Elizabeth Smart's kidnapper arrested for violating probation as sex offender

Jessica Schladebeck, New York Daily News on May 3, 2025

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Wanda Barzee, the woman who kidnapped Elizabeth Smart and held her captive for months in the early 2000s, has been arrested in Utah for violating the terms of her probation as a sex offender.

Barzee was arrested at her Salt Lake City home on Thursday after visiting at least two parks — Liberty Park and Sugar House Park — in the city last month, police said on Friday. She allegedly told officers “she was commanded to by the lord” to visit the green spaces, so she could “sit on benches and feed ducks,” KUTV reported.

Under Utah state law, registered sex offenders are barred from entering protected areas, including public parks. As a result, Barzee was booked into Salt Lake County Metro Jail on one count of violating the terms of her probation. She has since been released from custody with the promise not to “commit any criminal offense.” The conditions of her parole also include that she check in once a week with a phone call and appear at all future court hearings.

Barzee’s husband, Brian David Mitchell, kidnapped Smart from her Utah bedroom at knifepoint on June 5, 2002. Smart, just 14 years old at the time, said she was raped every day, and sometimes more than once a day during the nine months she was held captive.

Mitchell is serving a life sentence in federal prison for the kidnapping while Barzee took a plea deal from prosecutors to avoid serving a lengthier sentence. She spent 15 years in prison before she was released on parole in September 2018, a move that Smart has criticized in the years since.

“I don’t think you can just kidnap a 14-year-old girl and, you know, not only sit by her while she’s being raped but encourage the rapist to continue … Then just at the end of it say, ‘I’m sorry,’ and really mean it,” Smart said at the time.