S3 Ep380: Elizabeth Smart | The False Prophet (Part 2)

In 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. TryFUM.com - Use code CRIMEWEEKLY for a FREE gift with your Journey Pack!2. https://www. FactorMeals.com/CrimeWeekly50Off - Get 50% off and FREE breakfast for a year!

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:12Stephanie Harlowe?

  Hello, everybody. Welcome back to Crime Weekly. I'm Stephanie Harlow.

• 0:15Derrick Levasseur?

  And I'm Derrick Levasseur.

• 0:17Stephanie Harlowe?

  So this is going to be a long episode as it is, but I have something I want to say to all of you before we get in. So we're just going to get into it. So first of all, I was a little bit disappointed, I'll be honest. A little bit disappointed to see some of the comments from part one when it came to the LDS Church. And not because of your criticism of the LDS Church, because it's valid. And if, I feel like if you guys knew me and you'd followed me, especially in my own channel, you know how critical I have been of the LDS Church when it comes to cases like Lori Vallow and Ruby Frankie and all of these. I've been very critical, but the way that this, this series was unfolding was very intentional.

• 0:58Stephanie Harlowe?

  So for instance, there's a comment, "You're being way too nice to the LDS Church. It's incredibly corrupt, racist, sexist, much more. It's incredibly harmful. You don't need to dance around the flaws because you're afraid of insulting people." Stop. When have you ever known me to be afraid of insulting people if it's the truth? It's not. So it was very important for me, and I think for, once again, the storytelling aspect of this, and how important it is to the case, to, in part one, show the LDS Church at its foundation, right? Not as an institution across all of history, but as a belief system as it was lived by the Smart Family, okay? Their faith emphasized charity, trust, compassion, and those values shaped their decisions in ways that really mattered to this case.

• 1:43Stephanie Harlowe?

  Now, this does not mean that the LDS Church has not functioned harmfully at many times in history, but that was not the question we were answering in part one. And once again, I thought I was very clear about that. So there's good people in the world and there's bad people in the world. And those people are going to take things that they're taught by a religion, or an education system, or their parents, and they're going to do different things with what they're taught. They're going to pervert them, use them to their benefit, use them in a bad or harmful way, or they're going to internalize the good parts of what the LDS church taught in a good way, or in a harmful way in this case, because the Smart family was like, hey, we're going to give this guy a chance, and it ended

• 2:28Stephanie Harlowe?

  up exposing their child to a predator. Now, with that being said, I hope you, in the future, and in this series, give me the opportunity to present the case into you in a way that that really is going to like unfold, instead of coming out in just a very non-gray area way and being like, the LDS church is terrible, it sucks. That's not what this is about. It's not what this is about. Because although they shared the same religion, lived in the same state, and moved within the same broad cultural orbit, Elizabeth Smart and her captor, Brian Mitchell, they may as well have lived on different planets. Okay, so where Elizabeth's childhood was defined by structure, stability, and faith

• 3:13Stephanie Harlowe?

  rooted in family and community, Brian Mitchell's was marked by alienation, rigidity, and a growing sense of superiority that steadily isolated him from the people around him. So they existed under the same religious umbrella, but they experienced it and behaved within it in fundamentally different ways. So Elizabeth and her family, they kind of used the LDS church as a source of belonging and moral guidance. Brian Mitchell, he looked at it as something to be challenged, reshaped, and weaponized. And long before their paths crossed, Brian Mitchell's life was already moving in a direction that would place him at odds, not just with society, but with reality itself. So today, we are diving deep

• 3:56Stephanie Harlowe?

  into the background of Brian David Mitchell, the man responsible for Elizabeth Smart's captivity and abuse, the monster who didn't just take her freedom, but attempted to dismantle her sense of self and faith. And this is where we're going to get into the darker side of the LDS church. It would not have been... Proper or or really made any any point to kind of dismantle the LDS church from the inside out in part one because the smart family did not use the church in that way. They just tried to do the right thing like so many people do and there's so many people who don't as with I think any you know religion probably there's people that wield it in

• 4:35Stephanie Harlowe?

  in different ways so that's where we're going to kind of delve into and like I'm gonna warn you it gets dark okay it gets really dark like this guy was messed up and the circles in which he kind of lived and existed were messed up and I'm going to be very very clear very concise and factual about how the LDS church played its part in allowing him to continue in the way he did because there were red flags there was red flags all over the place so here's where we kind of look at the the negative darker side of the LDS church so there was no blind praise there was no um you know like I'm about to

• 5:18Stephanie Harlowe?

  convert here it was it was for the storytelling aspect of that part one we were coming from Elizabeth and her family's perspective we were living in their world which yes understandably and factually is not the only world within which the LDS church functions so what do you think Derek?

• 5:36Derrick Levasseur?

  I mean overall we talked about this before we hopped on camera and I think I think our audience falls into a few different categories I think the majority 95% of the people when they disagree with us it's it's it's warranted they'll have a just a difference of opinion on how we feel about a certain topic or person all good and then there's a small group of people who are new and coming over to the channel for the first time which welcome we're glad to have you who don't necessarily understand our process and how we conduct our our series and how you start from the foundational perspective including in this series where for me I completely got it you were explaining the perspective of the smarts and how they viewed the religion and that's how maybe as good people they

• 6:21Derrick Levasseur?

  were susceptible to something like this because they weren't necessarily using it the way other people now view the LDS religion so I got it we were looking at it from the shoes of the victims and so then there's that small group less than 1% where they will watch an episode not only on crime weekly but everywhere and they look for one thing To complain about and we know this to be true. I put it on my social media, there were, there was a person who was upset with the way we were belittling BTK. So that just proved my point and solidified my belief that no matter what you do, no matter what you say, there will be one or two people out of a couple hundred thousand who will say something just to

• 7:04Derrick Levasseur?

  get a rise out of us and we're passionate about this, you know, we, we, we really take these things seriously for different reasons, you know, Stephanie's researching and writing these. I'm trying to convey information to you guys to protect you going forward. We're trying to educate and inform and learn from these tragedies. So when someone pushes back on it, it's human nature to feel something about it. And my personal opinion to Stephanie was like, don't even address it. It's like one person, but she's also the one writing it and trying to tell you guys this story in a way where it's captivating and different and it gives you a unique perspective that you're not going to get anywhere else. So overall.

• 7:37Stephanie Harlowe?

  And you understand, yeah.

• 7:38Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah.

• 7:39Stephanie Harlowe?

  You understand what Elizabeth and her family, because like I said, Elizabeth's family got criticism. Like, how could you let this man? And so it's, that is a hard thing to understand. So I had to really like look into it and kind of do my research to figure out.

• 7:52Derrick Levasseur?

  In spite of how you personally feel.

• 7:53Stephanie Harlowe?

  In spite of how I personally feel.

• 7:55Derrick Levasseur?

  Which is, which is a testament to you.

• 7:56Stephanie Harlowe?

  I have condemned the LDS church and the FLDS church on multiple occasions, in multiple cases, on multiple videos. We've done it together. So I hope that one day I will earn your trust enough to know that the, the whole story will unfold and the way it unfolds and, and every dark corner will be illuminated. So should we dive in?

• 8:17Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, absolutely. I, you gave it more than enough time. Let's dive in.

• 8:21Stephanie Harlowe?

  All right, so what follows is a dark examination of Brian Mitchell's life, his childhood, his relationships, and the belief system he eventually built around himself. And Derek, you're going to have, I think we're going to have a little bit of fun with this one because sometimes these people, like the, the kinds of people, you know, we talk about BTK and stuff and. There's gonna be somebody out there who's mad at us for making the LDS church sound too nice and there'll be people out there who are like, "You were too hard on Brian David Mitchell and we can't win," but this guy was action-packed with issues. So, Brian David Mitchell was born on October 18th, 1953, to his parents Irene and Cheryl Mitchell. He was the third of six children and Brian grew up in the Lower Parley's Canyon area of Salt Lake City. And

• 9:04Stephanie Harlowe?

  once again, I go deep, the symbolism of that was not lost on me. Elizabeth Smart grew up in Federal Hills. Elevated, insulated. Mitchell grew up in a neighborhood that was geographically set down in a canyon. The Lower Parley's Canyon, at that time especially, it held what people called transitional neighborhoods. So, the kinds of places where people would pass through, not where families settled for generations or bought their forever homes. His mother Irene was a high school English teacher and she was known to be a very gentle woman and a doting mother. Some might say that Irene was almost too forgiving when it came to her children, especially Brian. But Brian's father Cheryl Mitchell is the real piece of work in this

• 9:47Stephanie Harlowe?

  childhood story. By the time his son would go on trial, Cheryl was 87 years old, but still spry enough to give all his opinions on the situation. A situation that some might argue he had a hand in creating. So, when Cheryl was asked where his son had gone wrong, he said that the problems with Brian had started before birth, stating, "There are a whole series of alienation incidents from the time he was probably in the womb," end quote. According to Cheryl, he'd been out deer hunting when his wife Irene went into labor with Brian and she had resented him for this and that resentment had built up and transferred to their son in utero. Cheryl said that Brian was constantly oppositional, he hated being disciplined, and he would intentionally cause chaos within his own

• 10:32Stephanie Harlowe?

  home and family. Cheryl said, "I didn't have too much connection with him and maybe that's the trouble. He sort of isolated himself in his own little world, you know? He wasn't very responsive to me or my instruction or correction. There was a chronic, deep-seated craving for attention, for an identity. Even negative attention was better than none, as far as he was concerned," end quote. So, like most other little boys at the time, Brian played Little League, he was active in Cub Scouts, but there was something darker brewing beneath the surface. When he was eight, Brian got into trouble for playing doctor with another kid in the neighborhood and Cheryl decided to teach him a lesson, you know, about him doing this. And I guess about the human body by forcing little Brian to look at detailed pictures

• 11:14Stephanie Harlowe?

  of male and female genitalia, something he later said he regretted doing. By the age of 10, Brian was torturing the rest of his family, according to Cheryl. He said Brian was always teasing his mother and siblings and causing turmoil in the house. And while Brian's brothers and sisters do remember some of this, with his younger sister Lisa stating, quote, "He drew a lot of attention, a lot of drama by acting out and being non-compliant and breaking the rules and causing trouble," end quote. They also did remember Brian as being bright and energetic. Lisa would later testify that Brian had helped her learn to ride a bike. She said he was mischievous and he liked to tease, but in her opinion, was never malicious. Brian's brother Tim, who was six years younger than Brian, he

• 11:55Stephanie Harlowe?

  said that Brian was an intelligent and resourceful big brother who built model airplanes, devised flying rockets, and had dreams of building a roller coaster in their backyard. Tim remembered one incident where Brian had created a hot air balloon using some cloth and an actual burning flame, and it did exactly what it was supposed to do. It took off into the air, but unfortunately it landed on the roof of the house and it caught it on fire. Now...

• 12:20Derrick Levasseur?

  Sounds like something I would do.

• 12:22Stephanie Harlowe?

  I know. So, a normal boy in some ways, right? And you have to wonder, was there really trouble brewing, or was this kind of his father putting pressure on him and making him feel bad for just being like naturally, you know, adventurous and energetic and kind of getting into trouble like little kids do? I think a little bit of both, to be honest.

• 12:43Derrick Levasseur?

  You're probably not wrong.

• 12:44Stephanie Harlowe?

  So, Brian's father Cheryl acknowledged that Brian was smart. He said, quote, "Brian is a very intelligent person. He used that to his full extent in his harassment of other children and my wife," end quote. So apparently Brian would do weird things, like he would turn the hot water on in the bathroom to create a steam bath, and he would mess around in the kitchen all the time concocting things. His brother Tim Mitchell said that Brian was always doing one of his projects, and he said, quote, "I think when he's got his mind made up to do some project he wanted to do, he would be going about that, sometimes working all day long. Sometimes my mom would come out..." And I don't know what caused that conflict. One time he built a pulley system in the backyard where you would go from one end to the other on a tree, but somehow it would come into conflict.

• 13:27Stephanie Harlowe?

  He was sometimes teasing, teasing me or my sister Lori, and it kind of escalated somehow. End quote. Now, Brian's brother Tim would also testify about how when he was a child, Brian had set up boards and sheets in the backyard to create a nudist colony. And he remembered Brian and one of his sisters laying out in the yard, sunbathing without any clothes on. So, like I said, some of this is like, yeah, it's just a normal kid. He's building pulleys and making, you know, hot air balloons. And he's kind of getting in trouble because he's so energetic and his parents just don't have the time or energy for it. And they're impatient. But now it's like you're setting up a nudist colony in your backyard. And you and your little sister are laying out there without clothes on. Kind of weird.

• 14:11Derrick Levasseur?

  Not what I would do. Not what I would do.

• 14:13Stephanie Harlowe?

  Right, that's what I'm kind of wondering. Like, there's curiosity as a young boy, but now we've got Brian playing doctor with a neighborhood kid. His father showing him naked bodies in books when he's probably too young for that. He's trying to get his sister naked and lay out in the backyard. Probably not normal there.

• 14:31Derrick Levasseur?

  Some of it, some of it in the beginning could be innocent, but also, yeah, as parents and everyone around, you have to start thinking about where this could potentially lead. I think that's fair. Although, we are the undercover pineapple channel, so people are judging us too.

• 14:46Stephanie Harlowe?

  But we're not actually. That was just an innocent naive mistake.

• 14:50Derrick Levasseur?

  Ask the internet. They disagree with you.

• 14:53Stephanie Harlowe?

  Oh, well, good thing you can't believe everything you read on the internet.

• 14:56Derrick Levasseur?

  Yes.

• 14:57Stephanie Harlowe?

  So, Brian's father Cheryl, he also had a big problem with something that Brian would frequently do. So Cheryl would be driving the car. And then when he would come to stop at a red light, Brian would open the door and run away. And then, you know, Cheryl would have to chase him, get him back in the car, bring him home. So one time when Brian was 12, Cheryl claims he lost patience with him. And he left him in the Rose Park neighborhood of Salt Lake City to find his own way home. And Cheryl kind of acted like he was going to be so scared. He was like, hi, Jill, Brian, find your own way home. Well, Brian, he didn't go home right away. He instead helped a Japanese tourist take a photo at the state Capitol. This tourist paid him money for his help. And then with that money, Brian enjoyed a double feature at the movie theater. And he didn't arrive home until after dark.

• 15:39Stephanie Harlowe?

  And his father Cheryl said, quote, "That was typical of Brian. He was smart. He said, I'm gonna make them worry about me. I'm going to stay away all day." End quote.

• 15:47Derrick Levasseur?

  That is definitely something I would do.

• 15:50Stephanie Harlowe?

  Right? Well, it's kind of like Cheryl's like, "I'll show you." And Brian's like, "I'll show you, man." Like, you know?

• 15:55Derrick Levasseur?

  Yep.

• 15:56Stephanie Harlowe?

  So the Mitchells' neighbors remembered the family as Mormon, frugal, and a little weird. All six of the kids were born at home, not in a hospital, and their parents served them only whole wheat bread, steamed vegetables, and other various healthy foods. Brian's cousin, Bill Christensen, remembered that when the Mitchell cousins came over to his house for dinner, they would devour plates of beef. He said it seemed as if they were starving for meat. I also want to point out that although the Mitchells were Mormon and Brian grew up in that environment, his brother Kevin would later say that Brian had never shown much interest in religion as a child. Which is going to be interesting, considering how he will really lean into being a Mormon and being a part of the LDS church when he gets older.

• 16:39Stephanie Harlowe?

  Decades later, Brian's actually gonna write a book about his beliefs and philosophies, and this may have been something he learned from his father Cheryl, who was also a writer. Actually, I take that back. At first Cheryl Mitchell was a social worker, which, thinking about what we know about him, and I'm gonna tell you about him, is terrifying. But then one day Cheryl told his wife Irene, "Yeah, I don't wanna work anymore. I actually just wanna write all day because I'm an amazing writer." And in his writings, Cheryl represented himself as a divine emissary. He also admitted to enjoying pornography, being a neighborhood voyeur, and reaching into young girls' panties. That's what Brian Mitchell's father Cheryl Mitchell wrote about and talked about and admitted to, without seeming to find a problem with it.

• 17:23Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah. Well, there is a problem there. I mean, that's, I'm, no comment.

• 17:28Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah. Well, we'll get there, cuz it's gonna get worse. So- During a full psychological evaluation, which would be done on Brian Mitchell after his arrest, Cheryl was asked by an evaluator what the best two ideas in his book were. And he said, quote, and this is Cheryl's book, not Brian Mitchell's book. Cheryl read Brian Mitchell's book and he was like, "The ideas are pedantic, but the writing is very good. He must have gotten that from me." So this is Cheryl's book he's being asked about and he responded, quote, "The primary idea is very pragmatic idea that deals with nutrition. The second, the major theme is on reproduction. Our continuity depends on the racist reproduction. Those two things are the root of everything." End quote. So Cheryl also talked about how his father and Brian's grandfather, he said that his

• 18:13Stephanie Harlowe?

  father and Brian's grandfather was obsessively litigious and had spent some time at the Utah State Hospital for mental health treatment. So, looks like it kind of runs in the family, probably the male side of the family. Now, after Brian's arrest, Cheryl talked to anyone who would listen about how messed up his son was. And the Salt Lake Tribune stated, quote, "Cheryl Mitchell denies allegations that he physically abused his wife, but said, 'I forced the issue of sex once in a while, which prompted Irene to leave a poster in the master bedroom accusing him of rape.'" End quote. Now, keep in mind, this is the same man, Cheryl Mitchell, who in 2003 is going to stand in a courtroom in front of a judge and say with a straight face that his son deserved leniency for treating Elizabeth Smart so well during her nine months of captivity.

• 18:57Stephanie Harlowe?

  Now, despite his intelligence, Brian did not do well during his school years. He was sent to detention multiple times. He started smoking marijuana and his grades plummeted. His mother Irene said that Brian was a darling boy, but she remembered him staying up all night, reading and getting in trouble for skipping school. In 1970, when Brian was 15, he was referred to a juvenile court after he exposed himself to a neighborhood girl who was just four years old. The four-year-old told her father that Brian had lured her into his home and asked her to touch his genitals.

• 19:31Stephanie Harlowe?

  Brian's father Cheryl Mitchell claimed that this four-year-old girl's father overreacted and he just yanked Brian into juvenile court for no reason. Brian was given a psychiatric evaluation and his mother later said that the psychiatrist had told her that when a child has parents pulling him in two different directions, he tends to get into power and manipulation. Irene said that she and her husband Cheryl had very different ideas about how to discipline a child and she said she agreed with the psychiatrist saying, quote, "I feel that was what happened to Brian," end quote. That's not all that happened to Brian. Lots of stuff happened to Brian, but the whole point is we're going to be asked a question when Brian Mitchell gets caught for what he did to Elizabeth Smart and his lawyers

• 20:13Stephanie Harlowe?

  are going to try to make it seem like he's almost in like a religious psychosis, like he's lost his mind, he's mentally ill. But we're going to hear from people all throughout his life, family members, brothers, sisters, friends, coworkers, wives, ex-wives, children of these wives and ex-wives. It wasn't that Brian was crazy. He was pretending to be something in order to do what he wanted to do, in order to have control, in order to manipulate people. So Cheryl Mitchell was certainly an authoritarian-type parent, but as we will see when it comes to Brian's mother Irene Mitchell, she was far too lax when it came to her kids. She would give Brian chance after chance, she would enable him at every turn, even

• 20:54Stephanie Harlowe?

  into adulthood, and she would let him walk all over her for her entire life until she's, you know, into her senior citizen age. It's really actually sad. So Dr. Tanya Thomas, she worked with Brian between July and September of 1970, and this was when he was, you know, an older teenager after he'd been, you know, put into juvenile court for what he did to that four-year-old girl. And she described young Brian as, quote, "bright, relates with an air of intellectual superiority," end quote. She also said that he was cynical and dismissive of what he called his siblings artifice. And that's a word that suggests Brian believed the people around him were fake. Performative and morally hollow while he alone saw the truth, he alone saw through

• 21:39Stephanie Harlowe?

  the illusion. All of this throws up red flags for what Brian David Mitchell would become in the future. It shows early contempt and a belief that others were morally or spiritually inferior. This isn't just a character note, by the way, it's early evidence of how Mitchell saw the world. He wasn't simply troubled or rebellious. Brian already viewed other people as pretenders who were morally compromised and he saw himself as exempt. He was exempt from or above societal norms that were accepted by other people. This can become especially dangerous when paired with extreme religious beliefs and delusions. Dr. Thomas also observed that Brian, quote, "knows psychological vulnerabilities of others and derives pleasure from exploiting them, externalizes blame to others," end quote.

• 22:22Stephanie Harlowe?

  She concluded that Brian Mitchell was very alienated and used his intellect to frighten and humiliate others. Psychological testing yielded a profile of a person who was highly mature but highly antisocial. So, once again, this is, he's 15, 16, 17. At this point, Brian Mitchell was not showing any signs of pathological paranoia or other signs of psychosis. And I'm going to keep saying this as we go through because, once again, his lawyers are going to argue, well, he's been crazy, he's mentally ill, he has a history of mental illness.

• 22:53Derrick Levasseur?

  Clearly, that's not the case. It's almost like when you buy a house, you know, you buy the house, you get your inspection report done, three months later, you have a major issue with the house and insurance wants to push back on you and say, oh, it's probably been there for a long period of time. Well, that's when you go back to the inspection report that was just conducted where they can clearly see there were no issues until, you know, maybe a major winter storm just happened and it punched a hole in your roof. Just saying, not saying that's me or anything, but maybe it is.

• 23:23Stephanie Harlowe?

  Kind of got to look at the history and the evidence, yeah. And what's happening with Brian is more kind of explained by maybe a personality disorder rather than a mental illness. So, why does that come into play when you're talking about legal ramifications? We've talked about this before. Because a mental illness is something where somebody can say, I didn't know the difference between right and wrong, I didn't know what I was doing. A personality disorder is This is just how they are and it can't be really treated. So it's not that they didn't know the difference between right and wrong. He didn't, he didn't care. He didn't care and he used his intelligence and his really almost innate ability to manipulate people and get reactions out of them, push their buttons to his benefit to get what he wanted.

• 24:07Stephanie Harlowe?

  And once again, because we have had an issue with this in the past, I'm talking about a personality disorder that is destructive, like, you know, psychopath or narcissistic personality tendencies, things like that, not something that is, you know, more treatable, like borderline or something like that. I'm talking about in the same way. Was it BTK that we were talking about that with?

• 24:28Derrick Levasseur?

  I can't even remember the case, but it was one case where we had tried to break down different personality disorders and some people were like, oh, you know.

• 24:35Stephanie Harlowe?

  I think it was BTK, yeah.

• 24:36Derrick Levasseur?

  There is, there is treatment for it.

• 24:38Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yes, for something like what we're talking about with Brian Mitchell and, and people who become like serial killers, when you're seeing this develop in early childhood, the ability to manipulate and dominate people, control them, you think you're superior to them and you're just a teenager still. This is, um, once again, more indicative of a personality disorder than a mental illness where somebody doesn't know the difference between right and wrong. So after this, when Brian gets in trouble for trying to lure this four-year-old girl into his home and he's got to go to get a psychological evaluation, things in the Mitchell household got far worse. Brian became verbally and physically abusive towards his mother and his siblings. His records noted that he had poor frustration tolerance and he refused to follow the rules of others.

• 25:21Stephanie Harlowe?

  His psychological report says, quote, "He reportedly told his mother he wanted to screw her eyes out, admitted to breaking his brother's collarbone, beating his siblings about the face was incredibly explosive, would drag his sister by the hair and enjoy it," end quote. So Tim Mitchell, the owner of the broken collarbone, he said this happened when he was five and Brian had run across the room and jumped on him. So Tim Mitchell kind of makes it seem like, no, Brian was just kind of rough, but this happened so repeatedly that Brian would be so rough with his siblings and end up like really hurting them that it did not seem to be, oh, just my brother's rough. I mean, Tim was five and Brian would just be very, very rough with them, like he was very aggressive.

• 26:03Stephanie Harlowe?

  And Tim Mitchell remembers a game that they would play and Brian would be like, let's play the animal game. And Brian would turn into different animals, but they were always animals that were like super aggressive. So Brian would turn into a tiger and like really bite him and hurt him and draw blood, you know? So this wasn't just a, oh, we're just playing around and I get a little rough. This was like, I want to hurt somebody. So when he was 16, Brian was sent to live with his grandmother because he had put his hands on his mother during an aggressive argument. Reportedly, Brian had pushed Irene hard. He was accusing her of trying to poison him. He called her a bitch and told her he wanted her dead. At this point, Brian pretty much stopped going to school at all. He started

• 26:45Stephanie Harlowe?

  drinking and experimenting with harder drugs like LSD, and eventually he dropped out of school. From Brian's extensive psychological report, it says, quote, "Brian's family reported that he changed from being creative with lots of friends to being a loner." According to the defendant's mother, she was never aware of his drug use until he was unexpectedly hospitalized for an anxiety reaction to LSD. Brian's father was reported to be harsh and erratic with discipline. Cheryl told the evaluator that Brian identified with him and was similar in that they both felt no guilt, end quote. Once again, I would like to draw your attention back to Cheryl Mitchell, who has the same issues as Brian with

• 27:23Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah.

• 27:24Stephanie Harlowe?

  sex and maybe, you know, younger children, basically, when you were an adult or an older teenager. And also saying, yes, we, we relate to each other because we both feel no guilt about things.

• 27:39Derrick Levasseur?

  There's definitely a disconnect from reality at minimum. You had mentioned earlier, you had Cheryl asking for leniency for his son because he treated Elizabeth well while he was holding her captive. It's, it's crazy to say that out loud, but that's what we're dealing with here.

• 27:56Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah. And I mean, is it a, a break from reality? Or is it just, once again, what I need to believe my worldview is in order to do what I want? And I don't know, I don't know if it's a break from reality. And was, was Brian raised this way? Yes. So his father is like, I hated this kid. He never listened to me. He sucked. He was terrible to his siblings and his mother. But Cheryl Mitchell was also terrible to Brian and his siblings and his mother. Cheryl Mitchell was the model of what a man would have been, and Brian followed in his footsteps. And Cheryl is like, we relate to each other. But also, it seems like Cheryl hates Brian. But now he's asking for leniency for what he did to Elizabeth Smart instead of using that to condemn this, this man, this person who apparently, you know, has been a problem

• 28:40Stephanie Harlowe?

  for you and a thorn in your side since he was born. This is an opportunity for you to condemn him, but instead you're like, well, this I get, you know? He, he kidnapped this little girl, this 14-year-old girl and held her captive for nine months, but he was kind to her during that time, you know? She's alive, isn't she? Because basically Asher Mitchell said, she's alive, isn't she?

• 28:58Derrick Levasseur?

  He should get an award.

• 28:59Stephanie Harlowe?

  So it's funny that he like takes that and he can't use that to condemn this kid who he's hated forever, but this is where he chooses to defend him. It's absolutely bananas.

• 29:08Derrick Levasseur?

  It's a choice.

• 29:09Stephanie Harlowe?

  It is a choice and we are going to take a quick break and we'll be right back.

• 29:18Stephanie Harlowe?

  Okay, Derek, let's talk about cravings for a second because they're not always about nicotine. A lot of the time it's the habit, the hand-to-mouth motion, the pause, the muscle memory, something to do.

• 29:29Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, it's that loop that your body expects, especially when you're stressed, bored, or, or trying to focus. I know that's how it is for me.

• 29:36Stephanie Harlowe?

  That's where Fume comes in. Fume is a flavored air device designed to help people quit smoking or vaping by breaking that hand-to-mouth habit.

• 29:44Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, there's no nicotine, no batteries, and no vapor. It's just a weighted, fidget-friendly device that gives your hands and mouth something better to reach for when that craving shows up.

• 29:54Stephanie Harlowe?

  And I've had moments where I grabbed my Fume just to fidget, right? Not be even because I think I was having a craving. It's that, it interrupts the automatic reach before it turns into something else. And you have your Fume device on you right now and it's so fun. It's clickable and fidgety and perfect.

• 30:09Derrick Levasseur?

  You can hear it right there. That's what I use it for a majority of the time. Get the magnets. It's, it's a really cool design, real wood, real metal.

• 30:16Stephanie Harlowe?

  Weighted. It's got a weighted handle, so it feels really good. And like, and like you said, the design is beautiful. It's fun to play with. And Fume helps you upgrade the habit loop. Instead of just white knuckling through it, you're replacing the behavior, not just removing it.

• 30:29Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, they also have different flavors and it's important to say that they're lighter than vaping. So more like a flavored water compared to soda. And my personal favorite is still the orange vanilla.

• 30:39Stephanie Harlowe?

  Crisp mint, I will say, is the strongest and it's great if you've been a heavier user. And raspberry, a new one that I've been into. It's a little tangy. It's on the sweeter side. It's subtle, but that's what makes it workable long-term.

• 30:53Derrick Levasseur?

  Completely agree. We've been with Fume for a long time and Fume has already helped over 700,000 people take steps toward better habits. And now it's your turn. When you grab your journey pack, you'll also get a free gift just for using our code. If you want to try it out, head over to tryfum.com. That's T R Y F U M E dot com and use code CRIMEWEEKLY to claim your free gift today.

• 31:21Stephanie Harlowe?

  Okay, we're back. So now we got Brian. He's going to live at his grandma's because apparently he's just not really conducive to what's happening in the Mitchell household. And he starts going to a different high school at that point, but apparently that high school had a more lax attendance policy, as in they just didn't care whether you showed up or not. So he just stopped showing up and then he eventually dropped out of high school altogether. So as a high school dropout and teenager, Brian got his then-girlfriend pregnant. And this would lead to his first marriage to Karen Minor in 1972. At that time, Brian was 19 and Karen was 15 or 16 years old, depending on, you know, when she was pregnant,

• 32:03Stephanie Harlowe?

  when she gave birth. Either way, she's way too young for him to be in a sexual relationship with, but that won't be anything new. Now, the couple would go on to have two children, Travis and Angela. But records indicate that becoming a father did anything but force Brian to get his act together. Brian would be arrested for a DUI in 1973. He would be arrested for assaulting his wife in 1974. Karen reported that Brian was physically abusive to her, including when she was pregnant, and an absent father who would disappear for days at a time. And this, once again, is going to be a pattern that follows Brian all of his life, a need for control and dominance, but an aversion to actual responsibility. Now, according to Brian's sister Lisa, both he and Karen were not the best parents. And

• 32:48Stephanie Harlowe?

  she said, quote, "They were kind of messed up themselves. They were teenagers. They would party. They wanted to have fun." End quote. Brian's abuse and absence caused Karen to file for divorce in 1975, where she cited all of these issues that she had with him as well as infidelity. Now, in that divorce case, both Karen and Brian acknowledged that they were drug users. But custody of Travis and Angela was granted to Brian in 1976 because I guess he was the better option at that time. He lived with his mother Irene and she told the court that she was willing to raise the kids if he wouldn't. And Karen was kind of all messed up on drugs and didn't really have a place to live. So I guess that was the better of two evils.

• 33:31Stephanie Harlowe?

  Now, during this time, Brian briefly attended classes at the University of Utah where he accumulated 46 credits with a 2.6 GPA, but his grades once again steadily declined and he never graduated. But then Karen Minor remarried and she petitioned for a reconsideration of the custody agreement now that she was off drugs and settled. You know, she'd grown up a little bit. The court did award her custody of her two children in 1977. But the day before this would be technically determined and court ordered, Brian took his daughter and his son and he fled the state. He just left. He didn't want to give Karen custody, even though he didn't also really want to be responsible for the children.

• 34:13Stephanie Harlowe?

  Once again, this goes back to control. Now, during this time, Brian drifted around New York and New England, but he did send letters home to his family, including his mother Irene. He told Irene to keep the letters private. He said, "Don't tell Karen, the mother of his children, where he was or disclose his address." He sent pictures of himself and the children. And once again, he told his mother Irene to not show Karen the pictures of her own children because he said he felt it would only make Karen more determined to find them. And what's messed up, that's obviously messed up, right? To take these two kids from their mother and then hide your location and not even let this woman see pictures of her children as they grow over the years. What's even more messed up

• 34:55Stephanie Harlowe?

  is Irene did it. She did it. She didn't tell Karen. She kept it all hidden. Now, in his letters, Brian suggested that he was working hard on alienating Travis and Angela from their mother. And Brian's second wife would later talk about how Brian would brag that he fooled the authorities and he would even sometimes go back to Utah for brief periods where he and the children would stay with his mother. Karen Minor remembered a time once where she called Irene Mitchell's house to talk to Irene and she swore she heard her daughter, Angela, answer the phone. But by the time she called the police and they showed up, the children and Brian weren't there and Irene was like, no, they've never been here. What are you talking about? So, yeah, pretty, pretty messed up. So in a 1977 letter to his mother, Brian talked

• 35:40Stephanie Harlowe?

  about growing his hair and beard long. Now, remember, we, we've seen pictures of Brian where he's got this long hair, this long beard, he's wearing robes and he's calling himself a prophet. And then we've seen that when, at least when Elizabeth Smart and her family encountered him, he was clean shaven, clean cut and looking kind of more normal.

• 36:01Derrick Levasseur?

  Yep.

• 36:02Stephanie Harlowe?

  Right. So this is something Brian would do. And he told his mother, quote, "As for my beard and long hair, I think I'm more handsome without them as well. However, that is not the image I am after at this moment. Maybe I want to look like a serious fellow, and there are other reasons as well. As you know, I like acting. My hair and beard is part of an act. I can just as readily cut them off, just as I grew them. And to my delight, will shock everyone here who know nothing of my boyish mug." End quote.

• 36:29Derrick Levasseur?

  I'm being good. I'm refraining. I'm refraining here. I think everyone should just stop the video, stop the audio, give me a round of applause. Not belittling him like I belittled BTK.

• 36:39Stephanie Harlowe?

  You absolutely should be belittling him. He is worthy of belittling.

• 36:44Derrick Levasseur?

  I mean, if we, if I started that, we're gonna have 12 minutes in this episode of just me making fun of this guy.

• 36:49Stephanie Harlowe?

  All right, but promise you'll give me a little bit of that.

• 36:50Derrick Levasseur?

  I'll give you a little bit.

• 36:51Stephanie Harlowe?

  All right. So a good friend of Brian's, his name's Marlon Peterson. Marlon Peterson would later say that Brian Mitchell was quite an actor. And he never believed he was legitimately insane or mentally ill, not even when he kidnapped Elizabeth Smart. So, Marlon Peterson said, you know, I watched the trial. He was there in the courtroom and he's like, I knew everything he was doing. Like, the whole singing act, the whole Charles Manson, like, I'm crazy and you just don't know what to expect. It was all an act. He'd seen it done before. In fact, Marlon Peterson actually helped, he helped Brian go on the run and hide his children from their mother, Karen, because he thought he was doing the right thing, because Brian was so manipulative, allegedly, according to Marlon Peterson, that

• 37:34Stephanie Harlowe?

  he believed Karen was like a really bad person, she was gonna hurt the kids, and Brian was like, this is what we have to do to keep these kids safe. And so, Marlon Peterson helped him. Now Peterson also reported that while on the run hiding his children from their mother, Brian joined a hair Krishna commune, but he did this not because he believed in their religion, but to survive, to obtain food and shelter for himself and the kids. And if it was one thing that Brian Mitchell knew how to do well, it was to rely on the kindness of strangers in the most parasitic of ways. And once again, we will see this throughout his life. He uses whatever religion, whatever way of life that the people around him are experiencing and he's sort of comelions into that and, and basically manipulates them into

• 38:17Stephanie Harlowe?

  thinking, you know, he's this nice guy. He's smart. He's just down on his luck. He needs help and, and he's a smart guy. There's no reason he should be in the position he's in and he does this. But he even does it with his own family who know he's out of his mind in a way, who know that he's a user and all of his family will say, especially his siblings, when they see the way he treats his mother Irene and keeps like feeding off of her and going back to her and going back to her and using her. They're like, yeah, that's all he ever did was use her and she never seemed to understand that until the very, very end.

• 38:49Derrick Levasseur?

  Well, these guys, I mean, to be fair, I mean, yeah, it's, it's his mother, but overall, we've been doing this, what, for six years now? I think there's one thing we can all agree on is that even though these people are just evil at the core, they do have a knack for being pretty manipulative, even to people close to them, where they're able to convince them at least for a short period of time that regardless of what they're seeing and hearing, right? It's an illusion. It's not real. They're actually a good person. They're doing the right thing and they can be redeemed. And so imagine them encountering people that they don't see on a normal basis and how easy it would be for them to convince them that they're someone they're not. So this is a very common trait that we see with these types of people and they unfortunately are, in many cases, good actors.

• 39:33Stephanie Harlowe?

  Absolutely. Good actors and like you said, incredibly deeply manipulative where it's almost like a second nature.

• 39:40Derrick Levasseur?

  Yep. It's a skill set, man. It's a skill set. It's an innate ability that unfortunately they possess.

• 39:45Stephanie Harlowe?

  So it's like, when are you being your true self? Has anybody even really seen that? Or have you put on an act depending on who you're in front of with every single person you've ever met?

• 39:54Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah.

• 39:55Stephanie Harlowe?

  Now, according to Brian's psychological reports, there really isn't much information available on him during the time between 1977, when he left Utah with his kids, and then 1979, when he returned. But it was known that during this time, Brian quote, heavily abused drugs, such as LSD, and was socially involved in boundary-free relationships, end quote. I think that means like situationships. Like, that's what they would call it now, a boundary-free relationship. It kind of just feels like a free love sort of thing. That's what a

• 40:24Derrick Levasseur?

  Boundary-free relationship.

• 40:26Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, it's like a nice way of saying that.

• 40:28Derrick Levasseur?

  See, I took that as like, it's an open relationship.

• 40:31Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah.

• 40:31Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, like a

• 40:32Stephanie Harlowe?

  Like a situationship.

• 40:34Derrick Levasseur?

  Undercover pineapple, baby.

• 40:36Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, also that, right?

• 40:37Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah.

• 40:38Stephanie Harlowe?

  Brian would have loved being an undercover pineapple.

• 40:41Derrick Levasseur?

  Yep. He definitely would have. Many of these guys would.

• 40:44Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, well, that's another thing, you know? He keeps marrying women and he keeps like introducing to them like, you know, maybe I can have a girlfriend. They're like, no, what are you talking? And I think that's another reason why he gravitated towards the LDS church.

• 40:58Derrick Levasseur?

  I mean, listen, that's, you know, that's the one you gotta use. Hey, listen, it's just because I want our love to have no boundaries.

• 41:03Stephanie Harlowe?

  It's because this is what God wants for us.

• 41:05Derrick Levasseur?

  No boundaries in our relationship. We're not restricted here.

• 41:08Stephanie Harlowe?

  He's not, he's not, he's like, I'm not cheating on you. We are taking part in a boundary-free relationship, which sounds, it sounds way better.

• 41:14Derrick Levasseur?

  We've, we've evolved, babe. We're in a different world now. We can do this. This is, this is an evolution in the love process. All those weirdos that are in monogamous relationships? What's that about? Come on.

• 41:26Stephanie Harlowe?

  It's the 70s, baby.

• 41:27Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 41:29Stephanie Harlowe?

  So, when, uh, when Brian returned to Utah, his brother Tim said, you know, it was clear that he was struggling with issues, including drugs, drinking, and bad relationships. And one night, the two brothers were sitting beside a bonfire. They were talking about life. And then Tim told Brian that he was now devoted to the Mormon faith, right? Tim was into the LDS church. And Tim said, quote, "He became a bit tearful and said, I think what you're saying is true, and I kind of lost my way. I remember he had a pack of cigarettes and he tossed them in the fire and said he wanted to change his life too," end quote. And then after this, surprise, surprise, Brian started going to church. He shaved off his beard. He started behaving more conservatively. He is acting. He's like, my brother Tim was

• 42:12Stephanie Harlowe?

  saved by the LDS church. I can pretend I am too. So Tim said that Brian seemed to show a really heartfelt conversion at that point. And it seemed he wanted to be a better person in his life. And remember, this is Tim testifying after Brian is on trial for kidnapping a 14-year-old girl and holding her ransom for nine months and doing absolutely horrific things to her that Tim is well aware of. But even then, he can't wrap his head around the fact that somebody could be just so manipulative and so intentionally misleading about who they are and what they want. He's like, I thought he really like wanted to turn his life around. Now, to be honest, I researched all of this. I've read about him. I've read all his psychological reports.

• 42:56Stephanie Harlowe?

  There's not a small bit of me that thinks that Brian Mitchell ever wanted to lead a good life or do the right thing. Not at all. So this was around the time that Brian met and started courting his second wife, Debbie Woodridge, and he became very active in the LDS church. Brian also started putting his thoughts on paper, and his writings at the time reflected his desire to become an elder in the church. So, most LDS men are elders. It's actually a very entry-level office. It's considered to be a normal step in Mormon male adulthood, expected in the same way that like graduating from high school or going on a mission would be. Brian wanted to be considered spiritually mature and participate more fully in the religion. And he wrote about having conversations with the bishop of his chapter, who gave him encouragement

• 43:41Stephanie Harlowe?

  and provided him with like additional reading materials. Brian wrote that he was making efforts at this time to repulse an old weakness, and he felt that being given more responsibility and respect in his community would assist him in doing that. In January of 1981, Brian was granted full adult priesthood standing in the church after passing interviews with local leadership. And this meant, at that time, he was viewed as being in good standing with the church, and he could hold the office of an elder, which, like I said, entry-level, pretty basic. Brian's journals also talk about Debbie Woodridge and their early relationship. He wrote that she was devout and idealistic with prayer. He said he liked how friendly Debbie was with him as well as others. He liked how she listened to him and encouraged him.

• 44:24Stephanie Harlowe?

  Brian expressed a desire for himself and Debbie to come together, despite being from different family backgrounds, of unresolved mending. And he also mentioned how Debbie was pretty much great, except for the fact that she didn't agree with him on his desire to date other women.

• 44:40Derrick Levasseur?

  Well, that's, that's, you know, that's a deal breaker.

• 44:42Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yes, but you know, it's not a deal breaker for him. He's just gonna do it on a sly.

• 44:47Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, exactly, exactly.

• 44:48Stephanie Harlowe?

  He's like, she'd be perfect. She'd be perfect if she just accepted this part of me.

• 44:52Derrick Levasseur?

  He's just not, she's not as refined yet. She's not as evolved. She'll get there.

• 44:55Stephanie Harlowe?

  She's like his siblings, you know, she's putting on this artifice and wearing a facade of societal norms when he's so much beyond that. He's evolved past that. Now, Brian did want to marry Debbie Woodridge, but apparently this union had not gained the approval of the Mitchell family. Debbie had two daughters from a previous marriage, and Irene Mitchell was worried about the financial burden of combining Brian's two children from his first marriage with Debbie's two children. Irene also didn't feel it was right to uproot Travis and Angela, which remember, those are Brian's two kids, from their home, their schools, their community, when the families combined and then Brian and Debbie began living together.

• 45:32Stephanie Harlowe?

  Brian's brother, Tim, said that they were worried because Brian had started isolating himself from the family and his personality changed, and he was acting strange and paranoid. When Tim and another brother, Kevin, went over to talk to Brian, he told them he was upset because their mother was not supportive of his relationship. Brian also wrote about his concerns about Debbie's parenting style, saying that although each of her own children had expressed openly that they loved their mother, he was worried what type of mother she would be to his own children and how she would raise them. Now, in February of 1981, Brian had apparently decided that his connection to Debbie was strong enough to prevail, and the two were married. Of course, the new family did have financial challenges right from the start.

• 46:14Stephanie Harlowe?

  Brian was consistently unemployed or underemployed, and they all lived together in a small 800-square-foot apartment. The newly married couple argued constantly. Brian admitted to slapping Debbie, and by June, Brian was leaving for days at a time without coming back or contacting his wife and children, which if you remember... That's what he did with his first marriage with Karen and she cited that in the divorce proceedings. Like this dude just leaves me with the kids for days at a time. He doesn't come home. He doesn't let me know where he is. He abandons us. He's doing it again.

• 46:46Derrick Levasseur?

  Well, maybe if she had agreed to the evolution in their relationship where they could, you know, see other partners or he could have other girlfriends.

• 46:54Stephanie Harlowe?

  He would just be doing it there with her.

• 46:56Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, wouldn't have to leave the house.

• 46:57Stephanie Harlowe?

  Probably exactly what he thought to himself. Yeah.

• 46:59Derrick Levasseur?

  No doubt that I'm not saying this to be like, I'm being sarcastic, obviously, but this is the way these people think. This is, this is not just an act. They have convinced themselves, I told you, the best liars are the ones that actually believe they're bullshit. And, and this guy has somehow convinced himself that it's her fault and everything. And this isn't just in these extreme cases. I've seen it in domestic violence cases. I've worked for over 20 years. You talk to these guys and if you didn't know any better, when they gave you their justifications for their actions, you'd go, oh, that makes sense because the way they, the way they deliver it, there's conviction there. It's incredible. It really is.

• 47:40Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, because they've been trying to convince their spouse of this. You know, they've done the research, they've made arguments, they've made spreadsheets. They've probably done like, you know, full presentations on PowerPoint where they're like, sit down. And they've got like a slideshow set up and they're like, and this is why it would make more sense. And I would be about her husband and father if I could just have extramarital affairs or we could have threesomes, you know? So.

• 48:00Derrick Levasseur?

  We talked about interrogations a few episodes ago. We were talking about Amanda Knox and it's, it's, it kind of goes in line with that because I used to have, and I didn't have a lot of them, thank God, but child molestation cases. And I'd have to go in there and try to relate to this person because at first it was like, oh, I didn't do it. I didn't do it. I don't know what you're talking about. But then when I started playing to what I knew their justification was for, oh, she came on to me and she was wearing certain clothing or whatever it might be. As disgusted as I was to go to that level, once I started doing it, it was like, yes, yes, you, you get it like, and they weren't just saying it as an excuse. I could tell at their core, they believed what they were saying, which is even more frightening.

• 48:44Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, I mean, that's what you're, that exactly. You're playing into them to try to relate, relate to them. And you don't

• 48:51Derrick Levasseur?

  And you want to reach across the table and smash their head off of it, but you can't.

• 48:54Stephanie Harlowe?

  You're almost surprised when they genuinely look at you almost as like you understand and you're almost like offended, like, really? You thought I was serious? Like, I was trying to do this as an interrogation technique, but you really think I'm like you? Like, how dare you?

• 49:07Derrick Levasseur?

  I get it. You know, I get it. I mean, those were the best. And after 20 minutes, 30 minutes of getting them to just basically say everything they did, then you tell them like, oh, by the way, I think you're an absolute piece of shit. And I don't agree with anything you just said. And they're like, wait, what? They're all confused.

• 49:22Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, you were waiting for that. You were waiting for that shoe to drop, right?

• 49:25Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah.

• 49:27Stephanie Harlowe?

  Well, so Debbie said that by the end of that summer, this is like the first summer after they're married, Brian will be missing for longer and longer stretches, sometimes months at a time. And when he was home, he was a terrifying and controlling force, dictating everything his wife did, from what she ate, to how she dressed, to even how she prayed. So when they would pray together, Brian would use this time to belittle Debbie, asking God out loud to help his beloved wife with all her shortcomings. So I can imagine him doing this and they're sitting and they're praying and he's like, please, Lord, help Debbie understand that me being with other women has nothing to do with our relationship, and it will only help my spiritual growth.

• 50:09Stephanie Harlowe?

  Please tell Debbie that, please help Debbie see that if she could just be less controlling and not worry when I leave for two months, that she wouldn't get slapped and, and you know, thrown around. And this is absolutely something that Brian is going to integrate into his later relationship with someone named Wanda Barzy, who, if you know about this case, you know that she was the person who was with him when he kidnapped Elizabeth and she helped him, which is hard to understand as a woman, how a woman could do that to a little girl or another woman. But once again, we know that women like this exist, Ghislaine Maxwell, for instance, so. Now, Brian would frequently put his family on speakerphone during phone calls so that Debbie

• 50:52Stephanie Harlowe?

  could hear them criticize her. And Debbie would later say that Brian used her fears of things like mice and insects against her. So it started with him bringing home a live mouse in a jar. Then Brian claimed he'd had a dream, a vision of a roach infestation in their house. And the next day, a bunch of roaches showed up in the kitchen. Also, Debbie once opened the oven to find 50 dead mice laying on a cookie sheet. Now, this was confirmed by Debbie's daughters, who we're going to hear from in a bit. Debbie and Brian would have two children together, Sarah and Joey. And Debbie claimed that Brian would regularly beat her and once even left her unconscious when she was pregnant with Joey. She says that she went to their church with her complaints of abuse and said

• 51:34Stephanie Harlowe?

  Brian was physically abusive, emotionally abusive, and he would bring home books about satanic worship. But she says the bishops told her that she needed to respect her husband's authority and work things out at home, or risk losing her recommend. Now, this is where we talk about the LDS Church and the bad parts and what it did in real time to women like Debbie. Because somebody said in the comments, you know, the LDS Church is incredibly misogynistic, etc., etc. Yes, you're absolutely right. There are parts of the church and people in the church, and even I'm sure full chapters and I'm not sure exactly what they're called, but the, you know, local areas that were like this, especially

• 52:16Stephanie Harlowe?

  during this time. You know, we're talking 60s, 70s, 80s, even into the 90s. So, the LDS Church's stance on marriage was very specific and very narrow-minded. So, the bishops are the local authority for each ward. And their role, well, they have a huge role, but one of their roles is to provide spiritual counseling for the ward members amongst other duties. And so, they would do like one-on-one counseling, they would do marital counseling, stuff like that. Now, what Debbie Woodridge described is very specific to LDS structure and authority, especially in the late 80s when this would be happening. Within LDS teaching, especially in earlier decades, marriage would often be framed with a patriarchal structure, with the husband considered the spiritual head of the household,

• 53:01Stephanie Harlowe?

  the wife being encouraged to support and respect that role. Now, this does not mean, and I'm going to say for the record legally, that the LDS church has ever, or as to my knowledge, has ever officially endorsed domestic abuse. They would not come right out and say that, but it does reflect that these bishops were not trained to recognize how dangerous these situations could be, and maybe at the end of the day, they really didn't care all that much because they were trained to keep families intact and to preserve marriages first and foremost, above everything else. So divorce would be treated as a spiritual failure in the LDS church. That would be something to be avoided, if at all possible, at all costs.

• 53:44Stephanie Harlowe?

  And Debbie was threatened with losing her temple recommend if she didn't work things out. So this would have been a very grave threat to someone involved in the LDS church, especially at this time and especially in Utah. A temple recommend was an official stamp that a member was in good standing with the LDS temple. They were considered worthy by local leaders because they were following church teachings and living by moral standings. And losing her temple recommend would mean that Debbie would be barred from temple worship. She would be barred from participating in certain sacred ordinances such as families being sealed together for eternity. She would almost certainly be spiritually marginalized, but she would be socially marginalized as well, right? Because this is Utah and everybody was LDS.

• 54:27Stephanie Harlowe?

  So the people you went to school with, the people you went to church with, the people you worked with, everybody. For someone raised in the LDS church, the implicit message was if you leave this marriage, you'll be the one spiritually penalized. You'll lose your community. You won't be able to be sealed to your children and be with them in the afterlife. You'll lose God's favor and blessing. Now, I will say, once again legally, to protect everybody involved, modern LDS leaders publicly state that domestic abuse is never acceptable and they claim the church encourages reporting abuse to the civil authorities. But historically, experiences like Debbie's were not uncommon, especially in the 80s, the 90s. And even now, there's people who say even now that they are a part of LDS church and that the abuse in a marriage is kind of like something they're expected to just endure.

• 55:12Stephanie Harlowe?

  And I guess it's their fault if it's happening and if they behave differently, then it wouldn't be happening. So at that time, Brian Mitchell was very respected in their LDS chapter and the church members who interviewed him at the time found no reason to have an issue with his behavior in the church or in the home, at least not yet. So that is, yes, a very big downfall and downside to the LDS church is domestic abuse happens in these marriages and the women are kind of made to feel like, well, if it's happening, it's because you're not doing your job properly as a wife.

• 55:49Derrick Levasseur?

  This might be an unpopular opinion, but I'll go with it anyways. And I know there's a lot of history and public national examples of the LDS church and the problems within it. But I'll just also say that there's problems in every religion. I'm Catholic and I would say the Catholic Church is a mess as well. And they hide a lot of as well because it's not good for the overall religion. But I mean, it's no, it's no secret with the priest in the Catholic Church and what they're doing. And it's a huge issue that's without a doubt being covered up on a mass level to try to quote unquote, protect the overall religion itself.

• 56:25Stephanie Harlowe?

  Protect the image of the religion.

• 56:26Derrick Levasseur?

  So I'm not trying to sit here and say, well, you know, LDS is bad, but look over here. I'm, I'm basically, I'm basically criticizing my own religion. I'm just saying in general, there is a, I hope I'm not saying this wrong, but with religion in general, and I'm not the, a super religious person, but I do have faith and believe in certain things. But there is a cult like element to all of them, right? Because you're having to believe in something that's being conveyed by the quote unquote leaders of said religion. And if you have nefarious individuals who are trying to capitalize on your beliefs and your conviction to that belief, they can convince you to do things that may not be best on a, on a personal level, or even on just a moral or ethical level. So in general, I think is

• 57:10Derrick Levasseur?

  overall, you'd find this type of stuff almost in every religion, although it's more prevalent in certain religions. And, you know, I think there is a good argument to be made that We are seeing a lot with the LDS community specifically, although I'm sure there are very good people within that community that have nothing to do with things like this.

• 57:30Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, it's all who you are and how you use it. And I will, I will say it was, I think, stronger and more of a threat for an LDS person because like I said, this wasn't just, hey, you can't come to this church anymore. It was like, God will be disappointed in you. You won't be able to be with your children in the afterlife. And every single person that you socialize with in the community will ostracize you. So you will lose your husband, yes, and you'll lose his income. Because most likely in a divorce, they would side in his favor. Because like I said, lawyers, judges, everybody, LDS, right? And then you won't get support from your community. So there won't even be people in your community who will help you with your children or help you financially or, or just help you mentally and emotionally and be there for you because you will be viewed as

• 58:14Stephanie Harlowe?

  the one who did something wrong. And you're already struggling with that victim, the feeling of being a victim and being hurt by somebody you're supposed to love and trust. And now you're also being told from everybody at every angle that it's just because you failed some way spiritually and in your marriage and as a wife. And that's very insidious. And it goes really deep. Like you're ostracized completely. So it's rough. So, and, and on top of this, Brian was not just harming his wife Debbie at home. He was also sexually abusing her two daughters, Rebecca and Heidi, who claimed the abuse happened within weeks of the marriage and continued for years. Now Rebecca claims she was sexually abused by her stepfather from the ages of seven until

• 58:56Stephanie Harlowe?

  she was 11. And Heidi said that she caught Brian Mitchell in the bathroom linen closet, taking photos of her while she was in the bathtub. Now, we're gonna come back to this. And the dynamic between Brian Mitchell and Rebecca is really, I guess I would say fascinating, but also incredibly sad. And we will talk about that later in the timeline. But in 1983, Brian attempted to put his two biological children up for adoption. He said he was doing this in an attempt to save his marriage with Debbie. And at that time, an examiner found Brian's two children to be very antagonistic towards their stepmother. And they also both indicated that they would rather live with strangers than in a home with their own father. The examiner noted that Brian had alienated his

• 59:40Stephanie Harlowe?

  children to such a degree that they literally wanted nothing to do with him. Now Irene Mitchell and Brian's sisters challenged this decision with Brian wanting to put the kids up for adoption. They claimed that Brian was mentally ill. So the kids were placed temporarily in foster care so that Brian could be psychologically evaluated by Randall Oster at Sugar House Mental Health on December 22nd, 1983. This is another psychological evaluation. And at that time, Oster concluded that Brian was not mentally ill. And the children were placed in foster care where Brian refused to allow his mother Irene to visit them. He said that she had undermined his marriage to Debbie, so he was punishing his mother Irene, who had basically raised his children by not allowing her to adopt his children and care

• 1:00:24Stephanie Harlowe?

  for them. So he's punishing his mother, but he's also doing a disservice to his children. And now his children are going to be adopted by strangers. And at this point, they're not that little anymore. You know, they're, they're older. It's just a very toxic, abusive dynamic from every angle. Now Brian, even though he said he was putting his kids up for adoption to save his marriage with Debbie, he was the one who ended up divorcing or filing for divorce from Debbie in 1984. He claimed in the divorce filing that Debbie was controlling because she got mad at him when he would go off and disappear for days or weeks at a time. And it was not until after they were separated that Debbie found out what her husband had been doing to her children. Debbie would say, quote, "He threatened one of the children that if you told your mother, I will do this to your other sister." And so they were afraid

• 1:01:08Stephanie Harlowe?

  to say anything because they didn't want their other sisters to go through what they were going through. And so there were a lot of mind games, a lot of horrible things that he did to them. He already had them afraid of him, end quote. Debbie and her daughter, Rebecca, have both stated that Debbie, once again, went to her bishop and talked to him about the allegations. She also said that she believed Brian Mitchell was abusing his four biological children as well. So not only the children he had from his previous marriage, but the two children they shared together at that time. And at that time, their daughter Sarah was only 18 months old. And according to Debbie, when she went to the church and talked to the bishop, they got laughed at. And she said, quote, "You have closure when you get divorced,

• 1:01:50Stephanie Harlowe?

  but with what he did to my children, because nobody believed us, there was never closure. When I wanted to leave him, the bishop said, no, you need to work on your marriage. I would go to church with black eyes and they'd ask me what I did to make him hit me." End quote. So throughout Mitchell's reports, his psychological reports, the reports of what happened when he was talked to by the police after everything went down with Elizabeth Smart, we do hear from some church leaders, and it does seem as if they, they did notice some unraveling happening in David Mitchell when he was faced with these allegations. And this is where things get a little sticky. Because on one hand, you can say, oh, these LDS leaders, the bishops, they were trained to see things one way and they, they didn't, they didn't notice that what he was doing was weird.

• 1:02:34Stephanie Harlowe?

  But you kind of have people in the LDS church who talked to Brian and who saw him at these times, and they were like, yeah, he was definitely like not a good person. And that's a problem. So Paul Meacham, the stake president of their chapter at that time, he said that when complaints first emerged about Brian, Brian had maintained the appearance of a right living man. And Meacham's first impression of Brian had been of someone who was clean cut, soft spoken, and good looking. And he said, quote, "It was hard not to believe him, and we called him in two or three times. Eventually, it became clear that he had a Jekyll Hyde existence. He had us all fooled. The first sentence that included the word improper, there was an explosion.

• 1:03:17Stephanie Harlowe?

  This mild-mannered young man stood, shouted, and denied any, any, any improper action of any kind. He then stormed out, and I have not seen him since." End quote. So this, I believe, is after Debbie, after they're separated and Debbie comes forward and says, you know, hey, I told you he was abusing me. And then he ended up filing for divorce from me. So Debbie's not going to lose her recommend because Brian's the one that initiated the divorce. But now that I have gotten separated from him and my children have felt safe to come and tell me what's happening, they're telling me this happened. And so then they called him in, the bishops and the stake presidents, to ask Brian about what he was doing to the children or what he was being accused of doing. And this is when they say that he saw him kind of like change in front of their eyes. And Paul Meacham said that it became clear

• 1:04:02Stephanie Harlowe?

  that Mitchell was a master manipulator, and he would observe him interacting with different church members, and he'd noticed that Mitchell would change. He'd become more animated with some, more calm with others. And Meacham said it dawned on him that Mitchell was playing to his audience. And he had heard him brag more than once that he could quote, "Get myself out of anything," end quote. Now, this is interesting, because Paul Meacham's like, yeah, when we accused him of what he was doing to the kids, he like exploded. And then we were like, oh, we never knew who he was. But then he also talks about it like, you know, I've observed him with people, and I've heard him brag about this repeatedly, and only when he exploded, I kind of put everything together. But it's like, these are also red flags that you've been seeing with this guy, and you kind of wrote them

• 1:04:43Stephanie Harlowe?

  off. And only when he, you know, let his mask slip, did you realize maybe it was something more? So.

• 1:04:49Derrick Levasseur?

  Hmm. That's better than sometimes. I've talked to you before about cases where you have prominent figures within the community, coaches, city councilmen, people who are in high-profile positions within the community I grew up in. And then, as a police officer, they're beloved by everybody during the day, but at night, when I ran into them, they're beating on their wives, hitting their kids, getting drunk, getting in fights, doing drugs in the wrong places, doing unsavory things. And it's like, wow, the person that I'm communicating with right now, who I talked to maybe a week ago during the day, it's Dr. Jekyll, Mr. Hyde, all day long. It's literally the perfect example of it. I almost wish everybody could experience it, because in that moment, it's almost like you're living in an alternate

• 1:05:33Derrick Levasseur?

  universe. Like, you can't believe that the person you're looking at, who you've seen 100 times. Is the same person who's saying what they're saying in that moment. They just, it doesn't make sense. It doesn't compute for the human brain.

• 1:05:43Stephanie Harlowe?

  It makes you kind of question your own instincts. Like how, how did I not see it?

• 1:05:47Derrick Levasseur?

  Everybody. And that's why today, I am like I am with my kids where I'm seeing people at the basketball games, at parent events, at birthday parties, at school. And it's like, oh, I'm gonna go hang over so and so's house. And I'm like, yeah, based on everything I've seen about that person, everything tracks. But I haven't been behind closed doors with them. And I know from experience that there's a, there's a clear distinction there. It could be just two different versions that are both good people, or it could be the worst case scenario where they're able to put on a front for a short period of time in small increments. And then when they're in their household and nobody's watching, that's when they become who they truly are.

• 1:06:27Stephanie Harlowe?

  Cause you don't really know who somebody is until they're stressed or angry or have their back to the wall. And like you said-

• 1:06:34Derrick Levasseur?

  Or there's a comfortability there.

• 1:06:35Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah. Or like you said, it could be a normal thing. Like, yeah, everybody, you know, gets a little angry when they get upset, but then some people just absolutely go off the rails. And you can tell the difference between just, oh, it's a regular guy and he's just a little stressed, or this person's been pretending to be someone else.

• 1:06:51Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah. And then, and it's something where I think a lot of our listeners and watchers, and we've met a lot of you in person at this point. You've told us your stories. They're not always as extreme as, as the cases we cover. But to unfortunately, to a lesser degree, we've all had our own traumas where people are around individuals who represent themselves one way in a public setting, in a completely different way behind closed doors. And you've talked to us about those experiences, how it's affected you. And when we cover cases like this, and we covered this specific topic, you're like, yes, I can attest to that. That is the truth. And it's not for everybody, but it's more prevalent than I think anyone really real understands until they are in a law enforcement position or in it themselves.

• 1:07:36Stephanie Harlowe?

  In, in a position with somebody like that, where you could even marry somebody and then it's not till after you're married and legally trapped and you have kids that all of a sudden you're like, whoa, what happened? Who is this? I don't even know this person. And yeah, it's difficult, but people were noticing the cracks in Brian Mitchell. Former Bishop Daryl Newbold also noticed the cracks. He stated, quote, "Mr. Mitchell would tell a story about this and this. He would tell a story so well, then we would find out he was concealing things, then the story would fall apart." End quote. But at the time, still, no one noticed anything off mentally with David Mitchell. Sure, he was intelligent and cunning and manipulative, but he wasn't mentally ill.

• 1:08:17Stephanie Harlowe?

  Even Debbie said that during the time she was married to David Mitchell, he was never a religious fanatic. And she said, quote, "I never saw that side of him. I don't believe he's a religious fanatic. I believe that he's doing all of this as a cover up. Who's going to go after someone that loves God? I mean, if he comes forth and said that he loves God and he's preaching, that's not going to let anybody think that he's a pedophile and child molester. No one's going to look at this. They're going to look at the good things he's done." End quote. Exactly. Exactly. Especially in a community based around loving God. And you know, if you're doing the right things out in the world, then that means you're a good person. So obviously, when things went south with Debbie and with his church chapter, David Mitchell had to shift gears and make himself scarce from that area and that community.

• 1:09:02Stephanie Harlowe?

  Enter Wanda Barzy, a woman who was already action-packed with issues herself before she ever met the man who would forever change the course of her life. Now, according to the Salt Lake Tribune, quote, "Wanda Barzy was once bubbly and outgoing, a talented musician who studied with the Mormon Tabernacle, organist, the wife of a military man, a dedicated mother of six who was always perfectly coiffed." End quote. So Wanda was the daughter of a master organ builder. And by all reports, from everybody who knew her, the one thing they say, "She played the organ and the piano beautifully, and with a passionate fervor that many believed came straight from God. She was a concert pianist, a talented musician who could pick up any piece of music and play it or sing it by ear or just by sight reading.

• 1:09:46Stephanie Harlowe?

  And actually, one of the first women to play the organ in the Mormon Tabernacle." According to Wanda's sister Evelyn Kemp, "Wanda excelled at everything she did as a child, and she had an infectious laugh." But right out of high school, Wanda married Talmage Thompson in 1964. Thompson, who was often away with the military. It seemed he returned just long enough to get Wanda pregnant and then leave her alone again to care for their growing family, which would eventually include six children. In the early days, Wanda was described as devout, pleasant, outgoing, and an attentive mother. However, she claims that Talmage Thompson, her husband, was chronically abusive to her, and he made his family move 33 times in 22 years.

• 1:10:28Stephanie Harlowe?

  This whole thing with Wanda is complicated, and I want to talk about it, and we're going to get into Wanda because after her arrest, Wanda's defense team would try to assert that she'd been perfectly fine until she met Brian David Mitchell, that she was an amazing person, nobody ever had a problem with her until he poisoned her brain and made her do what she did. And that's when she went astray and changed completely. But several of her then-adult children would speak out. They wanted the world to know that the issues with their mother had started long before that. They do acknowledge that their father, Talmage, was abusive towards their mother, but they said she wasn't much better to them. And we're going to talk about that, but let's take our last break, and we'll be right back.

• 1:11:16Stephanie Harlowe?

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• 1:11:25Derrick Levasseur?

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• 1:11:34Stephanie Harlowe?

  And some people might say, well, why don't you plan and shop ahead? Well, who are we talking about? Who are we talking to?

• 1:11:40Derrick Levasseur?

  You clearly don't know us.

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• 1:12:01Stephanie Harlowe?

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• 1:12:14Derrick Levasseur?

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• 1:12:21Stephanie Harlowe?

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• 1:12:34Derrick Levasseur?

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• 1:12:41Stephanie Harlowe?

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• 1:13:18Stephanie Harlowe?

  All right, we're back. So Wanda Barzy, her daughter Andrea has come forward and said that her mother robbed herself and her siblings of their innocence and everything that they should have been. She basically stole their childhoods. Andrea stated, quote, "I think the media portrayed my mother as being a victim of Brian David Mitchell, and I think one of the reasons I wanted to come on this show," she was on a show at this time, "is to kind of expose her for the monster she is. She would brainwash us relentlessly. We would be called up to her room and she would sit there and drum into us. If you weren't part of the family, then the family would be fine. So it was more psychological, emotional, constant abuse from her that to me was worse than the physical abuse because I felt like the physical wounds could always heal, but

• 1:14:03Stephanie Harlowe?

  the scars of emotional abuse have remained," end quote. And yes, apparently, according to her kids, Wanda was both emotionally and physically abusive, and this happened before she ever met Brian David Mitchell. Andrea said that the unconditional love was never present in their home, and this caused Wanda's children to grow up in an environment where they were always scared to step out of line. They never knew what was coming or when it was coming, so they learned that flying under the radar and making themselves small was the only way to live, even though it was actually no way for a child to live. Andrea said she never even knew what a normal family dynamic was until she went to the home of a friend. She said, quote, "I would ask my friend, 'You mean your parents don't beat you?' I remember her family inviting me up to a camping trip two weeks of the summer. It was like heaven," end quote.

• 1:14:47Stephanie Harlowe?

  Now, Wanda's son Derek said that he was never taught the difference between right and wrong as a child, stating, quote, "I got in a lot of trouble with the law. I wanted nurturing so badly. I wanted my parents to love me, you know? I wanted somebody to tell me it was all right. I never got that," end quote. Now Derek did acknowledge that his mother, Wanda, was probably terrified of her husband, his father, and that she would have incurred his wrath if she tried to defend her children, but all of her children pretty much make it clear that although Talmage Thompson was abusive to Wanda, he was also abusive to the children. She never protected them. She never interfered. She never did anything to help them. So, in September of 1983, on the day her eight-year-old daughter Lori was supposed

• 1:15:28Stephanie Harlowe?

  to be baptized into the LDS church, Wanda ran away without saying goodbye to any of her children. Now later, Wanda would explain this by saying, quote, "I had to leave my children, who were abusive to me, and was forced to leave my first husband in order to survive," end quote. So actually, I mean, it feels like Wanda and Brian Mitchell are perfect for each other, because they both blame everybody else for why they do things, and for an adult woman, a mother, to say, "My children were abusive to me, and that's why I had to leave," is... Just beyond ludicrous. Now, at that time, Wanda was still an active part of the LDS church and she began attending a counseling group led by someone named Jolene Green, where she was told she was going to learn to get in touch with her feelings and to

• 1:16:11Stephanie Harlowe?

  manage her depression. Brian David Mitchell was also a part of this group because if you remember, he's going through a divorce at the same time. He's divorcing his second wife Debbie, whose children he's been abusing. So, this is where they meet in this, this support group. And Wanda said that she knew Brian David Mitchell was a good person because her bishop had told her she was going to meet somebody in this group who had the same kind of problems that she had. And then suddenly, she was introduced to Brian and from then on, they were inseparable. Wanda would later testify, quote, "I never did heal from that first relationship before I met Brian. There was a house I sold in Sandy. I thought I was going to be alright, but I was terrified of being alone and desperate to have love. I didn't want to tell my problems to anyone else. Brian was so supportive of

• 1:16:56Stephanie Harlowe?

  me and became my best friend," end quote. According to Wanda, she talked to Brian all about her issues, her divorce, having to be medicated for depression, the issues with her children, the abuse she'd suffered in her past relationship. And Wanda said that Brian told her he also had similar experiences of abuse, but he gave her far more support than she gave him in return. She said Brian didn't seem to need much from her in those early days. What does it sound like to you?

• 1:17:23Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, it definitely sounds like he's obviously trying to relate to her, say, "Hey, I'm aligned with you." Obviously, he's going to use that to gain her trust, let her guard down. It's, it's a common tactic amongst manipulators, right? At first, they can, they'll make sure that they relate to you on all different levels, even if it's disingenuous. And then after the fact, they'll try and turn it on you and say, "You're the one that flipped up and changed, not them."

• 1:17:47Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, and also, he's gonna say, "Well, I was always there for you. I was the one that was there for you."

• 1:17:51Derrick Levasseur?

  Yes.

• 1:17:52Stephanie Harlowe?

  "I didn't ask you for anything. I had horrible experiences in my life too, but I let you lean on me and I didn't lean on you." You know, even though his horrible experiences of similar abuse were lies, he didn't, he wasn't abused, he was the abuser.

• 1:18:04Derrick Levasseur?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:18:04Stephanie Harlowe?

  So, at that time, Brian was working as a maintenance man and he would call Wanda every night from his job so they could talk until the early hours of the morning. And Wanda said that she thought Brian was a righteous man because he'd been ordained as an elder and he'd been through the temple and received his endowments. Now you might be wondering how Brian would be able to just join a new LDS ward and start over after leaving his previous ward under such odd circumstances with horrible allegations being laid against him by his wife, who like I said, he's still married to at the time, and her children. And we did hear men from his previous ward acknowledge that Brian was manipulative. Dr. Jekyll, Mr. Hyde, wearing a mask, hiding his true nature from them until the end. Even Paul Meacham from Brian's previous ward would later say, quote, "We were amazed that with his background, he was able to obtain a temple recommend, but he

• 1:18:47Stephanie Harlowe?

  was capable of keeping up the facade. It was easy to see him as a good kid. He was polite, very normal, and handled himself well. It's understandable that he could lie and get himself over," end quote. So unfortunately, issues at one LDS stake would not transfer to the other. It wasn't like, you know, a job or law issues. There were no background checks or one place calling the other to check on Brian's past, especially in the 70s, the 80s. The LDS Church, remember, operates on trust and systems are built on the assumption that members are being honest in interviews and leadership shouldn't dig around looking for something unless there is cause. Brian Mitchell would have gone to a new ward. He would have met with the new bishop, answered a standardized set of worthiness questions

• 1:19:31Stephanie Harlowe?

  that he'd already answered before at different wards and different stakes. And then the new bishop would evaluate him based only on those answers, like his demeanor, how he appeared before him. Remember, the emphasis in the LDS Church would be on repentance, not permanently labeling someone as a bad apple or a perpetual problem.

• 1:19:50Derrick Levasseur?

  And he capitalized on that.

• 1:19:51Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yes, exactly. He did.

• 1:19:52Derrick Levasseur?

  He took advantage of it. He knew the specifics and he used them to his advantage.

• 1:19:56Stephanie Harlowe?

  And am I gonna lie to you and say that even if the people, the elders, the men at his new ward had known that he'd had allegations at a previous ward, would they have immediately been like, "Oh, we don't want you here"? No.

• 1:20:07Derrick Levasseur?

  Well, you had said in episode one that they focused, either way, on forgiveness and people can change and people can be, they can repent, you know? And so I agree, I'm with you. I think even if he... Had admitted to it, they had found out about it regardless, they would, he would have said, "I'm a changed man." And more than likely, they still would have allowed him to be part of their, their group.

• 1:20:28Stephanie Harlowe?

  Exactly, or he would have blamed his wife and been like, "She's lying, she's lying." And a woman can ruin a man's reputation like this because she's lying. And they would have been like, "Yeah, we can see that, you know, we could see how that would be a thing that that she would do, that a woman would do." So, at the time, Brian and Wanda were getting close. The church normally would not have approved of their relationship as they were both going through a divorce, but she said that because the stake president and the bishop knew that they both needed a friend, they condoned the relationship and they allowed it to progress. So Brian would come over to Wanda's house, she would feed him, they would go to church together, and they did this for nine months before getting married civilly on November 29th, 1985. This is the same day Brian's divorce from his previous wife Debbie was

• 1:21:13Stephanie Harlowe?

  finalized. So he's wasting no time because part of the "I'm a good Mormon man" thing is having a wife, right? That's part of the, the act. So at the time of their marriage, Brian was 31 years old and Wanda was 39. And Wanda introduced Brian to her children the following month, around Christmas. And over the next several years, a few of Wanda's children would actually live with Brian and Wanda, and they had experiences. We're going to talk about that in a minute. Like I said, Brian and Wanda, they were not sealed in temple at that time. It was just a civil ceremony. They would be sealed in temple three years later on January 23rd, 1988. And this is once again, the eternal marriage thing. And although Wanda described the first years of their marriage as hellish, filled with

• 1:21:57Stephanie Harlowe?

  constant arguments and Brian being possessive and controlling, the couple publicly threw themselves into the LDS church and they developed a very positive relationship there as Brian attempted to climb the ladder of LDS leadership in the downtown Salt Lake City 10th ward. One of the church members said that Wanda and Brian were, quote, "The epitome of righteousness, fulfilling every church duty and assignment," end quote. As I said, Brian Mitchell seemed intent on gaining respect and responsibility in the church, and he was allowed to do that. He first acted as a counselor in the stake mission presidency. Next, he became a member of the high stake council, and then he acted as a counselor in the Bishore Prick ward. Now, I could go into details of what the responsibilities were in all of these different roles, but-

• 1:22:42Stephanie Harlowe?

  I know this episode is going to be long enough as it is.

• 1:22:45Derrick Levasseur?

  I feel like I'm an LDS expert at this point. Anyone who was doubting, yeah, anyone who was doubting you or thinking you were just kind of painting a one-sided picture. That has been completely dismantled at this point.

• 1:22:59Stephanie Harlowe?

  And remember that the episode technically came out on YouTube just yesterday. So I didn't just, you know, research and write all of this in a day.

• 1:23:08Derrick Levasseur?

  No, no, no, no, no. This was the plan, but no, I mean, listen, for anybody who was concerned, I think those, those concerns have been alleviated.

• 1:23:17Stephanie Harlowe?

  So let me just basically say, without going into too much detail, Brian's steady rise in his chapter, his stake, it meant that by all the people there, he was seen as spiritually mature, dependable, and someone who was thought to represent the church publicly very well and whose judgment could be trusted. So the mission president, Drew White, said that Brian was great. He was highly conscientious, completely normal, quiet, soft-spoken. Brian didn't talk about any weird religious ideas and Drew trusted his spiritual strength and guidance enough to ask Brian to be his counselor. This is the mission president, okay? Gary Shaw, who served the church with Brian Mitchell, he remembered Wanda as pious, kind,

• 1:24:00Stephanie Harlowe?

  and a great organist who played with a lot of emotion and put on well-attended recitals. Wanda would practice on the organ or piano six to eight hours a day, and she was very well-respected and recognized for this. Another LDS person who knew Wanda and Brian in 1995 testified about how Wanda had gotten a church calling to play music. And when asked whether Brian expressed like anger or envy that Wanda was called and he wasn't, the person said, quote, "I sensed very, very strongly that there was an inferiority complex or an inferiority feeling or whatever. Wanda, to my feelings, she had the talent between the two, and I always felt that Brian was trying to achieve a match. I think he was using his areas of interest to kind of rise to her level," end quote.

• 1:24:44Stephanie Harlowe?

  So basically, Brian's the man. He should be the one going to church and everybody's like, Brian, you're great. Like, let me give you more responsibility. Let me give you more power. But they were going to church and everybody was like, Wanda, you're so amazing and so talented and God himself is playing through you. And Brian was getting kind of like jealous about this. And so he was trying to rise in the ranks to get more power so that I guess he wouldn't feel like downplayed by her or overshadowed by her, but.

• 1:25:10Stephanie Harlowe?

  There was a point where he just wouldn't rise in the ranks anymore. Like, they didn't let him go up any further, and he felt frustrated by this. So, according to Wanda, behind the scenes, things were not so polished and perfect. After they were man and wife, Brian began to open up. So, remember, Wanda's like, "He let me talk all the time. I put my problems on him, my burdens on him. He didn't need much from me." But now you're married, you're trapped. So, this is when Brian's gonna show you who he really is. And he started talking a lot about his previous marriage to Debbie, and how horrible Debbie was to him, and how she would drive him to these horrible anger episodes where he would be violent. Now, Wanda said that their first year of marriage, Brian became consumed in fear and doubt. And he

• 1:25:53Stephanie Harlowe?

  would get so angry that he would leave the house. And he told Wanda he was leaving so that he wouldn't get violent and hurt someone or destroy something. He told Wanda that when he'd been with Debbie, he'd gotten so angry that once he'd taken a TV and thrown it out of the window. Wanda said that sometimes Brian would scream into his pillow, and he would make Wanda destroy pictures of her ex-husband. And he would tell Wanda, like, "This is good for you, to destroy pictures of this man," because they were living in Wanda's house, right? And she'd have pictures of her children and her husband. And he'd be like, "We gotta destroy these pictures, cuz it'll help you heal." But she felt, you know, he really just hated the sight of those pictures and the understanding and recognition that Wanda had like a life before him, and that there'd been another man there before him. And it would drive him into like this episode of rage where he'd just grab these

• 1:26:36Stephanie Harlowe?

  pictures and be like, "Let's destroy them." And so, yeah, he's out of his mind. So, Wanda went to her church leaders to talk about Brian's issues, not in a bad way. She wasn't like, "Oh, I'm scared of him." She was like, "How can I help him, you know? What am I doing wrong?" Because this was how LDS women were basically programmed and trained to feel. And she went to her church leaders, and she was told that she needed to be in control and help Brian overcome his fears and doubts and not feed the fire. So, she had to basically, like, give in to him and just be very, like, I guess, submissive.

• 1:27:11Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, so basically because he was insecure, she had to baby him?

• 1:27:14Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yes.

• 1:27:15Derrick Levasseur?

  That makes sense.

• 1:27:16Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yes.

• 1:27:16Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, that totally tracks.

• 1:27:18Stephanie Harlowe?

  Exactly. So, even Wanda's mother said, at first, Wanda would like push back, but then she kind of learned not to do that anymore. So, Wanda said that after three years, she learned to be less argumentative with Brian. And she also recognized that during the time Brian had been aspiring for a higher position in the church, he wanted to be bishop. He was always getting passed over and this was like making him, I guess, more frustrated, more angry. And he was kind of like taking it out on her because he wasn't getting this bishop role that he thought he was entitled to because he was so much more spiritually mature and better than everybody.

• 1:27:54Derrick Levasseur?

  Do you think there's some people within the church, although they let him in, knew who he was and like, ah, we, you know, we can allow him to be in here and be a part of it. He's a number, but we're not putting him in a managerial role. Not happening. We know that there's some, some stuff going on.

• 1:28:09Stephanie Harlowe?

  He was in high up roles, like his-

• 1:28:11Derrick Levasseur?

  Not a bishop. Bishop, I mean-

• 1:28:13Stephanie Harlowe?

  He was a counselor to the bishop.

• 1:28:15Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah. Which is still terrible. I mean, he shouldn't have been there at all. Let's just make that clear. But bishop, at least in the Catholic church, you know, you're up there and it's like, well, you know, we can look the other way for certain positions, but yeah, this one's, it's not going to happen.

• 1:28:28Stephanie Harlowe?

  I think by the time he got to the counselor to the bishop, they were like, yeah, we noticed something's off about him. And they couldn't like demote him or do anything crazy, but they were like, you're not rising. I exactly think that's right. And of course, nobody comes out and says anything until after what happens with Elizabeth Smart. And by then, the people who allowed him to get as high as he got weren't going to come out and say, yeah, this is why we didn't promote him anymore. Because then they'd have to explain why they allowed him to continue being there and being part of this management.

• 1:28:55Derrick Levasseur?

  While they let him in the first place.

• 1:28:56Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:57Derrick Levasseur?

  Because there was a history of it, right? It's not like he was a good guy. I mean, all they had to do was make a call down the street and they would have got the information they needed, but they didn't.

• 1:29:04Stephanie Harlowe?

  Well, they say they didn't, but-

• 1:29:06Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:06Stephanie Harlowe?

  Once again, they all run in the same circle. So don't tell me that nothing from his past ward or his past like church ever made it to the new one or anybody there. They all work together. They all hang out together and socialize together. Even if you're in a different chapter or ward, you still know these people from different wards. Like, don't tell me nobody ever heard about Brian Mitchell's past problems. I don't believe it. So by the late 1980s, Wanda's two sons, Derek and Mark, as well as her daughter Lori, were all living with Brian and Wanda. And Lori was the first one. In 1986, she moved in there when she was 12. Lori said at this point, they were both extremely religious and Brian would start calling himself a prophet right around the time she moved out, which was when she, you know,

• 1:29:49Stephanie Harlowe?

  I think it would be a few years later, but they were already religious, but he wasn't calling himself a prophet yet. Not when she first moved in. Now, according to Wanda's son Derek, Wanda had always been like this, this very religious person, and he didn't feel that it was Brian's influence at all. He said, quote, "My mother was always religious to a fault and we would fight when she would try to force her beliefs on me. She was like that all her life." End quote. Lori said, quote, "I don't know whether my mom needed a savior and made him that way or vice versa." End quote. So Lori said that she believed Brian calling himself a prophet meant that he never had to admit he was wrong about anything. And she felt that he sort of adapted this persona after he was unable to get the kind of power he wanted

• 1:30:33Stephanie Harlowe?

  through the mainstream LDS church. Lori said Brian would be different based on who he was with and who he was talking to, which remember is what other people in the church said about him. And also what his therapists, his psychologist said about him when he was like 15, 16, 17. So basically Brian was at church acting like a normal Mormon that was charming and everyone loved him. And Lori said, quote, "I actually liked who he was at church, but at home, there was nothing but torment and chaos." End quote. From the moment she moved in, Wanda and Brian made Lori get a job to pay them for living there. And then they would take every one of her paychecks. Lori said, quote, "I was looking for love and acceptance. After being in foster homes,

• 1:31:15Stephanie Harlowe?

  there was no love there. They wanted me for child support and to get back at my dad. They were greedy. There was nothing that was ever enough for them. They always wanted more." End quote. Lori had no control or autonomy over her own life while she was living there. She was on lockdown 24/7 with the exception of her church activities and her job, which was at a local movie theater. And the one time she was allowed to have friends over on her 14th birthday, Brian ended up kicking everyone out after he saw a scene in a movie the girls were watching that offended him. Um, I think it was like a scene where a statue of Michelangelo fell over and his, his penis broke off and Brian was just very like, "Oh, this is blasphemy. How could you watch this?" And he kicked everyone out. And Lori, Lori was really pissed.

• 1:31:57Stephanie Harlowe?

  According to Lori, um, Brian never sexually abused her necessarily.

• 1:32:03Stephanie Harlowe?

  But there were incidents that made her very uncomfortable and that were, you know, just really inappropriate, no matter what way you look at it. She said, quote, "There were innuendos. There were long hugs. He'd shrug up against me. I felt like if I wore a turtleneck around him, that he was undressing me with his eyes." End quote. Brian would kiss Lori on her lips, even though she repeatedly asked him not to, and he would put his arms around her and thrust his pelvis at her, even though she repeatedly asked him not to. Brian would come into Lori's room to say goodnight and be overly affectionate, to say the least. Lori said, quote, "He'd caress me way too much. His hugs were too long. He'd brush up against my breasts." End quote. Additionally, Wanda, her mother, and Brian did not attempt to hide their sexual relationship

• 1:32:48Stephanie Harlowe?

  from Lori, and she said he always had to be touching either her or Wanda, her mother. And she said that religion was used as an excuse for their behavior. They felt they could treat anybody any way they wanted, and then they could repent so that they didn't have to answer for their wrongdoings. Lori said, quote, "Brian and my mom would force me to pray with them for two to four hours a day. My mom was praying, and I was kneeling there, and Brian actually nudged me, and he pulled out some photos of some nude women and laid them upon the bed, and it seems that they were trying to get me to participate with them that day." End quote. So...

• 1:33:23Derrick Levasseur?

  I do want to pause this for a second because I know we're going over a lot of exposition about Brian David Mitchell specifically, and it's important to the story of Elizabeth Smart and understanding who this person was and how they got to this point where they're kidnapping little girls out of homes. But I do think this is an interesting point to make for everybody listening, watching right now, and how we can learn from these experiences and maybe prevent something from happening in our own lives. And what you were describing there, I have to tell you, I've heard that on so many occasions as far as how it started.

• 1:33:55Stephanie Harlowe?

  It's grooming.

• 1:33:56Derrick Levasseur?

  If you ever, if you ever have a situation where your child or a child you're taking care of comes to you, and it might be something that seems innocent at first, but they suggest that so-and-so...

• 1:34:10Derrick Levasseur?

  Keeps brushing themselves up against them, or they felt something, or they're very handsy with them. Or if it gets to the extreme, which this should be a no brainer, but it usually is a progression where eventually what I've seen a lot is where our victims will tell us that before it ever got to the the ultimate point of why I was involved, they would show them porn and explicit photos. And this again, all forms of grooming, like you said, where they're warming them up to the idea so that it's not as traumatic when it actually happens. It's almost like an evolution, a step up process to it. So again, if you take anything from this episode, other than what we're learning about Brian David Mitchell and how much of a scumbag he is, he is not the only Brian David Mitchell out there. There are different gradients of it.

• 1:34:54Derrick Levasseur?

  And if you're someone who comes here to be educated and to learn about these behaviors so that you can help people in your own lives, this is something you need to pay attention to because I can tell you as a detective, speaking to many victims, this is how it starts where it's something like, oh, we played a game like Twister. That was a big one. I heard a lot. Believe it or not, I love the game Twister, but that's an opportunity to intertwine with people and use it as an excuse to be in close proximity. Games like that, wrestling, oh, we used to, we used to, he used to wrestle me a lot. And then it gets to the point where it's like, oh, you know, I didn't realize it at the time, but he would specifically rub up against certain areas. And then, you know, he would show me or put on porn in the background and act like he didn't know I was there.

• 1:35:39Derrick Levasseur?

  All of this, not the first time I've heard these stories. So if you ever encounter anything like this, or someone you know says, hey, my child said this. Red flag, obviously 99% chance it's not innocent, especially if it's happening on more than one occasion. Just something I wanted to bring up, not that I want to make it about this, this entire episode, but we can learn from this because this is something that's not isolated to this story.

• 1:36:04Stephanie Harlowe?

  It's grooming. Exactly. It's, um, I'm going, and especially will often start with even a younger child than Lori was at that time, because it's, I'm getting you comfortable with this close proximity between you and I, and then it's going to like the stakes are going to rise. So first it's my hand on your stomach and then your thigh and then it's moving. And Derek, I mean, you know, the statistics, being a former police officer. When you have a non-related, non-biologically-related male in the house, how do the statistics of sexual abuse of a child shoot up?

• 1:36:37Derrick Levasseur?

  Oh, they definitely increase. I don't know the exact numbers, maybe you do, but they definitely increase. You see a lot of, a lot of stepfathers, you know, boyfriends. Candidly, what I've seen a lot of, as well as just fathers of other, of the friends, right? Sleepovers, you know, things like that. I also see a lot of that. So it's not always the significant other. It's also that, that certain degree of separation where for some reason in these scumbags' minds, they are able to justify it because it's not a blood relative. So therefore, it's not wrong because obviously incest is way worse than child molestation, right? I'm saying that sarcastically, obviously, but that's their way of justifying it in their perverted minds.

• 1:37:19Stephanie Harlowe?

  And there are men who target single mothers specifically to get close to their young children. And this is not something that I'm saying to be judgmental or to cast an incorrect sort of characterization. This is true. It's proven. These men have admitted it in interviews or in support groups or whatever. Afterwards, they will specifically target single mothers in order to get close to their children, so.

• 1:37:43Derrick Levasseur?

  And I know we're saying a lot of he, he, he, and that's because of experience.

• 1:37:47Stephanie Harlowe?

  And it's also just the statistics. Yes, of course, women do it as well.

• 1:37:50Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, it's not isolated, but the high, the probability is heavily on one side. And I'm saying that as a guy, you know, if it's, it's not completely impossible, but the likelihood of it being the father of the friend is way higher than it being the mother. Let's just call it what it is. I don't make the stats.

• 1:38:09Stephanie Harlowe?

  And unfortunately, I have, I have, I do have a young daughter. So if she has a friend who has a single father and she wants to have a sleepover, I say no. And it's not because I think this guy's bad. The odds are he's not. But I will not take that chance with my child ever. So it's like, yeah, you can have be friends with this person, this girl. Of course, she can come over and sleep at, at our house, but you will not be going over to the home of a friend who has a single father and it's just you and this other little girl there and that single father. And this is not trying to be judgmental. It's just you have to err on the side of caution when it comes to kids because this will change them. And and destroy their innocence and I'm not going to take that chance.

• 1:38:48Derrick Levasseur?

  Here's what I always say to people who ask my opinion on it, sometimes colleagues, sometimes friends. Here's what I can promise you, you can let them go over there and more than likely, they're going to be fine. But I can't guarantee it and I can guarantee you, if you don't let them go over there, it's not going to happen that way. It just decreases the opportunity for someone who's wearing a mask to take advantage of the situation. If you don't put your child in those situations, it can't happen, right?

• 1:39:18Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, I'm not like hidden about this. I'll tell the guy, you know, and as a man, he understands. As a man with a daughter, he always, every single time understands. I'm like, I'm not trying to be like a jerk and it's not that I don't trust you, but he's like, I totally get it. I see these stories too. I watch the news. As a man with a daughter, I want to protect, I completely understand. They're not mad about it. I'm not like hiding and talking shit about him behind his back or thinking terrible things. I tell him upfront, this is my concern and I don't not trust you. It's just, I don't trust anybody. And he always understands. So now, according to Lori, the photos that Brian would show her were kept in a box under his bed. And he would pull the box out while Wanda was having her eyes closed as if she was praying while this was happening.

• 1:40:01Stephanie Harlowe?

  And you could tell that Lori doesn't really believe that her mother's eyes were closed and she didn't know what was happening. She thinks that Wanda and Brian were trying to like get her to come into their intimate times with her. She feels that her mother was very well aware of what happened. Now about Brian Mitchell, Wanda's son Mark said, quote, "We always thought he was kind of weird and creepy. He seemed normal at first, but he had a really weird way of talking to you and looking at you. He had an empty look in his eyes, soulless. He would just come up and touch me on the shoulder and squeeze in a weird way that just gave me the creeps." End quote. Mark and Derek, both Wanda's kids, they actually made fun of Brian Mitchell and like they said he had this like whispery voice. Like he would talk in this whispery voice and they'd make fun of him about it.

• 1:40:44Stephanie Harlowe?

  But they also had similar experiences with Brian Mitchell. They said he was kind of creepy, but he related to the boys on things like physical fitness and doing things outdoors. Mitchell would take them out camping, bow hunting, rifle shooting. And then Mark said, quote, "And he even shot our pet dog in a weird way. And he just came up and told me one day that he had shot it in the head," end quote. They could never understand why he did that. The dog wasn't sick. Brian Mitchell just walked up and was like, "I shot the dog in the head today," and that was it. They didn't understand why. All three of Wanda's kids agreed on several things. The intensely religious behavior got worse and weird over time. Mark said they put a lock on the TV so that it only played the Mormon channels, and eventually Wanda and Brian shunned modern medicine, and they

• 1:41:28Stephanie Harlowe?

  would only rely on herbal and natural remedies. Towards the end of Mark's time there, he said Brian started talking about seeing prophets and angels, and he told his friends that he was worried his mother and Brian might try to sacrifice him or something like that. He said there was just a look in their eyes. They also agreed that Brian Mitchell was very intelligent. He knew a lot about a lot, and he spent most of his time reading books at the public library. Mark said, quote, "He was highly intelligent. He read a lot. He had a whole library on self-sufficiency, survival, camping," end quote. Lori also said that Brian studied books on how to survive the wilderness, books about how to hypnotize people, books about Jeffrey Dahmer and mind control, and books on how to not pay taxes. Lori said, quote, "It was an obsession of his to always have the upper hand. He thought

• 1:42:12Stephanie Harlowe?

  people were his puppets in a way. He was very smart. He was almost too smart. He thought he had a lot of control over everybody," end quote. Now Derek eventually moved out. He said it was just too creepy, and then he turned 18, and he knew it was time to go. The last straw happened for Lori when she was 14. And one night, she sat down for dinner with her mother and Brian Mitchell, and she said, quote, "I asked what we were having for dinner, and my mom said chicken. During that meal, she and Brian were not touching their plates really, but they were kind of picking at a salad that they had, and she had a smile on her face the whole time. The next day, I went to go feed my rabbit, and the cage was empty. I said, 'What happened to Peaches?' And she said, 'You had him for dinner last night,'" end quote.

• 1:42:54Derrick Levasseur?

  What the?

• 1:42:55Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:56Derrick Levasseur?

  Jesus, man.

• 1:42:57Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:58Derrick Levasseur?

  I wonder why these kids grow up and they struggle so much. I mean, the shit they have to endure.

• 1:43:02Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah. Well, that's why they wanted her, they wanted everyone to know when Wanda's lawyers were like, "Oh, Brian Mitchell did this to her." She was fine. The kids were like, "No, she wasn't. Not once was she fine." So Lori said that while her mother, Wanda, was breaking this news to her, she was laughing hysterically and Brian Mitchell was in a nearby room watching with glee. And after this, Lori knew she had to run away to escape the mental torture. She said her rabbit peaches was the only thing that had loved her unconditionally and her mother and Brian knew how she felt about peaches. So, you know, she'd broken away from her father because he was also abusive and that's how she ended up in foster homes and that's how she ended up living with Brian and Wanda to begin with because they kind of were like, "Hey, this is

• 1:43:44Stephanie Harlowe?

  a better, stable environment." So it got so bad that she actually found her father, who was abusive, and called him and was like, "Come and get me." And then she ran away when Brian and Wanda left the house one day. She left as soon as she could, went back to an abusive father, a physically abusive father, to get away from these people. So Brian Mitchell was working at a company called OC Tanner from 1984 to 1994. He first worked in shipping and receiving before being promoted to die cutter. And listen, apparently he was great. This is like a metal worker, I guess, and he was really good at it. He actually made like table settings and he sold these things and he would give them to people for weddings and he made the rings that, you know, he and Wanda used for their wedding.

• 1:44:27Stephanie Harlowe?

  But reportedly during this time at his church, Brian was not really saying anything weird or pushing back on the norms. He wasn't preaching about crazy things. But his coworkers at OC Tanner saw Brian as someone who was obsessed with his faith and intensely religious. And this is coming from people who were all also Mormon. So they were all Mormons and they were like, "Brian Mitchell was out of his mind." So Brian's supervisor, Garth Rosenland, seemed to feel that Brian was a thorn in his side, like the ultimate energy vampire every single day. Garth said, quote, "He was doing his own interpretations, distorting the canons of the church and then just insisting he was right and he knew better, like he was above and beyond." It would put people off. He would say, "The prophet is wrong," and go on and on talking

• 1:45:09Stephanie Harlowe?

  about it. Brian would get people going. He had a way of bringing something up to get under a person's skin. He would just get people going, end quote. Garth said that Brian could be very convincing when making his points, but if someone brought up a solid counterargument, or who was also making good points, Brian would just start loudly singing hymns, and the conversation would obviously end because he just wasn't taking part in the conversation anymore. And Brian actually ended up fashioning a contraption with a hanger, so that he could turn pages in his hymn book while he worked, so that he could work and sing at the same time. And he did this incessantly and loudly. And so if his coworkers would complain, Brian would either ignore them, or tell them, "This is just how

• 1:45:51Stephanie Harlowe?

  I sing," and continue on as if no one else around him existed. And this kind of behavior is going to be identical to how he would act in court later, when he was on trial for what he had done to Elizabeth Smart. He would just start randomly singing, and, you know, kind of acting like he was in a trance, and he just couldn't be bothered. And according to his supervisor, Garth, if Brian was reprimanded, or told to get back to work, he would, quote, "Look and just stare at you. He did not like anyone to have authority over him," end quote. Needless to say, when Brian Mitchell was taken into custody in connection with Elizabeth Smart's kidnapping, no one at OC Tanner was surprised. They actually went to the media and said that, they were like, "No, this does not

• 1:46:35Stephanie Harlowe?

  aston us or surprise us." And Garth stated, quote, "There was always something squirrely about him. He gave you the creepies. He was very smooth and very convincing, but you always knew there was something he was not letting on. I was never afraid of him, because he was such a little guy. But he would get angry so quickly, and there was a real anger there. You could sense it," end quote. It does remind me a lot of Charles Manson, because people would say the same thing about him. And a lot of people don't believe that Charles Manson was ever really... Mentally ill, he just pretended to be so that he wouldn't be held as accountable for the things that his cult had done, but he always knew what he was doing. Now Garth also said that if Brian was threatened with a suspension or termination, he would get back to work. And then when that happened, he was a hard and productive worker.

• 1:47:20Stephanie Harlowe?

  But this just shows you, once again, he can turn it on and off. So when people are just complaining or getting annoyed with him, he keeps his antics going. But when his supervisor looks at him and says, "I'm going to fire you," and Brian needs the money, he can suddenly transform back into a normal person who's not acting like, you know, a psychopath and singing all day at work. And maybe this is what happened and how he sort of became more extreme in his opposition to authority and his desire to go against the government so that he wouldn't have to pay taxes and Brian's insistence to like live off the grid because he's getting annoyed that he has to work for money and he has to listen to these people at work and he also has to pay taxes to the government and he doesn't want to do any of that.

• 1:48:03Stephanie Harlowe?

  So by the late 80s, Brian was getting more and more into the ideas that taxes were theft and unconstitutional. And Wanda's mother, Dora Corbett, said that Brian not only didn't want to pay taxes, he didn't want to be responsible for anything in any way, shape, or form.

• 1:48:16Derrick Levasseur?

  One thing, one thing we could both agree on, I'm like, damn, not me relating to Brian.

• 1:48:20Stephanie Harlowe?

  I mean, so.

• 1:48:21Derrick Levasseur?

  With taxes.

• 1:48:23Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, but he wants to, he, he literally doesn't want to pay any taxes.

• 1:48:27Derrick Levasseur?

  Me neither.

• 1:48:28Stephanie Harlowe?

  So he would.

• 1:48:29Derrick Levasseur?

  Me neither.

• 1:48:30Stephanie Harlowe?

  I mean, me neither.

• 1:48:31Derrick Levasseur?

  None of us do.

• 1:48:32Stephanie Harlowe?

  Nobody does. But we'll pay like a normal, acceptable amount of taxes, but Brian's like, "I want to go off the grid and make no money. I would rather be poor and like eat acorns than have to pay a cent to the government." And I don't think you're at that point, Derek.

• 1:48:44Derrick Levasseur?

  Not yet, but man, sometimes when I write those checks, you guys are going to hear about me going to prison for tax evasion. No, I'm a good, I'm, I'm, I'm the guy who always pays my bills.

• 1:48:53Stephanie Harlowe?

  I know, you're, you're perfectly responsible with that.

• 1:48:56Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, yeah, unfortunately.

• 1:48:57Stephanie Harlowe?

  So Wanda's mother said, quote, "He was fed up with the government. He was mad about taxes and didn't want to pay them. He just wanted to be a free man. He had all of these ideas about tax evasion and he was trying to get us to go along with them. He was always very convincing, but no one was very comfortable with it." End quote. This was also the time, you know what I mean? Like the 70s going into the 80s, everybody's kind of like. Why do we have to pay taxes? Why do we have to live in a house when we can live off the land and, and dance around in circles and have sex with everyone? You know, it was very of the time and this was a big movement. The patriot movement was coming along at that time. So it kind of made sense that he would sort of like gleam onto that.

• 1:49:38Stephanie Harlowe?

  But this also aligned with a period of time when Brian began telling people that he understood LDS scriptures better than LDS leadership. And he was clearly becoming more and more frustrated with the limits that the church had put on his authority and also the limits they put on his potential for power and influence. So in 1994, Brian quit his job at OC Tanner and he began working for a man named Dr. C. Samuel West, a Mormon fundamentalist who taught that the LDS church had fallen into apostasy and that personal revelation outweighed all institutional authority. This is where we come in with the FLDS church, like the people that branch off and they start saying, oh, you don't tell me how to interpret scripture.

• 1:50:21Stephanie Harlowe?

  God speaks directly to me and I am more powerful. And then they have their own little like, you know, like Warren Jeffs, if anybody knows who I'm talking about, this is exactly what we're talking about. West was an author and a religious ID log. He was not a person recognized by the mainstream LDS church. And by the early nineties, he was known in certain extreme circles for teaching that true believers must reject official church authority. He also advocated for polygamy as a divine requirement. West spread his message primarily from a compound in Orem, Utah, where he wrote self-published books and pamphlets, and he had each of his seven sons involved in telephone sales of DVDs and other materials to people around the world.

• 1:51:05Stephanie Harlowe?

  If anybody's ever watched the, the show Big Love with Bill Paxton, which is an amazing show, one of Bill's wives had a father who, who said he was the prophet and they had like a compound and then everybody there, which was basically just women and like a few men would work and try to like spread the word of the prophet. And this is exactly what it made me think of. But West also taught something called lymphology through the International Academy of Lymphology, also run out of his family compound in Orem. And this is a fringe belief, a fringe belief. Now you will find that he still has a website going and this is still. Being sold and everything, and they're not really marketing it in this way, but this is how it was being marketed it back then.

• 1:51:49Stephanie Harlowe?

  Okay, so this is a fringe belief that the lymphatic system is the true seat of spiritual purity, and sexual behavior directly alters a person's spiritual and physical state via the lymph, the lymph fluid. Now, understand, there's obviously medical and science research behind the lymph fluid, and we have a lymph system, and all of that's true, but not in this way. Okay, I want to really make that distinction. So, Dr. West, he's not a real doctor, okay? I looked it up. No! It says he is, and he's got his degree from this, and they're not like legitimate places. I hope he doesn't try to come after me, but he's not a real doctor, alright? But Dr. West taught that men could absorb spiritual power through sexual dominance,

• 1:52:32Stephanie Harlowe?

  and that women were vessels whose bodies could be used to purify and empower men. So in this system, women were seen as instrumental, existing primarily to serve a man's spiritual progression. So female autonomy would have been an act of spiritual corruption or rebelling, and interfering with the divine order of the world. And once again, not only was this taught by this Dr. C. Samuel West person, who's not a real doctor, but Brian Mitchell's father, who we talked about, Sheryl, he was also a big proponent of it. So we wonder, when Brian Mitchell takes a 14-year-old girl, and takes her as his wife, right? And why did he think he could do this? Well, he was using all of these beliefs around him to justify it.

• 1:53:17Stephanie Harlowe?

  So Brian Mitchell, he quits his real job, and he starts selling Dr. West's teachings. He earned about $400 a week. Now, understand, at this time, he was also being held responsible for a monthly child support payment of $200 a month, and, you know, normal bills, and taking care of a family, and rent, and bills, and things that he's got to pay. And suddenly, Brian Mitchell was a man of the people, talking about the evils of materialism, and wanting to be a prophet for the poor. Now, at this time, Brian and Wanda were moving around a lot, because they weren't paying rent anywhere that they would be living. So they would stay at one apartment for a few months before the landlord ran out of patience, and then they would up and move in the middle of the night, move into another apartment, and they would repeat the same pattern. They also stopped attending church because they were unable to pay the tithe,

• 1:54:02Stephanie Harlowe?

  which was already something Brian was saying they shouldn't have to pay, but it was mandatory in order to get a temple recommend. And people might say, well, you get a temple recommend you're in. No, that's reevaluated every year. So every year you have to be reevaluated. And if you're not paying, they're not going to give it to you.

• 1:54:19Derrick Levasseur?

  Oh, man, this anti-tax man was not happy about that.

• 1:54:23Stephanie Harlowe?

  No, no. And it would prevent him from being considered a part of like the legitimate mainstream church, which kind of gave him some sort of, you know.

• 1:54:31Derrick Levasseur?

  This could have also contributed to him not being a bishop as well, right? I mean, you're not paying, not paying your dues.

• 1:54:37Stephanie Harlowe?

  Well, according to the people at church, Brian wasn't talking about crazy ideas or pushing back. He was just doing this like outside, but I don't believe them.

• 1:54:44Derrick Levasseur?

  I don't know. I don't know. I have a hard time believing it. But like I said, with any religion, it's just, it's hard because they know if there's a bad stigma put on their religion, it could affect the overall cause of what they're trying to do.

• 1:54:55Stephanie Harlowe?

  Right? Yeah.

• 1:54:56Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah. Like, you know, they're doing it for the betterment of the, of their organization, but it's, but it's shady.

• 1:55:02Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah. So at this point, Brian and Wanda, they just stopped paying bills, including bills that were co-signed by family members. And then when Brian would be confronted by these family members, he would lecture them about how money and materialism were signs of weakness of faith. And so they were beneath him because they were mad that he wasn't paying his bills. And in 1994, Wanda and Brian got themselves a five-wheel trailer. They sold all of their belongings and they moved for a short time to a campground in Heber City, right next door to one of Brian's sisters, Evelyn. And Wanda would later say that she was on board with all of this. This was not something she was forced to do. She said she felt inspired by the Lord to simplify their lives. Wanda's mother, Dora, actually

• 1:55:44Stephanie Harlowe?

  paid Brian for Wanda's piano to save it for her, because remember, it's very important to Wanda. And Dora said, quote, "I always thought that selling their possessions was a way for him to get control over her. They went homeless to stop paying child support and stopped working to avoid paying income taxes and child support," end quote. So during their time at the campground, Wanda asked Evelyn to help her go through the rest of their meager possessions that she and Brian had left because they wanted to get rid of even more, to be even closer to the Lord by having even less. And this is when Evelyn found photos that Brian had been keeping of little girls. And in the police files, the names of these little girls are redacted. But if you asked me to venture a guess, I would say that the little girls in these

• 1:56:28Stephanie Harlowe?

  photos were the daughters of Brian's ex-wife Debbie. Because remember, one of her daughters said that she would catch him in the linen closet taking pictures of her while she was in the bath. But it goes even further because Evelyn said the photos showed these little girls naked in sexually provocative positions. And she said, quote, "These were little girls, like six years old. It really disturbed me," end quote. Evelyn obviously told Wanda, "This is messed up, you know? Confront Brian. Ask him what the hell is he doing with these things?" And Wanda later told her that she had talked to Brian about it and he had laughed, telling her that it was no big deal and that everyone does it. And that was acceptable to Wanda, I guess. So after a few months, Brian and Wanda left Heber City and they relocated to Clearwater,

• 1:57:13Stephanie Harlowe?

  Idaho, where they stayed with a group of naturalists who lived off the land. They would eventually be asked to leave. Now, they have different reasons of why they were being asked to leave, but once again, this video is long enough. And then the couple bounced around. They were begging for money on the streets. When someone would ask Brian why he wouldn't just, you know, man up and get a job, Brian would tell them that people always gave him money and the Lord would always provide. In May of 1994, the then LDS president Ezra Benson died. And while many LDS followers were concerned about what this meant for the direction of their church, Brian saw it as what had been foreseen for the millennium, an apocalyptic struggle between the forces of good and evil. In the LDS Church, the millennium refers to the prophesized thousand-year reign of Jesus

• 1:57:57Stephanie Harlowe?

  Christ on earth followed, you know, following His second coming. And the belief comes from the Book of Revelation, which, once again, if you know anything about Lori Vallow and, and these LDS people that go off the rails, they're always talking about the Book of Revelation. According to what Brian Mitchell told others, the death of Ezra Benson was a sign that the end time struggle had started, and it further supported his already growing belief that institutional authority was collapsing. After this, Brian Mitchell would suddenly begin receiving revelations, which meant God was speaking directly to him, sending him messages and granting him authority that superseded anything he had ever been taught by an LDS leader or inside an LDS building. And one of these revelations would tell Mitchell that he was to have seven wives.

• 1:58:42Stephanie Harlowe?

  And these wives would be young girls between the ages of 10 and 14 from Mormon households. And then, a really, really short time later, just a few days later after this revelation, 14-year-old Elizabeth Smart stood nearby as her mother handed Mitchell money and a phone number. There she was, a young girl from a Mormon family, as if God Himself had handpicked and delivered the perfect wife right to Brian David Mitchell's feet. At least that's how he would see it, or how he says he saw it.

• 1:59:14Derrick Levasseur?

  Wow. I mean, this was a great episode. I will say, and we talked about it a little beforehand, it was a very long episode, so I wasn't as engaging tonight because I knew if I, if we kept talking about every topic you covered, we'd be here for five hours. So I was more of a listener than a contributor tonight, and I'm fine with that because I think it's really important when we talk about these cases that everyone feels like they know everything about them, to really dive into the details, not only for the sake of that story, but to try to identify moments in time that we can use in our own personal lives. You know, things that could have been done differently, forks in the road that may have prevented something like this from happening, because my big takeaway is that, not that it's anyone's fault per se,

• 1:59:58Derrick Levasseur?

  although I could put some blame on some people if we're going to be really specific here, but... Brian David Mitchell was allowed to operate in plain sight and he didn't start at the extreme of kidnapping young girls. It was an evolution as it is with many of these individuals. And there are moments where you can identify this and point it out and maybe at minimum deter them from doing it in the future, but in a perfect scenario apprehend them, identify them, get them off the street and not allow them to do this to anybody else. So for me, I think about episode one and what you described to us and the mindset you have to have to go into

• 2:00:40Derrick Levasseur?

  someone's home and take a young girl at knife point like that while she's laying in bed with her sister. Takes a certain individual and now after this episode with two hours talking about this person, I get it. I understand it. I see how we got there. I don't agree with it.

• 2:00:58Stephanie Harlowe?

  You can see the timing of his evolution and how Elizabeth Smart and her family entered his life right at the time where he was claiming to get these, see it all kind of like converges. And now we've converged and now we have Elizabeth Smart and Brian David Mitchell together and now you can talk more.

• 2:01:15Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah. And it's, and it's like, and now I could talk, talk more, but it also to the point you made at the beginning of this episode about the LDS church. It's a dichotomy right here. You have on one end, a monster hiding in amongst everyone, using the religion to, for their own benefit, right? And then on the other end, you have a good family who is trying to do the right thing and live up to the expectations of what the religion originally intended, right? And unfortunately because of that commonality, the LDS church, they were infiltrated. Their family was infiltrated where this individual who had been doing this for years was able to get into their lives and have this.

• 2:01:57Derrick Levasseur?

  Basic level of acceptance because of that, that shared interest in the LDS religion. So two different lives, two different, you know, parallel universes who unfortunately intersected at the wrong time. And I think that's important. It's an important distinction to make because what you didn't say tonight was a, a, a long history of Elizabeth Smart's family having interactions with this person and ignoring the signs. You know, it was, it was just wrong place, wrong time, and it can happen to anyone. So I'm really appreciative that you went this deep with it. It, you know, it, it's not part of the story that most people know, but it's, it's extremely important when we want to understand how people tick and what causes

• 2:02:38Derrick Levasseur?

  them to do something like this. Yeah, there is a underlying behavior that's instilled in them probably before birth, you know, like that's just who they are. But there's also a, a set of environmental conditions that allows those urges to grow and manifest into something like this. So really important topic to cover. We don't always do this, but I'm really glad we did it here.

• 2:03:00Stephanie Harlowe?

  It was important. And I think like, okay, Elizabeth Smart happened to be wrong place, wrong time. But if not Elizabeth Smart.

• 2:03:06Derrick Levasseur?

  It would have been someone else.

• 2:03:07Stephanie Harlowe?

  It would have been somebody else. And in fact, she will even talk about it and will learn through the police files. He attempted to do this again. He wanted to get seven wives. He had Wanda. Now we had Elizabeth, quote unquote, and the, he was not done. And, and Wanda Barzy, you can say what you want about her. He, you know, Brian was horrible to her and he manipulated her, you know, this, this and that. Sure. But she willingly went along with all of this and she took part in it. And that's when, you know, if you think what we talked about today was bad.

• 2:03:37Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah.

• 2:03:37Stephanie Harlowe?

  What happened to Elizabeth is nightmare fuel of, of the most epic proportions. And you'll see, there's not going to be a shred of. Sympathy or any kind of wiggle room in your head to feel bad for either Brian or Wanda when we're done talking about this.

• 2:03:56Derrick Levasseur?

  I would like to say I'm looking forward to it, but I'm not, but we will be back here next week. Obviously, we appreciate you all hanging out with us for this episode. It was a long one. Sometimes that's what you gotta do to really do what we do over here, which is deep dives to the fullest extent. So we'll be back next week with part three of the Elizabeth Smart case. Until then, everyone stay safe out there. We'll see you soon.

• 2:04:21Stephanie Harlowe?

  Bye.