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Speaker 3: Yes, you are now listening to True Murder, the most
Speaker 3: shocking killers in true crime history and the authors that
Speaker 3: have written about them Gasey, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker BTK.
Speaker 3: Every week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking
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Speaker 3: your host, journalist and author Dan Zupanski, Good Evening.
Speaker 5: Chris Thomas is not yet thirty years old when he
Speaker 5: finds himself managing the immense pressure, eccentric personalities, and extenuating
Speaker 5: circumstances of an international story where one small misstep could
Speaker 5: adversely impact the search for a missing teenager and a
Speaker 5: reputation of her family. Now twenty years later, Thomas takes
Speaker 5: readers behind the scenes, providing new details, perspectives, and commentary
Speaker 5: on finding Elizabeth Smart. In the process of reflecting on
Speaker 5: Elizabeth's search and rescue, Thomas discovers how growing up in
Speaker 5: the culture of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter
Speaker 5: day Saints commonly known as Mormon, helped push him to
Speaker 5: develop the exact kind of intuition needed to manage Elizabeth's
Speaker 5: kidnapping and rescue and do so while the world watched.
Speaker 5: Unexpected juxtaposes crucial events from the Smart case with Thomas's
Speaker 5: experience growing up in the latter day Saint culture, including
Speaker 5: coming to understand the secret of a broken war hero
Speaker 5: before it was too late. The book that we're featuring
Speaker 5: this evening is Unexpected, the backstory of finding Elizabeth Smart
Speaker 5: and growing up in the culture of an American religion,
Speaker 5: with my special guest, author, speaker, and communications profession you know,
Speaker 5: Chris Thomas. Welcome to the program, and thank you so
Speaker 5: much for this interview. Chris Thomas, Thanks Dan, it's a
Speaker 5: pleasure being on. Thank you so much, and congratulations on
Speaker 5: this extraordinary book.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's been quite the journey and it's always you know,
Speaker 2: for me, this was a first and seeing it come
Speaker 2: to life has been a real thrill.
Speaker 5: Let's talk about this extraordinary book project. With this book,
Speaker 5: you have the forward, written by Elizabeth Smart herself. It's
Speaker 5: somewhat brief, but she writes that when she was abducted
Speaker 5: in two thousand and two, she didn't believe she'd live
Speaker 5: another year, let alone twenty, and she spent countless hours
Speaker 5: and imagining what it would be like to be rescued
Speaker 5: and how it would happen, and what it would be
Speaker 5: like to reunite with her family when it finally did happen,
Speaker 5: a whirlwind of names, places, and so many feelings regarding
Speaker 5: this unknown Only a few people stood out in her
Speaker 5: memory from shortly after, and one of those people was
Speaker 5: you tell us about where you were, what position you
Speaker 5: were in, what was your background, and how you came
Speaker 5: to be involved with the Elizabeth Smart Search and rescue.
Speaker 2: So Elizabeth's cousins started an internship with my public relations
Speaker 2: firm a couple of weeks before the abduction, and so
Speaker 2: when Elizabeth was abducted, we volunteered to help. Initially, they
Speaker 2: said we've got it. Elizabeth's uncle is a photo journalist,
Speaker 2: so he had some media savvy. But as the media
Speaker 2: contingent swelled, they welcomed our health and we got involved,
Speaker 2: thinking it would be a few days, they'd find her,
Speaker 2: we'd celebrate and go back to our day jobs. And
Speaker 2: my partners ended up going back to the agency and
Speaker 2: I stayed with the Smart family for the next nine
Speaker 2: and a half months. So in long History, and I
Speaker 2: was managing the media initially, was handling all the communications
Speaker 2: efforts with a team and then over time grew to
Speaker 2: be a close confidant of the family and was involved
Speaker 2: in so much more.
Speaker 5: You take us right, just again briefly to the first
Speaker 5: time you lay eyes on Elizabeth Smart and the circumstances
Speaker 5: in which you end up being at the Smart home.
Speaker 2: Yes, So, that day of her rescue, I actually had
Speaker 2: seen Elizabeth at the police station. There had been some
Speaker 2: issues with victims rights. John Walsh, the post of America's
Speaker 2: Most Wanted had reached me. We'd worked very close and
Speaker 2: I took his call and he had asked me to
Speaker 2: pass on some information about how Elizabeth should be treated,
Speaker 2: and they were doing the exact opposite. And when ed
Speaker 2: Smart learned that, you know, they were violating her victims rights,
Speaker 2: he became very upset, to the point where he had
Speaker 2: to be restrained and I was called down to the
Speaker 2: police station. So the first time I saw Elizabeth was
Speaker 2: when I got out of the elevator and she was
Speaker 2: coming out of an interrogation room. I didn't see anything
Speaker 2: to her at that point. I felt it just wasn't
Speaker 2: appropriate to talk to somebody who had been in captivity
Speaker 2: just a few hours earlier. Later that night, when I
Speaker 2: went up to the house to touch base and planned
Speaker 2: for media for the following day. As I approached the doorstep,
Speaker 2: Elizabeth and her siblings were in the background and her
Speaker 2: parents were at the door talking with some neighbors. And
Speaker 2: as I got out there, Elizabeth gave me this strange look,
Speaker 2: like who is this? She obviously didn't recognize me from
Speaker 2: the police station. And fortunately Ed caught that glimpse and
Speaker 2: he said, Elizabeth, you don't know who this is. He said,
Speaker 2: this is Chris. I consider him like a brother. You
Speaker 2: should too, And I just wept. It was one of
Speaker 2: the most remarkable experiences of my life, and for that reason,
Speaker 2: I start the book with that experience and then go
Speaker 2: back through the story, coming back to that day toward
Speaker 2: the end.
Speaker 5: Now tell us about the conversations you have, the job
Speaker 5: that you have at this public relations company that's been
Speaker 5: recently formed not too long before this, but also tell
Speaker 5: us about who Tom Smart is and some of the
Speaker 5: concerns from the family regarding Tom Smart.
Speaker 2: So Tom Smart is elizabeth uncle who's the photo journalist,
Speaker 2: and in fact his daughter was Sierra was the one
Speaker 2: who started the internship with my firm. And Tom has
Speaker 2: an interesting story. He is one of the most passionate,
Speaker 2: iconoclastic people I know. And after Elizabeth was abducted, Tom
Speaker 2: didn't sleep for more than one hundred and fifty hours,
Speaker 2: and the longer he didn't sleep, the more his faculties
Speaker 2: were compromised. And as he was interfacing with the media,
Speaker 2: he started to say things that were pretty erratic, and
Speaker 2: we had to try to pull him away from the media.
Speaker 2: But Tom was this force throughout the book where he
Speaker 2: was doing everything he could to find Elizabeth, and many
Speaker 2: of the things he did were instrumental in her rescue,
Speaker 2: and in other places he created some challenges as well.
Speaker 2: And Tom and I have an interesting interplay as trying
Speaker 2: to respond to the media and respond to his lack
Speaker 2: of sleep.
Speaker 5: Tell us about this board and the Smart family and
Speaker 5: the actually the the Church of Latter day Saints and
Speaker 5: all of the people involved in organizing and strategizing the
Speaker 5: very first steps towards the search and rescue of Elizabeth Smart.
Speaker 2: And one thing that was remarkable about the search for
Speaker 2: Elizabeth Smart is just the level of organization and detail
Speaker 2: and the resources that were available. Now, the Smarts were
Speaker 2: portrayed to be very affluent, and they weren't necessarily really wealthy,
Speaker 2: they definitely were gutter off than most people. At the
Speaker 2: same time, they were very very well connected. So Elizabeth's
Speaker 2: grandfather had been head of the National Cancer Institute. Was
Speaker 2: this incredible man who actually kind of led the efforts
Speaker 2: at seventy six years old, and he had done amazing
Speaker 2: service around the country. So people came out of the
Speaker 2: woodwork to help him. In addition to that, the culture
Speaker 2: of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints
Speaker 2: is one of service, and you know, we're taught from
Speaker 2: a very young age to serve others, and there's a need,
Speaker 2: you rise to the occasion. And that first week Elizabeth
Speaker 2: was missing, more than ten thousand people came out to
Speaker 2: search for her. And to provide some context, the next
Speaker 2: closest search for a missing child in recent history was
Speaker 2: four thousand people over several weeks. So the church played
Speaker 2: a significant role in organizing that. Now these weren't all
Speaker 2: church members. This was very much a community effort, but
Speaker 2: was organized at the church and very much by Elizabeths congregation.
Speaker 2: And I get into the culture of the church a
Speaker 2: little bit in the book. It's not necessarily a religious book,
Speaker 2: but to understand that effort and to understand a lot
Speaker 2: of what went into rescue Elizabeth. It's important to understand
Speaker 2: that culture. You asked about the board. So elizabeth aunts
Speaker 2: and uncles were all pretty esteemed people, physician, a lawyer,
Speaker 2: and there were others in kind of their inner circle,
Speaker 2: and a tech entrepreneur, the former mayor of Salt Lake,
Speaker 2: and they formed this group that more or less was
Speaker 2: a board. I couldn't think of a better word than
Speaker 2: a board to use for them. I don't know that
Speaker 2: it was formal, but they met together twice a day
Speaker 2: to work on the investigation and to figure out how
Speaker 2: best to assist law enforcement, to assist the search effort,
Speaker 2: and to take care of the family. And very early
Speaker 2: on I was introduced and made a member of that group,
Speaker 2: which was a little overwhelming in that I was twenty
Speaker 2: nine years old and had a bachelor's degree and nearly
Speaker 2: everyone in there was ten at least ten years older
Speaker 2: than me and had many graduate degrees. But I learned
Speaker 2: so much from them. It was tremendous experience.
Speaker 5: And we talk about this Elizabeth Smart Search center that's
Speaker 5: set up, But also what did the family really need
Speaker 5: from you in your mind, and what did you and
Speaker 5: your team bring to them in terms of this, but
Speaker 5: also how did you arise as a for better term,
Speaker 5: a leader or a spokesperson for this group.
Speaker 2: Sure there was intense media attention and la and that
Speaker 2: really is credit to Tom Smart, who made Elizabeth a
Speaker 2: household name overnight. There's a lot of attention and he
Speaker 2: really fed that and worked a lot of his media
Speaker 2: contacts around the country. Once that attention was there, it
Speaker 2: was figuring out how best to work with the media.
Speaker 2: The media is a two edged sword and one way
Speaker 2: they can be your best friend, can really help to
Speaker 2: get the word out, and on the other they can
Speaker 2: cut you personally pretty deep. And we had a very
Speaker 2: personal discussion with the Smarts about the media early on
Speaker 2: and said, you need to understand what you're getting into
Speaker 2: because this is not going to be rosy. They are
Speaker 2: going to take shots at you, They're going to dig
Speaker 2: into your background. Are you willing to do this and
Speaker 2: to what degree? And they said, we want to do
Speaker 2: anything it takes to find Elizabeth. We don't care what
Speaker 2: they do or say. We want to go full bore.
Speaker 2: So at that point my team and I were really
Speaker 2: working to be as organized as possible and how we
Speaker 2: worked with the media. We were very fortunate that the
Speaker 2: extended Smart family was large and they were articulate and
Speaker 2: willing to do interviews. It was at that point that
Speaker 2: we were working to make sure that they were well coordinated,
Speaker 2: that they were consistent in how they were answering questions,
Speaker 2: and that we were providing the media with you know,
Speaker 2: as much content and with good commentary that would make
Speaker 2: for good stories. So really trying to manage that initially,
Speaker 2: and then as things got more pointed and more negative,
Speaker 2: it was managing those issues and crises within the abduction
Speaker 2: and the search.
Speaker 5: What was your relationship with Tom Smart and how did
Speaker 5: you manage that relationship or attempt to.
Speaker 2: So Tom was really the only person that I had
Speaker 2: known prior with him being a photo journalist. I had
Speaker 2: worked with him on a number of stories. He also
Speaker 2: one of my business partners. He was like an uncle
Speaker 2: to him. So I knew Tom pretty well. And initially,
Speaker 2: you know, Tom and I felt Tom and I and
Speaker 2: our team we were just part of the team, and
Speaker 2: he was he was kind of leading that. But as
Speaker 2: he had to be pulled off because of his lack
Speaker 2: of sleep, changed his role a little bit and we
Speaker 2: stepped up and Tom was Tom's kind of a cowboy.
Speaker 2: He is a cowboy, really loves horses, and very much
Speaker 2: has this renegade approach to things, and so there was
Speaker 2: this amazing enthusiasm and passion and spirit with Tom. Sometimes
Speaker 2: it was just working with him to make sure that
Speaker 2: we were being productive with that. And then there were
Speaker 2: challenges throughout throughout the situation where at times things got
Speaker 2: a little off the rails and we had to work
Speaker 2: to bring those back.
Speaker 5: This book, not to take it off on a tangent,
Speaker 5: but part of this story includes you growing up in
Speaker 5: the Church of Latter day Saints and how that culture
Speaker 5: shaped you with the experiences that you did have not
Speaker 5: only with the church culture, but also this interesting and
Speaker 5: fascinating and important figure in this book named Baker. Just
Speaker 5: tell us briefly who this person is before we get
Speaker 5: back to handling this case and Tom Smart and Bill
Speaker 5: O'Reilly and Fox.
Speaker 2: News absolutely so. Baker was one of the most unlikely
Speaker 2: teachers in my life. He was an alcoholic who lived
Speaker 2: next door to me. We had a very acrimonious relationship.
Speaker 2: He was verbally abusive. At one point we got in
Speaker 2: a fight. He threatened to shoot me. Several times. And
Speaker 2: after thirteen years, as I was getting ready to leave
Speaker 2: on a mission for my church on a whim, I
Speaker 2: knocked on his door to say goodbye and spent several
Speaker 2: hours and learned his real story. And this had a
Speaker 2: profound impact on me that carried over to the smart Case.
Speaker 2: I learned from him not to judge people. I still
Speaker 2: struggle with it, but at least to try to keep
Speaker 2: an open mind as it relates to what's on the surface,
Speaker 2: because it's often not what's real. And also to get
Speaker 2: fantastic skin. I mean, he was about as harsh of
Speaker 2: an individual as you could expect. So there were several
Speaker 2: lessons there, several lessons growing up in the latter day
Speaker 2: Saint culture that really prepared me for that experience with
Speaker 2: the smart Case. And so I go back to that.
Speaker 2: It's kind of a Wonder Years type of rated memoir
Speaker 2: where there's part of my childhood and then there's the
Speaker 2: smart Case.
Speaker 5: Specifically, let's get to you're trying to handle the media.
Speaker 5: You're trying to stress that you need to have a
Speaker 5: consistent messaging everyone extended family included that may be interviewed,
Speaker 5: and that is you are coordinating day and night from beginning,
Speaker 5: as you write in the book, from very beginning in
Speaker 5: the morning, coordinating interviews, facilitating interviews, facilitating print interviews. But
Speaker 5: tell us about Tom Smart and his own mission and
Speaker 5: what he does, and how Bill O'Reilly and Fox News
Speaker 5: comes into this story.
Speaker 2: So Tom is finally Elizabeth's grandfather. Charles Smart, who's the patriarchy,
Speaker 2: more or less, tells Tom, you're going home, You're getting sleep.
Speaker 2: He sets up a rule that anyone who's going before
Speaker 2: the media must have had at least four hours of
Speaker 2: sleep the night before, and so he sends Tom off,
Speaker 2: and that night, unbeknownst to us, Tom shows up on
Speaker 2: Larry King Live. He had somebody drive him across town
Speaker 2: to a studio we've been doing all the interviews by
Speaker 2: satellite at the church house, and he's on with the
Speaker 2: neighborhood milkman who had seen this man, Brett Mike Ledmans,
Speaker 2: who was one of the initial suspects in the case.
Speaker 2: And during the interview, Tom again, who is severely compromised
Speaker 2: from a lack of sleep, determines in his mind that
Speaker 2: the milkman is the actual abductor, and he tries to
Speaker 2: get him to confess to the crime. Live on Larry
Speaker 2: King Live, and then Tom starts saying erratic things, trying
Speaker 2: to get him to confess, like the abductor's not a
Speaker 2: bad person, that we think he's okay, And so that
Speaker 2: was kind of the beginning of it. And after that interview,
Speaker 2: Tom was sent, I think, to a remote cabin with
Speaker 2: no self service to get some sleep. The next day,
Speaker 2: though he hadn't told us that he had lined up
Speaker 2: an interview with the Bill O'Reilly show and that there
Speaker 2: was a backstory to it that we weren't familiar with,
Speaker 2: and that was that Tom had worked with a man
Speaker 2: named Mark Klass, whose daughter Polyclaus was unfortunately abducted and murdered,
Speaker 2: and he had come to town under the auspices of
Speaker 2: a father of a missing child, trying to provide his
Speaker 2: help and advice to the Smart family and didn't disclose
Speaker 2: initially that he was a paid Fox News consultant. And
Speaker 2: Tom set up a meeting with Ed and Lois Smart,
Speaker 2: Elizabeth's parents, and at the end Fox News came in
Speaker 2: for a little exclusive part of the meeting, and then
Speaker 2: Tom called Mark out and said, wait a second, you
Speaker 2: know who are you working for? And Mark confessed that
Speaker 2: he was working for Fox News, and Tom told him
Speaker 2: to stay away from the family, and so he then
Speaker 2: went to Bill O'Reilly and they made this whole fuss
Speaker 2: out of the fact that Tom was a suspicious individual
Speaker 2: and that he was trying to impede the investigation, that
Speaker 2: Mark Klass and Bill O'Reilly wanted to bring in this
Speaker 2: famed forensic artist Jeanie Boylan, and that Tom had mixed it.
Speaker 2: The only problem was Tom didn't show up to the
Speaker 2: interview the next day. He was going to take these
Speaker 2: guys head on, and the producer at the very last
Speaker 2: minute was able to convince Tom's daughters, my intern Sierra
Speaker 2: who was twenty one, and her younger sister who was eighteen,
Speaker 2: to come on the show in Tom's stead and completely
Speaker 2: ambush them over the situation which they weren't aware of.
Speaker 2: And this this was, I mean deplorable to begin with,
Speaker 2: and secondly, really caused a fury with Tom when he
Speaker 2: finally came out of his exile and was arrested.
Speaker 5: What did the police have to say and what's the
Speaker 5: media response?
Speaker 2: So a couple of things happened during that time. Around
Speaker 2: that time, the Salt Lake Tribune publishes a story that
Speaker 2: citing unnamed sources that a member of the extended Smart
Speaker 2: family might be involved in Elizabeths abduction, and of course,
Speaker 2: reading between the lines, it's obvious they're talking about Tom Smart,
Speaker 2: and it doesn't add up. I mean, at least from
Speaker 2: a public perspective. Here he is on Larry King Live
Speaker 2: saying erratic things. Then he disappears, and then you know,
Speaker 2: he's called out on the O'Reilly Show, and you know,
Speaker 2: now this is happening. So Tom looks very suspicious under
Speaker 2: the circumstances, and you know there's something that it takes
Speaker 2: some time before the media kind of lays off of
Speaker 2: Tom and the public people aren't convinced that the family
Speaker 2: wasn't involved in some way until March twelfth, when Elizabeth
Speaker 2: is rescued.
Speaker 5: Now, meanwhile, the police have seemed to have their own
Speaker 5: agenda and are not working or working with the family
Speaker 5: necessarily and talking about a different suspect. The person named
Speaker 5: Ricci tell us about this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So Richard REESI was a handyman who had worked
Speaker 2: at the Smart's home for a period of several months.
Speaker 2: He had been fired I think six or eight months
Speaker 2: before Elizabeth went missing, and there was a lot of
Speaker 2: circumstantial evidence that pointed to him. It came out once
Speaker 2: he was arrested, that he had stolen items from the
Speaker 2: smart home, he had stolen items from another neighbor's home nearby,
Speaker 2: and had gone in the house during the middle of
Speaker 2: the night, had awakened a guest and had taken things
Speaker 2: from the house. So he looked like somebody that had
Speaker 2: the ability and and knew the house and all these
Speaker 2: other details that could have come in in the middle
Speaker 2: of the night with a knife and taken Elizabeth. So
Speaker 2: he was arrested. There were a number of other elements
Speaker 2: that that pointed to him being the man, and the
Speaker 2: police were absolutely convinced it was Richard Greasy behind closed doors.
Speaker 2: They told the family they were ninety nine point nine
Speaker 2: percent sure it was him, despite the fact that there
Speaker 2: were some very peculiar developments and questions that didn't add
Speaker 2: up with recy being the suspect.
Speaker 5: So what is the family response to this differing of opinion,
Speaker 5: and also what how does the public respond and the
Speaker 5: media respond to the suspicions now that seemed to be
Speaker 5: caused by Tom and his actions.
Speaker 2: Well, there's a lot of focus on Tom and then
Speaker 2: Richard Reesy tends to take some of that away when
Speaker 2: the rec development breaks. That's after there had been a
Speaker 2: heavy focus on Tom Smart. The Nation Inquirer, right before
Speaker 2: Reese is arrested as well, publishes a story about the
Speaker 2: Smart brothers being involved in a gay sex ring that
Speaker 2: potentially led to Elizabeth's abduction. And it was so ludicrous,
Speaker 2: especially in such a conservative community like Salt Lake City.
Speaker 2: That wasn't it wasn't at all believable here and even
Speaker 2: outside of Salt Lake it was so far fetched. In
Speaker 2: a way, it did the family a favor because it
Speaker 2: kind of took the emphasis off of them a little bit,
Speaker 2: just because it's gone too far. And so when rees
Speaker 2: came out, that became more of the focus. And then
Speaker 2: and then something peculiar happened on July twenty fourth, which
Speaker 2: is a statewide holiday, and there's fireworks. It's just like
Speaker 2: the Fourth of July everywhere else. We celebrated it twice
Speaker 2: here in the state of Utah. But on the twenty
Speaker 2: fourth of July, there was a break in at Elizabeth,
Speaker 2: or an attempted break in at Elizabeth's cousin's home. And
Speaker 2: her name was Write and she was one of Elizabeth's
Speaker 2: best friends, and the irony was that it was almost
Speaker 2: identical to how the break had occurred on the night
Speaker 2: of Elizabeth's abduction. Yet at this point, Richard REESI was
Speaker 2: in jail, so there was no way that he could
Speaker 2: have done that. The police did not want the information
Speaker 2: getting out, and it took about a month before it
Speaker 2: finally broke, And when it did break, they said that
Speaker 2: they had investigated it and they believed it was a
Speaker 2: teenage prank. And that was where around that time is
Speaker 2: where the family and law enforcement started to really have
Speaker 2: some differences of opinion as it related to Richard Reese
Speaker 2: and the larger case.
Speaker 5: Now, you want to keep the board's focus on finding
Speaker 5: Elizabeth and not suing Bill O'Reilly or any other thing
Speaker 5: that anyone's proposing. You want to keep that focus. So
Speaker 5: what is the strategy that you employ with the media
Speaker 5: and what do you do to get the messaging that
Speaker 5: you want out to that public and move this case.
Speaker 2: Backing up to that point, when Tom comes back after
Speaker 2: the O'Reilly interview, which I believe was on a Friday,
Speaker 2: so it was like Monday morning, he brings an attorney
Speaker 2: with him into the board meeting and he says, you know,
Speaker 2: we he starts handing out a press release and he said,
Speaker 2: at the eleven o'clock briefing this morning, we're going to
Speaker 2: announce that we are taking legal action against Mark Klass
Speaker 2: and Bill O'Reilly and Fox News. And there was just
Speaker 2: such a bad idea from the onset, and he was
Speaker 2: starting to get some traction with a few people on
Speaker 2: the board, and there was quite a bit of discussion,
Speaker 2: and I finally stood up and wrote Elizabeth's name. There
Speaker 2: was a blackboard in the room. Wrote Elizabeth's name on
Speaker 2: the blackboard and circled it and said, look, our focus
Speaker 2: is on Elizabeth and anything that doesn't help in finding
Speaker 2: her really doesn't matter, and we need to keep our
Speaker 2: focus there. And our message was largely along those lines
Speaker 2: it had been. But moving forward, we asked ourselves that
Speaker 2: question quite often. You know, we went back to our mission.
Speaker 2: Our mission was finding Elizabeth. This is helping, you know,
Speaker 2: both tactically and from a message standpoint.
Speaker 5: Can you tell us about Jane Clayson and her role
Speaker 5: in this story?
Speaker 2: Sure?
Speaker 5: So.
Speaker 2: Jane is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ
Speaker 2: of Latter day Saints, had went to school at Brigham
Speaker 2: Young University here in Utah and started her career with
Speaker 2: KSL Television. Utah is a small, kind of a medium
Speaker 2: market from a demographic standpoint, but we tend to have
Speaker 2: really strong broadcast journalists that come out of here and
Speaker 2: go national. And then this has been for some time,
Speaker 2: and so this market is one that she usually two
Speaker 2: or three rungs up. When you start out as a
Speaker 2: broadcast journalist, you usually start in a really small market.
Speaker 2: You cut your teeth there, you go to the next
Speaker 2: rung up, and so Jane kind of started, you know,
Speaker 2: three rungs up on the ladder and quickly made a
Speaker 2: name for herself and got a job with ABC Nightly News,
Speaker 2: and then was discovered by CBS News and became Briant
Speaker 2: Gumble's co host on the Early Show, and that lasted
Speaker 2: for a couple of years, and then she was a
Speaker 2: correspondent for CBS News and for forty eight Hours, and
Speaker 2: she came out to cover the case for forty eight
Speaker 2: Hours and it formed a close relationship with Lois, who
Speaker 2: wasn't as involved with the day to day media. Convinced
Speaker 2: Lois to do a primetime special for forty eight hours
Speaker 2: that would run in February, and this was like at
Speaker 2: the end of the summer, so like five months later,
Speaker 2: they were there was going to be this special that
Speaker 2: the family was going to collaborate with Dane Playson and
Speaker 2: CBS for several months.
Speaker 5: On what happens in the recy case and him as
Speaker 5: a suspect.
Speaker 2: Sure, so there's a lot of doubt and suspicion surrounding
Speaker 2: Richard Reesi. And in September, which is about five months
Speaker 2: after elizabeth subduction, he has a brain hemorrhage and he
Speaker 2: dies in prison, completely unexpectedly, and this creates a real
Speaker 2: challenge because the police are somewhat positioning his death as though,
Speaker 2: you know, the mystery of Elizabeth's abduction may have died
Speaker 2: with recy And so the family has to make a
Speaker 2: very concerted effort to show condolence to the reci family
Speaker 2: and not come off as being insincere. And in the
Speaker 2: same vein pointing out that even if Reesi was involved,
Speaker 2: he didn't act alone, and at that point offered some
Speaker 2: rewards for information, one about, you know, if anyone could
Speaker 2: explain what had happened at Elizabeth's cousin's house on July
Speaker 2: twenty fourth, and a couple of other questions that they
Speaker 2: offered rewards for around that time anonymously and didn't receive
Speaker 2: any credible tips from it.
Speaker 5: You right that without a new development of finding Elizabeth
Speaker 5: seems hopeless. Let's use this as an opportunity to stop
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Speaker 5: the Smartest way to Hire. Now, Chris, we were talking
Speaker 5: about the it seemed that there needed to be some
Speaker 5: new development in this case. And you then take us
Speaker 5: to the Mayflower Hotel and the Smart family travels to
Speaker 5: New York City and to meet John Walsh and America's
Speaker 5: Most Wanted the host. John Walsh tell us how this
Speaker 5: happens and what happens as a result.
Speaker 2: So there's a couple of things here that happened.
Speaker 4: So they do.
Speaker 2: They go to New York, they do their first network interview,
Speaker 2: and this is around the time of Reese's death. And
Speaker 2: then shortly thereafter, a couple of weeks later, Mary Catherine Smart,
Speaker 2: Elizabeth's sister, who was in the room the night that
Speaker 2: she was abducted. She had feigned sleep. It was pretty dark,
Speaker 2: she didn't get a good look at the individual, but
Speaker 2: she recognized his voice and one night, you know, the
Speaker 2: family had been told too throughout. Don't ask her questions.
Speaker 2: If she wants to talk about it, talk about it,
Speaker 2: Let her talk about it. But if you allow her
Speaker 2: to process it, at some point she may figure out
Speaker 2: who it is. And this happened one night she was
Speaker 2: reading the Guinness Book of World Records and saw a
Speaker 2: picture of the world's strongest woman, and it popped into
Speaker 2: her head that that voice was this man named Emmanuel
Speaker 2: who had worked in the yard one afternoon. He'd only
Speaker 2: been there one day. And she went to her father
Speaker 2: and said, Dad, I know, I remember who did I
Speaker 2: remember who was in the room? I know who took Elizabeth?
Speaker 2: And they got pretty excited and called law enforcement. And
Speaker 2: law enforcement was less interested in the development. They just
Speaker 2: created tension. The fair amount of the book deals with
Speaker 2: this tension between law enforcement and between Ed and Lois
Speaker 2: Smart on what to do. Law enforcement does not want
Speaker 2: the information coming out, and Ed and Lois Smart are
Speaker 2: at odds. They're extended families are at odds regarding what
Speaker 2: to do that the extended Smart family feels like they
Speaker 2: should defile law enforcement and come forward with the information,
Speaker 2: and the other side believes that they should trust us
Speaker 2: authority and do what the police are saying. And this
Speaker 2: goes on for several months before they finally make a
Speaker 2: decision on what to do.
Speaker 5: What is the police justification for not going along with
Speaker 5: a sketch? What is their rationale? For that.
Speaker 2: You know, I couldn't really speak for the police department,
Speaker 2: so what I would be saying is somewhat speculation. It
Speaker 2: goes back to and in law enforcement there tends to
Speaker 2: be a lot of tribalism, and I think in this
Speaker 2: case there was a herd mentality where most of the
Speaker 2: people in law enforcement felt that it was Richard REESI,
Speaker 2: that it was a slam dunk, that he had done it,
Speaker 2: and that they were wasting their time with anything else.
Speaker 2: They also had been under incredible scrutiny from the media,
Speaker 2: from the public, from the mayor's office, and I think
Speaker 2: they wanted to avoid any additional items that could reignite that.
Speaker 5: So what happens in terms of this continued police focus
Speaker 5: on this reci and the family, as you say, increasingly
Speaker 5: at odds with the police to do something with this
Speaker 5: sketch that is has been produced. But the police are
Speaker 5: pretty lax in the production of that sketch to say
Speaker 5: the least.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So there's a lot of back and forth between
Speaker 2: the families. And finally Tom Smart is the one who
Speaker 2: makes the recommendation that Ed and Lewis should talk to
Speaker 2: John Walsh and agree ahead of time that whatever John
Speaker 2: Walsh says to do that, they will follow it, and
Speaker 2: they agreed to do that. And they had met John
Speaker 2: earlier at the end of the summer and had done
Speaker 2: his daytime talk show, and they had been invited back
Speaker 2: in early December to do his year end show. He
Speaker 2: brought back his best guests. And I reached out to John,
Speaker 2: and I'd worked with him a fair amount, so we
Speaker 2: had a relationship, and I explained to him that the
Speaker 2: Smarts had that there was a development that they wanted
Speaker 2: to talk to him about and get his objective counsel,
Speaker 2: that they needed him to know. I needed him to
Speaker 2: remove his journalist's hat and to be you know, to
Speaker 2: keep things completely confidential. And he agreed, and so we
Speaker 2: went and did the show and afterwards talked to John
Speaker 2: and John nearly jumped out of his seat when he
Speaker 2: heard the development that Mary Catherine had remembered and said,
Speaker 2: you guys need to come forward with this, that this
Speaker 2: is one of the most important developments in the case.
Speaker 2: And he de cided probably a dozen other cases that
Speaker 2: had been solved where there had been mistakes by the
Speaker 2: police department that America's most wanted had become involved in.
Speaker 2: And we were always careful well, not to give new
Speaker 2: developments exclusively to any one media organization. And I talked
Speaker 2: to John about that and I said, we'll give you
Speaker 2: some preferential treatment, but we want to do a press
Speaker 2: conference in early January to announce this. You know, if
Speaker 2: you want to put together a package before that, we
Speaker 2: can work on something like that. And John said, let's
Speaker 2: talk after the first of.
Speaker 5: The year and what happens on Larry King Live again.
Speaker 5: Larry King Live has devoted incredible amount of time and
Speaker 5: I'm resources, but focus on the Elizabeth Smart case. What
Speaker 5: happens with John Walsh the information that you thought was confidential.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So on the twenty third of December, and then
Speaker 2: to back up a little bit, the Christmas holiday was
Speaker 2: incredibly difficult for the Smart family. They could not fathom
Speaker 2: going through Christmas without their daughter and it was a
Speaker 2: very somber time for them. And I had largely said
Speaker 2: let me, I'll handle you know, whatever's happening, Just take
Speaker 2: care of your family, don't worry about it. I'll let
Speaker 2: you know of something big rises. Well, on the twenty
Speaker 2: third of December, I get a call from Tom Smart.
Speaker 2: I wasn't watching, but John Walsh was on Larry King Live,
Speaker 2: and he had just leaked everything about Mary Catherine's epiphany.
Speaker 2: So the story came out on Larry King Live. Luckily,
Speaker 2: because of the holidays, I didn't receive any calls until
Speaker 2: the next day, about ten o'clock the next morning, and
Speaker 2: then the floodgates opened and I spent Christmas Eve on
Speaker 2: my front lawn doing interviews. And the way we handled
Speaker 2: that was we said that there was credibility to what
Speaker 2: John was saying, and at the same time, the family
Speaker 2: wasn't ready to make that announcement. They would do that
Speaker 2: early in the new year. Law enforcement immediately discredited what
Speaker 2: John was saying. They said he was doing it to
Speaker 2: promote his own TV show, that they had investigated this guy,
Speaker 2: that there was nothing to it, and that you know,
Speaker 2: he was just blowing hot air.
Speaker 5: How does the other the rest of the media respond
Speaker 5: to this? Even though it's on Larry King Live.
Speaker 2: Locally, it gets a little national. Locally, it gets quite
Speaker 2: a bit of attention. It does get coverage and they
Speaker 2: give it's pretty balanced. It gets both sides. It gives
Speaker 2: the side of what John saying, that it's my quote
Speaker 2: saying that there's credibility to it, and then the police
Speaker 2: saying there's no credibility to it.
Speaker 5: So you say, it's a bitter pill to swallow for
Speaker 5: you with this betrayal by John Walsh. But still the
Speaker 5: fact remains that you want to have this information that
Speaker 5: Mary Catherine has brought forward in terms of the sketch
Speaker 5: and description. So how do you get this to happen?
Speaker 5: What happens in terms of your decision to what to
Speaker 5: do next.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I was very disappointed that that came out
Speaker 2: from John. You know, ed shared my frustration. At the
Speaker 2: same time, John had been such an ally to the family.
Speaker 2: It was hard to be mad out of me such
Speaker 2: an incredibly nice guy. In hindsight later on, there's members
Speaker 2: of the board, kind of the extended family who believe
Speaker 2: that John not leaked that information. It's possible that the
Speaker 2: Smarts might not have come forward with it. There were
Speaker 2: a number of things that occurred. Law enforcement as the
Speaker 2: Smarts were getting closer to defile them continued to put
Speaker 2: more pressure on. They pulled Ed and Lewis and me
Speaker 2: into a meeting one day and said, look, well we
Speaker 2: want to reason with you. We found bullet casings in
Speaker 2: Richard Reese's cheap, and we're relatively confident that he took
Speaker 2: Elizabeth out to the desert, he shot her. He's buried
Speaker 2: or somewhere. We may never find her. We're doing our best,
Speaker 2: but we want to level with you and if you
Speaker 2: guys come forward with this information, it's gonna it's going
Speaker 2: to cause all kinds of issues, and it potentially could
Speaker 2: embarrass and Mary Catherine, and we want to protect her.
Speaker 2: And so they were making this case and it kept
Speaker 2: delaying things, and finally Ed Smart decided I'm coming out
Speaker 2: with it. We're doing it, and on February fifth, we
Speaker 2: called a press conference, and in the press conference, we
Speaker 2: offered a ten thousand dollars reward for anyone who could
Speaker 2: exonerate Richard Reesi and then released a sketch of this man, Emmanuel,
Speaker 2: who had worked on the house. For one day, local
Speaker 2: media covered it ed and I jumped on a plane
Speaker 2: and went to New York. I had lined up interviews
Speaker 2: with the morning shows, and that next morning all of
Speaker 2: the shows canceled and it was odd, and so I
Speaker 2: called a source with one of the networks and asked
Speaker 2: him what was going on, and he said the police
Speaker 2: department had made it very clear to the media that
Speaker 2: they should be careful on this one, that I had
Speaker 2: concocted the story to try to get Elizabeth back in
Speaker 2: the news, and that they had investigated this guy and
Speaker 2: found nothing that led them to believe that he was
Speaker 2: any more prominent a suspect than anybody else. And so
Speaker 2: the national media completely panned the story. Locally, the story
Speaker 2: was about the reward, not the fact that there was,
Speaker 2: you know, the King Mary Catherine who remembered this guy
Speaker 2: that was potentially involved in the abduction, and so it
Speaker 2: was it was really ignored, and at that point, you John,
Speaker 2: who had been the goat for a little while, came
Speaker 2: out as the hero. He was the only one who
Speaker 2: really took the story seriously and did significant feature on
Speaker 2: America's Most Wanted, which led to Brian David Mitchell's family
Speaker 2: stepping forward and saying, this is his name, and he's
Speaker 2: capable of this, and we need to find him. And
Speaker 2: there were two other stories in the next two weeks
Speaker 2: on America's Most Wanted before Elizabeth was recognized by America's
Speaker 2: Most Wanted viewers and was rescued.
Speaker 5: It's incredible you described a person that you were playing basketball.
Speaker 5: One of your favorite hobbies growing up. And still imagine
Speaker 5: you talk about Adjason Burnett, somebody who played high school
Speaker 5: basketball with you, gave him acall he wasn't answering tell
Speaker 5: us about this very dramatic scene that you read about.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So that day, on March twelfth, kind of a
Speaker 2: difficult start to the day, Tom Smart had blasted law
Speaker 2: enforcement to the Salt Lake Tribune.
Speaker 1: And over the.
Speaker 2: Prior nine and a half months, we've been so majored
Speaker 2: and so disciplined in how we talked about law enforcement
Speaker 2: to not be overtly critical of them. We recognized that
Speaker 2: they were still the families, one of the family's best
Speaker 2: tools for finding Elizabeth, and also recognized that getting into
Speaker 2: shouting match with law enforcement was only going to create
Speaker 2: conflict in drama and it wasn't going to of any
Speaker 2: good purpose. But Tom finally defiled that, and nine and
Speaker 2: a half months of frustration came out in the Salt
Speaker 2: Lake Tribune publishes a front page story about the family
Speaker 2: finally criticizing law enforcement, which creates all kinds of national attention.
Speaker 2: The New York Times, USA Today, NBC News, everybody wants
Speaker 2: to talk now, all of a sudden, despite the fact
Speaker 2: that a few weeks earlier they had no interest in
Speaker 2: this development, and so we had planned a press briefing
Speaker 2: for that afternoon and Tom Smart and that Smart and
Speaker 2: I were getting together to determine how best to navigate
Speaker 2: that situation. And a few minutes before the meeting, Ed
Speaker 2: called me and told me that he had been summoned
Speaker 2: to the Sandy City Police Department, Sandy being a suburb
Speaker 2: ten miles to the south of Salt Lake. He was
Speaker 2: told not to stop, not to talk to anyone, not
Speaker 2: even Lois. He felt like he needed to call me
Speaker 2: because he was going to be late to the meeting,
Speaker 2: he might even miss the meeting, and I told him to,
Speaker 2: you know, let me know when you know something. But
Speaker 2: as you mentioned, my good friend Jay and Burnette, my
Speaker 2: basketball teammate, threw me the assist of a lifetime when
Speaker 2: I called him and he finally picked up, and he
Speaker 2: told me that the police department had brought in an
Speaker 2: indigent teenager that they believed was Elizabeth Smart. And I
Speaker 2: paused and tried to keep my composure. I was crying
Speaker 2: and said to Jason, where did they find the body?
Speaker 2: And he said, what body? She's in the room next
Speaker 2: to me, and it was the most unbelievable news I
Speaker 2: had ever heard. We know the end of that story,
Speaker 2: but in that moment, it was surreal, and I was
Speaker 2: able to get a hold of ed Smart and then
Speaker 2: we had a resolution plan, and Tom and I started
Speaker 2: calling down to the other members of the extended family
Speaker 2: and the board and giving them instructions on what to do.
Speaker 2: And it was about forty five minutes later that the
Speaker 2: story finally hit the news. But it was the assist
Speaker 2: of a lifetime.
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Speaker 5: Now you chronicle the credit moments. Again. We already mentioned
Speaker 5: at the beginning of this interview when you first laid
Speaker 5: eyes on her at that police station in the shabbily
Speaker 5: dressed and much different after a few days of nutrition
Speaker 5: and proper sleep and rest. But you also did see
Speaker 5: her less than twelve hours later at the home and
Speaker 5: then which began this extraordinary relationship that still exists today.
Speaker 5: You've been in an employee of the Smart family. You
Speaker 5: talk about the White House meeting in the rose Garden,
Speaker 5: but let's talk about the national Amber Alert, one of
Speaker 5: the main things that was always focus of the family
Speaker 5: and also yourself.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the Amber alert was a godsend and it really
Speaker 2: you know, a lot of people recognize Elizabeth and the
Speaker 2: amazing work she does in taking something that's so tragic
Speaker 2: and using it as a catalyst to help other people
Speaker 2: and to be a force for good. And her father
Speaker 2: really started that with the Amber Alert. He was at
Speaker 2: a point where he was restless, the media attention was waning,
Speaker 2: and I reached out to Utah's congressional delegation and Senator
Speaker 2: Orn Hatch's office suggested that we get involved with lobbying
Speaker 2: for the Amber Alert, and Ed it was a perfect fit.
Speaker 2: He was as passionate about it as anyone could be.
Speaker 2: We lobbied on Capitol Hill, we did countless interviews, and
Speaker 2: the nice thing about it was it gave us an
Speaker 2: opportunity every time we talked about it to also talk
Speaker 2: about Elizabeth and to keep her story alive, but in
Speaker 2: the process to do something very positive. And shortly after
Speaker 2: Elizabeth was rescued, Ed really put the heat on, and
Speaker 2: Elizabeth even wrote a letter to Congress, and a few
Speaker 2: weeks later, the National Lumber Alert was passed. And it's
Speaker 2: something that has stood as kind of a hallmark of
Speaker 2: that case that it's been something that's now universal and
Speaker 2: has helped bring so many kids safely home and you've.
Speaker 5: Worked and Elizabeth asked you to be involved with her,
Speaker 5: and again just tell us what this role was with
Speaker 5: this much different project than the rescue and search for Elizabeth.
Speaker 2: So years later I worked with Elizabeth during the trial.
Speaker 2: It was about a decade later that her abductors were
Speaker 2: put on trial and then sentenced, and we looked at
Speaker 2: how do we take this opportunity where there was a
Speaker 2: lot of attention and use that to put out a
Speaker 2: message about other survivors and other victims of child abduction
Speaker 2: and sexual abuse, and worked with something that Elizabeth is
Speaker 2: such a shy and modest person. She didn't want it
Speaker 2: to be about her, and so this gave her something
Speaker 2: else of substance to talk about and she's like, I
Speaker 2: want to do this. Can I do more of this?
Speaker 2: And it's you know, you have a tremendous opportunity to
Speaker 2: be an advocate, And so we started working together and
Speaker 2: figuring out and she had a lot of opportunities. A
Speaker 2: lot of people played a role in this, but really
Speaker 2: figured out how to position her in the best way
Speaker 2: possible so that she could make a difference and be
Speaker 2: a voice for the voiceless.
Speaker 5: You write in the introduction that members of the church.
Speaker 5: If I don't have this incorrect. There's a reason why
Speaker 5: you took so long to be able to write this book,
Speaker 5: and there's a reason why it is so important to
Speaker 5: include your upbringing and the lessons that you learned by
Speaker 5: growing up in the culture of the Latter day Saints church.
Speaker 5: Tell us a little bit about these connections and the
Speaker 5: relations to this story and your upbringing.
Speaker 2: Sure, so I worked as I was writing the book,
Speaker 2: I was part of a group of writers from around
Speaker 2: the country who had no connections to Utah and no
Speaker 2: connections to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints.
Speaker 2: And as I was reviewing some initial material, they really
Speaker 2: pushed me and my culture to me is passe, and
Speaker 2: they kept saying, well, wait, what is this and explain
Speaker 2: that we're not interested from a religious standpoint, but we're
Speaker 2: really interested in your culture, and your culture really plays
Speaker 2: an important role in this story. And so they pushed
Speaker 2: me a lot. And we're a great sounding board as
Speaker 2: somebody on the outside that helped talk about about that culture.
Speaker 2: But I grew up in a culture that's very well organized,
Speaker 2: that that's very disciplined, you know, in the you know,
Speaker 2: the Mormon Church is the common term gone away from it.
Speaker 5: In the church.
Speaker 2: You know, even from the age of three or four
Speaker 2: years old, you start speaking to the to the group,
Speaker 2: so you're grown up. You grow up as a communicator,
Speaker 2: you grow up doing a lot of service, and you know,
Speaker 2: many people choose to serve a full time two year mission,
Speaker 2: which I had the opportunity to do at the age
Speaker 2: of nineteen, and there were many experiences through that that
Speaker 2: prepared me for the opportunity to work with the Smarts
Speaker 2: and then with the Smarts, I mean. Some interesting elements
Speaker 2: of that culture as well is that you know, each
Speaker 2: congregation is geographical, so if you live in a certain area,
Speaker 2: you go to church with the same people in that
Speaker 2: area at the same time each week. And it creates,
Speaker 2: especially in Utah, it almost creates these small towns within
Speaker 2: a small town where everybody knows each other, everybody looks
Speaker 2: out for each other, and when there are needs and challenges,
Speaker 2: you know, the village really comes together to help. And
Speaker 2: that was a big part of the reason that the
Speaker 2: search for Elizabeth was organized so quickly and so efficiently.
Speaker 2: There were some outside groups that came in to help
Speaker 2: with that as well. But the culture itself, and there
Speaker 2: are many people who aren't in the church that are
Speaker 2: a part of this culture as well that really lent
Speaker 2: to that search effort and lent to providing the providing
Speaker 2: to the needs of the family during that time.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's very it's fascinating to see the immediate response
Speaker 5: and the level of organization in this church that rallied
Speaker 5: around this family is extraordinary, and I have not read
Speaker 5: of anything of the sort in comparison.
Speaker 2: And the interesting thing is, you know, the Smarts lived
Speaker 2: in an area where people were more affluent, but this
Speaker 2: same structure is exists throughout the world. Had some friends
Speaker 2: who had an issue while they were on vacation in
Speaker 2: Hawaii and had some extenuating circumstances, and they were able
Speaker 2: to get a hold of the bishop, the leader of
Speaker 2: the local ward, and then they were able to come
Speaker 2: to their aid. And so there really is an amazing
Speaker 2: tradition that goes back to the early days of the
Speaker 2: Church of people serving one another and really being there
Speaker 2: in times of need. And this was just a prime
Speaker 2: example of that.
Speaker 5: You also don't go into too much, but I think
Speaker 5: it is very important that you and you do stress
Speaker 5: this that despite what Brian David Mitchell contended in say
Speaker 5: interviews and what the media interpreted and conveys in their
Speaker 5: reports some form of connection, sort of an extremist religious
Speaker 5: connection that Mitchell had with the Latter day Saints of
Speaker 5: the Church. So you talk about polygamy and that issue
Speaker 5: and dispel any kind of the notions that people might have.
Speaker 2: And that's the stereotype of my religion, polygamy, which was
Speaker 2: something that was outlawed in the eighteen hundreds. There are
Speaker 2: fundamentallyst groups that are not tied to the Church, that
Speaker 2: are very much around the fringe that practice polygamy. And
Speaker 2: I write in the book that I was asked one
Speaker 2: as a child in Missouri, a gift shop cashier asked
Speaker 2: me how many wives my parents had, And I'd never
Speaker 2: seen a polygamist growing up. I have since then, but
Speaker 2: I growing up, I'd never seen one. Yeah, But there
Speaker 2: are all these stories, there are lots of Netflix docuseries,
Speaker 2: there's books, there's other things written about these splinter groups
Speaker 2: well outside of the Church and a small fraction of
Speaker 2: them that there's these extremists, the herbal Leverons, the Warren Jeffs,
Speaker 2: the Brian David Mitchell's that use religion as a leverage
Speaker 2: to get what they want. Elizabeth in her book said
Speaker 2: that Brian David Mitchell didn't care about religion. All he
Speaker 2: cared about was sex and alcohol in that order. And
Speaker 2: so it's something that is misportrayed a lot specific to
Speaker 2: the current Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints,
Speaker 2: and so it was something that I did want to
Speaker 2: address and just fell a little bit. Not that there
Speaker 2: aren't issues in places, and not that there aren't some
Speaker 2: issues with these splinter groups, but it's such a small percentage,
Speaker 2: and it's unfortunate that it taints a group of good,
Speaker 2: god faring people that are doing amazing things in our
Speaker 2: community and in society.
Speaker 5: We didn't talk about and we didn't talk about this
Speaker 5: in the beginning, but I think it's important tell us
Speaker 5: about the genesis of this book, because originally you were
Speaker 5: writing about your next door neighbor, the damage Warvette, and
Speaker 5: the relationship that you had and all you learned on
Speaker 5: that relationship. But tell us how it plays into the
Speaker 5: genesis of this book unexpected.
Speaker 2: I don't want to spoil it, but the last chapter
Speaker 2: is an experience that happened at a celebration a couple
Speaker 2: of days after Elizabeth was rescued, and I encounter somebody
Speaker 2: who just ties everything back. It was as though my
Speaker 2: experience growing up with Baker Paxton had prepared me for
Speaker 2: that moment. It was one of the most miraculous moments
Speaker 2: outside of with rescue and meeting her for the first time.
Speaker 2: It brings those two stories together. I've heard from a
Speaker 2: number of people who've read the book that initially they're like, wait,
Speaker 2: what is this backstory, Like, I just want to read
Speaker 2: about the Smart And over time they cooked by it
Speaker 2: and they all of a sudden are wanting to see
Speaker 2: where that one goes as well, and then just amaze
Speaker 2: how they come together in the very end.
Speaker 5: And you say that there's the role of the values
Speaker 5: that you learned growing up in the church. Speak to
Speaker 5: the kinds of things like forgiveness and understanding, which led
Speaker 5: to being able to successfully manage the kind of eccentric
Speaker 5: and at times out of control characters of people like
Speaker 5: Tom Smart and other people in the media themselves that
Speaker 5: had their own agendas.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, and I think today we have we're just so
Speaker 2: quick to judge people, and especially people going through extenuating circumstances,
Speaker 2: and it's often when these people need our help the
Speaker 2: most that we are the most critical of them. And
Speaker 2: those experiences growing up helped me to hopefully be a
Speaker 2: little bit more understanding and charitable and to have a
Speaker 2: little more patience in those circumstances, because it was you know,
Speaker 2: if I snapped at the media, that wasn't going to
Speaker 2: reflect well on the smart family. And so how do
Speaker 2: you how do you diplomatically handle that situation? How do
Speaker 2: you give somebody the benefit of the doubt while still
Speaker 2: being assertive and looking out for the best interest of
Speaker 2: your client. And so a lot of those lessons growing
Speaker 2: up really instilled that in me and prepared me for
Speaker 2: those experiences, and reflecting on it twenty years later has
Speaker 2: helped reassure that, I mean, I still struggle with it.
Speaker 2: It's not like I'm an expert at it reminds me
Speaker 2: and all the time in my often I'll meet somebody
Speaker 2: and in the back of my mind, I'll say, Baker,
Speaker 2: you know, to remind me that this person is likely
Speaker 2: very different than how I'm judging them in the story
Speaker 2: I'm telling myself in the moment.
Speaker 5: Yes, absolutely, It's an extraordinary book and I want to
Speaker 5: thank you so much for coming on and talking about unexpected,
Speaker 5: the backstory of finding Elizabeth Smart and growing up in
Speaker 5: the culture of an American religion. Chris Thomas, can you
Speaker 5: tell us if people want to find out more information?
Speaker 5: Is there a website? Do any do any social media?
Speaker 2: Absolutely so, Chris Thomas connects dot com and a really
Speaker 2: fun element of that, Dan, I think you find this
Speaker 2: interesting is I went and pulled from about twelve chapters.
Speaker 2: I pulled the video so Bill O'Reilly interview for example.
Speaker 2: I have excerpts from that interview video of that interview,
Speaker 2: so you can actually go back and see that that
Speaker 2: corresponds with it. I have a number of pictures there.
Speaker 2: It links to my social media and so trying to
Speaker 2: make it something that is dynamic and multimedia in function.
Speaker 2: So I hope people will enjoy that. And you know,
Speaker 2: the books available just about everywhere as well as on audible.
Speaker 2: I voiced the book, so if you're not pared of
Speaker 2: my voice, you can hear it in nine and a
Speaker 2: half hours more.
Speaker 5: Well, thank you so much. That's great news, and it's
Speaker 5: great to hear that you're voicing your own audiobook as well.
Speaker 5: That it's very very interesting and I think very much
Speaker 5: warranted and also appreciate it. I want to thank you
Speaker 5: so much for coming on and talking about your book Unexpected,
Speaker 5: the backstory of finding Elizabeth Smart and growing up in
Speaker 5: the culture of an American religion. Chris Thomas, you have
Speaker 5: a great evening, and thank you so much for this interview.
Speaker 2: You too, Dan, thank you so much.
Speaker 3: Good night.