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In her second day of testimony, the wife of Brian David Mitchell has described the events leading up to the 2002 abduction of a then-14-year-old Elizabeth Smart.
Wanda Barzee told jurors in U.S. District Court Friday that Mitchell had an April 30, 2002, revelation about how he would take the first of many plural wives.
"We were told that we were to go forth in five weeks and on the night of June 4th and the Lord would open up the way for us to obtain our first wife," she testified.
The first four weeks were "temporal preparation," she told the court, and the last week was "spiritual preparation."
"And when it came to be the 4th of June and Brian was supposed to go forth around midnight," Barzee said. "And I didn't know who the young woman was going to be. I had no idea, but it was really stressful trying to accomplish everything we were supposed to do."
The two fought while setting up the camp where they would eventually hold Smart captive in the foothills above her Salt Lake City home.
"We were so stressed out trying to set up the new camp and it was a really heated argument and I can't remember what it was about, but I have been thinking about it since and trying to figure it out," Barzee said. "I just knew how drastically my life would change and having a 14-year-old girl, woman."
Barzee testified she was "devastated" when Mitchell told her the new wife would have to be taken by force.
"I believe the Lord is all powerful and I believe if it was the Lord's will, he would have provided the young woman," she said. "... but Brian, but he gave me a priesthood blessing that he knew he needed to take the young woman by force, and I was devastated."
Barzee also testified about her personal difficulties with accepting Mitchell's desire to take other wives, which began with a 2001 revelation of Mitchell's. She recounted Mitchell's sexual relationship with a woman named Kelly he decided to take as a wife, and a failed attempt at making another wife out of a woman named Julie.
Barzee then recalled how Mitchell decided to "stalk" young girls between the ages of 10-14 in the hopes of making them wives.
"He would go downtown to minister and stalk young girls. Try to find out where they lived," Barzee testified.
The revelation about plural wives was one of many Barzee has testified Mitchell gave her as the two traveled around the country homeless or pulling handcarts.
Barzee recalled another blessing in November of 2000 in which Mitchell "told me the keys to the Lord's shoulder had been transferred to him. He called me as a Relief Society president and asked if I would accept the job."
Barzee's testimony is expected to continue through the end of today's session, 2 p.m. The trial will be suspended for Thanksgiving week, but will resume Nov. 29.
Read Wanda Barzee's Nov. 19 testimony at http://tinyurl.com/2exktk8
The case against Brian David Mitchell
Mitchell is accused of kidnapping Elizabeth Smart, then 14, at knifepoint from her Federal Heights home in the early hours of June 5, 2002.
Smart has testified he forced her to march to his camp in the nearby foothills, where Mitchell's wife, Wanda Barzee, was waiting. Mitchell then performed a "marriage" ceremony, which he said made her his plural wife, before he began raping her over the next nine months, Smart testified.
The trio traveled to Southern California in the fall of 2002, then returned to Utah in early March 2003. On March 12, several people called police saying they had spotted the missing girl on State Street in Sandy. When police arrived, they arrested Mitchell and Barzee and returned Smart to her parents.
Mitchell's prosecution has been delayed mostly due to issues surrounding his mental competency.
He was initially charged in state court, but that case came to a halt in 2008 when a 3rd District Court judge declared Mitchell was incompetent to stand trial and said he couldn't be forcibly medicated to try to restore his mental health.
Federal prosecutors succeeded in getting Mitchell declared competent earlier this year, in part by presenting testimony from people who had interacted with Mitchell at the Utah State Hospital when his guard was down to show that his silence in the presence of doctors and his disruptive hymn singing in the courtroom were an act.
By Pamela Manson and Stephen Hunt