Pod Insights Crime Weekly S3 Ep145: Elizabeth Smart | The Trial That Almost Never Happened (Part 5) About this episode Check out our new Patreon tiers and perks here: Crime Weekly | PatreonEnter to win TWO badges to CrimeCon 2026 in Las Vegas here: CrimeCon 2026 Badge GiveawayIn June of 2002, a 14-year-old girl was taken from her bedroom in the middle of the night, from a quiet home in one of the safest neighborhoods in one of the safest cities in America. Her name was Elizabeth Smart. This case has endured for more than two decades, not only because of what happened to Elizabeth, but because of how it happened. It forces us to confront uncomfortable questions about trust, faith, and what happens when deeply held beliefs collide with someone willing to exploit them. Elizabeth wasn't held for hours or days. She was a prisoner for nine months, subjected to repeated trauma and torture that would have broken most adults. But Elizabeth's story is not just about what happened to her. It's also about survival and strength. It's about a young girl who would later turn the unimaginable into advocacy and support for victims of kidnapping and sexual violence. Try our coffee! - www. CriminalCoffeeCo.comBecome a Patreon member -- > ｿ https://www.patreon.com/CrimeWeeklyShop for your Crime Weekly gear here --> ｿ https://crimeweeklypodcast.com/shopYoutube: https://www.youtube.com/c/CrimeWeeklyPodcastWebsite: CrimeWeeklyPodcast.comInstagram: @CrimeWeeklyPodTwitter: @CrimeWeeklyPodFacebook: @CrimeWeeklyPodADS:1. https://www. LiquidIV.com - Use code CRIMEWEEKLY for 20% off your first order!2. https://www. WildGrain.com/CrimeWeekly30 - Use code CRIMEWEEKLY30 for $30 off your first box and FREE croissants for LIFE!3. https://www. HelixSleep.com/CrimeWeekly - Get 27% off sitewide! Remember to select our podcast, Crime Weekly, after checkout to let them know we sent you!4. https://www. EatIQBAR.com - Text WEEKLY to 64000 for 20% off ALL IQBAR products and FREE shipping!
Transcript 22,383 words · 8 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:11 Stephanie Harlowe? Hello, everybody. Welcome back to Crime Weekly. I'm Stephanie Harlow.
0:15 Derrick Levasseur? And I'm Derrick Levasseur.
0:16 Stephanie Harlowe? So we are diving into the fifth and final part of the Elizabeth Smart series today. But before we do, we have a pretty big announcement. We've been working on it behind the scenes for months. So it almost feels like surreal to be talking about it out loud right now. But Derek, would you like to do the honors?
0:35 Derrick Levasseur? Yeah, so we have had Patreon for a while. We had our day want-er tier, which was essentially ad-free Crime Weekly episodes. And we get so many emails, so many comments about, "Hey, we want more. We want ad-free content. We want bonus content. We want other options." And logistically, it's just Stephanie and I, so it was an undertaking. But we're happy to report that the Patreon page has been completely refurnished. Is that what you would call it?
1:04 Stephanie Harlowe? Revamped.
1:05 Derrick Levasseur? Revamped, right? It's been completely redone. There's three new tiers. Now, let me just start by saying, anybody who's a day want-er at that basic tier that we had for many years, thank you for all your love and support. Nothing will change for you. The price is going to stay the same. The only thing changing for you is that you're now going to have access to our exclusive group chat. So you didn't have that before because it wasn't available. But now, every tier has a group chat where you can talk and interact with Stephanie and I. In the chatroom, it's much easier than the DMs. You're also automatically upgraded to the ad-free episodes for Crime Weekly news. So before, it was just Crime Weekly. Now, it's going to be for both. We have changed the Patreon discount.
1:50 Derrick Levasseur? I'm not going to say what it is here and the code and all that, but that has changed slightly. But just because we're adding more value in other places, you're going to get the bonus episode, the archival footage. So you're getting a lot of different things in those upper tiers. But for the basic day want-er that you were before, ad-free episodes, group chat, same price, nothing changing. However, if you want to upgrade to the day want-er plus package, which is the new package, you're going to get all the ad-free content. You're going to get the merch discount. You're also going to get a bonus audio episode each and every month. So you guys have been wanting more content. We have a different style show. Stephanie's super excited about it.
2:33 Derrick Levasseur? She'll probably tell you about it, but we're going to do something different with with this bonus episode. That's going to be nothing like we do already with Crime Weekly News and Crime Weekly. Do you want to talk about that a little bit?
2:43 Stephanie Harlowe? The bonus episode?
2:45 Derrick Levasseur? Yeah, how it's going to be structured. I know you're still kind of like figuring some things out, but it's pretty cool.
2:50 Stephanie Harlowe? So it's going to be a little, like Derek said, a little different than normal. It's going to be more of like a kind of shorter episode. Derek said he wanted to be something that people could listen to on their commute where they don't have to invest in a multi-part series.
3:05 Derrick Levasseur? What am I referring to it as?
3:07 Stephanie Harlowe? Um, crime bites.
3:08 Derrick Levasseur? Crime bites.
3:09 Stephanie Harlowe? Yeah.
3:11 Derrick Levasseur? Crime bites, so something, something that you can consume on your way to work, kind of like, you know, one of those little egg things from Starbucks.
3:18 Stephanie Harlowe? Yeah, so we actually are kind of excited to test it out on Patreon and see what what they think about it, get their input on how they think we can modify it, fix it, make it better, make it the best it can be. And yeah, we're looking forward to that because, you know, we do a lot of long form content.
3:36 Derrick Levasseur? Yep.
3:36 Stephanie Harlowe? So it's going to be challenging for us, I think, for me.
3:39 Derrick Levasseur? I think it's going to be cool and it's going to be more storytelling, which is something that you don't necessarily see from me on this channel, which will be cool because I'm going to be involved in that process. But yes, the Patreon, there's three different tiers. I'm not going to go over all the details here because some of you may not be interested in it. The different tiers are designed for the people in mind that want to support those levels. Some people don't like the ads on anything. There's a tier for you. Some people want monthly live episodes and giveaways. There's a tier for you. Some people want everything. They want the Cadillac package where they want the monthly personal videos from Stephanie and I. You're going to get a monthly video from us where we're going to answer your questions or give a shout out. You're going to get an annual gift from us during Christmas time. You're going to get access to an exclusive chat.
4:24 Derrick Levasseur? You're also going to have a monthly live episode. All the tiers, it's up on the screen right now if you want to look at it. But I would recommend going over to the Patreon page because the Partner in Crime tier. So there's Day One or Plus, there's Weekly Web Sleuth, and there's Partner in Crime. The Partner in Crime tier, if you look on your screen right now, if you're on YouTube, we added so much stuff in there. You're gonna get a birthday shout out in your Crime Weekly News episodes. It's crazy. We went all out in it. We wanted to make it so it's gonna be super specific to each individual, depending on what you want, and it'll give you the access to the extra content that you've been asking for as well. So, super excited about it. It's long overdue. Everybody's way ahead of the game. We're behind the eight ball here, but better late than never.
5:06 Stephanie Harlowe? Yeah, and we're excited, and it's gonna give us more of a chance to communicate and talk to people one-on-one with the chat system.
5:13 Derrick Levasseur? Yes.
5:14 Stephanie Harlowe? With the, you know, kind of, I know that the top tier gets like behind the scenes pictures and things.
5:19 Derrick Levasseur? Yes, yes.
5:20 Stephanie Harlowe? You know, show us more of our personalities and who we are in real life.
5:25 Derrick Levasseur? It's a small group. It's a small group. That's the only negative I'll say about it, because with all the things that we're offering, especially in the Partner in Crime tier, we would love to offer it up to everybody who wants it, but we can't give that personal interaction if we're doing it at a mass level. We're all human beings. We have children and families, and we got things we gotta take care of. So, we wanted to do enough where we would still be able to make it something that's unique to each and every person that's in that tier. So, we had to cap it. It is capped right now, so there's limited spots available. Patreon actually tells you how many spots are left. We may open it up to more spots eventually if we have the bandwidth to do it, but we wanted to start small to make sure that the people who are at that tier are getting that attention.
6:11 Stephanie Harlowe? Yeah, absolutely. More excited.
6:12 Derrick Levasseur? We're excited about it. Go check it out. The link will be in the description box on both the audio episode and the YouTube episode.
6:19 Stephanie Harlowe? Okay, so let's dive into today's episode. We kind of ended with Brian David Mitchell's arrest and then his interrogation, which I'm glad people found as, I hate to say it, but entertaining, as I did. It was great to see Brian David Mitchell be finally put in a room with adult men who he couldn't manipulate and who he couldn't, you know, talk his way. I mean, he did talk in circles around them, but it just didn't get him anywhere. So. That was great, but you know, you kind of look at what happened here. Elizabeth Smart, 14 years old. She disappears from her home. She's taken by a man. Her sister kind of witnessed portions of that happen. A huge case nationwide. Everyone's talking about it. It's on all the news networks.
7:03 Stephanie Harlowe? And then she is found in the, you know, in the company of Brian David Mitchell and Wanda Barzy. They're arrested, Barzy and Mitchell. Elizabeth goes back home to her family and it's kind of like, we can tell what happened here, right? This isn't a huge mystery anymore. And so after Brian David Mitchell and Wanda Barzy were arrested in 2003, I guess many people assumed the trial would happen quickly. The evidence was overwhelming. Elizabeth had been found alive. She could tell the police what happened. The world knew what Brian David Mitchell and Wanda Barzy had done. But it didn't happen that way. And this is what I've kind of been alluding to throughout the whole series.
7:45 Stephanie Harlowe? Instead of moving towards a courtroom, this case came to a standstill. And the problem wasn't proving what happened or that it did happen. It ended up being proving whether Mitchell and Barzy were mentally competent to stand trial. And this is what was the most frustrating thing about me when I was reading all of this. And I kept encountering, you know, through the analysis that was done of Brian David Mitchell and how the doctors talked to so many people who knew him, friends and family who knew him, all while he was growing up. And the same question was asked of these people. Like, did he ever appear to be mentally unstable? Did he ever appear to be out of his mind? Or did he know what he was doing? Did he say things that didn't make sense?
8:30 Stephanie Harlowe? Did he say things that seemed outrageous? But also in a way that seemed pointed and manipulative? And did he seem more manipulative? Or did he seem more crazy? And over and over again. Doctors were brought in to evaluate Brian David Mitchell.
8:46 Derrick Levasseur? It's crazy to me because I understand the need for the process. Here's my process. Was he mentally capable of breaking into a home undetected and taking a young girl? Yes. Was he mentally capable of staying off the radar for almost nine months while basically walking around in plain sight? Yes.
9:04 Stephanie Harlowe? Creating like a survivalist camp.
9:06 Derrick Levasseur? Right. Was he able to manipulate other people into believing his bullshit? Yes. Well, then he's competent enough to stand trial. Then he's competent enough to be held accountable for his actions. End of story, let's move on.
9:17 Stephanie Harlowe? Yeah. Was he able to continually victimize young girls based on marriages and, and, and, you know, different situations and relationships he put himself in? This is not a one-time thing. It happened over and over again, so.
9:31 Derrick Levasseur? And by the way, real quick, that interrogation, I think, is so important from that aspect. And I, I was harping on it so much last week because to me, when you're talking about mental stability and, and being competent enough to understand what you're being accused of, his pauses in moments where he had a potential to implicate himself in a crime shows me that he absolutely knows what he did and the legal ramifications of what he did.
10:00 Stephanie Harlowe? Yeah. That was wrong.
10:02 Derrick Levasseur? Absolutely. No doubt. He always would stop short, even when it came to his biblical recitations, when it came to things that could implicate him in a court of law. He went from the spiritual leader to a lawyer real quick.
10:16 Stephanie Harlowe? Yeah, even as simple as, you know, did you go into her room and take her? The Lord did that. The Lord did that.
10:22 Derrick Levasseur? Yes.
10:22 Stephanie Harlowe? He's not saying, I didn't. He's saying, the Lord did that, and that can be interpreted.
10:26 Derrick Levasseur? What else did you say last week?
10:27 Stephanie Harlowe? In multiple ways.
10:28 Derrick Levasseur? That I thought was important? When they asked what he thought her age was, what did he say?
10:32 Stephanie Harlowe? He said she was 18.
10:33 Derrick Levasseur? 18. How convenient.
10:35 Stephanie Harlowe? And why would you think she was 18? Her picture was all over the TV.
10:38 Derrick Levasseur? Right. But the argument, the argument, the setup will be, this was consensual.
10:45 Derrick Levasseur? And in order for it to be that, gotta be 18. So that's, that's why he's saying those things. He knows exactly what he's doing. And this isn't something he just thought about that day. He's been planning this for months and months, maybe even before he took Elizabeth. So yeah, he's capable of standing trial and understanding what he did and that it was wrong.
11:04 Stephanie Harlowe? Yeah, based on the publicity of this case, based on the atrocious nature of the case, it really did surprise me how much leeway he got. But some of these mental health experts and doctors who talked to Brian David Mitchell believed he understood exactly what was going on. And he was pretending to not cooperate with the police, not cooperate with the lawyers.
11:27 Derrick Levasseur? You don't say. What a shocker.
11:29 Stephanie Harlowe? But others questioned whether his extreme religious behavior made him unstable. Judges ruled him incompetent more than once, which meant everything stopped. He was sent away for treatment, brought back, reevaluated, and then the cycle would begin once again. Appeals were filed, hearings dragged on, years passed. And by 2008, prosecutors were facing a really grim possibility that the trial might never happen at all. If Mitchell could not be declared competent, and if the courts couldn't or wouldn't allow him to be forcibly medicated, because that was a whole thing too, the case could remain frozen indefinitely. And for Elizabeth and her family, justice wasn't necessarily denied in the end, but it was painfully and endlessly delayed.
12:12 Stephanie Harlowe? And although Elizabeth was home with her family again, the torture of Brian David Mitchell continued. And this is something that I find to be unforgivable. So we know that during and after Mitchell's first interview with the police after being arrested, he did several things that would bring up the question of competency. He made bizarre religious proclamations. He referenced his self-written scripture, the Book of Emmanuel David Isaiah. He sang hymns in custody, and he even refused to cooperate with his own lawyers and psychiatric experts. So people are going to say, the people who are in charge of this, they're going to be like, well, he won't even cooperate with his lawyers who are there to help him. He won't let his, even his lawyers, mental health experts.
12:56 Stephanie Harlowe? Interview him and, you know, talk to him and they're there to help him. So he must be not able to, to help himself in his own legal defense. This was, in my opinion, and the opinion of others, very smart and calculated on Mitchell's part because to stand trial, a defendant doesn't have to necessarily be deemed completely sane, but they do need to be able to understand the charges and they do need to be able to assist their lawyer in their own defense. This is a big one. So Mitchell refusing to cooperate in a way that allowed his attorneys to build a defense, this created a legal paradox. If he genuinely couldn't help his lawyers because of mental illness, then he was incompetent.
13:39 Stephanie Harlowe? If he understood everything but was choosing not to cooperate, it was obstruction. But proving, but proving that distinction takes time, expert testimony, careful evaluation. They can't just, they can't just like you and me be like, this is obvious what's happening here.
13:56 Derrick Levasseur? I mean, just the eye test. I think everybody, if you're watching on YouTube right now, and I'm open to, to the, to the debate, is there anybody who watched that interview with us? And I know for me, it was my first time and thought this was a guy who didn't understand what was being asked of him.
14:14 Stephanie Harlowe? No.
14:14 Derrick Levasseur? And what he was being accused of. Quite the opposite. I even gave him a compliment by saying clearly, this is an intelligent guy and his ability to stay composed.
14:24 Stephanie Harlowe? Everyone who knew him said he was brilliant. Everyone.
14:26 Derrick Levasseur? I mean, you hate to say it, it makes me want to vomit in my mouth, but, but you gotta call it what it is. The guy is put together in the sense of like, understanding what he's dealing with. And also I would even say, human behavior. He knew exactly what he was doing with those two detectives. And I would even argue that at some points, he was winning. He was frustrating them and he never lost composure. I can't say the same for those two investigators.
14:53 Stephanie Harlowe? I can't blame them either, by the way.
14:54 Derrick Levasseur? Not one even iota of blame put on them here. What I'm saying is optically looking at it, if you didn't know who was in the right and who was in the wrong, if you were to say someone lost their, their temper here, would you say the guy who sat there composed and didn't say a word? Or would you say the guy that was slapping the chair and poking him in the chest? And who was doing that? It wasn't Brian David Mitchell. So. He knew exactly what he was doing. He knows exactly what he's doing. And I understand you can have experts come in and depending on who's paying them, they're more than likely going to say what you want them to say. But sometimes you just gotta use common sense.
15:29 Stephanie Harlowe? Yeah. And I mean, to me, not even that, just that police interrogation, right? Because we know that we both agree that police interrogation, it was pretty clear. Brian David Mitchell knew what was going on. But Mitchell also spoke on more than one occasion with the FBI and he spoke with FBI agent George Dougherty. And Dougherty reported that Mitchell asked questions about the legal proceedings. And he asked what to expect during court appearances. Mitchell told the FBI agent that he knew that he and Wanda would be caught, that Elizabeth would be returned home, and that, quote, "The world would view him as a monster, or a child predator, or a sexual deviant." He knew the world would think he was crazy, end quote. To me, once again, you're asking questions about the court process. Like, what should
16:14 Stephanie Harlowe? I expect during my hearing? That means that you're with it enough to realize something's happening that's important enough for you to understand it.
16:22 Derrick Levasseur? AKA, you're no dummy.
16:23 Stephanie Harlowe? Yeah.
16:24 Derrick Levasseur? You know what's going on here. We don't need you to be a rocket scientist to be charged with a crime. You're smart enough to carry it out and get away with it. I think you're smart enough to stand trial.
16:32 Stephanie Harlowe? Now, Wanda Varzi, I do have some questions about her mental competency, to be fair, because she was also interviewed by the police after her arrest. And at that time, and for a while after, she was still adamant in her belief and in her husband and their mission. She admitted to urging Brian to take Elizabeth, even though she claimed he was terrified to do it. You know, she pushed him to do it. And she was completely on board and supportive of this plan because, quote, "Nobody would receive the testimony we had to share, and we needed someone who could be molded," end quote.
17:08 Stephanie Harlowe? So both Barzy and Mitchell are going to go through multiple competency hearings. And surprisingly enough, Wanda Barzy would be found competent to stand trial before Brian David Mitchell. But I have my, my beliefs about this. I believe that they really wanted Mitchell more. And so they kind of used Wanda to testify against him in order to get him.
17:29 Derrick Levasseur? Of course.
17:29 Stephanie Harlowe? We'll talk about that.
17:30 Derrick Levasseur? That makes, that's a great strategy. Perfect sense. If you get him, she has as much to lose as him, although maybe not as culpable. So you go after her because she's going to be more inclined to speak with you to get a better side, to get a better deal.
17:42 Stephanie Harlowe? Yeah, so from March of 2003 until January of 2004, Brian David Mitchell was held in the Salt Lake County Jail. And during this time, he was absolutely fine. He needed no clinical intervention. Jail records described Mitchell as coherent and lucid. He didn't exhibit any weird mood or emotional changes. He wasn't walking around ranting and raving irrationally. After being referred for a competency evaluation, even though he objected to it, Mitchell was transferred to the Utah State Hospital from June 16th to June 17th of 2003. And during that time, he refused to speak to Dr. Noel Gardner, who was retained by the prosecution, or Dr. Stephen Golding,
18:25 Stephanie Harlowe? who was retained by his own defense team. Now, that doesn't mean the evaluations were stopped. It just means the doctors would talk to him, he wouldn't talk back. And then they had to rely on other legally accepted methods of assessment, such as behavioral observation, recorded jail phone calls, letters, writings, prior mental health records, police interviews, statements from third parties, et cetera. So Dr. Golding, who remember was for the defense, he believed Mitchell was psychotic and a delusional, not simply a religious extremist with intense beliefs. He said Mitchell had longstanding beliefs involving one world government conspiracies, JFK assassination themes, banking control narratives,
19:09 Stephanie Harlowe? and blaming others, including his family, in suspicious ways, like being suspicious of everybody. Golding interpreted this as clinical. Paranoid, not political skepticism. Mitchell claimed that everyday events were direct signs from God and God was guiding and directing his life step by step. And Golding saw this not as religious devotion, but as psychotic referential thinking, the belief that random events are personally and supernaturally directed at you. And if you remember, we talked about this in BTK a little bit. Remember how BTK said that he would be getting like signs from the universe? He didn't call God, but he said signs from the universe, like, oh, this person had a three in their address and that's my number.
19:53 Stephanie Harlowe? And so the universe was telling me that this person was my next victim. Just because BTK wasn't saying God told me to do this, it didn't mean that he still didn't have this kind of, you know, referential thinking that random events were personally and supernaturally directed at him. Once again, this does not make somebody not competent to stand trial or not able to understand the charges against them. Golding said that Mitchell compared himself to biblical figures such as Joseph Smith and the Apostle Peter, and Golding interpreted this as delusional grandiosity. There was also a family history of psychotic thinking in Brian David Mitchell's grandfather. We talked about that.
20:34 Stephanie Harlowe? And a peculiar religious expression in his father Sheryl, which Golding saw as further evidence of a possible inherited psychotic disorder. Golding noted that Mitchell had a longstanding social dysfunction. He struggled in relationships, his marriages failed, and his functioning declined as his religious preoccupations intensified, which I could see that. We know that when Brian David Mitchell wasn't getting his way with the LDS church, when he wasn't getting his promotions and he wasn't being given as much power and respect as he wanted, that's when he kind of branched off and started talking about starting his own religion and writing his own scriptures. And that's when he and Wanda gave away all their belongings and went on their, their sojourn around, around the country.
21:16 Stephanie Harlowe? And you could say visibly, it looked like he was, you know, not functioning as well socially. But I think you could also look at Brian David Mitchell from the time we started keeping Track of him, which was in his, you know, teenage years when he started acting up and getting referred from, you know, mental evaluations. He never really socially adapted to anything, right? He would pretend to. He even wrote his mom letters saying, oh, I'm, I'm with these people now and I'm growing my beard because that's what I think they want. And, and if I have to change my costume and cut my hair and shave my beard, then I'll do that. And he would meet a Mormon woman and then all of a sudden he'd be a good Mormon man for a short time so that the church would allow
21:58 Stephanie Harlowe? him to integrate into there. But he never, all his wives said the same thing, that shortly into the marriage, he would just disappear for days or weeks at a time. He was abusive. He was controlling, manipulative, devious, all of these things. It never, it seemed like anytime he, he was seeming to be socially functioning, it was just a part he was playing.
22:18 Derrick Levasseur? No doubt, completely in control. And again, I don't, I wasn't one of his wives and I didn't know the interactions that he was having, but to create that type of following, it takes a person, a certain person to do that. And then you saw examples of it in that interrogation. So even if you didn't experience anything else personally, just watching him interact with two trained interrogators, you could see what he was capable of. So anything that you're saying to me right now, none of it is a surprise. It all makes sense based on what I saw in that interrogation footage.
22:50 Stephanie Harlowe? Okay, so there was also the fact that Brian David Mitchell had taken Elizabeth into public repeatedly. And Dr. Golding interpreted this as an irrational psychotic conviction because a rational criminal would try to avoid capture and wouldn't take that risk. Once again, this is annoying to me because Dr. Golding had access to Elizabeth's statements. And she said that after they went to into public and the police officer questioned them at the public library, that at first Brian David Mitchell was like, oh, this means that God protected us and haha, he shielded the eyes of that detective. But then after this, Brian David Mitchell was like, you're not going
23:34 Stephanie Harlowe? out again, which I think says to me that he was like, oh, that was a close call. We should not take that risk again. So it's almost like Golding, who is, you know, for the defense. We hope that mental health experts would have. Some sort of higher level purposing that they'd want to actually, you know, diagnose these criminals properly for the sake of psychology, but they do work for one side or the other and they are getting paid. So it is not always a matter of, hey, is this, you know, something you're doing because of your integrity or are you doing it because you got paid? But when I see mental health experts like this look at certain components
24:19 Stephanie Harlowe? of a person's behavior and ignore others that contradict the components they're looking at to make their determinations, to me, it seems intentional, personally.
24:29 Derrick Levasseur? Yeah, I have a love hate relationship with expert witnesses. We've talked about it on so many different cases and I've experienced it personally where there's a piece of evidence and two highly trained quote unquote experts will look at it and come to completely different conclusions. On one hand, that could just be because although it's science, it's an interpreted science, right? And depending on the person and their beliefs and their background and their personal experiences that they've had in their life, they may interpret it different. That's on the good side of things. On the other hand, like you kind of said there, depending on who's paying them, it could influence the way they interpret
25:11 Derrick Levasseur? that information. And that is something that's not like a big secret that I'm revealing. We know that prosecutors and defense teams will go out there and shop experts and find the one that's going to support the theory they're going with. It's just the way it is. So although experts are always going to be necessary, if you guys knew how much some of these people get paid, you would drop dead. And they get paid that amount of money because what they have to say is so critical in these trials. And the unfortunate thing is, some of them can be bought.
25:46 Stephanie Harlowe? So yes, it is, it is something that's open for interpretation, right? Psychology and... All of these things, but when you're Dr. Golding and you're like, hey, he's not a rational criminal because rational criminals tried to not get caught. And so him bringing Elizabeth in public meant that he wasn't a rational criminal, which means he's not competent, right? And then you look at the fact that there was plenty of evidence that showed Mitchell did take measures to not get caught, like concealing their entire campsite and putting dirt and leaves and stuff on top of it. So from above, you wouldn't, you know, you wouldn't see him and hiding Elizabeth's face with the veil and
26:28 Derrick Levasseur? Coming up with backstories.
26:30 Stephanie Harlowe? Coming up with backstories. And even like I said, when they, they got caught by the detective or the detective questioned them in the, in the public library, Mitchell's boasting and everything on the way home. But once they get back to the camp, he's like, hey, we're not taking that risk again. You're staying here now.
26:43 Derrick Levasseur? Yeah.
26:44 Stephanie Harlowe? These are all things that it looks like Golding intentionally ignored because they did not fit with his diagnosis.
26:50 Derrick Levasseur? No doubt. Context matters and that's why it's so important to do these deep dives because without it, we could agree with him. However, because I already listened to what you had to say, we knew that this went on for months and months and months where he had no intention of bringing Elizabeth down to town, but Wanda started complaining and wanting to go herself. And there was no way that this narcissist, this control freak was going to allow her to go down there by herself because it could jeopardize things. And he wasn't going to stay home and babysit. So this was something that evolved over time and caused them to make mistakes. This wasn't something that was done initially. And without that context, you might agree with this, this expert, but when you know
27:32 Derrick Levasseur? that information, then you understand that it was just fatigue and over time he got overconfident.
27:39 Stephanie Harlowe? And a judge who's reading these, you know, analysis coming from these mental health professionals, they're not going to know all that context. They're only going to know or think, hey, this mental health professional is reviewing everything and taking everything into account when giving me their conclusion. So I don't need to know all this context. So they're basing it on the ruling of the mental health experts who are conveniently leaving things out of their conclusion.
28:03 Derrick Levasseur? Yep. Nope. Couldn't agree more. And unfortunately I wish it was like math where two plus two is four, no matter where you look. And I think unfortunately, sometimes juries think that because this person is saying this, that it's as binary as as math, and it's not. And there is a lot of personal interpretation that goes into it. And ultimately, the jury members have to just use their own judgment. And I think that's why sometimes you'll have prosecutors and defense attorneys ask personal or professional questions of the experts to try to understand who they are as people, not just as experts, because that can give you some understanding.
28:43 Stephanie Harlowe? And that's why a great lawyer would have to know all this context, right? Because if Golding got up on the stand and said, oh, well, he didn't take that that risk because he's not a rational criminal, then the lawyer would now have to say, but isn't it true, Dr. Golding, that he did take certain precautions to not get caught?
28:58 Derrick Levasseur? Yes. Was that considered when you when you came to your assessment? These are all things that that's why the lawyers get paid the big bucks. They got to not only know what they're going to ask in that moment, but they have to understand the entirety of the case. So when they're thrown that curve ball, they know how to counteract it.
29:12 Stephanie Harlowe? And even Dr. Golding noted something that complicated his whole, you know, conclusion. He noted that Brian David Mitchell's revelations often conveniently justified what he wanted to do inevitably. And that raised the question, was this psychosis? Or was it a predator using religion as a shield? And Dr. Golding ultimately rejected the idea that Elizabeth had been taken by Mitchell due to pedophilic predation, partly because he said Mitchell had previously sought adult plural wives. I don't, once again, this is pissing me off because I know you're you're hired to do a job, but this is a 14 year old girl. He stole a 14 year old girl. Wanda Barzey said they did it because somebody young would
29:57 Stephanie Harlowe? be molded. This is exactly how a predator and a pedophile thinks. All of these things you should know as a mental health expert. And it really is hard for me to wrap my head around the fact that you're getting a paycheck and you're throwing a 14 year old girl under a bus and basically trying to make her attackers and her abusers less, you know, responsible for their actions and and not calling it what it is. So as far as competency goes, Golding believed that Mitchell understood the charges against him, understood the courtroom process, could behave appropriately in court, and could testify coherently. However, he also believed that Mitchell was impaired in making rational
30:41 Stephanie Harlowe? legal decisions. He believed that Mitchell probably expected some sort of divine intervention to happen, and he believed that Mitchell would be rather martyred than seen as mentally ill. So basically, what he's saying is, oh, he understands what's going to happen in court, but he also, there's a part of him that thinks, because of who he is to God, that either God's going to intervene and not let anything bad happen to him, or he's supposed to go to court and he's supposed to become a martyr for the cause, so that more people can hear about what he's doing, and the people who are on his side and also affected by the Lord will gather around him and he'll be a martyr. He said Mitchell
31:25 Stephanie Harlowe? didn't want people to see him as being mentally ill or not competent. He wanted them to see him as like a Jesus Christ figure, you know, somebody who was martyred for his religious beliefs and for the spiritual purpose he had in this world. Which, what do you think about that?
31:43 Derrick Levasseur? I think it's all bullshit. I mean, I'm not trying to dumb this down, but to me, it's very apparent what was happening here. I understand the interpretation. It's hard to argue with this individual, because maybe that's what they truly believe as an expert. I hope it is, because as you just mentioned, there's an ethical consideration here, right? Regardless of how big the check is, you could be preventing a young girl from getting the justice she deserves, and that's something you have to wrap your head around.
32:15 Stephanie Harlowe? You have to live with, yeah.
32:17 Derrick Levasseur? If Dr. Golding truly believed in what he was saying, well, you know what, we can agree to disagree.
32:22 Stephanie Harlowe? I mean, we're not mental health professionals, Derek, and because of what we know, we would say that's absolutely not correct.
32:29 Derrick Levasseur? Yeah. Only he knows. And I would love, if I were working this case, one of the first things that I would look into would be Dr. Golding's history as an expert. And in some cases, you can clearly see a pattern where certain experts are brought in. Usually for the same side. If you follow where I'm going with here, where if there's someone who defense attorneys have a lot of success with, word gets around about them that they're they're able to contort their opinions and analysis based on the defense. You'll see the same faces at trial. I saw the same quote unquote experts at many of my cases. And they always found a way to uh always disagree with what my assessment was.
33:13 Derrick Levasseur? That we were never on the same page. But that said, just to be fair here, because you know, there's Stephanie and I don't know where Dr. Golding's head was. There's a real possibility that he believed what he was saying here, and that was his true assessment. When I talk about experts in general, I'm not conflating the two. Dr. Golding's entitled to his opinion. He's a doctor and I'm not. Um, but we can respectfully disagree with him.
33:36 Stephanie Harlowe? And I respectfully will say that a doctor takes an oath to do no harm and
33:40 Derrick Levasseur? Right.
33:41 Stephanie Harlowe? If that's what you truly believed after looking at what you looked at and seeing what happened and hearing the victim, the 14 year old girl, give her rundown of what happened, then you probably should reconsider your profession.
33:55 Derrick Levasseur? Respectfully, in your opinion.
33:56 Stephanie Harlowe? Allegedly in my opinion. Alright, let's take a quick break. We'll be right back.
33:59 Derrick Levasseur? Alright.
34:04 Stephanie Harlowe? Okay, we're back. So when he filed his report in September of that year, Dr. Golding diagnosed Mitchell with NPD, narcissistic personality disorder.
34:14 Derrick Levasseur? Well, he got something right.
34:16 Stephanie Harlowe? I think that's kind of one of the things that all the mental health professionals agree on.
34:20 Derrick Levasseur? After listening to this guy talk, it's like, alright, you got me there.
34:22 Stephanie Harlowe? Yeah, but he also attributed Mitchell's refusal to cooperate with law enforcement and the mental health professionals as, I'm trying to say this right. Anasano gay, nope.
34:35 Derrick Levasseur? Jeez. I butchered that one.
34:37 Stephanie Harlowe? Anasano Jay.
34:40 Derrick Levasseur? I would say.
34:41 Stephanie Harlowe? Anasano Jay.
34:44 Derrick Levasseur? Sanoia?
34:45 Stephanie Harlowe? I broke it down phonetically and still, I can't do it.
34:49 Derrick Levasseur? We're gonna put it up on the screen right now for everybody on YouTube. We'll spell it for you. A-N-O-S-O.
34:55 Stephanie Harlowe? Anasinoja.
34:56 Derrick Levasseur? That sounds more right.
34:57 Stephanie Harlowe? That sounds a little right.
34:58 Derrick Levasseur? G-N-O-S-I-A.
34:59 Stephanie Harlowe? It's a big ass word that basically means a person does not have insight into their own mental illness. They don't know they are mentally ill.
35:09 Derrick Levasseur? Right.
35:09 Stephanie Harlowe? Which is funny because I don't think that Brian David Mitchell was mentally ill, in the very least.
35:16 Derrick Levasseur? So next time you get mad at me, I'm just gonna say I'm Anasinoze.
35:19 Stephanie Harlowe? Anasinoze? Anasinoja.
35:23 Derrick Levasseur? That's what I'm going with.
35:24 Stephanie Harlowe? Just send me that big one. Anasinoja.
35:26 Derrick Levasseur? Hey, stop. I have a disability here, okay?
35:30 Stephanie Harlowe? You are Anasinojic.
35:32 Derrick Levasseur? Yeah, I'm Anasinojic, okay? It's a thing.
35:35 Stephanie Harlowe? So, uh, yeah. This person doesn't know he's mentally ill, apparently.
35:40 Derrick Levasseur? Cleared.
35:41 Stephanie Harlowe? Brian David Mitchell, not mentally ill. Once again, probably a personality disorder. That does not mean you're mentally ill. So Dr. Noel Gardner, for the prosecution. He did not believe that Brian David Mitchell was psychotic in any way, shape, or form. Yeah, no. He believed Mitchell was cognitively intact, mentally organized, aware of reality, choosing not to cooperate for strategic reasons, and fully capable of participating in his own legal defense. Gardner noticed no signs of active psychosis, no hallucinations, no signs of mania or depression, no evidence of disorganized thought. He said Mitchell exhibited clear thinking, focused attention.
36:21 Stephanie Harlowe? He was taking care of himself physically. When we're talking about him being in jail and stuff, like he's exercising, he's making sure he's eating healthy, uh, he's reading a lot, he's just perfectly fine. Dr. Gardner said that Mitchell was not a man losing touch with reality. He was a man who had created a religion, he wrote his own scripture, created rituals, adopted specific dress, established rules and doctrine, and modeled himself after biblical imagery. Gardner believed Mitchell's religious system functioned as a justification for antisocial behavior.
36:56 Stephanie Harlowe? Imagine that.
36:58 Derrick Levasseur? Yeah.
36:58 Stephanie Harlowe? He said that the theology he created gave him permission to do things that society wouldn't see as proper, and it excused his crimes and insulated him from accountability. The belief system itself was instrumental, and Mitchell used it selectively. When logic or evasion failed, he invoked divine explanation. When he would be pressed further, he would sing hymns, which Dr. Gardner saw not as a crazy hallucinating man, but as a defensive tactic. He described it as turning to religion when other strategies fail. All right. So I think we can agree that probably Dr. Noel Gardner knew what he was talking about.
37:38 Derrick Levasseur? That's because we agree with it, right? And, and this is the concern that I have.
37:41 Stephanie Harlowe? No, it's because it's right. It's true. From everything we know about him, Derek, it's true.
37:47 Derrick Levasseur? I agree. I'm, I'm obviously not disagreeing with you, but just to kind of wrap this whole topic up, and we're going to talk more about this case, but this is the concern that we have with the justice system, because both of these experts are qualified by the court as experts, and yet the same person, the same systems and testing that can be done, and yet if you would have just looked at these two descriptions, you would think that they're talking about two separate people, right?
38:17 Stephanie Harlowe? Yes.
38:18 Derrick Levasseur? And so what it comes down to, and I've said this before to you guys, when it comes to experts, it's not only what they know, it's their presentation, it's their showmanship. That will tell you who's going to be more successful, because they're both going to give differing opinions, but how they present those opinions to that jury will decide whether or not the jury just goes with them or the other party. So being able to deliver information in a way that the jury is going to be receptive to it is probably the most important quality an expert can have. Not necessarily how good they are, but the show that they can put on. How good of a salesman are they? And that's scary when you're thinking about people
39:02 Derrick Levasseur? going to prison for crimes they didn't commit.
39:05 Stephanie Harlowe? Yeah.
39:06 Derrick Levasseur? Or crimes they did commit. So that's, that's what we're really, when you want to boil it down, that's what you're looking at here.
39:13 Stephanie Harlowe? I guess. I just see it as wrong and right. I'm a little bit more black and white there.
39:19 Derrick Levasseur? But you have a defense team and you have other people who are out there all supporting this. So the clearly, Dr. Golden wasn't the only one, wasn't the only one.
39:27 Stephanie Harlowe? I don't get, Brian David Mitchell is not like a wealthy person. Okay. So it's not like he has a ton of money to be paying his lawyers and these experts. As a lawyer, I'm a defense lawyer. I'm going to do my best for you. But I'm not going to be like, let's find some creative way to get this kid, this guy off. Like, I'm going to do my best for you. But if you're not cooperating with me, I'm not going to now bring in a horde of mental health professionals to say that you're not cooperating because you're insane and you don't know you're insane.
39:56 Derrick Levasseur? Yeah. Well, it's, it's, it's a right to a fair trial, but it has a right to be represented. We get all that. I think this boils down to just our society in general. It's not specific to the judicial system.
40:06 Stephanie Harlowe? He stole a 14 year old girl and raped her multiple times a day for nine months. I'm sorry, I'm not going to go out of my way to help you if you don't want to help yourself.
40:15 Derrick Levasseur? Are you expecting me to disagree with you?
40:16 Stephanie Harlowe? No.
40:17 Derrick Levasseur? Cause it ain't going to happen. I'm trying to present the other side here, but it's just like anything. It's almost like that meme that was out there where it was like, is it a black or purple dress or whatever it was a blue or, you know what I mean? Whatever it was, it's all about perception, but like half the country thought it was one color, the other half of the country thought it was gold or whatever. And it's, I wish it wasn't as simple as that when it came to our justice process, but it kind of is.
40:41 Stephanie Harlowe? All right. Well, now we're going to talk about somebody who's kind of controversial in this.
40:44 Derrick Levasseur? We haven't got to the controversial stuff yet.
40:46 Stephanie Harlowe? It gets more controversial.
40:47 Derrick Levasseur? Oh, Jesus. Okay.
40:48 Stephanie Harlowe? So Dr. Jennifer Scheme. She was hired by the defense. She had received her doctorate in clinical psychology from the University of Utah, where her graduate advisor was Dr. Stephen Golding.
41:00 Derrick Levasseur? Whoa.
41:00 Stephanie Harlowe? Mm hmm. So there's some, you know, there's like buddy, buddy behind the scenes there going on.
41:05 Derrick Levasseur? He was also, he, she learned from him.
41:08 Stephanie Harlowe? She learned from him.
41:09 Derrick Levasseur? Right.
41:09 Stephanie Harlowe? But listen, here's the thing. Mitchell wouldn't talk to Golding or Gardner. They had to kind of read between the lines, read his file, read Elizabeth's, you know, everything, all of that stuff. They had to do that. For some reason, Brian David Mitchell did talk to Dr. Jennifer Schem. And there's some, there's some, you know, theories as to why this could be. Uh, she actually spent 15 hours interviewing him the first time. Now, it could have been because she was a woman. Um, some people think that, you know, he felt more comfortable around women. He felt like he could manipulate them easier. It could have been because he'd realized that his total refusal to cooperate wasn't benefiting him.
41:51 Stephanie Harlowe? And it could have been because, in my opinion only, reading between the lines once again, that Dr. Schem and Mitchell's defense team had created a sort of, mm, a strategy that they were going to follow. And I think that Mitchell was told, hey, if you follow this strategy and you just do what you're supposed to do and say what you're supposed to say, we have a chance here.
42:16 Derrick Levasseur? You didn't know what you were doing, right? You didn't know, you were only, this was some bigger thing that God had told you to do, right? You didn't realize what you were doing was wrong, did you?
42:26 Stephanie Harlowe? Listen, I have some evidence to back up that I think this was a little bit of a conspiracy behind the scenes. But that wouldn't be surprising, once again, right? This is the defense's mental health expert and there's going to be talks of strategy behind the scenes. I think that's allowed, right?
42:39 Derrick Levasseur? Of course, and you know what? The prosecutors are guilty of it as well. This isn't, this isn't specific to one side, by the way. In this case, it might be, but-
42:46 Stephanie Harlowe? We get it, man, we get it. But in this specific case, we don't care what the prosecutors are doing, because this dude was guilty as sin.
42:54 Derrick Levasseur? Oh, no doubt.
42:55 Stephanie Harlowe? You know, so in this specific case, it's weird to me that a female, mental health professional and a defense team that included female lawyers would go to such lengths.
43:07 Derrick Levasseur? To defend this guy, to defend this creep?
43:09 Stephanie Harlowe? And just like I find Wanda Barzey's involvement in this to be, you know, it's not like, oh, Brian David Mitchell gets a pass. But it's like, he's a man, no offense to the men out there, no offense to you. Men, you know, you just can't, you can't really expect too much from them in certain situations.
43:25 Derrick Levasseur? No, I mean, we're simple minded people.
43:27 Stephanie Harlowe? But a woman to, to know what happened to that 14 year old girl and to go along with it like Wanda Barzy and to now defend this guy to try to get him to be less responsible for it, like Dr. Scheme and some of Mitchell's lawyers, I don't, I, I don't, I don't like it. I don't like it. So let's talk about what happens here. Mitchell talked at length with Dr. Scheme in July and August of 2004 and Scheme initially concluded that Mitchell was competent to stand trial, even if he held delusional beliefs. This was her initial statement. She observed that Brian David Mitchell was interpersonally aware, unusually
44:08 Stephanie Harlowe? intelligent, able to talk at length about his beliefs. He was articulate and engaged in conversation and anxious about the evaluation in a normal way, like anxious about the outcome of it, you know, trying to make sure it went his way. She did not dismiss the presence of delusional thinking, but she believed that he had the ability to understand and participate in the legal process, that this ability remained largely intact. She called this situational competence. Dr. Scheme decided that Brian David Mitchell was suffering from a delusional disorder, a psychotic disorder with fixed beliefs. She felt that Mitchell's delusional system impaired his ability to make a fully reasoned out choice. He was
44:50 Stephanie Harlowe? competent to plead, given his basic rationality, though. So she's like, hey, he might not be the best decision maker, but you know, he's, he's, he's, he's got a basic understanding of what's happening. He has the ability to be rational about things, so he can plead. Now, Dr. Jennifer Scheme had an issue, though, with her, her interviews with Mitchell because unlike most mental health professionals in this kind of situation, she did not provide detailed notes or verbatim transcripts from her interviews with Mitchell. She mentioned that Mitchell refused to participate in structured psychological testing, meaning the normal ways That you would try to figure out if someone was mentally ill, he wouldn't do that.
45:33 Stephanie Harlowe? But then she didn't follow up to talk about what methodology she did use to reach her conclusions. And it was once again unclear about how she dealt with inconsistencies coming from Mitchell. For instance, in one of her reports, Dr. Scheme stated, quote, "In my interview with him, Mr. Mitchell was quite difficult to direct away from religious topics to more personal ones. His mission is to save. He expends every effort during his time with a person to do so." And to quote, Scheme said herself that she felt during her interviews, Mitchell was doing a lot of talking, most of the talking, and she was doing a lot of listening. And listening is obviously part of a forensic psychological evaluation,
46:14 Stephanie Harlowe? but so is confronting contradictions in a person's story and comparing their statements against known evidence and asking follow-up questions to clear up logical gaps. So it seems like Brian Mitchell just ranted and raved at her and she just kind of listened. And when he said things that didn't add up to the evidence that she knew about the case or to things he had said previously, she didn't really call him on it. For instance, Brian Mitchell told Dr. Scheme that God had told him to do what he had done. He also told her that he knew he would be arrested and imprisoned. And Dr. Scheme should have asked Mitchell how those two beliefs could exist at the same time. Like, okay, if God told you to do what you did and he told you that you would be protected
46:56 Stephanie Harlowe? and safe from it, but then you also knew that you were going to be caught and put in prison, how did those two things in your head exist? And not because they can't exist, but based on the person's mental capacity, if those two things can exist in your head, then you're very well aware of the certain downfall of things. You're not just going like a religious zealot forward, thinking that nothing bad is going to happen to you and you're completely protected. She didn't call him out on anything really. Or if she did, we don't know because she never gave any notes or transcripts.
47:28 Derrick Levasseur? So this would be the equivalent of what I like to call, and I sometimes use, selective memory.
47:34 Stephanie Harlowe? Selective memory on whose part?
47:36 Derrick Levasseur? If it doesn't fit my narrative and you're like, didn't you say, didn't I tell you this? I'm like, nope, don't remember that. So when it comes to Brian David Mitchell, as far as his ability to regulate at certain moments and not at others, any time he couldn't, she would just chalk it up to, oh, you know, it's part of the, it's part of the condition, selective delusionalism.
47:56 Stephanie Harlowe? Well, remember, his coworkers said that he would debate with them very intelligently about religion, but then if they made a good point, he would just shut down and get upset and sing hymns. So instead of seeing that as malingering, which another psychologist that we're going to talk about later did see it as, which malingering means you're lying to benefit yourself, right? You're, you're acting this way because it benefits you to act this way, not because you always act this way. Instead of Dr. Jennifer Scheme seeing, hey, the only time he starts singing hymns and completely goes quiet or goes off the rails is when I confront him with something that's inconvenient for him.
48:31 Derrick Levasseur? Right.
48:31 Stephanie Harlowe? She did not seem to, to do that, or at least she didn't seem to want to do that, at least in her final report. But once again, no notes, no transcripts. So we don't know what she actually thought during the interview. So here's the interesting thing. At the time of this interview, Brian David Mitchell had actually been working with the prosecution on a plea deal. He was willing to plead guilty to kidnapping and burglary charges as long as the prosecution agreed to a 10-year minimum sentence and a stipulation that if the prosecution was going to seek 15 years, which was the max for that, it would not be based on testimony from Elizabeth Smart. And they're kind of going back and forth with this plea deal. And something else Brian David Mitchell wanted in this deal was the sexual assault charges
49:16 Stephanie Harlowe? dropped, right? So they kind of agree on the first part, like, you plead guilty to this, yeah, we'll only go for 10 years, et cetera, et cetera. And then Brian Mitchell comes back to the table. He's like, by the way, I would like you to drop the sexual assault charges. And the prosecution was like, no.
49:30 Derrick Levasseur? Yeah, not happening.
49:31 Stephanie Harlowe? We're not going to drop those charges. Are you crazy? I don't even know if we could do that. The public would kill us, right? Like, who, who could even do that? What kind of person, besides Jeffrey Epstein, is going to get a deal like that, my friend? You're not Jeffrey Epstein. So they refused to drop it. The conversation about plea agreement, it fell apart at this point. And this is when the defense brought Dr. Jennifer Scheme back to Utah from the University of California where she was employed. So remember, she's already interviewed him. She said, hey, he's delusional, this, this and that, but he's smart and he's competent to stand trial. And then they brought her back once the plea agreement fell apart. And she interviewed Brian David Mitchell again on October 29th.
50:14 Stephanie Harlowe? And this time she found his competence to be severely impaired. Just in the, in the course of a few months, he goes from being able to stand trial to being completely out of his mind bananas crazy. And he can't do it anymore. Apparently in, in that short time, Brian David Mitchell had completely unraveled to the point where according to Dr. Scheme, he didn't even meet basic rationality any longer. Now here's Scheme's second report that states, quote, "Mitchell's thinking is now being run by religious delusions and he wants to go to trial, not to defend himself, but to be martyred." End quote, which is what Dr. Stephen Golding said, if I remember correctly. Now because of that.
50:55 Derrick Levasseur? Very similar.
50:56 Stephanie Harlowe? Yeah, that's what he said. He wanted to go to trial to be martyred. He would rather see himself as a martyr than see himself as mentally ill. Now because of that, Dr. Scheme said he can't do the basic mental tasks required to participate in his defense. She also stated that Mitchell could no longer answer direct questions. And he was using hymn singing as avoidance. And since the singing was disruptive, it would prevent him from being able to concentrate during court appearances or understand what was going on. Now this is interesting because at this point when she wrote this report, Brian David Mitchell was not singing hymns in court. We're going to talk about that. Now according to Dr. Scheme, at one point Mitchell considered taking an Alford plea.
51:39 Stephanie Harlowe? And we're familiar with the Alford plea, most notably from the staircase, the staircase murder case with Michael Peterson, right?
51:45 Derrick Levasseur? Yep.
51:46 Stephanie Harlowe? Where basically he would say, "I'm guilty," but how does that go? "I'm guilty."
51:51 Derrick Levasseur? Basically that he, that if it went to trial, the prosecution has enough evidence that he would be found guilty even though he is not claiming guilty.
52:00 Stephanie Harlowe? He's, he's like, "I am guilty, but I don't want to be seen as guilty."
52:03 Derrick Levasseur? Right. They have enough evidence to say that I'm guilty, but I still am claiming my innocence.
52:08 Stephanie Harlowe? So this is what he was going to do at one point, according to Dr. Scheme. But then she said he decided against it because taking that plea would be Satan tempting him, which would lead to eternal death. So Mitchell decided that a trial was necessary for his eternal soul. Mitchell said that it might be possible he would plead guilty after the trial, because then he would have been able to give his message to the world and become the martyr he thought he needed to be for the Lord. Once again, Dr. Scheme did not provide any detailed notes or transcripts from this interview, but she did say some things in her report that raised eyebrows as to its legitimacy. So Scheme mentioned that Wanda Barzy had filed for divorce, and this had impacted Brian
52:51 Stephanie Harlowe? heavily, because remember, Brian's interviewed by Dr. Scheme. She's like, he's competent. A few months later, she interviews him again, once the plea agreement falls apart. And now she's like, he's absolutely not competent. And part of this was because Wanda Barzy had filed for divorce, and he was really upset about it. However, Dr. Jennifer Scheme interviewed Brian on October 29th, and Wanda Barzy did not file for divorce until November 23rd. Now, it's worth noting that although Dr. Scheme interviewed Brian on October 29th, and she said herself that he would not talk to her again after that day, she did not submit her second report until February 1st. So it's pretty difficult to believe that Brian could have talked to her about something
53:35 Stephanie Harlowe? that had not yet happened, but because Dr. Jennifer Scheme is in contact with Brian's defense team, they would know that about a month later, Wanda Barzy would file for divorce, and they would tell Dr. Scheme. And then Dr. Scheme could conveniently put this in her report, even though at the time she talked to Brian, that was not impacting him, because it had not happened yet.
53:55 Derrick Levasseur? I see what you're putting down there. When you talk about conspiracy and a collaborative effort where multiple parties are working together to create or stitch together one narrative, yeah, when you put it that way, looks pretty good for what you're saying.
54:09 Stephanie Harlowe? Yeah. Now, there's more to support this.
54:12 Derrick Levasseur? There's more?
54:13 Stephanie Harlowe? Yes. Yeah, as if that wasn't enough, which I think it's enough.
54:16 Derrick Levasseur? I'm pretty much sold.
54:17 Stephanie Harlowe? Your soul, right?
54:18 Derrick Levasseur? Okay, sure.
54:18 Stephanie Harlowe? All right, we're gonna take a quick break. We'll be right back.
54:24 Stephanie Harlowe? Okay, we're back. So, one of Brian's lawyers, her name was Heidi Burci. She filed an affidavit on November 9th, 2004. She stated that she'd been seeing Brian every week since his October evaluation with Dr. Scheme, and she'd noticed a marked decline in his capacity to rationally engage in conversations about legal options and strategies. Now, we've all heard about Brian David Mitchell's tendency to start singing hymns in court and derail the proceedings completely. But it's also important to note that before this affidavit was filed, Mitchell had appeared in court many times, many times. And he had never done that hymn singing thing. He had never acted out or tried to interrupt the court proceedings.
55:09 Stephanie Harlowe? He had never exhibited any sign that he was incapable of appropriate courtroom behavior. But after this affidavit, Brian Mitchell began singing in court, and he had to be removed during every single appearance. So here's what I mean about the strategy that's being developed behind the scenes, right? With the lawyers saying, "Hey, I've been talking to Brian, you know, and he's really not doing well." In fact, like, it's completely broken down. He won't have any conversations about his legal... I mean, yeah, he was really able to help us in trying to make a plea deal before. But then, when the prosecution wouldn't take that plea deal, all of a sudden, he no longer can do that. Yeah. It was clearly calculated, in my opinion.
55:52 Stephanie Harlowe? So, and honestly, the opinion of a lot of people. But, yeah, that's what we're looking at here. And I just find it to be distasteful. Once again, I understand if you want to defend a person and try to give them their fair day in court. But when you're actively helping to formulate strategies and filing affidavits that, in my opinion, you're saying things that aren't necessarily 100% true, it becomes a question of why? Why for this person? Did he manipulate you two? Like, what's going on here?
56:23 Derrick Levasseur? I think sometimes it's a checks and balances thing where, from what I've... Learned and having debates with with defense attorneys is it's not necessarily about one specific case. Their outlook is, hey, we have to make sure that we're always holding the prosecution accountable in every case because when they step over where they're supposed to go, we have to be there to defend it. So, setting up these measures and making sure that police officers and detectives are doing their due diligence, getting good evidence, collecting it properly, preserving it correctly, doing all these things and and and being ethical in their process, that's what that's how they justify it.
57:07 Derrick Levasseur? It's not about one person. It's about the justice system and making sure that the prosecution isn't overreaching. And to a certain degree, I can understand that, but it does hurt when they make an example of the prosecution at the expense of someone potentially like Elizabeth Smart.
57:24 Stephanie Harlowe? Well, first of all, the prosecution in this case wasn't doing anything unethical. Their their hands were basically tied because of this whole song and dance. And secondly, I'm sure there are a lot of defense lawyers out there who are doing just that. That did not happen in this case because we can also acknowledge that there are defense lawyers who don't do it for the greater good. I just think that there's probably some attorneys out there who are thinking, hey, this is a very high-profile case and the person who committed this this crime, a lot of people would look at this and say, there's no way they can get off. So if I get them off, I'm going to attract more high-profile clients, which means more money for me.
58:02 Derrick Levasseur? I think even the human instinct prosecution side as well, where you have a high-profile case, it can make or break their careers. It really can. And they they they're just like any other human being out there where they they spend years in law school and they want to show how good they are at their job and this is an opportunity to showcase that.
58:19 Stephanie Harlowe? But I think we can look at this case and say, based on the detectives in that room and based on the prosecution even being willing to deal with Brian David Mitchell at all, they weren't trying to go for some huge trial. They didn't want to put Elizabeth through that. They were just trying to get justice for a 14-year-old girl who had been
58:35 Derrick Levasseur? Agreed.
58:35 Stephanie Harlowe? brutally tortured for nine months. And the defense was like, let's use this and see what we can get out of it, in my opinion. So on July 22, 2005, Judge Judy Atherton ruled that Brian David Mitchell's religious ideas were delusional and he could not rationally assist his attorneys. And Atherton felt that Mitchell's level of distress, preoccupation, and social dysfunction showed signs of psychosis. He was suffering from a mental disorder, but he failed to recognize he was suffering from a mental disorder. Atherton stated that since Mitchell was delusional, he lacked the capacity to determine what was in his best interests. And at that point, Mitchell was sent back to the Utah State Hospital on August 11, 2005,
59:19 Stephanie Harlowe? and he remained there for about three years. Now, over the years, Mitchell would be found not competent to stand trial several more times. In December of 2006, Mitchell screamed at Judge Atherton during a competency hearing. He said, "How dare you sit in those filthy robes, those robes of false priesthood. Forsake those robes and kneel in the dust." Okay, because he'd never done anything like that before, but all of a sudden, he's saying, he's being, he's being all sorts of wild. After this, the prosecution filed a motion for Mitchell to be forcibly medicated to restore his competency so that he could stand trial. A hearing to determine whether this would happen took place in September of 2007, and
1:00:00 Stephanie Harlowe? once again, as soon as Mitchell was led into the courtroom, he started his antics up again and had to be removed. The hearing continued without him, and Atherton later decided to deny the request to have Mitchell forcibly medicated. By early 2008, the prosecution was starting to feel that there was a strong possibility that Brian David Mitchell would never have to stand in front of a jury of his peers and face the music for what he had done to Elizabeth Smart. Utah State proceedings had dragged on for years, appeals were pending, no trial date was in sight. The case was essentially dead in state court.
1:00:36 Stephanie Harlowe? And then while all of this is happening, Elizabeth's other captor was going through basically the same courtroom proceedings. By June of 2006, Wanda Barzy had been declared incompetent to stand trial three times. Eight mental health providers had evaluated Barzy and agreed that she suffered from psychotic disorder and persecutory and grandiose delusions. They said that the chance of restoring her competency with medication was between 20 and 70%. And in June of 2006, a district judge ordered Barzy to be forcibly medicated. Her legal team argued that it would violate her constitutional rights. And then in December of 2007, the Utah Supreme Court upheld the district judge's forced medication order.
1:01:17 Stephanie Harlowe? So we kind of have parallel things happening, but they're the same. David Mitchell is in the court. They want to forcibly medicate him because, once again, everybody has said that he's insane and he has these delusions and he has all these issues, so let us give him medication so he can stand trial. And the judges in that case were like, no. In Wanda Barzy's case, the same thing. They said she had these issues. And eventually, a judge said, okay, forcibly medicate her so that she can stand trial. And what's the difference there? Why is one being allowed to be forcibly medicated and the other's not when both are being declared incompetent to stand trial based on their mental disorders? I'm not sure.
1:02:02 Stephanie Harlowe? Was it because it's Utah and Wanda's a woman? That could be it. Some people have speculated that.
1:02:09 Derrick Levasseur? I didn't see you go. Okay, I get what you're going there. Yeah, I have no clue. When you were asking that question, I thought it was more rhetorical because I have no clue how... Is this the same judge?
1:02:17 Stephanie Harlowe? Not the same judge, no.
1:02:19 Derrick Levasseur? Yeah, so that goes back to what we've been talking about this entire episode where same information, two different outcomes. It's incredible that our justice system isn't more aligned where it's kind of just like a, you know, a formula as opposed to just an interpretation and an opinion.
1:02:35 Stephanie Harlowe? I genuinely do think Wanda Barzy was mentally ill. I think she is still to this day. We'll talk about that. But... Yeah, so she gets forcibly medicated. And on October 10th, 2008, the case of Brian David Mitchell was transferred to the US District Court of Utah. And the United States Attorney's Office revisited the idea of filing federal charges against Mitchell, who hadn't just kidnapped Elizabeth, right? He had actually transported her across state lines. So this is giving some leeway here. If the, if the case isn't going anywhere in state court, let's see what we can do with it in a federal court. And having a minor transported again across state lines and then, you know, sexually assaulted,
1:03:19 Stephanie Harlowe? this triggered federal criminal jurisdiction and potentially a clearer path forward for forced medication, along with a stronger sentencing option. So this is when Dr. Michael Wellner was brought in. Wellner, a forensic psychiatrist and chairman of the forensic panel, who had built his career around criminal responsibility, he had a very big reputation for this kind of thing. His work focused heavily on competency to stand trial, insanity defenses, and very complex courtroom testimony. Now, by 2008, Wellner had already testified in capital cases and nationally publicized crimes, and he had an expertise in what's called malingering and symptom validity.
1:04:02 Stephanie Harlowe? Basically, he was well-trained to figure out if someone is truly mentally ill or pretending, exaggerating, or selectively acting impaired. He was the perfect person to bring in for this. So after his initial introduction to the case records, Dr. Wellner realized that a psychiatric diagnostic assessment could not be completed until there was an understanding of fundamentalist LDS teachings, which to that point, had not been done by any other person who had examined Brian David Mitchell. Wellner then embarked on a careful study of the Mormon faith. And after that, he did a careful study of its fundamentalist offshoots. So basically, the kind of sects that branch off from the LDS church and create their
1:04:44 Stephanie Harlowe? own churches based on LDS teachings, like the FLDS Church and Warren Jeffs and people like that. But basically, Wellner Wanted to see if Mitchell's belief system was unique or patterned after existing extremist Mormon ideology. And that research led him to shift the framework. Earlier, people who had examined Mitchell were asking, is this just him being extremely religious? And he's not insane, or is this psychosis? Wellner added a third category, social deviance, meaning maybe this isn't just extreme belief or mental illness. Maybe it's someone adopting extremist theology in order to justify antisocial or criminal behavior.
1:05:25 Stephanie Harlowe? Wellner was basically saying, before we call this man mentally ill, we need to understand the religious world he's drawing from. And once we do, we also have to consider whether he's not crazy, just criminal and using religion as a shield. And that reframed the entire evaluation. After this, Wellner reviewed hundreds of sources of information and interviewed 58 people, including a five-hour interview with Elizabeth Smart and a six-hour interview with Wanda Barzy. He also interviewed at least 30 people on the Utah State Hospital staff. So remember Dr. Jennifer Scheme and Brian Mitchell's attorney had said Mitchell was absolutely out of touch with reality. Scheme said Mitchell was increasingly delusional, he would be awake all night in jail.
1:06:09 Stephanie Harlowe? She said he, quote, "no longer meets the test of even basic rationality," end quote. Well, Dr. Wellner wanted to see if that was true. He wanted to interview those at the state mental hospital who were in contact with Brian David Mitchell every day for three years. And of course, expectedly, we got a completely different story from those people. Dr. Wellner wrote in his incredibly thorough report, quote, "None of these staff across disciplines experienced Brian Mitchell as paranoid in a pathological sense. The overwhelming majority experienced him as not psychotic and nearly all reflected that other patients did not interact with him as they would with a person they experienced as sick," end quote.
1:06:52 Stephanie Harlowe? A senior physician technician, Brigham Andrew, told Dr. Wellner, quote, "If we had tape recorded his behavior from the first week on the unit, we wouldn't be having this conversation." Because his court case would be over. End quote. In August of 2005, after a ruling that found him incompetent, Brian was observed telling someone, quote, "If people think you're crazy, you can get away with more. You can really be yourself when people think you're crazy." End quote. Staff who worked with him described him the same way. Determined, articulate, normal, manipulative, calculating. Mitchell did talk with some of them about religion, but only with those who were interested in it or engaged him in a conversation about it. And during those times, he did so in informed and sophisticated ways.
1:07:37 Stephanie Harlowe? He talked about religion very rationally with people. And if they didn't want to talk about it, he wouldn't force it on them. So Dr. Wellner's report stated, quote, "Mr. Jensen chronicled one conversation of over three hours about the book Silas Mariner by George Eliot, with Brian Mitchell providing a very rational thesis. Psychiatric technician Judith Fuchs recounts that she told Mr. Mitchell right away that she was not interested in speaking with him about religion. The defendant did not respond to her angrily, but communicated with her about a variety of subjects from that point forward that had nothing to do with religion. Brian Mitchell was very attentive to a vegan diet and lifestyle, including his refusal to use the soap and toothpaste offered on the unit. With great discipline and consistency,
1:08:21 Stephanie Harlowe? he exercised, paced, did yoga, brushed and flossed, and did laundry. When staff gave him even seven ounces of soy milk instead of eight ounces, he expressed his displeasure and would ask them to get him more. According to psychiatric technician Jill Raffner, Brian would request even two or three drops of soy milk if the amount given was not up to his liking. He maintained his weight and worked collaboratively with the nutrition staff. Ty Jensen experienced him as self-educated, entitled, and meticulous, among other qualities. Social worker Porter appraised him to be pragmatic and reflected that the defendant behaved in a way contrary to that of a martyr." End quote. So basically, what we're seeing here is nothing like Dr. Jennifer's scheme
1:09:06 Stephanie Harlowe? or Brian Mitchell's defense team was claiming they were seeing, where he was just not capable of rational thought. He was pacing up all night, not able to sleep. Brian Mitchell's exercising, he's doing yoga. He's very, very selective about his diet. He's in prison, but he's claiming through his lawyers that he has specific diet needs because of his religion. Of course, right? It's because of his religion that he has these dietary needs. He can't have regular milk, he needs soy milk. And he needs certain fruits and vegetables. He can't eat the regular prison food. He won't use the regular prison soap. He has to have special things because of his religion. And the prisons going along with it. And the state mental hospital, because it's not a prison, but they're going along with it. And they're giving him everything that he needs.
1:09:52 Stephanie Harlowe? And that he's requesting. He's reading, he's having conversations about books that have nothing to do with religion. People are saying, hey, I don't want to talk about your crazy religion. And he's like, okay, what do you want to talk about? Want to talk about, you know, pop culture? You want to talk about music? What do you? He can talk about a number of other things and not rant and rave about his religion. Which is what his lawyers and some of these mental health professionals who were hired by his lawyers were making it seem like.
1:10:18 Derrick Levasseur? Meanwhile, we have people over here sticking peanut butter down their pants and then eating it at trial, but.
1:10:23 Stephanie Harlowe? What? Is that real?
1:10:25 Derrick Levasseur? The real thing, stuffed peanut butter down their pants, went into court and pulled it out and ate it. And now that someone, you know what? Maybe they're not capable of standing trial. They're not complaining about two ounces of milk being short.
1:10:38 Stephanie Harlowe? Yeah, like where's the rest of my soy milk? And you could say maybe he's a little, you know, obsessive about certain things being the right way. But that's once again.
1:10:49 Derrick Levasseur? And listen, I know it's not as simple as like him being particular about certain things. But you could see this man's interactions and know that he's very coherent. He knows what's going on around him. We don't need to be a genius to stand trial.
1:11:03 Stephanie Harlowe? And he was, he was very smart, so.
1:11:05 Derrick Levasseur? But we don't even need that.
1:11:06 Stephanie Harlowe? We don't need that.
1:11:07 Derrick Levasseur? We just need you to understand right from wrong. It's that simple. Do you understand what you did was wrong or not? If you truly believe that what you did was right. Then you would have expressed that in the interrogation room. You would have told them, "I did go in there. God compelled me to go in there. I went in there, I took her, "and I made her my wife, even though she was underage, because that's what God told me to do. "I don't care about your stupid laws." That's not what he did.
1:11:28 Stephanie Harlowe? Yeah, and the Bible says it's not wrong, so it's not wrong. I don't go by the laws of man, yeah.
1:11:32 Derrick Levasseur? That's not what he did. He always would say the certain things, but whenever it came to incriminating himself, full stop. That is someone who clearly understands the line, where it's at, and what he can say and what he can't say. And not only that, he took it a step further by saying, "I know what you want me to say. I know what you're trying to do."
1:11:49 Stephanie Harlowe? Mm-hmm, yes, exactly.
1:11:51 Derrick Levasseur? I mean, it's like, what else do you need here? End of story. This should not have taken this long. This is a waste of time, money, and resources. That's my, that's my opinion.
1:11:59 Stephanie Harlowe? He even made statements during his time in, in the state mental hospital, that he was, that he knew he was gaming the system. In September of 2005, Mitchell explained the legal process to a psychiatric technician, along with the duties of different positions within the system. So he's saying, "I understand how the court system works." And then he said, quote, "I won't be judged "by this corrupt system. I sing to disrupt the system so that I can come back to the hospital," end quote. Mitchell told another patient not to talk to judges because they can't condemn you if you don't speak. In April of 2006, Mitchell told someone that he would, quote, "Never be out of the hospital, as I will never acknowledge my guilt,
1:12:39 Stephanie Harlowe? "and they will never parole me, nor find me competent, as I will not participate in a corrupt system," end quote. And he's toeing the line, right? Like, if you heard that, and you were trying to defend him, you'd say, "Well, he's saying the system's corrupt," you know, because it's that, it's the system of man, not the system of God. He's saying the system's corrupt, so that he's clearly still delusional. No, he's saying, like, "I sing to disrupt court proceedings, so I don't say anything to incriminate myself," basically.
1:13:07 Stephanie Harlowe? And there's evidence that Brian David Mitchell was not delusional. He completely understood the legal system and was perfectly capable of participating in his own defense. This evidence went on and on. He read books. He read the newspaper every day. He played this tactical board game called Axis and Allies that would last hours. He loved doing that. He would listen to classical music and opera. He exercised for as many as five hours a day. And he even actively engaged with other patients who were agitated and helped calm them down. So, he was, he was helping these people out. Mitchell also talked about Elizabeth, though he was more careful with these comments. And numerous staff members recorded Brian saying things like, "I took her and taught
1:13:52 Stephanie Harlowe? her the truth, and sometimes you need to do that because their mind is full of false beliefs." He also told a patient in February of 2006, quote, "Once a female is given to you from God, you have the right to do what you please with her, and the state and the law is below them in this area," end quote. On February 23rd, 2006, Mitchell called his father Cheryl and said that during Elizabeth's nine months of captivity, he had laid with her as man and wife. Brian told Cheryl that at first, it was not consensual, but it grew in willingness and intensity. So, right there, I mean, his phone calls are being recorded. Right there, he's saying, "I took this girl and I had sex with her that was not consensual."
1:14:35 Stephanie Harlowe? The whole bullshit about it being, "Oh, it grew in intensity and willingness after that." That doesn't matter, because that's A, not true, and B, you admitted in a call with your father that when you first took her, you had sex with her that was not consensual. You raped her. You just admitted to that. But, okay. Even though Dr. Jennifer Schem had claimed she believed Mitchell was not thinking straight because he wanted to go on trial and be a martyr, Mitchell was actually actively planning an escape from the hospital in March of 2006. So, apparently, he didn't actually want to go on trial because he wanted to escape and was planning to do so. And Brian Mitchell did sing his hymns during the early days of his
1:15:17 Stephanie Harlowe? His stay at the state hospital, but unlike his appearances in court, he would stop or modify this when asked. One nursing supervisor told Brian that if he kept up his loud singing, the really crazy patients would beat the crap out of him. And in the fall of 2005, a patient told him to shut the hell up while he was singing, and Brian did in fact shut the hell up. And after this, Brian Mitchell was careful to sing quietly, privately, or move to where he would not disturb anyone. And as time went on, Mitchell's singing completely decreased, and the staff noted it would only pick back up around the time he had court appearances. Dr. Wellner's report said, quote, "In contrast to the forensic unit, when the defendant was at court, Mitchell would immediately burst into song to the point that he would
1:16:01 Stephanie Harlowe? need to be immediately removed. When Judge Alba politely asked him to sing softer, he sang more loudly. After his court appearances, he would not sing even in the holding cells, according to U.S. Marshals, who had the responsibility of transporting Mr. Mitchell." End quote. Translation, the weird loud singing of the hymns was not something he couldn't control, as his lawyers and Jennifer Schien would have liked you to believe. It was something he did selectively, and was able to stop doing, or to modify and do it in a different place or in a different way as not to disturb people around him. When he's in the, you know, mental health unit of a hospital, and a nurse is telling him, hey, people don't like this, and if you keep it up, some of them are gonna beat the crap out of you. And
1:16:44 Stephanie Harlowe? he's like, okay, I will make sure to have self-preservation in this, in my physical safety. But he does not have that same ability in court, because he chooses not to. We're gonna take a quick break, we'll be right back. So, at this time, because remember, I said he's in the state hospital for three years, and he's going through, you know, multiple evaluations to see if he is now competent to stand trial. So, while he's being interviewed by mental health professionals throughout the time, the behavior that had gotten him labeled mentally ill and delusional would pick back up. The singing, the shouting of repent, the refusal to answer questions.
1:17:26 Stephanie Harlowe? The ramblings about religion and being a prophet and the Antichrist. On February 4th, 2009, Dr. Richard De Meyer, who had been conducting another competency evaluation, diagnosed Mitchell with delusional disorder. He later changed his diagnosis to schizophrenia. De Meyer claimed that Mitchell was not capable of even thinking about his own legal situation in a rational or coherent way, and that he believed he had to endure the suffering of trial and imprisonment to fulfill his role as the Davidic king who will battle the Antichrist. Obviously, Dr. De Meyer said that Mitchell was not competent to stand trial. What is your take on this, that all the people at the hospital are like, he's perfectly capable of talking,
1:18:11 Stephanie Harlowe? he's not crazy, he's not singing, and then somebody would come in who is apparently a trained, intelligent, mental health, like, person, psychiatrist, psychologist, and they, they can't see through it. What is that about? They can't see through it?
1:18:26 Derrick Levasseur? Well, I think in their defense, when they go in there for their quote-unquote "analysis", Brian David Mitchell knows what they're there for, and just like he does with everybody else in his life, he can tell them what they want to hear in a way that they want to hear it, so that he gets what he wants. He's a master manipulator. But when they're not around, he lets his guard down, assuming that the other people there, the caretakers, whoever else is at the facility, they don't really have a say in whether or not he's mentally competent. So he's a little bit more, he's a little bit more free with how he acts, knowing that he's not under a microscope at that moment, and that what in their observations aren't held to the same regard as these quote-unquote "experts."
1:19:10 Derrick Levasseur? So again, I think when he gets put into a specific situation, he can turn it on and off, and that's exactly what he's doing here.
1:19:17 Stephanie Harlowe? Yeah, but the experts, they're supposed to be trained.
1:19:20 Derrick Levasseur? To be able to see through that?
1:19:21 Stephanie Harlowe? Yeah, right?
1:19:22 Derrick Levasseur? Oh, yeah. I'm with you.
1:19:23 Stephanie Harlowe? He's manipulating expert, mental health expert after mental health expert after mental health expert for years.
1:19:29 Derrick Levasseur? It does speak to who he is as a person, but also, it goes back, and I don't want to be redundant in this episode, because it's not about this. About Elizabeth, but when you say experts are going in there to analyze him and and and see where he is, you have to follow up that question with what side of the aisle they're on. If they're representing the defense, they may go in there with a certain mindset. And if they're representing the prosecution, it may be something completely different. So there's a lot of variables at play here.
1:19:56 Stephanie Harlowe? So Dr. De Meyer, Dr. Richard De Meyer, he worked at the Utah State Hospital. So he wasn't necessarily.
1:20:04 Derrick Levasseur? He was kind of supposed to be impartial, right?
1:20:05 Stephanie Harlowe? He was supposed to just be, yeah, like a guy who works at the hospital where Brian Mitchell is, has been for years.
1:20:11 Derrick Levasseur? Yeah.
1:20:11 Stephanie Harlowe? And probably, probably kind of responsible for most of his day to day mental health care. And he's even manipulating and tricking him. Like this is embarrassing for these people at this point.
1:20:23 Derrick Levasseur? Yeah, yeah, no, it's, it's, it's troubling. It's concerning. It's still happening to this day, right? There's a manipulation of our, of our systems and people know how to use it at this point because they've been doing it a long time. But that would be my simple explanation is that unfortunately, the reason that Brian has been able to get away with this stuff for so long is because he's, he's an expert at it now himself. And sometimes he's even able to fool the people who are supposed to be able to, you know, kind of see through that bullshit.
1:20:53 Stephanie Harlowe? And you know, every time he fooled them and he got away with it, he was like.
1:20:57 Derrick Levasseur? Gave him some gratification.
1:20:58 Stephanie Harlowe? Yeah, it gave him gratification and it built his ego up to the point where he was like similarly to evading the detective. Like I'm so smart. I stood face to face with somebody who's trained to be able to tell whether somebody is mentally ill or faking it. And they believe me.
1:21:13 Derrick Levasseur? Yeah, no, you could see it and I, and I just keep going back to that interrogation footage where we got a live example of it. Where how he kind of almost, there's a, a word for it. It's called mirroring where they'll mirror the person they're speaking with. And he has an ability to do that where he was kind of. He was kind of emulating their cadence for a while, their kind of mannerisms. And then he stayed at that level when they got even agitated and that's a skill.
1:21:40 Stephanie Harlowe? And that takes a lot of self-control, yeah.
1:21:42 Derrick Levasseur? Yes, it does. And you know, there's points where they're saying things about him and about his religion and that he's a fake and a fraud and he wants to lash out.
1:21:49 Stephanie Harlowe? Oh, yeah.
1:21:50 Derrick Levasseur? But he has that mental discipline to stay, like you said, stay composed. It's scary, scary that someone like that, because if he was, if he was smart and had, and was a good person, he could probably do some great things, but instead, yeah, he's a monster.
1:22:04 Stephanie Harlowe? Well, then, you know, Dr. Wellner comes in and he's playing a whole different ballgame with Mitchell and he sees through it right away. He made a very comprehensive 205-page report that to this day is considered the most comprehensive and most accurate depiction of Brian David Mitchell's actual psychological profile. He sent that to the US Attorney's Office in June of 2009. It was very well peer-reviewed by a respected forensic psychologist from Harvard Medical School, a highly respected forensic psychiatrist off of the forensic panel. And then a competency hearing was held in late 2009. And once again, Brian David Mitchell interrupted the proceedings with his rendition of Silent Night and Joy to the World before being removed to a holding cell where he could watch the hearing.
1:22:48 Stephanie Harlowe? Now, this is the competency hearing where not only is Dr. Wellner going to present his findings, for the first time, accurate findings of who Brian David Mitchell is, but members of the Smart family were also present and a then 21-year-old Elizabeth Smart would testify.
1:23:09 Speaker 02 You know, there were certainly a lot of things that I had never heard before. And I had, I had no idea what she had gone through, so much out there. I was very proud of her, the way she was able to be so forthright and, and basically paint the picture of Brian Mitchell, of what he is. And that if this doesn't clinch the issue of competency, our nation is in really, really bad shape. Because it means that anyone out there can manipulate and make the court do what it wants and get away with what they want.
1:23:49 Speaker 03 There's indications from what she testified to that.
1:23:55 Speaker 03 That he is delusional and there's indications that he also is off into his desires.
1:24:06 Speaker 02 We said all along that one of the most important things in this case would be those that spent time with the defendant as the psychologists have not been able to conduct psychological testing, standard psychological testing, those witnesses that had spent time with him and observed him are the most important and none more important than Elizabeth. I thought she was graceful and remarkable, strong, and gave powerful testimony today.
1:24:32 Derrick Levasseur? Yeah, incredible. And I agree with everything that was said there as far as, well, she's remarkable and it's incredible what she's been able to do and how she was able to get up there and be in front of her, you know, her offender and speak her truth. And I think what Edward had to say there kind of summarizes all of what we've been saying for almost two hours now, which is if this doesn't seal the deal here, then it basically just shows how screwed we are as a society because essentially you can go out there, commit a horrific act like this and then just claim that you are insane.
1:25:08 Stephanie Harlowe? And they get put in a cushy state hospital with soy milk, yeah.
1:25:11 Derrick Levasseur? So like, I mean, it speaks to a much larger issue and Edward, who's not necessarily an attorney, he's just a father supporting his daughter, but he nailed it. This is such a bigger problem and such a bigger issue and it means so much more than just this case. And if that's the precedent we set, we're screwed as a society. So, very well said.
1:25:33 Stephanie Harlowe? But you saw that Mitchell's attorney, he came in and he tried to twist it.
1:25:38 Derrick Levasseur? It's disgusting. It's disgusting. In my opinion, it's absolutely disgusting.
1:25:41 Stephanie Harlowe? Right. She said things that show he's delusional. Yeah, but she also said things where she, Elizabeth very clearly clarified, yes, he said things that didn't make sense and couldn't possibly be real, but he did that because he was using this religion as a way to justify what he was doing. So, once again, just the omission of that other part of Elizabeth's testimony and trying to use her testimony to show, see, my client is crazy because she said he's delus- he said things that were delusional.
1:26:10 Derrick Levasseur? Yeah, it's a, I guess everyone has their line. I've talked about this with Bob Mata before in Defense Diaries and, you know, they had their perspective on it. I'm obviously on the different side of the aisle. I try to remain in the middle and be objective, but I do think there is a line there where you're making sure that the investigators and the prosecution are doing everything by the book. That that's okay with me. You lose me when you start to say that the victim is is saying things in certain ways that actually justify your client's actions. That's where you lose me and you'll never get me to agree with you that that's where we gotta go. Where you're starting to contort the words of the victim to support your client's defense.
1:26:51 Stephanie Harlowe? Mitchell's defense team did that a lot and both Elizabeth and her father came out afterwards because there's it's not, you know, there's a trial to follow. This was just a competency here.
1:27:01 Derrick Levasseur? This is just a competency, yeah.
1:27:03 Stephanie Harlowe? Yeah, so there's going to be a lot of times where they do that, the defense team of Mitchell, and almost even times where they definitely crossed the line and made it seem kind of like, well, maybe, maybe she did want to be there, you know, who's to say that that she didn't? Kind of thing. And like, once again, I think that both of us understand everyone deserves a fair day in court, but...
1:27:26 Derrick Levasseur? That's where you lose me.
1:27:27 Stephanie Harlowe? Yeah.
1:27:27 Derrick Levasseur? You're you're at the end of the day, you're a human being and I have to assume that these attorneys have families of their own and there has to be some level of, you know, just just humanity and and just doing the right thing and and understanding that you can represent your client, but not make excuses for them and not try to help them get out of something that you know they're guilty of.
1:27:48 Stephanie Harlowe? Yeah, during one of these times, Elizabeth actually got up in the middle of testimony and left the courtroom.
1:27:54 Derrick Levasseur? Yeah.
1:27:54 Stephanie Harlowe? Because she was so offended and disgusted by what the defense team was doing.
1:28:00 Derrick Levasseur? Unbelievable. Yeah, there's only so much you can say. Again, you could have a defense attorney on here and they'll they'll find ways to
1:28:06 Stephanie Harlowe? Defend it.
1:28:06 Derrick Levasseur? Try to explain away some of the things they say, but yeah, defend it, exactly. But um, everyone's entitled to their opinion and ultimately, at the end of the day, we all have to put our heads on our pillows and if they have found a way for to justify what they're doing, you know, congrats, congrats to them.
1:28:21 Stephanie Harlowe? Well, in March of 2010, Brian David Mitchell was found competent to stand trial in great part to Dr. Wellner, his report, his And his testimony during the competency hearing. And this trial would start in November of 2010. And during the trial, Wanda Barzy took the stand to testify. Now, the previous November, Wanda had pleaded guilty to federal charges of kidnapping and unlawful transportation of a minor across state lines. In exchange, the sexual assault charges against her had been dropped. As part of her deal, Wanda also agreed to testify against her ex-husband, Brian David Mitchell. And during the trial, Wanda called Mitchell a great deceiver.
1:29:05 Stephanie Harlowe? And she now did believe he had used religion to justify what he wanted to do. Now, by this point, Barzy had been found to be mentally incompetent multiple times. They did the forced medication thing. She had been on a variety of medication. She had undergone countless hours of mental health therapy. And after all of that, it was her opinion that she herself had been manipulated by Brian David Mitchell. She said she never would have done what she done without his influence. I don't know how I feel about this. I don't disagree that she was probably not mentally well. I don't disagree that she was prime for being manipulated at the time that he encountered her.
1:29:46 Stephanie Harlowe? But once again, at what point, when you are standing there, watching a child be raped and taking part in it and allowing it to happen, at what point can you say that was because you were manipulated? And not admit that you are just a really bad person?
1:30:06 Derrick Levasseur? I agree. I'm not going to add anything to it. Ultimately, it is what it is at this point, but we know how we feel about it. We've made our opinions very well known. But I think whenever you have something like this where there's, you know, it goes on for nine months. There's some level of mental stability involved with being able to carry that out without being discovered. And, you know, I'll acknowledge that I do think there is a hierarchy here. And in a lot of these cases where you have a cult-like leader who is in control of a larger group, most of the people in that group are going through something or are lower mental capacity and they're easily manipulated. That's why they target those people. That's what they're looking for. So I acknowledge that as far as Wanda is concerned.
1:30:50 Derrick Levasseur? But again, it goes back to me where we're not looking for people who are going to solve world, you know, create world peace. We're just looking for people who have a basic understanding of right and wrong. And I have to think that just based on what we know about Wanda so far, that as you just said, when you have a grown man raping a 14-year-old girl, you understand as you're sitting outside that tent that this is wrong.
1:31:16 Stephanie Harlowe? As a mother, of all things, right?
1:31:18 Derrick Levasseur? You know that what is transpiring in front of your eyes is not right. And to me, that's the standard. If you can differentiate the two, knowing right from wrong, then to me, you're capable of standing trial for the crimes you were involved in. That's that simple.
1:31:34 Stephanie Harlowe? We had Wanda's own children come out and say, listen, like, don't get it twisted. Don't let her make you think that this was just, oh, I was so manipulated.
1:31:41 Derrick Levasseur? I was manipulated.
1:31:42 Stephanie Harlowe? She was a bad person, too. She was terrible to us during our childhood. And outside of that, there's a place where you're a victim. And I understand that. And I will acknowledge that at one point, you could have been a victim, but then you transitioned to an enabler.
1:31:55 Derrick Levasseur? And a co-conspirator.
1:31:57 Stephanie Harlowe? Yeah, and a co-conspirator, just like Ghislaine Maxwell and Paul Bernardo and Carla Homoka, where, you know, she took part in his crimes. We see this a lot. There's a lot of killer couples out there who do things. And the woman will claim afterwards, I was a victim, maybe at one point. But the second you became complicit and allowed him to continue doing it and did not help that girl get away, because there was tons of times, remember that Mitchell left them alone?
1:32:24 Derrick Levasseur? Yeah. She was the only line of defense.
1:32:26 Stephanie Harlowe? For a week sometimes. And Wanda could have been like at any point out from under the Manipulation while while Mitchell's gone for a week. Elizabeth, we're getting the hell out of here, man. Like, I'm sorry, this is, this was wrong. We're getting out of here, or just say, hey, you run away. I'll deal with it when he comes back. But she didn't. She kept. Yeah, like you said, she was the jailer that kept the Elizabeth in that cell even when Mitchell wasn't physically there.
1:32:51 Derrick Levasseur? That's right. Yeah, I mean, if Wanda's ever stopped at a traffic light or not stolen from a store, that just shows she has a general understanding of the rule of law and right and wrong. And to me, that's all you need in these cases.
1:33:04 Stephanie Harlowe? Yeah, so there was something not right with her far before she met Brian David Mitchell. He saw that in her. Yes, but still, there was something not right.
1:33:12 Derrick Levasseur? Yeah, he definitely capitalized on it, but it wasn't like she was walking around with no conscience of her own where she could make decisions. She met many opportunities to get out of there and do the right thing.
1:33:24 Stephanie Harlowe? Yes. And once again, during the actual trial, Brian David Mitchell was, he was gonna die on the hill. All right, he took part in all sorts of antics.
1:33:31 Speaker 04 Interact with me. And so, um.
1:33:36 Speaker 04 The time is far spent. There is little remaining to publish glad tidings by sea and by land. Then hasten ye heralds, go forward proclaiming. Repent for the kingdom of heavens at hand. Repent for the kingdom of heavens at hand. Repent for the kingdom of heavens at hand. Repent for the kingdom of heavens at hand.
1:34:13 Derrick Levasseur? I'm gonna have one note on this. I'm not gonna make it long because this episode, we're in, we're in the weeds right now. But I ask all of you to go back to episode four. Watch a small 30 second clip from that interrogation interview. And then watch this video clip right here and tell me if you're seeing the same person. And all I would tell you is that in between that interrogation footage and that video that you just witnessed was a defense plan as far as. The defense plea that they were gonna go with is with mental insanity, right? And so that's the only difference there. You have a gentleman that beforehand did not know the direction this was gonna go. You see one person and then after developing a strategy, you see a different person. Come to your own conclusions.
1:34:55 Stephanie Harlowe? Yeah, it kind of, I mean, he looks like a clown one way or the other, but knowing that he's completely faking it and just trying to act crazy. It's like, oh, you're, everyone says you're so smart, but this is what you've, you've been reduced to.
1:35:08 Derrick Levasseur? I have full confidence in the crime weekly community. Ain't nobody falling for this.
1:35:12 Stephanie Harlowe? So one of the most compelling witnesses during the trial was obviously Dr. Michael Wellner, who gave his opinion on what was actually going on with Mitchell. When asked if Mitchell met the criteria for a psychiatric disorder, Wellner diagnosed him with pedophilia, non-exclusive type. Basically, he was a repeated pedophile with many years of offending. Cause Wellner actually went back and interviewed Mitchell's ex-wives and their children and, and he got the, the whole story. He also said that Mitchell had antisocial personality disorder and had shown a pattern of disregard for and the violation of the rights of others since the age of 15. He had failed to conform to social norms and lawful behaviors.
1:35:52 Stephanie Harlowe? He had shown reckless disregard for the safety of others and exhibited a complete lack of remorse. Grandiosity, pathological lying, glibness, manipulation, sadism organized around the theme of dominance and control, shallow affect, parasitic lifestyle, promiscuous sexual behavior, lack of realistic long-term goals. All of these things were present long before Brian David Mitchell became Emmanuel. Wellner said that Mitchell had used religion to control others. He used their already set in belief system as a vehicle to justify and protect his antisocial behavior. Yes, Brian Mitchell had grandiosity, but not in a delusional way. His antisocial and narcissistic personality traits formed a personality pathology
1:36:37 Stephanie Harlowe? that did not make him mentally ill or incompetent. It made him entitled, resistant to accountability, exploitative and dangerous. Dr. Wellner said that Brian was malingering. He was intentionally producing false symptoms to evade criminal prosecution. The courtroom was played portions of Dr. Wellner's sessions with Mitchell and a clip showed Wellner playing Elizabeth's police interview for Mitchell. And Mitchell, who hadn't talked to Dr. Wellner or reacted before, he turned around in his chair and stared intently at the screen where Elizabeth was, and a small smile appeared on his lips. And Dr. Wellner was asked, like, what do you think he's thinking?
1:37:17 Stephanie Harlowe? And he's like, you know, he's definitely enjoying seeing this girl again. He's enjoying, like, seeing his handiwork, because she's clearly upset, and I'm not going to discount the fact that he may be getting something sexually out of seeing her again. Dr. Wellner said that Mitchell was not psychotic and he was completely capable of approaching things strategically. He could sit quietly if he wanted to. Wellner stated, quote, "He is a pedophile, and that has to be front and center. He has no remorse for what he has done to Elizabeth Smart," end quote. And in the end, the verdict was as it should have been.
1:37:57 Speaker 05 Nine years after her kidnapping ordeal, Elizabeth Smart saw her tormentor sentenced to life in prison yesterday, but not before she delivered her final message to him in court.
1:38:07 Speaker 06 With cameras and cellphones banned from the courthouse, the first news came in handwritten notes.
1:38:12 Speaker 03 Wait, here we go. There it is, right there, life in prison.
1:38:16 Speaker 06 The life sentence for Brian David Mitchell is exactly what Elizabeth Smart and her family had been waiting for, for years.
1:38:24 Speaker 07 I am so thrilled with the results that came out today. The life sentence, I couldn't be happier. Today is the ending of a very long chapter and the beginning of a very beautiful chapter for me.
1:38:40 Speaker 03 Soon as they brought him in the door.
1:38:42 Speaker 05 He went, "Oh, come, oh, come Emmanuel," and began singing hymns as he always has in the past.
1:38:48 Speaker 06 Mitchell kept singing as Smart finally had a chance to address him.
1:38:52 Speaker 07 I told Ryan David Mitchell today in court that one day he will have to be responsible for his actions.
1:38:58 Speaker 06 And she wasn't disappointed. He had no response.
1:39:01 Speaker 07 I heard enough during those nine months and I never have to hear anything else from him again.
1:39:06 Speaker 06 Mitchell's sentencing came on Missing Children's Day.
1:39:09 Speaker 07 First, we would like to highlight Bianca Piper.
1:39:12 Speaker 06 And Smart took the opportunity to focus attention on some who are still missing.
1:39:18 Speaker 07 Keep looking for them because miracles can happen and they still do happen today.
1:39:24 Speaker 06 Pointing to her own life as evidence that anything is possible.
1:39:28 Derrick Levasseur? There's nothing really to say. She's incredible. I mean, in that moment where this is something that she's been waiting for for years, almost a decade, and she takes that moment to highlight another case. What else can I say?
1:39:39 Stephanie Harlowe? That she finally got this validation after so long of having it denied to her because of some stupid system. And then she's like, "Hey, let me talk about somebody else that needs your help."
1:39:51 Derrick Levasseur? Yeah, what can you say? Self-explanatory. She's an amazing person.
1:39:55 Stephanie Harlowe? So he got life in prison, which, once again, absolutely was needed. I think the only sentence that I would have been happy with, to be honest.
1:40:04 Derrick Levasseur? Without a doubt.
1:40:05 Stephanie Harlowe? Without a doubt. And I like that Dr. Wellner, when he testified, he focused on the one thing. He's like, "Listen, we can talk about, oh, he's narcissistic, he's grandiose, he talks about religion, he used religion. We can talk about all of that. Front and center, what is the most important thing here is he's a run-of-the-mill pedophile, and that's what he is, and that's why he did this."
1:40:25 Derrick Levasseur? When you dilute it down and distill it down to what it's really all about, he's a pedophile.
1:40:30 Stephanie Harlowe? Yeah, and everything else is kind of secondary at this point.
1:40:32 Derrick Levasseur? It's all just noise. He saw a girl, a young girl that he found attractive, and he wanted her.
1:40:39 Stephanie Harlowe? Yeah, exactly. And he took her.
1:40:42 Derrick Levasseur? And he took her.
1:40:42 Stephanie Harlowe? And he used some stupid shit to justify it, but that's once again secondary to the fact of what his motive was, what his intention was.
1:40:49 Derrick Levasseur? It's disgusting to say it, but he saw this girl, wanted to have sex with her, and that's why he did what he did.
1:40:54 Stephanie Harlowe? And he created a worldview to justify doing that, so he could have, you know.
1:41:00 Derrick Levasseur? To disguise his fucking sickness, you know?
1:41:02 Stephanie Harlowe? We have one last break to take, and when we come back, we will finish up.
1:41:10 Stephanie Harlowe? All right, we're back. So, a lot of people were present for this trial, including people from Brian David Mitchell's past. Now, one of the most surprising, I guess you could call her allies, that he had during this trial was his stepdaughter and one of his earliest known victims, Rebecca Woodbridge. Now, remember Rebecca? She had talked about how Brian David Mitchell had molested her for several years while he was married to her mother. And then, when he gets arrested, basically Rebecca comes out and she like, supports him. She visits him while he's in jail. She writes him letters. She talks to him on the phone. And, I don't really understand what happened here.
1:41:55 Stephanie Harlowe? But, during the trial Rebecca talked to reporters. She told them she considered Mitchell to be a very sick man who didn't have control of all his faculties. And after the verdict was read Rebecca spoke to the media again, telling them she was disappointed and she didn't know how the jury did not see Mitchell as a mentally ill man. Somebody that can give us perspective into who Brian David Mitchell is. On a little bit of a different level is his stepdaughter Rebecca Woodbridge. She probably looks very familiar to you. She's been in the media a lot lately, in court almost every day during this trial. Tell me your feelings about the verdict. I'm very disappointed. In what way? I don't think he got a fair trial.
1:42:39 Stephanie Harlowe? From the start, it shouldn't have been held here. You always said that because you do not believe that he's insane. No, I believe he's insane. You do believe he's insane. Yeah, but there's no way he could have ever gotten a fair trial here. In another state, maybe a little bit better, people know about it, but not in this state. And you were... And smarts have a lot of influence.
1:42:59 Speaker 03 Known.
1:42:59 Stephanie Harlowe? You were disappointed in the jury. Why?
1:43:03 Speaker 03 They, half of them were asleep. I would look over and see one of the guys doing, nodding off stuff like that and other ladies were looking up and doing that kind of things, looking down a lot, staring into the audience as opposed to looking at the attorney or the people on the stand. Should be looking at the lawyers and the people testifying, not at how many people are sitting in the courtroom.
1:43:27 Stephanie Harlowe? And do you feel like they did that because their minds were already made up?
1:43:30 Speaker 03 Mm-hmm, absolutely. I think their minds were, I know the judge instructed them and he still, two or three of them said that they thought Brian was guilty of doing this. And they were still selected by the judge to be jurors.
1:43:45 Derrick Levasseur? Well, newsflash Rebecca, nobody was questioning whether your stepfather did this or not. That wasn't up for debate. What was up for debate was whether he was mentally competent enough to stand trial. So, once that was decided on, you're right, the jury members were falling asleep because this was a slam dunk.
1:44:03 Stephanie Harlowe? Yeah, because this wasn't the competency hearing. The competency hearing had already happened. He was now on trial for what he did, yeah.
1:44:09 Derrick Levasseur? We know that he took her out of the house. We know that he brought her up to this camp. We know that they were out there for nine months. We know he brought her back down to the, to the town. We know he was traveling back and forth from California with her. We know all that, right? So, that wasn't up for debate. The trial went forward, jury decided on a guilty verdict day one because that wasn't in question. They might have tried some tricks and techniques to throw some, you know, some things in there that may have complicated it a little bit, but this was as good as a slam dunk as you get in this type of setting. Nobody was disputing whether he was the guy or not. I know there was some arguments over whether she wanted to be there or not. Give me a break. No shot. No
1:44:49 Derrick Levasseur? shot. Not everybody is as insane as you are. There was a good jury panel up there and like she said, some of them have already, had already decided that he was guilty and that's because most of the population was on board with that. Would have been hard to find 12 people who did not think he was guilty.
1:45:06 Stephanie Harlowe? In fact, I think they would have had a harder, or... Like that the prosecution might have had a harder time of it outside of Utah where the matter of religion would not have been.
1:45:14 Derrick Levasseur? You might be right.
1:45:15 Stephanie Harlowe? Yeah.
1:45:15 Derrick Levasseur? You might be right.
1:45:16 Stephanie Harlowe? She's like not here. They couldn't do it here.
1:45:18 Derrick Levasseur? More forgiving out there.
1:45:19 Stephanie Harlowe? Yeah, so.
1:45:20 Derrick Levasseur? Put him up in Boston or New York.
1:45:22 Stephanie Harlowe? Yeah, and I mean, listen, like.
1:45:24 Derrick Levasseur? Game over.
1:45:24 Stephanie Harlowe? I, I once again acknowledge that as a child Rebecca Woodridge was a victim of Brian David Mitchell's.
1:45:30 Derrick Levasseur? No doubt, no doubt.
1:45:31 Stephanie Harlowe? Claims that she was.
1:45:32 Derrick Levasseur? No doubt, two different things.
1:45:34 Stephanie Harlowe? He always denied it, by the way. He always denied it.
1:45:37 Derrick Levasseur? Are you telling me that he didn't admit to committing the crime? That this pedophile didn't admit to being a pedophile?
1:45:43 Stephanie Harlowe? He told the police she was lying.
1:45:44 Derrick Levasseur? What a shocker.
1:45:44 Stephanie Harlowe? And she still came out as an adult woman that many years later to stand in defense of him and.
1:45:50 Derrick Levasseur? That just shows you the power of Brian David Mitchell.
1:45:52 Stephanie Harlowe? Yeah, I mean, I.
1:45:53 Derrick Levasseur? The manipulation power that he has over these people.
1:45:56 Stephanie Harlowe? Suppose, but.
1:45:57 Derrick Levasseur? No, overall, she, her observations to her credit are spot on. As soon as he was in that box and he was on trial for this, it was game over.
1:46:06 Stephanie Harlowe? Yeah, the jury was probably like, why are we here?
1:46:08 Derrick Levasseur? Yeah, let's just get this over with. Can we just vote now?
1:46:10 Stephanie Harlowe? What's the question?
1:46:11 Derrick Levasseur? Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, nobody was, nobody was questioning whether or not he was responsible for this.
1:46:16 Stephanie Harlowe? Rebecca said she didn't condone what he did. Um, she said, you know, I'm, in, I guess in her credit, she said, I'm glad that Elizabeth got the justice, but you can also hear her saying like the smarts are very connected. And it's like, you know, you're kind of also just.
1:46:31 Derrick Levasseur? Evil smarts.
1:46:31 Stephanie Harlowe? You're kind of dismissing the fact of what happened to this 14 year old girl.
1:46:35 Derrick Levasseur? Smarts who left their window unlocked and your dad just decided to walk in.
1:46:39 Stephanie Harlowe? Yeah, so she said, Rebecca said it was in her nature to forgive him for what he did to her.
1:46:46 Derrick Levasseur? Good for her. I'm happy for her.
1:46:47 Stephanie Harlowe? That is her personal choice. Never should have happened to her. She should have never been in this life because clearly whatever happened to you as a kid had a long lasting impact on your mental health for you to stand in public, public support of this person.
1:47:05 Derrick Levasseur? This was a while ago and I, and I know I'm giving her a hard time right now, but I will say, and, and thank you for kind of indirectly reminding me of it. She is a victim as well. And I truly hope that since this interview. Because he's behind bars, she has been able to get the help that she needs and heal from this and actually see what was going on here. That's what I hope.
1:47:26 Stephanie Harlowe? Well, shortly after Mitchell was sentenced to life in prison, he signed over his power of attorney to Rebecca, and she made a promise to him to get his things from the Salt Lake City Police, who'd had his possessions and evidence since he was arrested in 2003. Rebecca said that Mitchell had told her to keep his personal items safe, and she had kept in contact with him since he was put in prison.
1:47:47 Derrick Levasseur? I'll take them. I have some things I'd do with them.
1:47:50 Stephanie Harlowe? Rebecca was still calling him and talking to him and writing to him after he went to prison for this. In 2013, Rebecca began to fight with the police to retrieve the belongings, telling the media that she was getting the runaround. She said that although she was getting weary of getting no answers from the police, she intended to keep her promise that she made to Brian David Mitchell, saying, quote, "I'll die trying. I won't give up. I'm not the type to quit," end quote. Yeah, that's a hard dynamic to understand, and we hope you're doing well, Rebecca.
1:48:21 Derrick Levasseur? And I truly mean that, by the way. I mean, clearly, she's been really twisted up, and I hope that with that separation, there's been time for healing.
1:48:29 Stephanie Harlowe? So Brian David Mitchell was transferred to a federal facility in Tucson, Arizona, for inmates with high security requirements. Sometime in 2023, he was transferred again to the United States Penitentiary in Indiana. In 2025, it was reported that Mitchell was transferred out of that facility after being attacked multiple times by other prisoners. Go other prisoners, yeah, keep it up.
1:48:49 Derrick Levasseur? I was just about to say, I didn't know if he was still alive, and I, literally, before you read that statement, I was about to say, I'm surprised that he hasn't been severely injured or killed in prison, based on these circumstances. And I'm not saying, you know, you said, "Go prisoners," I'm kind of there with you, to be honest, but I am not condoning violence, but also not going to, like, fight to protect Brian David Mitchell either.
1:49:14 Stephanie Harlowe? Yes, he's been attacked when he's been let around the general population, but he's been protected as well in prison.
1:49:19 Derrick Levasseur? They have to. They'll kill him.
1:49:21 Stephanie Harlowe? And he's, you know, he makes a very great concerted effort of living a healthy lifestyle, so he'll probably live longer than any of us.
1:49:28 Derrick Levasseur? That's insane. Yeah, I'm shocked.
1:49:30 Stephanie Harlowe? As of now, it's believed that Mitchell is at the Federal Correctional Institution in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania. So that's it for him. But in July of 2018, the Utah Board of Pardons and Paroles denied Wanda Barzee's parole. They kept up her original release date of January 29, 2024, but then a few months later, for some reason, the board reversed that decision and they announced that Barzee would be released from prison eight days later.
1:49:58 Speaker 07 I only found out shortly before everybody else did. And yes, it was a big shock. I mean, only months ago, I was on my way to a parole hearing when I was told that she would never be let out until 2024. I do believe she is a threat. She is a woman who had six children, and yet could co-conspire to kidnap a 14-year-old girl and not only sit next to her while being raped, but encourage her husband to continue to rape me. So do I believe that she is dangerous? Yes. But not just to me. I believe that she is a danger and a threat to any vulnerable
1:50:40 Speaker 07 person in our community, which is why our community should be worried. Wanda Barzee saw me as her slave. She called me her handmaiden, and she never hesitated to let her displeasure with me be known. So there were times when, yes, absolutely, she was manipulated by Mitchell. But she, in her own right, abused me just as much as he did. I think for me, having my own children has really helped me realize what my own mother went through and how difficult that was for her. And it's also taught me that being a mother doesn't just necessarily mean pushing,
1:51:21 Speaker 07 physically pushing, a child out of your body. It means loving someone so much that you'd do anything for them in the world and being there for them. Every second of every day, no matter what. And this woman, Wanda Barzee, despite having physically birthed six children, she was no mother. And I think that's what makes it all the worse to me.
1:51:44 Derrick Levasseur? Very well said. And I think she makes the point there that it's not only that she was a danger to Elizabeth at the time, but anybody who's able to make these types of decisions and stand by why this is occurring is a danger to society, a danger to the community. Shame on the parole board for letting her out early.
1:52:00 Stephanie Harlowe? I mean, she should have never been let out, in my opinion.
1:52:02 Derrick Levasseur? I agree. She should have been life in prison as well. But based on the stipulations, at minimum, it should have been January of 2024, not a day early.
1:52:10 Stephanie Harlowe? Yeah. And I mean, if we do get a chance to talk to Elizabeth, I do want to ask her what her stance is on Wanda Barzee as far as, you know, was she like just helplessly mentally ill? Or do you think, you know, she was just as bad as Mitchell and should have faced life in prison as he should have? Because I think that...
1:52:29 Derrick Levasseur? Yeah. And speaking of that, we are going to be speaking with Elizabeth next week. So if you have any questions, comments you want to make, you can leave them down in the comments section below on YouTube or again, leave a review, leave a comment there on Spotify or Apple and we'll make sure that we try to put some together and compile them so we can ask those questions with as much time as we have with Elizabeth.
1:52:48 Stephanie Harlowe? I agree with Elizabeth being upset when Wanda Barzee was let out because in her opinion and in her mind, and I think it was proven, that Wanda Barzee was dangerous. Even if she was mentally ill and she could be manipulated to that extent, she's still dangerous. And as, you know, kind of proof of that, on September 18th, 2018, Wanda Barzee was released after 15 years in prison. The terms of her release were that she had to not contact Elizabeth or the Smart family. She had to register as a sex offender and she had to continue undergoing mental health treatment. Now, this past May, this past May, okay?
1:53:28 Stephanie Harlowe? So I believe it would have been May of 2025, Wanda Barzee was arrested for violating her terms of parole.
1:53:35 Speaker 07 Barzee, a convicted felon, is not supposed to be in your protected areas where children gather like schools, daycares and parks.
1:53:44 Speaker 07 Springtime draws friends and families outside. But recently, someone who by law is not supposed to come to the park was roaming around. And I definitely don't love the fact that I could just stumble upon her. Salt Lake City Police arrested 79-year-old Wanda Barzee. She, along with her husband Brian Mitchell, kidnapped Elizabeth Smart 22 years ago. I didn't even know that she was out. I kind of assumed that she was still in prison. According to arresting documents, Barzee went to Liberty Park on April 9th because, quote, "She was commanded to by the Lord." Police say she admitted to sitting on benches and feeding ducks and also went to Sugar House Park. It makes you wonder what else she's thinking.
1:54:27 Speaker 07 KSL legal analyst Greg Scordish is well acquainted with Barzee. He served as Smart's attorney all those years ago.
1:54:34 Speaker 03 Violation of the Sex Offender Registry is a crime all by itself. And the state could prosecute that based on her conduct.
1:54:42 Speaker 07 Police say they became aware of Barzee's violation on Wednesday and quickly started an investigation. She shouldn't be at the park. And she may be incarcerated or hospitalized to prevent her from going there. Barzee was arrested yesterday at her home near Navajo Street and 900 South. It makes me more concerned for people whose kids come out in the park.
1:55:02 Stephanie Harlowe? Now, do I think it's an issue that Wanda Barzee is at the park feeding ducks? Normally, I would say no. But the fact that when she's arrested, and she's asked why she was there, knowing that, given the terms of her parole, she's not supposed to be there, she said, "God told her to." That's my issue. You are not mentally well.
1:55:21 Derrick Levasseur? She's not rehabilitated.
1:55:22 Stephanie Harlowe? She can't even say like, "Oh, I just went to the park because I wanted to feed the ducks." Like, "Yeah, I shouldn't have. My bad. I take accountability. God told me to." So either A, she's actually hearing the voice of who she believes to be God telling her to do things, which at that point, what the hell else is this voice that is supposed to be God telling her to do? Or what else is it going to tell her to do? Or she has a complete lack of accountability, cannot ever put aside anything to say like, "Yeah, I made a mistake. I was wrong." And, and you're the person that allowed a 14-year-old girl to be raped repeatedly every single day for nine months, and you shouldn't be walking amongst us, period. So, that's where we are with these two people. She's back out on
1:56:06 Stephanie Harlowe? the streets, by the way. She's not behind bars, so.
1:56:09 Derrick Levasseur? Which is terrifying, because the right person gets to her, she'll be right back to her old antics. So hopefully, hopefully, law enforcement is keeping an eye on her. Overall, Brian David Mitchell, right where he needs to be. You know, I'm not even going to spend too much time on him. We've talked about him enough. He, we don't need to ever talk about him again. What I'm going to focus on is Elizabeth. What she has gone through, what she has experienced, and how she's turned this horrific situation into something that can help others is incredible. It's inspiring. There's just good people in the world, and Elizabeth is one of them. And, and that video that you showed a little while ago, where she took a moment of her time, her moment to highlight another victim, just says everything you need to know about her. If that's the only thing you take from this. And I'm glad to see that she's still using her platform to help others. And she has a beautiful family
1:56:54 Derrick Levasseur? now that she loves deeply. And I've had multiple conversations with her about her family while we were sitting around on set. And just an incredible person. And I'm glad we got to go over this, because I didn't know the depth of this. And, you know, it just makes me respect, admire her even more. So, overall, good case and to cover, because I do think there's things we can all learn from it. Just, you know, make sure you know who's going in and out of your house, and make sure you're doing everything you can to protect what you have and your place of peace. And alarm systems, security cameras, lock those doors. You don't want to create a soft target. You never know when someone's going to choose you. All you can do is take those defensive measures to try, to try and prevent it as much as you can. And there's nothing that's guaranteed, but there are ways to increase the odds that you will be safe.
1:57:40 Stephanie Harlowe? Yeah, absolutely. And like I said, you know, I have a lot of things that I'd want to ask Elizabeth and kind of get her perspective on because that is the most important perspective to get. So hopefully she will be able to answer those. And I think that at the end of the day, Elizabeth has turned something that could have been really, I mean, she could have turned into somebody like Rebecca Woodridge, honestly, who clearly hasn't gotten the clarity of mind and soul that she needed to get to go on and live a healthy life. And Elizabeth really, I don't know if she ever lost that, you know, she never let this break her, even though I think it would have broken most of us.
1:58:24 Stephanie Harlowe? And, uh, and I think that is such a huge sign of how strong she was mentally, how smart she was, how mature she was at the age of 14, even though she was very sheltered. And, you know, she didn't really have a huge understanding of the world and how things worked at that time. But she still had enough sense of mind to know, this shouldn't be happening to me. I'm going to get out of here no matter what. I'm not going to let this break me because there's a life to be lived after this. And we're proud of her and we admire her. So.
1:58:56 Derrick Levasseur? 100%. We appreciate you guys being with us. We're gonna have a couple of small announcements here. One's gonna pay off for you. So the first one, again, Patreon, if you want to go check it out, you can. And then the second announcement is gonna be for the people who stayed till the end of this episode. Because not everybody does. Some people have already checked out. Some people have already gone on to do what they gotta do with the day and that's cool. But for the people who stuck around, if you go in our description box right now, there is a, uh, a document. There is a Google Doc. And it's for two free Crime Con tickets. All you gotta do is fill out the Google Doc. We're gonna go through it. We're gonna randomly select two people or select one person who's gonna get two tickets. Crime Con's not cheap, unfortunately.
1:59:37 Derrick Levasseur? It's not an inexpensive thing. It's definitely worth it, but some people just can't afford it. And we want to help you guys out with that. So Stephanie and I are gonna provide two tickets. This is our first Crime Con giveaway of the year. We may do another one, we may not. We'll see, but if you're interested in going to Crime Con, fill out the document and we are going to select one person for the two tickets. Please, if you're gonna apply, make sure that you're capable of going. It is in Las Vegas this year. It's at the end of May and um, you know, you're gonna have to pay for your travel and hotel to get out there, but you will have two free passes to get you into the event. And obviously, we will meet you. Last year's event, we had four people come from the giveaways. We were able to sit down and meet with all of them and actually had some drinks
2:00:23 Derrick Levasseur? uh, at night. It was a great time and we're looking forward to doing it again. So, if you made it to the end of the video or the audio, good job. Go click that Google Doc, sign up and uh, we'll, we'll announce the winners relatively soon because Crime Con's coming fast. Any final words from you, Stephanie?
2:00:39 Stephanie Harlowe? No, that's it. Let's uh, let's wrap this up.
2:00:42 Derrick Levasseur? Wrap this bad boy up. Guys, we appreciate you being here as always. Until next time, stay safe out there. We'll see you soon.
2:00:47 Stephanie Harlowe? Bye.
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