“He said he was taking me hostage, for ransom,” Ms. Smart told jurors on Monday, the first day of testimony in the trial of Brian D. Mitchell, who is accused of kidnapping her from her bed in 2002 and holding her for nine months.
Ms. Smart’s mother, Lois Smart, testified earlier that she hired Mr. Mitchell, a homeless street preacher, to do handyman work.
Mr. Mitchell’s lawyers said he was influenced by escalating mental illness and extreme religious beliefs that made him think he was doing God’s bidding.
Elizabeth Smart, who was 14 when she was kidnapped and is now 23, described the kidnapping. She had left a kitchen window open because her mother had burned potatoes at dinner.
“I remember him saying that I have a knife to your neck, don’t make a sound, get out of bed and come with me or I will kill you and your family,” she said.
Ms. Smart said she and Mr. Mitchell hiked three to five hours up a hill to a campsite, where Wanda Eileen Barzee, his now-estranged wife, told her to take off her pajamas and underwear and put on a robe or “she would have the defendant come in and rip them off,” she said.
Ms. Smart said Mr. Mitchell married them by pulling a sentence from the traditional Mormon marriage ceremony. “He said, ‘What I seal on this earth will be sealed to me in the hereafter, and I take you to be my wife,’ ” she said.
She said he then forced her to the ground and raped her.
She could not flee because he chained her to a table.
Parker Douglas, a public defender, did not dispute the facts but took issue with the prosecution’s allegation that Mr. Mitchell planned the kidnapping.
“His life here is marked by an intense idiosyncratic set of beliefs,” Mr. Douglas said.
