Smart's Sister Cried Out 'She's Gone'

ByABC News via GMA logo
October 22, 2003, 9:55 PM

S A L T   L A K E   C I T Y, Utah, Oct. 23 -- On the night Elizabeth Smart was taken from her bed at knifepoint, her younger sister, Mary Katherine watched in fear as her older sister was snatched from their shared bed.

Then, as soon as Mary Katherine felt safe, the 9-year-old entered her parents' room with a chilling cry, according to a passage from the Smart family's new book chronicling her older sister's ordeal.

"She's gone. Elizabeth is gone," the girl said, according to the book Bringing Elizabeth Home: A Journey of Faith and Hope. "You won't find her. A man came and took her."

Her words set off what would become a nationwide search for the Salt Lake City girl, then just 14. Now, more than seven months after the teen was reunited with her family, the Smarts are revealing some of the mysteries surrounding what happened the night of June 5, 2002.

ABCNEWS' Good Morning America got an exclusive first look at Oprah Winfrey's conversation with the Smarts about the kidnapping at their Salt Lake City home.

Before bedtime the night Elizabeth disappeared, Lois and Ed Smart had been debating whether or not to allow her to take a four-day vacation with a friend's family.

Later that night, Ed Smart checked to make sure all of the doors of the house were locked. Then, before Elizabeth went to bed, her mother and father finally agreed that she could go with her friend's family for the summer trip.

It was the last conversation they had with their daughter before she was taken from them for nine long months.

Nightmare Begins

Later that night, as the Smarts slept, Brian David Mitchell who had been hired as a handyman by the Smarts at one time allegedly cut through the kitchen window screen of the Smart family's million-dollar home to snatch Elizabeth.

"He walked in and walked around to this side where Mary Katherine was," Lois Smart told Winfrey during an exclusive tour of their Salt Lake City home. "And he had looked at things. She said she saw him look at things on her table here and then walk back around over to Elizabeth."