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Just hours after he was arrested with Elizabeth Smart in 2003, the man accused of kidnapping her told investigators that she had a "glorious experience" with him for nine months.
Day nine of the federal trial of Brian David Mitchell was highlighted by Mitchell himself. Mitchell did not take the witness stand. He was again removed from the courtroom for singing as he has during every other federal court appearance.
But a two-hour videotaped interview between Mitchell, Salt Lake police detective Cordin Parks and FBI agent Jeffrey Ross was played for the jury uncut and in its entirety.
In the interview, Mitchell is calm and collected, even when the law enforcers are inches away from his face and badgering him with questions about the case while also continually insulting him, calling him a beggar, a fraud, a loser, "lowlife," "revolting" and a child rapist.
Yet Mitchell is the one who appears to have control of the interview over the veteran officers, even when they take different approaches to interviewing him. At one point he even appears to crack a smile in response to one of the officer's frustrated reactions. During another portion of the interview, Mitchell pulls another chair up next to him so he can prop his feet up.
"Every single one of your questions are trick questions. Every single one of your questions is designed to entrap me," Mitchell tells the officers.
When asked about having sex with Smart, he replies in the video: "Your accusations are false. Your questions are false and immaterial."
At another point, when the officers touch Mitchell with their finger tips and lightly grab his chin to raise his head, he accuses them of assault.
"You're assaulting me," he tells the officers. "You poked me, he touched my chin."
Another time, when an officer put his arm around Mitchell in trying to get him to understand the gravity of the situation in an apparent "good cop/bad cop" move, Mitchell also appears to catch on to what they're doing and tell Parks, "You putting your arm around me is not the arm of a friend."
Mitchell insists that the officers refer to him as Immanuel David Isaiah. He answers everything in theological terms. He tells the officers he is God's servant and at first tells them that all answers to their questions can be found by reading his Book of Immanuel. And when pressed about kidnapping Smart, he says, "I'm telling you, the Lord God Almighty delivered her to us."
When pressed further about raping Smart, Mitchell replies in the video, "I've only done what I've been commanded to do." Mitchell also insisted that God told him that the then 14-year-old Smart was 18 years old "in God's eyes."
At one point during the interview, he said of Smart's nine months with him: "She's had a glorious experience."
But during another part of the interview, in which the officers try to get Mitchell to admit he raped Smart, Mitchell briefly gets more animated.
"I did not do what you just said," he said in a raised voice while pointing his finger at the officer. "I did not."
During another attempt to talk about raping Smart, a more collected Mitchell would only say, "You're asking me to talk about things that are sacred and holy."
At several points during the interview, Parks and Ross bring up the possibility of an insanity defense in court, believing Mitchell is using his religious rhetoric to try to set himself up for one later.
"You obviously have no insanity defense because you tried to conceal your identity," Parks tells Mitchell. "A jury isn't going to believe you're all that crazy, are they, Brian?"
"You think I want to go to the mental hospital? You think that's what I want? The mental hospital would be the worst thing for me," Mitchell responded.
When the officers tell him he'll likely spend the rest of his life in prison, he only responds, "It mattereth not. As long as I am being obedient to the Lord."
The officers accused Mitchell of resorting to religious answers whenever the questioning got too tough.
About an hour into the interview, Mitchell asks if he can use the restroom. He leaves the room singing. When he returns, he sings church hymns rather than answer questions.
"Are you going to hide in your songs?" the officers ask sarcastically.
When he stops singing, the officers move in closer to Mitchell, who without warning yells about a dozen times, "Get thee behind me, Satan!"
The rest of the time, Mitchell remained quiet with his eyes closed, even when an officer shook his chair, and he wouldn't answer questions.
FBI Special Agent George Dougherty also interviewed Mitchell on three separate occasions for a total of about six hours. But rather than the badgering method the other officers attempted, Dougherty went in with just the idea of talking to Mitchell. He read the Book of Immanuel and seemed to connect with him by asking him religious types of questions.
"When I asked a question, he'd either ask a question for clarity or reference his book for the answer," Dougherty testified Monday.
But when Dougherty had Mitchell's guard down, he got Mitchell to admit that he consummated his "marriage" to Smart. Shortly after saying that, Mitchell realized what he had done.
"He stopped and grinned at me and said, 'That was pretty good. You got me to say something I didn't want to say,' " Dougherty said.
When the agent asked Mitchell why Smart had to wear a veil, "He looked at me like I'm an idiot," he said.
About a half-dozen times during their conversation, Mitchell said the veils were to hide Smart, and also several times he talked about going to jail. He said he was scared police would find him and take Smart away. He said he knew when he was caught that people "would view him as a monster, child predator, sexual deviant," Dougherty said. Mitchell also told him, "I know that the world thinks I'm crazy. I'm not crazy. I'm just following God's will."
Mitchell was surprised at the attention Smart's kidnapping received and how her face was posted everywhere when he walked into Salt Lake City. At one point, searchers came within 50 yards of their camp, he told Dougherty.
Mitchell seemed to take note of when Dougherty would write something down, he said, as if he thought to himself, "I shouldn't have said that," according to the FBI agent. To get Mitchell to talk more freely, Dougherty said he eventually stopped taking written notes.
During another point of their conversation, Mitchell asked Dougherty what was next for him in the legal process.
"He understood what he was being told," he said.
Several other people who saw Mitchell, Smart and Mitchell's wife, Wanda Barzee, while Smart was still abducted, took the witness stand Monday.
Jill Flemming Ogilvie, a retired San Diego police officer who has lived in Lakeside, Calif., since 1983, testified that she saw the three walking around Lakeside several times in 2003. The faces of the women were always covered, she said.
Whenever they walked, Mitchell would always lead and the others would follow "like little ducks in a row," Ogilvie said. Smart was always in the middle.
The whole situation immediately raised red flags with Ogilvie.
"Something was wrong with the picture. Clearly, it was out of the norm. The man was clearly the leader of the group. The girl was out of place. The girl was school age but obviously not in school," she said. "My professional gut reaction was something was wrong."
Ogilvie tried to engage in conversation with the trio.
"He gave me a look that was so intimidating, so encompassing," she said of Mitchell's reaction. "It was cold, it was harsh and it stopped me. … This individual has a manner, a personality that is much larger than anyone I've ever encountered. He actually controlled the situation. He was incredibly intimidating. Literally by his actions he stopped me mid-word."
When describing Smart, she said she saw fear in her eyes.
"Her eyes were blank. Just absolutely blank — dead," she said. "Her eyes were fearful, I had the impression I was getting her in trouble. She put her eyes down and immediately stopped looking at me."
Adelia Harrington, a librarian in Lakeside, said she also saw the three walking around town and in her library on occasion. She described them as "unkept."
"She looked very sad. She didn't say a word," Harrington said of Smart.
Mitchell and Barzee would never let Smart out of their sight and would always sit or stand close to her or just hold her by her wrist.
Trevelin Colianni, from Las Vegas, saw the trio at a fast-food restaurant when they were traveling back to Utah from California. He too testified that he saw fear in Smart's eyes and called police.
"The look in this little girl's face — afraid, very scared," he said. "(It was) a look that I'll never forget. She looked very frightened. Very nervous. She had like a 'help me' look on her face."
Smart was wearing sunglasses and a wig in the restaurant, and Mitchell held her by the wrist.
"I don't think he ever let go of her," Colianni said.
Anita Dickerson, whose 911 call after spotting Mitchell in Sandy on March 12, 2003, ended Smart's nine months of abduction, said when she and Mitchell connected eyes, he tried to look away.
"I told my husband, 'Give me your cell phone, I'm calling 911, I know it's them,' " she said.
Also Monday, a recording of Mitchell's court appearance in Lakeside after he was arrested for breaking into a church was played for the jury. In the video, Mitchell calls himself Michael Jensen and calmly answers questions when asked where he is living and where he plans to stay, lying to the judge that he, his wife and daughter were staying with friends.
In the video, Mitchell says his week in jail was like Jonah being swallowed by the whale and tells the judge that he is a changed man.
This is the last week of testimony before the jury gets a week off for Thanksgiving.
The prosecution is expected to rest its case this week, possibly today. Then the defense will start calling witnesses to the stand. It's at that point that many speculate the defense will call expert witnesses to testify as part of their insanity defense. Once the defense rests, prosecutors will likely call their own expert witnesses during rebuttal, and as several legal experts have predicted, the trial will likely become a battle of psychiatrists and psychologists debating whether Mitchell was so mentally ill during the nine months he kidnapped Smart that he did not know right from wrong.
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