As we get ready to wrap up our year of Infamous Utahn’s, there are still plenty of people that we could cover… probably another complete year. We couldn’t allow the year to go out without talking about Brian David Mitchell and his accomplice, Wanda Barzee.

These people are hard to write about because it is so current, and not that the other people we have talked about aren’t horrendous, they truly are monsters. Mitchell was born in 1953 in Salt Lake City to parents who were staunch Mormons. He became known in the community as a street Jesus because of his looks and proselytizing. Barzee, born in 1945 also in Salt Lake City. Both experienced many marriages, many kids *who might we add weren’t keen on their own parents,* extreme religious beliefs, and all of this lead up to the kidnapping of Elizabeth Smart in 2002. After being taken from her own bedroom, for 9 months Elizabeth was tortured, raped, fed alcohol and lies, and was within inches of safety but couldn’t reach out. Elizabeth was finally saved in the spring of 2003 while in Sandy, Utah. Barzee was sentenced to 15 years and Mitchell to life. Elizabeth has since served and LDS mission, watched both Barzee and Mitchell be put away, gotten married, started a family, and now she advocates and does speaking events. She is truly a light after so much darkness.

Some of the resources we used for our discussion: ThoughtCo.com/ Real Life Villans/ DreShare/ Heavy.com/ Making of a Monster, and as promised, the psych evaluation panel that we mentioned. These people were not mentally ill, they had full on personality disorders that we only imagine stemmed from their upbringing. As of September 2018, Wanda Barzee was released after serving her time and Brian David Mitchell is serving in a federal prison in Arizona.

Music By: Folk Hogan; Bootleggers Dance