Elizabeth Smart Found Alive!?
 

And in Salt Lake City. No article yet, but it's on CNN's "breaking news'" header.

Blurb from MSNBC - geez, this is going to be a big story.

Utah girl found with former family handyman

BREAKING NEWS
NBC, MSNBC AND NEWS SERVICES

March 12 — Missing Utah teenager Elizabeth Smart has been found alive at a restaurant in Sandy, Utah, and is in custody, police said Wednesday.

I'm confused. I thought the former family handyman died while in jail, or was in a coma, or something. Is this ANOTHER former family handyman?

Whatever, it's amazing, but I don't know if she was held against her will or not?!? Still it's a miracle!!!

yes, different handyman.
USA Today has decent article.

Yea, it is pretty amazing. She's found 9 months after she was taken.

this has just completely made my day.
no, my week.

simply amazing.

Good for the 2 people who called in and still recognized her after 9 months. I certainly couldnt have done that.

Defying the odds and becoming one of the stories of the year. Her family must be so relieved and excited.

as I understand it, it's the guy that they recognized - they had put out a sketch of him about a month ago.

I guess I lost track of this story once the first suspect died. I had never even heard of Emmanuel until today.

Fantastic news. Now if the media could just put 1/10th of the original effort they put into this story into other missing children cases ...

Wow, I'll second the "made my week" comment........her parents must be in heaven.

The circumstances surrounding all of this, assuming the family permits it to come out, should be interesting. She was wearing a wig and there was another woman in the car with them. You'd think, being 15 miles from her home, if she had been abducted and wanted to get away, that she would have attempted some sort of contact with her family or tried to leave. Very strange.

Never know what kind of supposed threats that those who were holding her had made however. Could have threatened to go back and get her little sis, etc......and being the big sis would have done anything to protect her. As you say though should be interesting to hear.

I just pray that whatever physchological effects this has had on her are reverseable, and that she and her family can someday resume a 'normal' life.

My guess is the major news networks will announce the innocence of the first handyman with about as much emphasis as they put on apoligizing the Richard Jewell. I would say this whole thing could turn out to be very interesting.

So far, they seem to be hinting that he could have been connected. At the time, police had said they thought he was involved but not acting alone.

Ditto. I don't really follow these true crime stories that much. They're too depressing to keep up with so I don't know much about this disappearance, but unless it was a family custody abduction, that poor little girl may have too many permanent scars to ever lead a normal life again.

I'm amazed though. If they don't find missing kids after a week, I usually write them off. It's a miracle. I just hope that kid was taken care of.

Who's this Elizabeth Smart and what's her background?

This girl has been missing what a year? A whole year of life gone, of being someone else, something else, of being imprisoned, perhaps abused?, of being alive but in stasis, not knowing what fate was held for her...we know of no ransom, so one can only assume the worst.

I know she's 15, she'll heal physically, she will be back with her family, but she's plastered over everything again, I doubt she'll ever be a whole person again without years and years of conseling...

Or else they're trying to justify the fact that for months they followed the guy around and called him a kidnapper, a rapist, a child molester, a crook, a theif, everything that a person could ever be called. Of course they can say that now, the mans dead, he can't clear his name, which the media completely ruined.

If I was his family, I'd sue the cable companies for everything they have. The last months of his life were completely ruined because tehy destroyed whatever shred of dignity he had left by calling him a child molester (yes, I know he was in jail for something else, but still, nothing is worse than being known as a child molester). I'd like to see them have to pay the family exorbitant amounts of money, maybe that way the media can be held responsible for the wreckless ways they do their work, to get rid of the sensationalist crap that is constantly being heaped on us as cutting edge news.

Well, it's not like the media went out and picked the guy out of the phonebook to harass. This was a high-profile case and he was the main suspect. If the police said he was the guy and turned out to be wrong, don't shoot the messenger.

What about Richard Jewell? Just the messenger, right?

To a large degree, yes. Look, if I was Richard Jewell or someone in his family, I'd be pretty pissed off about the whole ordeal. But I'd direct my anger to the police who investigated me, tipped off the media and then stood back while I was fed to the wolves (taking the heat off them, of course).

I used to work as a reporter, so of course I'm biased. And I can understand the criticism that the media splashes the accusation on the front page, then buries the retraction in the back. But very often it's the investigators who are aggressively pushing the information out there (sometimes with good intentions, sometimes not) and I think they get let off the hook when it goes bad. "Blame the media" is getting almost as easy as "blame the politicians" but a lot of times it's just not warranted.

Well, not to put any fault on the victim, but it would be interesting to know how a 15-year old could be held captive that long, going out in car rides, and not escape at some point. Like open the door, jump out when you see a policeman, and say, hey I've been kidnapped. Don't know what kind of ordeal she might have been through, but it's an interesting question.

Tarkus

She was seen recently with the guy and the woman at a party. I don't care what kind of threats he made, if she announced to a group of people who she was and what he did, that guy wouldn't have made it out of the room to carry out his threats.

Still, you never know what goes through the mind of a scared 15 year old girl. All I know is, I would have tried to get away or died trying.

I would have done just that Kysrup, and if he tried it again, I would have stabbed him in the face with a soldering iron (thanks Clem.)

But IMO? I think she's messed up.. how could she have NOT tried to get away?

agreed. Either she's mentally far below 15 years old, or was in some way attracted to the guy or something. I'm sure more story will come out of this, but I dont think it's possible to kidnap someone of that age, that them into public and get away with it.

No one is saying it, but I'm assuming there was sexual abuse. Depending on how they held her, they could have easily brainwashed her or broken her will, I suppose. But then, that wouldn't explain the way she seemed to act relatively "normal" (considering the circumstances) with her family when reunited - asking how her brother and sister were, etc.

I don't know what to think of the whole thing.

I still say she just could have been scared of threats on other family so she stayed put. Guess we'll find out, when is the "Barbara Walters interview"? :)

Don't forget Patty Hearst...it could be the same thing here.

Just heard on the local news that Emmanuel/Mitchell is a child molester.. yep... had to be something.

That can't be a good thing, we need to keep Elizabeth and her family in our prayers. Hope everything turns out OK for them and she recovers.

She's a fourteen year old girl. She's not Rambo. If she was raised in Utah, I imagine she's even more innocent about the ways of the world because we all know what hellraisers those Mormons are. ;) I don't think it would be that difficult for her captors to brainwash her into submission. The abuse she suffered would probably make any parent snap. Prayers to the poor girl that was abducted and hopes that she can someday resume a normal life and also to the parents during the trial. This stuff is terrible and the primary reason why I still believe in the death penalty.

Wow, what an amazing story. I was sure that she was dead. It just seems really strange to me that she would go along with her kidnappers. I'm not sure whether to hope she was brainwashed or that she went along willingly. Either way, I hope her reunion with her family goes well...

CNN posted pics of the abductors. Damn, could you get anymore creepy and wierd looking?

I don't get why we care so much about this ONE little girl.

Because it was on CNN all the goddamned time.

Because the media wants their own real-life "Savanah Smiles".

Asshole.

Hope you have kids that are kidnapped and I hope you don't get a single bit of help.

I'm with the guys asking how she couldn't have gotten away if she wanted to considering she was seen in public and at parties and stuff. Just doesn't make sense to me.

Yeah, no overreaction here...

Kids go missing all the freaking time, and the vast majority get next to no media attention and certainly not the national attention that this case got. The question is: why this girl and not some other missing girl or boy? Why the level of attention given to her and not to other missing children? Are they less deserving somehow?

This has made for TV movie written all over it.

Great that she is still alive, but a bit disturbing. It will be very interesting to see how all this plays out in the next couple of weeks.

Maybe.. just MAYBE that this is in the news again because she was found. ALIVE.

Maybe.. just MAYBE this gives a little hope to those parents out there that are missing children that their children will come back to them alive one day instead of in a body bag.

Maybe you need cases like this to raise the level of awareness of people everywhere.

But, no.. on this board we get 'Why should we care about this one little girl.' There is a whole slew of people in Utah that care about this one little girl.

If you don't understand that.. go fuck yourself.

but the thing is, if this case does give parents of missing children hope, it's just giving them false hope. This is one case out of thousands. It doesn't change the fact that after a week the kid is likely to be dead. I too do not understand the level of national attention that this case has been getting. Local Utah news sure that's fine. What about other kids who were found alive? What about people who survived muggings, gunshot wounds, rapes, etc etc etc? What about women who survived abusive relationships or kids that managed to get out of abusive homes? What about men and women who defied the odds and beat cancer or AIDS? Are those people less deserving of national coverage?

That being said, I am truly happy and amazed that she was found alive. That's great

Mustang, I *think* the point some are trying to make (and that I tried to make before) is that if the media is going to devote so much attention to this rich little white girl, why don't they give the same attention to other missing children cases. I know it's not feasible, but the safety of this girl is no more important than any of the others. Being from southern WI, you probably know who 7 year-old Alexis Patterson is. Her story got a decent amount of local attention, but didn't get any national coverage until people complained about the disparity between the amount of coverage of her case and Elizabeth's. Unfortunately, most missing children cases don't get anywhere near the attention of either of them.

yes that's what i was trying to say crapt

And the fact that she was found is due in large part to the huge amount of media attention this case got. If all cases got this much attention, there would be more missing children found.

The problem is there are so many cases of missing children that if you have this kind of media attention on all of them, people would start ignoring it. Can you imagine everyday being inundated with information about hundreds of missing children across the nation?