Panhandling Preacher Under Arrest

The drifter found with Elizabeth Smart was a downtown fixture who panhandled on the streets, said he was a prophet for the homeless and lived in a teepee on the outskirts of town.

Brian Mitchell, known to the Smart family as "Emmanuel," was also "capable" of kidnapping a child, his stepson, Mark Thompson, told The Associated Press on Wednesday.

Mitchell, 49, was booked with his wife, Wanda Eileen Barzee, into the Salt Lake County Jail for investigation of aggravated kidnapping. He was also being held on an outstanding arrant for retail theft.

The Smart family said in February that Mitchell resembled the man Elizabeth's younger sister had seen abduct Elizabeth from their bedroom last June.

Elizabeth's mother, Lois Smart, has said she met Emmanuel in downtown Salt Lake City when he asked for money. She gave him $5 and hired him to help her husband work on the roof of their home in November 2001. He worked for about five hours and the family didn't see him again, she said.

Mitchell's sister called law enforcement with his identity after the Smart family held a news conference Feb. 3 to circulate a sketch of him clean-shaven, Thompson said.

Photographs released by Mitchell's family show him with a long beard.

Mitchell was frequently seen in downtown Salt Lake City, wearing white pants, a robe-like tunic and a brimless white hat that resembles a puffy turban or baker's toque. One of the photos provided to law enforcement shows him in such a hat.

He often panhandled and preached to the homeless downtown before Elizabeth's disappearance last June. He and Barzee sold their belongings and started living on the streets in the late 1980s.

Mitchell's family said he often spent time in a teepee in the mountains outside Salt Lake City.

Elizabeth told her family that Mitchell took her to San Diego at one point over the past nine months. Witnesses reported seeing him in California around the Christmas holidays.

Mitchell attended Skyline High School in the 1970s, married and had four children. He and his wife divorced and he married Barzee in the late 1980s, The Salt Lake Tribune reported Thursday.

The couple had been Mormons but were excommunicated, said Michael Otterson, spokesman for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Barzee's daughter Louree Gayler, who was 10 when her mother married Mitchell, said her new stepfather made her uncomfortable.

"They both had split personalities. They prayed a lot, two to three hours a day," Gayler told CBS News Early Show co-anchor Harry Smith. "I felt too uncomfortable in the situation" and after three years she went to live with her father.

She speculated that perhaps Elizabeth was kidnapped to "give my mom back something she lost.

"Elizabeth resembles me at 15," Gayler told the Tribune, which quoted her in a copyright story.

Gayler's brother, Mark Thompson, 32, agrees.

His mother "freaked out" when Gayler left home, Thompson told The New York Times. "I remember her saying, 'How dare my baby leave me?' Maybe she felt like she needed to replace a child."

Thompson said his mother carried around dolls for years, pretending they were alive. He said she had also been forcibly removed from a hospital — as recently as last year — "for touching other people's kids."

Gayler said Mitchell was abusive to a degree.

"He shot a dog in front of us, made me eat my own rabbit for dinner, things like that," she told CBS News. There were also "hugs, kisses, that were kind of uncalled-for," she added, plus "the way he stared at me sometimes."

When she was that age, she felt her mother and stepfather had control. "I didn't know how to get out of the situation. When I did get out of that situation, they were both at work, and I just ended up disappearing."

Smart has told authorities and her parents that she was never left alone.

Mitchell, Barzee and Smart stayed for a few days in the apartment of Daniel Trotta several months ago.

"They said she was their daughter, and I didn't really think about it at the time," he told CBS News.

The girl was always heavily veiled, Trotta said, and didn't speak much.

However, after seeing the television show "America's Most Wanted" about a week ago, and realizing the "daughter" was about the same age as Elizabeth Smart, he called police. They dusted for fingerprints and, Trotta says, were quite excited by what they found.