Police under fire over search for teen: Sketch of Mitchell wasn’t released for months

MSNBCnews ^ | 3/14/03 | NBC’s Ashleigh Banfield and Jim Avila, MSNBC.com’s Miguel Llanos and Alex Johnson and The Associated

[SarahW]

SALT LAKE CITY, March 14 — Plans were under way Friday for a formal review of the Elizabeth Smart investigation, as questions surfaced about police tactics and even the chief investigator acknowledged he made the wrong choice in not releasing a sketch of Brian David Mitchell, the man found with Smart, months earlier. In addition, Mitchell was picked up by police at least twice, then released, during the nine months Elizabeth was held captive....

View scenes from the return of Elizabeth Smart.

       SALT LAKE CITY Mayor Rocky Anderson announced an independent panel will be formed to probe the handling of the case.
       “This is not to intimate that there is anything wrong,” Anderson told reporters Thursday. “But there have been so many questions raised.”
       Among them is why police didn’t release a sketch of Mitchell sooner. Elizabeth’s sister Mary Katherine had provided one last October, after suddenly recalling that the figure she saw the night of Elizabeth’s disappearance looked like the handyman who had worked at their house months earlier.
       The sketch was not released until Feb. 3. A sister of Mitchell thought it was him and provided a photo that was also released. Two couples in Sandy, Utah, saw the photo on TV reports and were the ones who contacted police about seeing Mitchell with two veiled women who later turned out to be Elizabeth and his wife Wanda Eileen Barzee.

Wanda Barzee and Brian David Mitchell in their police booking photos taken Wednesday.

       The former lead investigator, Cory Lyman, took responsibility for the delay in releasing the sketch.
       “I’m accountable for that decision and it wasn’t my best choice,” Lyman was quoted by the Salt Lake Tribune as saying. “If I had a crystal ball, I would have done it differently.”
       Ed Smart, Elizabeth’s father, on Thursday criticized that decision. “When there is an eyewitness who points to someone, [that] person should go right to the top of the list,” Smart told reporters. “It’s not just one of 250 leads.”
       

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Brian Mitchell’s family speaks out March 14, 2003 — Rebecca Woodbridge, stepdaughter of Brian David Mitchell, spoke to “Today” along with Mitchell’s ex-wife and their two children. Woodbridge said she was sexually abused by Mitchell.

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[SarahW]

Click on the link for a well researches and detailed article on the Smart kidnapping, with updated information and interviews (including video interviews) of Mitchells former wife and stepdaughter and other family members.

Personal note - great background info on Mitchell

[SarahW]

I hope police learn from this case. Although Ed Smart has expressed tremendous gratitude for all the police work and effort expended on the search for Elizabeth and her abductors, he did make a statement yesterday saying

“When there is an eyewitness who points to someone, [that] person should go right to the top of the list”

I happen to agree with him on that point.

[OldFriend]

Even more horrifying is the fact that the kidnapper lived with Elizabeth Smart and his wife in an apartment just a block from the Salt Lake City Police Department.

That this child was finally resuced is truly a miracle.

[Amerigomag]

I feel sorry for the cops. This story is going sideways and I think the police have known this for some time.

Everyone bent over backwards to be respectful to the Smart family but in the end I don't think the police have responsibility to resolve the families internal problems unless the law is broken.

From the get go the "crime" was established by a nine year old. Two months ago this youngster starts to change her story and suddenly the police are unresponsive?

Unresponsive my foot. The police were beginning to realize that they had been victimized by a runaway who had help from her little sister.

[wolficatZ]

No doubt the cops saw these vagabonds in burkas wandering around hundreds of times and just kept driving by. Sensitivity to diverse cultures in the post 9-11 world as a matter of department policy, you know. Amazing that not once did any law enforcement official anywhere wonder who that young girl in the burka really was, and take even one minute to find out. Why wasn't she in school, for instance?

[OldFriend]

Probably looking for two white guys in a white van.

Heaven help us!

[jim_trent]

I am sure I will be corrected if I am wrong, but wasn't there a different handyman who was first implicated, he was found, was arrested, and died in the hospital? I remember a lot of people here saying that he took the whereabouts of her grave with him when he died. I am willing to bet that the person who the police finger for many crimes are often the wrong person. This is just another example.

[SarahW]

She was no runaway. I suggest you click on the article link above and view the video of the people he abused.

The problem is, the cops (esp the lead detective) got tunnel vision, and discarded useful information from a variety of sources.

[SarahW]

You also have some strange idea of MK changing her story 2 months ago. She didn't change her story - when she was able to place the voice and description she had already told police about, she told her parents.

BTW, that was WAY back in October. Police wouldn't put the sketch her parents PAID to have made, and asked the smarts to keep it quiet. Eventually the Smarts released it themselved in frustration.

It was that pic that broke the case.