8 years later, woman gets prison in Smart abduction

SALT LAKE CITY - Nearly eight years after 14-year-old Elizabeth Smart was snatched from her Salt Lake City bedroom at knifepoint, the woman who pleaded guilty to the 2002 kidnapping is headed to prison.

Wanda Eileen Barzee was sentenced Friday to two terms of up to 15 years in prison in back-to-back hearings in state and federal court.

"I'm just so sorry again for all the pain and suffering I caused upon the Smart family," Barzee, 64, said during the federal hearing.

The terms will be served concurrently, and Barzee is likely to be held at the Federal Medical Center, Carswell, in Fort Worth, Texas, where she can be treated for mental illness.

Barzee's case was repeatedly delayed when she was twice deemed incompetent to stand trial and rejected voluntary medication because of her religious beliefs. She pleaded guilty in November to federal charges of kidnapping and unlawful transportation of a minor across state lines in Smart's abduction.

In the state case, kidnapping and sexual-assault charges were dropped in exchange for her plea of guilty but mentally ill to a charge of conspiracy in the attempted abduction of Smart's cousin, Olivia Wright, also in 2002.

Barzee has agreed to testify in pending cases against her now-estranged husband, Brian David Mitchell, in the kidnapping of Smart.

Barzee will get credit for the seven years she has already spent behind bars in her federal case, U.S. District Judge Dale Kimball said Friday. Kimball also ordered Barzee to serve five years' probation upon her release and said she would have to register as a sex offender.

Smart was found walking the streets of a Salt Lake City suburb with Barzee and Mitchell in March 2003, nine months after her abduction. Now 22, she is serving a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Paris.