Piecing Elizabeth's Story Together

As Elizabeth Smart and her family celebrate their good fortune in her return nine months after her abduction, investigators still have a lot to do in answering questions and determining what charges may be filed.

Police say they made mistakes in their effort to find Elizabeth Smart, fixing on the wrong suspects and withholding a composite sketch of the man now being held in her abduction.

But at a news conference Thursday, Police Chief Rick Dinse said their two goals had been met: Elizabeth was found safe and her captors are in custody.

"There is clearly a psychological impact that occurred at some point," Dinse said. "There is no question that she was psychologically affected."

Salt Lake police briefly outlined Elizabeth's movements over the last nine months, saying she spent the first two held by Brian Mitchell and Wanda Brazee achingly close to home in Dry Creek Canyon, a popular hiking area searched many times last summer.

In October, the three rode a bus to San Diego, and the group returned to the Salt Lake area on Wednesday, the day of their capture in the suburb of Sandy, police said.

Members of the Smart family had criticized the department for dismissing Brian Mitchell, the self-styled preacher who was arrested along with his wife Wednesday.

Dinse acknowledged investigators were slow to release a sketch of Mitchell, who Elizabeth's sister had suggested was the abductor.

"Hindsight is 20-20 vision. If we had to go back over it again, I think every one of (our investigators) would say, `I wish we had gone public with that ... earlier," Dinse said.

She spent the evening in the arms of her five brothers and sisters, and her parents and grandparents, watching her favorite video, but telling little of the ordeal that left her appearing unscathed.

"It's real!" her father, Ed Smart, told a crowd outside the family's church Thursday, thrusting his arms high. "I can't begin to tell you how happy I am, what an absolute miracle and answer to prayers this has been."

Police discovered Elizabeth Thursday at an intersection just 20 minutes south of her Salt Lake City home, disguised in a wig. But they have yet to file charges against Mitchell and his wife .

At first, a frightened Elizabeth wouldn't admit who she was, reports CBS News Correspondent Jane Clayson.

"Then she blurted out, 'I know who you think I am. You think I'm that Elizabeth Smart girl that ran away,'" said police officer Bill O'Neal.

Mitchell, a panhandler and self-styled prophet, was hired by Elizabeth's mother, Lois Smart, to do some handiwork on their home months before her disappearance.

"I would never have guessed that such an animal could exist behind a person that looked so reasonable," said Ed Smart.

Elizabeth apparently caught Mitchell's attention, and in the early hours of June 5, police say, he cut a screen in back of the house and abducted her, taking her to nearby mountains.

"She said that she had spent months right up here in the mountains through August," said Ed Smart. "I can't believe it."

Elizabeth's uncle, Tom Smart, says she even heard the family searching for her, calling her name.

"She did say that she heard her uncle David Francom's voice during the search. We were very close to finding her at one point," Tom Smart said.

The family didn't suspect Mitchell until Elizabeth's younger sister, Mary Katherine, who witnessed the abduction, suddenly announced last October that she might know who did it.

"Mary Katherine, she is my hero. I just cannot get over that she was inspired to some forward," said Ed Smart.

When Elizabeth and Mary Katherine were reunited Wednesday, "it was one big hug and tears- tears of joy," Ed Smart said. "We just got on our knees in the police conference room and prayed and thanked God for this miracle."

Amid the joyful reunion was a growing list of questions: What about the shaggy-haired drifter accused of kidnapping the girl? Why didn't police find him sooner? Above all, what happened to Elizabeth during the long span since she vanished last June?

Ed Smart sounded forgiving of police, who he had previously accused of acting slowly in pursuing Mitchell and concentrating too hard on handyman Richard Ricci, who denied any involvement. Ricci died in August while in prison on a parole violation.

"I believe that some mistakes have been made but I know they were trying,'" he said. "Our whole focus was on bringing Elizabeth back."

Mitchell was spotted in Sandy, a Salt Lake City suburb, Wednesday afternoon by Rudy and Nancy Montoya, who recognized him from television reports.

They called police just as Anita and Alvin Dickerson drove past the trio, had the same thought and stopped their car. Anita said she walked up to the man and looked him in the eye.

"I knew it was him from the pictures I had seen on television," she said. What she didn't realize at the time was that the veiled person walking between the two adults was Elizabeth. After the three were questioned by police, the truth came out.

Ed Smart got a call a short time later from the Sandy police telling him to come straight to the station, but he wasn't told why. He said he was taken to a room and then told there was someone he should see.

"There she was, sitting on the sofa," Smart told "The John Walsh Show" Thursday. He said he and his daughter embraced, and he held her out so he could take a good look at the girl he hadn't seen in nine months.

"Is it really you?'" he said he asked. "And she said, yes."

When he called his wife to tell her the news, he said: "Lois, you're not going to believe this. Elizabeth is in my arms."

Mitchell's relatives have described him as a self-proclaimed prophet and outdoorsman who has lived in a teepee in mountains outside the city.

Barzee's stepdaughter, Louree Gayler, was 12 when her mother married Mitchell. She said they prayed for hours and expected her to do the same, and that she felt uncomfortable and went to live with her father after three years.

Elizabeth may have been kidnapped to "give my mom back something she lost. Elizabeth resembles me at 15," said Gayler, now 27.

Asked if her stepfather was sexually abusive, she said there were "hugs, kisses that were kind of uncalled for" and she was sometimes uncomfortable with the way he stared at her.

Elizabeth's mother said in February that she had met Mitchell in downtown Salt Lake City when he asked her for money. She gave him $5 and hired him to help her husband repair their home's roof in November 2001. He worked at the home for about five hours. Seven months later, Elizabeth disappeared.