Investigator: Smart Case Was Bungled

May 2 -- As Elizabeth Smart tries to return to a normal life after nine months in captivity, the former lead investigator on her case says she might have been recovered six months sooner if not for a typo and a decision that haunts him still.

"I struggle with that," Cory Lyman, the former lead investigator in the Smart case, told ABCNEWS' Primetime Thursday.

"I go over that in my head, as does everybody else in the task force [in the investigation]," he said. "What could we have picked up on? What did we miss? What did we do wrong? What should we have thought out better? Those kind of questions."

Residents of Utah — and the entire nation — rejoiced March 12 when Elizabeth, 15, was found alive with a homeless self-styled street preacher named Brian David Mitchell — who liked to refer to himself as "Emmanuel" — and his wife, Wanda Barzee.

But Elizabeth's rescue also raised eyebrows because she was found in Sandy City, Utah, just 15 minutes away from her home in Salt Lake City. Investigators later found that her alleged captors held her at a camp site in the mountains behind the Smart home in the first two months after her abduction.

Though the Smart family has said they harbor no ill will toward police for the way they conducted the investigation, media reports speculated the case was mishandled.

In February, the Smart family, with the police's blessing, released sketches of "Emmanuel" and appealed for the public's help in finding him.

They did not know the suspect's full name at the time but said Mary Katherine Smart, Elizabeth's 10-year-old sister and the sole eyewitness to her abduction, told them the kidnapper resembled the former one-time handyman for the Smarts. That public showing of the sketch led to Mitchell's sister calling authorities with his identity and the man's stepson providing investigators with photos that ultimately led to Elizabeth's rescue.

However, Mary Katherine had told her family and Salt Lake City police about Emmanuel back in October. Salt Lake City police said the family first told them about Emmanuel on Oct. 13 and that they interviewed Mary Katherine two days later. The Smart family wanted to release a composite sketch immediately but police chose not to do so.

Today, Lyman, who resigned as the lead investigator in the case in January to become the chief of police in Ketchum, Idaho, says he has second thoughts about his decision and believes they may have been able to find Elizabeth almost six months before her rescue.