Elizabeth Smart Was Rescued Almost a Year After She Was Kidnapped — Where Is She Now?

Three months after 14-year-old Elizabeth Smart was kidnapped from her family's home in Salt Lake City, Utah, a photographer snapped a picture of the couple who did it. In September 2002, Dan Gorder, a freelance photographer, was at an outdoor party close to where Smart lived when he spotted an unusually dressed trio, reported The New York Times. He quickly took a photo of the group, who were wearing what he described as white robes that looked like hospital gowns.

After Smart was rescued, nearly a year after she was abducted, police came to believe that she was one of the individuals in Gorder's photograph. Smart's captors forced her to wear a veil in public, which is what allowed them to move around freely with the little girl in tow. During the nine months she was imprisoned, Smart was repeatedly sexually abused. It's been more than two decades since that time. Where is she now? Here's what we know.

In January 2026, Netflix released Kidnapped: Elizabeth Smart. In an Instagram Story discussing the documentary she and her family were part of, Smart said what happened to her felt like a different lifetime. "I was a child back then, and now I'm married and have kids."

In revisiting her kidnapping through the documentary, Smart discovered things she didn't realize were happening at the time. She marveled at the support her family received from their community. So many people volunteered their time, energy, and prayers in order to help the Smarts. "I wanted to say thank you, so much, to everyone who searched and prayed and supported me for all these years."

Smart married her husband, a Scottish native she met while in Paris doing mission work, in 2012. "Because he didn’t know anything [about] my past, he wasn’t afraid to tell me what he really thought," Smart told Skip Intro host Krista Smith. "I appreciate that I’m not my past [with him]. I am just who I am right now, right here in the moment."

Smart has written three books about her kidnapping, the aftermath, and how she healed from the tragic experience. Her first, My Story, is a memoir that was published in October 2013. It focused on the horrific ordeal and how it affected her own life as well as the lives of her family. Five years later, Smart wrote My Hope, which dug into the actual trauma and how she was able to heal from it.

In December 2025, Detours: Hope & Growth After Life's Hardest Turns was released. This is Smart as she is now, living what she describes on Skip Intro as a normal life. "I like being at home with my family," she said. "I like a good dinner and then [watching a] movie with my kids, traveling up to our cabin, and going out boating, and just enjoying being outside." She also started a nonprofit organization in 2011 that creates programs aimed at thoughtful, trauma-informed approaches to victims.