother Jesus Christ. That gift is LOVE. He demonstrated and shared this time and time again by:

1
. His willingness to serve each of us in fulfilling our Heavenly Father's Plan

2
. His willingness to atone for our sins

3
. His willingness to be an example of righteousness showing us the path, which will lead us into eternity where we can be united as a family.

Each of you, Charles, Elizabeth, Andrew, Mary Katherine, Edward and William, have been sent and entrusted to us. How different our lives would have been without you. There isn't anything in this life more precious.

As we have cried, grieved inside and pleaded for Elizabeth's return, we have remembered those differences that make us each individuals and made Elizabeth what she is. It pains us to have her gone and we look forward to being together once again.

As we love each of you as parents our Heavenly Father loves us more than we can comprehend. We have learned that the way we live makes the difference of whether we will be together eternally. We hope this Christmas will always be remembered not only as one that Elizabeth is missing from, but one that so much love and support has been shown to us. Please know that you are most important in our lives and that in the eternal perspective nothing can be more important than love.

Love,
Mom and Dad
Christmas, 2002

For Christmas we normally travel to Palm Springs, where Ed's family has a condo. We thought it would be a good idea to stick to tradition for the children, so we left the day after Christmas. It is a time when we swim, hike, and horseback ride. We do an annual hike up one of the local mountains, which has turned into a contest between the children to see who can get up the trail first. It's a rough trail. It's rocky, slippery, and usually hot. Elizabeth was always the one leading the pack. One of Elizabeth's best friends, who also has a home in Palm Springs, decided to come on the hike with us. Her name is also Elizabeth—they are a month apart in age. We were so happy to have this Elizabeth with us, but it was a bittersweet reminder of what was really missing.

Our Elizabeth has a tight circle of friends. It was very hard to lose the presence of those girls in our lives. They lost a friend as we lost a daughter and sister. They came around from time to time to see how we were doing, to bring us cookies, and notes and cards of encouragement.

Just before the end of the year, John Walsh appeared on
Larry King
and announced, unbeknownst to us, that there had been a break in the Elizabeth Smart case. Walsh went public with the news of Immanuel. At the time, we were shocked that he had shared this information so quickly and without our knowing that he planned to do so. In hindsight, it was a blessing. It set us on the course that would ultimately bring Elizabeth home.

Chapter 18

I
N MID-AUGUST,
we received our first ransom letter. It was postmarked from Charlotte, South Carolina. The letter stated, “I have your daughter. Don't try to contact anyone. Don't try to trace this. You won't be able to find me. I'll contact you again in the future.” It seemed so far-fetched, but we handed the letter over to the police.

From mid-October until November 4, the day after Elizabeth's fifteenth birthday, the same man claiming to be Elizabeth's kidnapper emerged again, this time on the Internet, asking for a $3 million ransom for Elizabeth's safe return. He was using the screen name of “elizabethsmartkidnapper.” The man said either he got the money or he would harm Elizabeth. We had been the recipients of many hoax letters, but we always checked them out just to be certain they were not real. News of someone in an online chat room claiming to be Elizabeth's kidnapper surfaced. The Internet was an ugly place to read about our daughter. There were people with nothing better to do than talk about us: our family—that we were hiding something. It was brutal. It made us so sick to hear what some people were thinking about us, our case, and our daughter. While the majority of the communications we received from around the world were filled with loving thoughts, prayers, and hopes for the safe return of Elizabeth, one bad letter would set us back for days. If there wasn't a return address on the letter or card, we learned, it was usually not a favorable letter and we didn't open it.

In an effort to trap the man e-mailing us for ransom, FBI investigators engaged the perpetrator in Internet communication, pretending they were Ed. They were certain this was not Elizabeth's kidnapper because he was unable to answer important detailed questions about the case. The threats were still a very serious crime, and we intended to bring this man to justice for attempting to extort money from us while we were trying to find our daughter. The investigators were able to determine his physical location through his Web server. The e-mails were traced to South Carolina, being sent by Walter K. Holloway, who was nineteen years old. It honestly made us sick to see this young man ruin his life over a hurtful moneymaking scheme. He will spend a good part of his young life behind bars, and for what?

People came out of the woodwork to extort money from us. Bounty hunters, psychics, religious leaders—you name it, we heard from all of them. If we could simply pay their way to Salt Lake, or if we could find it in our hearts to make a small donation to their organization, or the police aren't doing their job, I'll find Elizabeth—if you pay me! It became ridiculous, but we always had to follow through by speaking to and listening to these people just in case one of them had some bona fide information. One time a man showed up at our house complaining about what a terrible job the police were doing in the investigation. He told us that he was the only person out there really working. He was associated with a group called Soul Miners. He sent us letters all the time with the numbers “671” on the envelopes. We had no idea what the numbers meant. He was very clear that the numbers were on a dollhouse in Elizabeth's room. We assured him he was wrong, but the man refused to leave our house until he saw the dollhouse. Sometime after that, he apparently went to the mayor and told him we had Elizabeth sealed up in a wall, and the police actually came out to our house to question us about his claim! The police diligently followed up on
those
leads—they combed our neighborhood, checking neighbors' homes to see if there was any shred of truth to his story. Finally, one day Ed received a phone call from the same man, claiming he knew who had Elizabeth. He was asking to come right over to the house with Detective Parks. Ed hesitated, telling the man that Lois wasn't home, then hung up and immediately called Detective Parks, who explained to Ed that this guy was a total nutcase. The police had been dealing with him for months. Finally, realizing the guy was trying to get a confession from us, Ed called him back and said, “I don't appreciate what you're doing. I've called Detective Parks, and he knows nothing about your claim. It's horrendous enough that we're going through this, but what you're doing to us is unbelievable. If you call me or come on my property again, I am going to call the police and have you arrested!” We continued to get letters from him—mostly with pleas for us to come clean and admit what we had done. He warned us that Jesus wouldn't hold us blameless if we didn't repent for our crime.

Even after Elizabeth came home, the strange visits didn't end. A man showed up on our doorstep sometime after we returned from a trip we took to Hawaii just after Elizabeth was found. A neighbor told us that someone claiming to be an old friend had been by the house that morning. He waited around the street until we came home that afternoon. The man finally came to the door. Ed answered.

“Hi, Ed. I'm here. It's me. Val. How are you?”

Ed was clueless about who this man was.

“I helped in the search. You know me, Ed. Don't you recognize me?”

Ed responded, “No. I'm sorry. I don't recognize you. I can't invite you into my house, I'm sorry.”

“Well, Lois knows me. Go ask her.”

Elizabeth was in the living room playing her harp.

Lois didn't know who the man was either.

Ed went back to the doorway and said, “Help me out here. My memory isn't what it used to be. How do we know you?”

The stranger went on and on about how he was with Elizabeth throughout her captivity. He was in the mountains and was responsible for finding her. Of course, then he told us that he wasn't
physically
in the mountains with Elizabeth—he was
mentally
there with her. We had heard enough, and we asked this man to leave immediately. We called the police, who warned the man that if he stepped on our property again, he'd be arrested for trespassing. Out of curiosity, we called Detective Parks to ask him if he knew anything about this guy.

“Actually, he was at the DA's office all morning, being a nuisance.”

We wondered if the police had done a background check after he'd been in the station. We were told they had not. The next afternoon, we received a troubling phone call from Detective Parks: “Ed, if that guy ever shows up to your place again, call us immediately. He has just been released from prison for kidnapping and assault.”

Lois and I reopened our conversations about moving after that call. It seemed that we had no privacy. Everyone knew where we lived, and the threat of one of our other children being taken was very real. The children had just started going places on their own, and once again we had to confine them to the house or insist that they go out with one of us.

Throughout the investigation, it seemed that we would just get through dealing with one crazy person when another would appear. Over and over again, people would show up with their own agenda. Some offered to help us find Elizabeth—making promises of information leading to the capture of her abductors. We had been through so many ups and downs. Sometimes, well-meaning people offered us a little comic relief, though we are certain their intention was to offer comfort and peace.

Chapter 19

A
S THE WEEKS
and months slipped by, life was getting somewhat back to a routine. The volunteers weren't as plentiful, but the searches continued. People needed to get back to work. They had to go back to their families. They had to continue living, even if it felt as if we were slowly dying on the inside. Lois remembers driving in her car one day and wondering what it would be like to look inside the homes she was passing. She wanted to observe these families, these strangers, in their homes. Were they happy? Did they appreciate what they had? She wanted to see how they celebrated holidays—if for no other reason than to see how the real world was living and to get out of her dark place. We were those people once—quietly living our lives in the privacy of our home. Now we were front-page news. The walls of our home were taken down for the world to observe. Our pain, our sorrow, our loss—exposed for everyone to see. As she passed more houses that day, she saw posters of Elizabeth in many of the windows. The blue ribbons that had gone up so quickly after Elizabeth was taken remained all over town. They were on car antennas, fences, trees, and lampposts; harpists all over the country tied them to their harps. Who were all these people who still cared enough for our daughter that they placed a Missing poster in their window, their car, their storefront? Many people continued to wear the pins with Elizabeth's image. In Washington, there were many members of the Senate and Congress who always advocated for what we were doing for other children and what we were going through, including Dianne Feinstein, Kay Hutchison, Orrin Hatch, Bob Bennett, Jennifer Dunn, Martin Frost, Jim Matheson, and Chris Cannon.

Before Mary Katherine said the name “Immanuel,” Elizabeth, Brian, and Wanda were probably already on their way to San Diego. Elizabeth has revealed to us that boarding the Greyhound bus in Salt Lake was terrifying because she feared never coming back to Salt Lake and never again seeing her family. That was a huge turning point in Elizabeth's journey. There had been searches in states surrounding Utah, Nevada, Arizona, Nebraska, and Colorado. By the time they left for California, Elizabeth had become resigned to the idea that she might never see her family again. She was a prisoner. The belief that her family would be hurt or killed was firmly planted in her mind. What child would risk bringing harm to the people she loved most?

Brian, Wanda, and Elizabeth walked around Lakeside, California, which is twenty-five miles east of San Diego. Wanda and Elizabeth were forced to wear robes and veils to cover most of their faces whenever they were in public to be certain Elizabeth would never be recognized—even in San Diego. When she wasn't wearing her veil, she usually wore sunglasses. They had set up a campsite that they'd live in for the next four months.

There were occasions when San Diego police directly encountered Mitchell while he held Elizabeth captive. In fact, Brian David Mitchell was arrested on February 12, 2003, for breaking into a church that also housed a preschool. Mitchell was apparently too drunk to carry out his mission of looting the church—he passed out cold. The police found him, woke him, handcuffed him, and brought him to the station for questioning. He gave his name as Michael Jenson. Brian David Mitchell spent six days in jail, where he continued to lie to law-enforcement officials. There was a warrant for his arrest from a misdemeanor shoplifting charge in September, for which Mitchell had failed to appear in court. When police checked his fingerprints, they turned up a name different from the one he'd given—he wasn't Michael Jenson. The police knew the man they had in custody was using an alias. What they never figured out was why.