Netflix continues to explore the genre of true-crime documentaries, this time focusing on the forgotten victim in Kidnapped: Elizabeth Smart. The documentary explores one of the most spine-chilling abductions. The kidnapping of 14-year-old Elizabeth Smart on June 5, 2002, started a massive search to find the missing child. After an agonizing nine months, Elizabeth was finally rescued. 

Decades later, the case still raises chilling questions about the man responsible for the abduction and where he is today.

A nationwide manhunt was started after Elizabeth Smart was abducted from her bedroom in her Salt Lake City home, as her sister helplessly watched in terror. She was held captive for months in a mountainside camp by Brian David Mitchell, aided by his wife, Wanda Barzee. Smart was eventually found alive on March 12, 2003, in Sandy, Utah, after bystanders Mitchell by the posters.

That was the beginning of a long and complicated legal prosecution of Mitchell. He was ultimately convicted in federal court for the kidnapping. In 2011, justice was done when Mitchell was sentenced to two life terms in federal prison without the possibility of parole.

He was held for years at USP Terre Haute in Indiana, but in October 2025, he was transferred following two reported assaults while in custody. As per prison records and reporting, Mitchell was moved through the Federal Transfer Center in Oklahoma City and kept at a medium-security federal prison in Pennsylvania, FCI Lewisburg. 

The details of the kidnapping, also shown in the documentary Kidnapped: Elizabeth Smart, remain horrifying, including the fact that he had previously worked as a handyman for the Smart family.

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His familiarity with their home helped him in his plans. But this also helped Elizabeth’s sister to recognize the man behind the kidnapping.

Elizabeth Smart’s sister, Mary Katherine, played a crucial role in the case. Four months after the abduction, an unexpected moment helped Mary get clarity when she was flipping through the Guinness World Records book, and a name suddenly clicked in her mind. She immediately recognized him as the man she had seen in her bedroom, the same person responsible for Elizabeth’s kidnapping.

She was just nine years old when her sister was taken, and the loss was heartbreaking. In the documentary, Kidnapped: Elizabeth Smart, Mary Katherine explained the pain, along with interviews of Smart's father, Ed Smart, and uncles, Dave and Tom Smart. Decades later, the Netflix documentary revisits this horrifying case and also shows Elizabeth Smart’s remarkable courage in sharing her story and speaking openly about survival and healing.

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