Strange Views Split Barzee From Family

"I don't know that person," Dora Corbett says of her daughter, Wanda Barzee, holding a photo of her daughter when she was a teenager. Barzee was with Elizabeth Smart when she was found in Sandy. (Steve Griffin/The Salt Lake Tribune)

BY BRANDON GRIGGS
© 2003, THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE

    Nine months ago, Ed and Lois Smart lost their daughter Elizabeth. Eight years ago, Dora Corbett lost her daughter, Wanda Barzee.
    It was summer 1995 when Barzee renounced her family in an angry letter, sold her possessions, took a new name and left home to wander the country with her husband, self-styled street prophet Brian David Mitchell. Except for a three-month visit in 1997, Corbett, 81, hardly saw her daughter again.
    "We were terribly worried," she said, fighting back tears during an interview Monday at her West Valley City home. Corbett, in fact, was almost relieved to learn her daughter was in the Salt Lake City Jail, where she and Mitchell are being held on suspicion of kidnapping Elizabeth.
    "The hardest thing is to accept the fact that [Wanda] did this . . . and that she is my daughter," Corbett said softly, shaking her head. "But at least I know where she is."
    Wanda Barzee was once a beautician, a talented church organist and the effervescent young mother of six loving children. By the time of her arrest Wednesday, she was bedraggled, penniless and hopelessly devoted to a delusional man. Her 1964 wedding photo reveals a beaming bride in a brunette bouffant; last week's police mug showed a sad, stringy-haired woman, her skin weathered by years on the streets.
    Hers is the story of a life gone awry -- a story so painful for Barzee's family that they occasionally refer to Wanda in the past tense, as if she were dead.

    "I had a wonderful sister," said older sibling Janice DeYoung, who has not heard from Barzee in nine years. Asked what she would say to her sister now, DeYoung shrugged and fell silent. "I don't think I could talk to her," she finally said. "I don't know that person."
    Her family believes Barzee's behavior gradually grew stranger after she married Mitchell, her second husband, in 1985. Corbett remembers that Mitchell seemed nice but soon became controlling and that Wanda was a "follower" who was easily swayed.
    The couple had little money and moved from apartment to apartment in Salt Lake City. Once devout members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, they attended church less and less as Mitchell's religious views grew more extreme. Mitchell spoke strange prophecies, balked at paying his tithing and refused to pay income taxes.
    When her family tried to intervene, Barzee denounced them as "evil" and "materialistic" in a 1995 letter to her mother. She and Mitchell started hitchhiking, first to northern Idaho, then east to New York City, where Barzee somehow gave an organ recital at a Presbyterian church. In November 1995 Corbett received a letter from Barzee from Florida, saying she had been on an all-fruit diet for five months.
    The couple returned to Utah in 1997 and moved in with Corbett, who was thrilled to have her daughter home. For several months, mother and daughter shopped and cooked meals together, but it wasn't the same as before. Barzee called herself "Eladah" or "Hephzibah." When Corbett refused to let Mitchell use her house as a place of worship for a church he was founding, the couple grew angry and left.
    Mitchell and Barzee were camping in the Salt Lake City foothills the last time Corbett saw her daughter, in November 2001. Barzee stopped by for a few hours, carrying a doll she treated as if it was her baby girl. She shared a salad with her mother, then left in a huff after an argument over her religious views. After April 2002, Corbett lost all contact with her. Two months later, she learned of Elizabeth Smart's kidnapping.
    "My heart went out to the Smarts for losing their daughter," she said.
    Then came last Wednesday. Corbett got a call from her daughter Janice: Elizabeth had been found alive in Sandy. Wanda and her husband had been arrested.
    "I turned the TV on and just sat there in shock. I was shaking inside. I cried a little," Corbett said. Her bishop came by to comfort her. The phone rang with inquisitive news reporters. And through it all Corbett sat dazed, wondering: "Where have I failed as a mother?"