Newly Released Video of Elizabeth Smart Kidnapper Brian David Mitchell Singing Hymns in Competency Interview
Brian David Mitchell in an interview to determine his competency to stand trial.
Aug. 19, 2011— -- Videotape of Brian David Mitchell, the self-proclaimed prophet who was convicted of kidnapping and repeatedly raping then-14-year-old Elizabeth Smart, having singing outbursts during an interview to determine his competency to stand trial was released by the U.S. District Court.
In response to a request made by "Nightline," Utah District Federal Court released video of the interview Dr. Michael Welner conducted with Mitchell in 2009. One of the country's top forensic psychiatrists, Welner is the chairman of The Forensic Panel as well as an ABC News consultant. The video has never been seen outside of the courtroom until now.
Federal prosecutors hired Welner to examine Mitchell, a 57-year-old homeless street preacher who claimed he was a Mormon prophet, and perform a complete evaluation of his mental state.
Welner, who also testified as the principal government witness in Mitchell's competency and insanity phases of his trial, determined that while Smart's kidnapper suffered from anti-social personality disorder, pedophilia, psychopathy and alcohol abuse, he did not suffer from a severe mental illness that would prevent him from standing trial.
"Mitchell knew what he was doing was wrong. He was a pedophile with a particularly high frequency of violating children in his custodial care, be they children or stepchildren." Welner told "Nightline." "Religious ideas did not drive his choices, sexual indulgence and a parasitic, responsibility-free lifestyle did."
Read Dr. Michael Welner's full report on Brian David Mitchell HERE
As Welner attempted to interview Mitchell, the man behind the wild gray beard can be seen on the video in stoney silence with his eyes closed for the majority of the over five-hour-long interview.
Submit your questions to Dr. Welner HERE
Mitchell would only break his silence to sing hymns, singing repeatedly, "Repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand."
"The singing derailed questions and was disarming at first," Welner said. "It derailed conversation and thwarted scrutiny, and enabled him to take control over a situation."
Welner explained that while examining Mitchell, he discovered that Smart's kidnapper was putting on the front of being very religious to throw off his previous examiners.
"Pertinent to the competency controversy, Mitchell's well-timed singing fed the mistaken idea of Mitchell as religion-obsessed when he needed to impress examiners, and he knew it," Welner said. "When I ignored his singing, for example, it extinguished. Even when the interview became stressful."
The court allowed the tapes to be released after Mitchell was convicted last December of kidnapping and transportation of a minor across state lines to engage in sexual activity, and then waived his right to appeal his conviction. He was sentenced to life in prison on May 25, 2011.
Earlier this month, the court also released a video of the two-hour interview Salt Lake City Police Detective Cordon Parks and FBI Special Agent Jeffery Ross conducted with Smart's abductor hours after he was arrested in Sandy, Utah in 2003.
That video was released in response to a motion filed by attorneys for The Salt Lake Tribune and KUTV.
When the investigators told Mitchell what he was being accused of during the 2003 interview, his response was defiance. He told detectives Smart had had a "glorious experience" with him.
"You're under arrest for aggravated kidnapping because the girl told us you took her, against her will, out of her house, at knife point," Parks tells Mitchell during the interview. "You're under arrest for aggravated sexual abuse on a minor ... both of these charges carry life in prison."
"You want to accuse me of being some diabolical, evil criminal and I'm a servant of the Lord and I believe what I've been commanded to do," Mitchell says.
"So God commanded you to go into the Smart home and take her?"
"She's had a glorious experience," Mitchell says.
"A glorious experience with you?" one of the investigators responds.
At one point Mitchell tries to explain the relationship he believed he had with Smart, who was just 14 years old when she was taken at knifepoint from her bed in the middle of the night on June 5, 2002.
"I didn't marry her but she served me as a wife," he said.
"She served you as a wife? Did you have sexual intercourse with her?" one of the investigators asks.
"That's a very personal, private question," Mitchell says.
Mitchell had been originally declared unfit to stand trial in state court by reason of insanity in two separate evaluations, until Smart took the stand for the first time and recounted her "nine months of hell" with Mitchell and his wife Wanda Barzee.
On Oct. 1, 2009, during Mitchell's 10-day competency hearing, Smart testified that her abductor was "articulate, manipulative," as well as "not religious," and "not close to God."
U.S. District Judge Dale Kimball ruled on March 1, 2010, that Mitchell was competent to stand trial.
"The evidence proves that Mitchell has the capacity to assist his counsel in his defense and the ability to behave appropriately in the courtroom," Kimball wrote in his 149-page ruling issued in response to Mitchell's competency hearing.
During Mitchell's trial, Smart told the court that he held a knife to her throat, took her to an encampment near Salt Lake City, pronounced her to his wife Wanda Barzee, and raped her.
Smart also testified that Mitchell raped her repeatedly, forced her to view pornography, drink alcohol and watch him and Barzee engage in sexual activity.
"I felt like because [of] what he had done to me that I was marked, that I wasn't clean, wasn't pure, wasn't worth the same," she testified. "I felt like another person would never love me."
Smart called Mitchell selfish and a "hypocrite" who raped her at every chance he got even while proclaiming himself to be God's servant.
After a nine-month search that attracted extensive national coverage, Smart was rescued in 2003 when she was walking in a suburb of Salt Lake City with Mitchell and Barzee.
Barzee, 65, was sentenced in May 2010 to 15 years after she pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit kidnapping.