Wanda Barzee



Wanda Barzee was the wife of Brian David Mitchell and his accomplice in the kidnapping of 14-year old Elizabeth Smart on June 5th, 2002. She was also known as Hepzibah, in accordance with her and Mitchell's extreme religious beliefs.

When Barzee and Mitchell were married, Barzee had been a forty-year-old divorcee with six children. She had a troubled relationship with her children; one of her daughters would later refer to her as a "monster," and claimed that as a child, Wanda fed the child her pet rabbit for dinner.

After the kidnapping of Smart, Barzee would often assist her husband in the torture of the girl. After her kidnapping, Smart was taken by Mitchell into the woods to an encampment outside Salt Lake City, where she was met by Barzee. According to Smart, Barzee "eventually just proceeded to wash my feet and told me to change out of my pajamas into a robe type of garment. And when I refused, she said if I didn't, she would have Brian Mitchell come rip my pajamas off. I put the robe on." Smart also stated that, during the multiple times that her husband raped Smart, she encouraged him to keep doing so.

After Smart was rescued, Barzee and Mitchell were taken into custody. Barzee was sentenced to concurrent terms of fifteen years in state and federal prison. In 2016, Barzee's federal imprisonment was terminated and she was transferred from the Federal Medical Center, Carswell in Fort Worth, Texas to the Utah State Prison in Draper, Utah to begin serving her state prison sentence. She was released in September 2018 and is now a free woman, but she will be under federal supervision for five years. Elizabeth Smart once described Barzee as "the most evil woman [she'd] ever met."