Elizabeth Smart says she lied to police over identity

SALT LAKE CITY - Elizabeth Smart was so terrified of her abductor that on the day police found her, she told them she was someone else.

She took the stand at her alleged kidnapper's trial for a second day Tuesday, telling jurors she was also too scared to speak up when a detective tried to question her in a public library months before she was finally freed.

Smart spent nearly six hours testifying in a steady voice before a rapt audience in U.S. District Court.

She told jurors that Brian David Mitchell raped her almost daily and forced her to drink, use drugs, and view pornography. Once she tried to flee, and Mitchell and his wife caught her and told her an angel would cut her down with a sword if she ever tried it again.

Mitchell, 57, who knew Smart because her mother had hired him to fix the family's leaky roof, is accused of kidnapping her from her bed in June 2002, when she was 14.

His attorneys say the homeless street preacher known as Immanuel was influenced by a worsening mental illness and religious beliefs that made him think he was doing what God wanted.

Smart testified Tuesday that when police finally found her in March 2003, wearing a wig and sunglasses and walking along a suburban Salt Lake City street with Mitchell and his wife, she told them she was Augustine Marshall, the daughter of traveling preachers.

Smart, now 23, said that was the story Mitchell had instructed her to tell if ever the three were approached.

Police separated them and peppered Smart with questions.

"I was very scared. I knew the threats that I had been told for nine months," Smart said. "I thought maybe at the same time that this is it. This is it, this is over."

Smart also told jurors about a missed chance to tell police what had happened when a detective approached her at the Salt Lake City library in the early fall, a few months after she was kidnapped.

She was wearing a robe and a veil that covered her face, and the detective asked if he could look under it.

"He said he was looking for Elizabeth Smart," Smart said.

Under the library table, Mitchell's now-estranged wife, Wanda Eileen Barzee, squeezed her leg, a sign that Smart should remain quiet.

Mitchell refused to let the detective talk to her, saying it was not allowed in their religion and only her husband would ever see her face.