Defense witnesses flesh out Mitchell's earlier life - Salt Lake Tribune

By Stephen Hunt

The Salt Lake Tribune

Published Nov 16, 2010 08:17PM
Updated 30 minutes ago Updated Nov 16, 2010 08:54PM While working with Brian David Mitchell at OC Tanner during the early 1990s, Doug Larsen came to consider his fellow tool and die cutter “close to being a brother.”

“He and I hit it off really well. We had a lot of similar views about the world and religion,” Larsen testified Tuesday for the defense at Mitchell’s trial for allegedly kidnapping Elizabeth Smart.

Several years later, Larsen spotted a transformed, Biblical-looking Mitchell begging for money at Main Street and South Temple — a man who now refused to even acknowledge his former friend.

Larsen, hoping to find out what Mitchell had done over the years, said: “You gave that guy a ‘God bless you’ for fifty cents. Will you give me five minutes of your time for five dollars?”

Mitchell, money in hand, looked at him and said, “The Lord be praised. God bless you.”

Larsen said, “I will pray for you,” and then he started to walk away. Mitchell turned and over his shoulder said, “And I will pray for you.”

Before that, Mitchell had been a clean-cut and “utterly sincere” member of the LDS Church, who often was ridiculed by other workers at the Salt Lake City jewelry company for singing hymns and zealously expressing his religious opinions. But after Mitchell quit in 1994 and became a follower of a naturopathic health concept called lymphology, Larsen said he lost track of him for four years prior to the Main Street encounter.

Prosecutors rested their case in chief Tuesday morning after four days of testimony that laid out the alleged facts of Smart’s kidnapping and her nine months of captivity and sexual abuse at age 14 in the hands of Mitchell, 57, and his wife, Wanda Eileen Barzee, 65.

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The defense » Now, with the start of the defense case, comes what U.S. District Judge Dale Kimball has identified as the real focus of the trial.

Larsen’s testimony — and more to come this week from other defense witnesses who knew Mitchell prior to Smart’s June 2002 abduction — is designed to illustrate Mitchell’s alleged descent into madness.

The defense is asking jurors to find Mitchell not guilty by reason of insanity. They also have the burden of proving he was insane at the time of the alleged crime.

To that end, Mitchell’s father and other family members are slated to testify today about Mitchell’s childhood and teenage years. Barzee, who pleaded guilty to kidnapping and unlawful transportation of a minor and is serving 15 years in prison, could take the witness stand as early as Thursday. She is being held in the Davis County Jail awaiting her testimony.

The defense’s first witness Tuesday was Dru White, who was an LDS high counselor in 1987 when he met Mitchell and Barzee at a Salt Lake City ward. Mitchell was the bishop’s clerk, Barzee the organist.

White said Mitchell was “quite clean-cut and well-dressed — a normal, conservative young man.”

Mitchell had a reputation as “an active member of the ward, and willing to work and serve,” which earned him a promotion to counselor, White said.

“He seemed eager to do a good job,” recalled White. “He was quiet, but friendly. At meetings he was quite attentive and listening carefully to everything that was going on.”

On the witness stand, Larsen said he was devoted to his religion, but that Mitchell was even more devoted.

They both read the same religious books, both assumed the prophesied Davidic king would arise from the upper leaders of the Mormon Church, and both admired then-LDS Church President Ezra Taft Benson as “among the great prophets.”

He and Mitchell also considered most church members to be “largely idolatrous.” He said they often discussed religion at work, and both were viewed by co-workers as “religious fanatic guys.”

Mitchell got into arguments with co-workers over religion because he was “very confident to the point of being dogmatic and inflexible, and he came across as abrasive,” Larsen said. When co-workers became annoyed and called Mitchell “crazy,” he would terminate the discussion by walking away, Larsen said.

But after Mitchell left OC Tanner, Larsen said the man he encountered was not the same Mitchell.

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A changed man » Speaking to reporters outside of court, Larsen said of Mitchell: “The person I knew no longer exists; he’s completely changed.”

“It’s like Brian David Mitchell died,” said Larsen, adding that he attributed the changes to Mitchell’s experimentation with LSD as a teen.

But Larsen added that he didn’t doubt Mitchell knew what he was doing.

“He’s clever, he’s lucid. He was calculating and in control,” Larsen said, pointing out that Mitchell tried to keep from getting caught by police.

Larsen said that while listening to testimony last week from Smart about what she called her “nine months of hell” with Mitchell and Barzee, he recalled that it was similar to a religious, science-fiction fantasy novel he once wrote and allowed Mitchell to read.

He testified that Mitchell objected to a portion of the novel in which a female character “prostitutes herself” to distract some guards and allow other family members to escape.

Mitchell claimed “he didn’t think God would ask a girl to give up her virtue,” Larsen recalled. Yet Smart had testified to a scenario “almost identical to his objections,” Larsen said, referring to Mitchell’s alleged contention that it was God’s will that they “marry.”

Larsen also told an amusing anecdote about Mitchell from his time as an actor in a Creation play, which used to be held on Temple Square, but has now been replaced with a movie.

Mitchell, who played the role of Satan, was taken aside and told, “You are one of the best Lucifers we’ve had, but could you tone it down a little,” Larsen recalled. “He was amused by their concern [that] he played a good devil and he was convincing.”

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More witnesses » Also Tuesday, the defense called two sons of the late C. Samuel West, a lymphologist who employed Mitchell to promote the concept that “bouncing” helps the blood and lymphatic system work together to prevent and to cure disease.

Karl West testified that when he first met Mitchell, he was clean-cut and dressed normally, but later wore robes, earning him the nickname, “The Israelite.”

Mitchell and Barzee lived off-and-on in the basement of the West’s Orem home, and also in a teepee in the backyard, while building a covered handcart, which they later pulled across the country, West said.

West testified that the couple left after having a religious disagreement with his father, possibly over the issue of practicing polygamy. West said the couple was also burning something in the basement of his house, which caused him to accuse the couple of “desecrating” the residence.

When Mitchell and Barzee reappeared in the spring or summer of 2001, West said they stood on the sidewalk in front of the house, yelling and “telling us the house was going to be destroyed.”

“I’d never seen him like that,” West told defense attorney Wendy Lewis. “He was off his rocker.”

Asked if Mitchell appeared mentally ill, West replied: “Yeah, in retrospect.”

But when prosecutor Felice Viti asked if Mitchell and Barzee may have burnt incense in the basement to cover the smell of marijuana, West agreed that after seeing pictures of Mitchell on the news with a beer in his hand, he decided it was marijuana.

“Are you saying he fooled you?” Viti asked.

West replied: “Yeah, definitely.”

shunt@sltrib.com

Pamela Manson and Cimaron Neugebauer contributed to this report.

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Suu Kyi release could boost Myanmar's economy - AFP

Suu Kyi release could boost Myanmar's economyBy Roberto Coloma (AFP) – 1 hour ago

SINGAPORE — The release of democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi could pay off economically for Myanmar's junta even though Western nations are unlikely to ease trade and other sanctions soon, analysts said.

For years, the military regime of resource-rich Myanmar has blunted the impact of US and European punitive measures by cultivating trade and investment links with neighbours led by Thailand, China, India, Singapore and Malaysia.

Suu Kyi's freedom and this month's rare election may reduce the stigma of doing business with Myanmar, even though her party boycotted the vote and the results were dismissed as a sham by much of the outside world.

"It is a welcome sign. We hope this is the start for a change and that it will encourage more investments in Myanmar," said a senior official from the Malaysian trade ministry who declined to be named.

But opponents of the junta fear that any increased money flowing into the impoverished country will not improve the lives of ordinary people.

Myanmar is one of the world's least developed countries, with nearly a third of the population living below the poverty line as the generals and their associates exploit raw materials for their own benefit.

Asian neighbours China, India, and Thailand already overlook human rights concerns in favour of engagement with Myanmar, which boasts oil, gas and other natural resources as well as tremendous tourism potential.

India gave Myanmar leader Than Shwe a red-carpet welcome in July and the two countries signed pacts on border security, road building and finance.

But for India, as the world's largest democracy, Myanmar's recent moves could ease domestic political pressure not to prop up the regime.

"The release of Aung Sang Suu Kyi gives India a greater diplomatic space to engage with Myanmar without the fear of being criticised while dealing with the military dictatorship regime," said C. Uday Bhaskar, director of the New Delhi think-tank National Maritime Foundation.

Thailand is another top investor and trading partner, importing over 90 percent of all of Myanmar's natural gas exports.

A major Thai construction firm recently signed an eight-billion-dollar infrastructure deal with the military-ruled country, including the construction of a giant deep sea port in the impoverished nation.

China, a single-party state often criticised for its own human-rights record, is also expected to forge closer economic ties regardless of the political situation as it scours the world for natural resources to feed its fast-growing economy.

Indeed, it recently became the largest foreign investor in Myanmar this year, state media in Beijing reported. Among projects already under way, China National Petroleum Corp. is building an oil and gas pipeline from Myanmar's Kyuakryu port to southwestern China.

"Both the junta and Chinese Communist Party have an understanding that whatever the West and rest of the world thinks about human rights and the Nobel prize, it will not really have an impact on the development of ties and support for each other," said Professor Ian Holliday at the University of Hong Kong.

Myanmar watchers said it was too early to say if the developments could lead to an easing of Western sanctions on the regime, which is still holding an estimated 2,200 political prisoners, and they underscored the crucial role to be played by Suu Kyi.

Alistair Cook, a fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore, said Western nations will await "feedback" from Suu Kyi, who plans to consult the people of Myanmar.

"Should they want an end to the economic sanctions, then I am sure Aung San Suu Kyi and other pro-democracy leaders will articulate this. It will be then up to those states imposing economic sanctions to respond accordingly."

Suu Kyi led her party to a landslide win in Myanmar's 1990 elections, but the military never recognised the result and kept the Nobel peace prize laureate in detention for 15 of the past 21 years.

Critics of the sanctions say they have done little to undermine military rule and instead aggravated the deprivation of ordinary people in Myanmar.

The United States bans trade with companies tied to the junta in Myanmar. It also freezes such firms' assets and blocks international loans to the state.

The European Union also has sanctions freezing assets and businesses of junta figures, and blacklisting their travel, but it has continued some trade and investment such as in oil.

Copyright © 2010 AFP. All rights reserved. More »

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Microsoft says sells 1 million Kinect devices - Reuters

Assistants demonstrate the game ''Kinect Adventures'' for Kinect for Xbox 360 during a media briefing at the Wiltern theatre in Los Angeles, June 14, 2010.

Credit: Reuters/Mario Anzuoni

SEATTLE | Tue Nov 16, 2010 3:20pm EST

SEATTLE (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp said on Monday it has sold more than 1 million of its new hands-free Kinect gaming systems in the first 10 days since launch, putting it on track to beat its target of 5 million sales by the end of the year.

The world's largest software company is hoping the Kinect will help revitalize sales of its Xbox game console this holiday shopping season and counter competing motion-based gaming systems from Nintendo Co, which makes the Wii, and Sony Corp, which introduced its Move product two months ago.

"It's a strong start," said Don Mattrick, head of Microsoft's game unit, in a telephone interview on Monday. "Consumers are loving it."

The Kinect -- a sensing device you plug into the Xbox which allows you to play games just by moving your body and speaking commands -- is priced at $150 for a standalone unit and $300 bundled with a 4 gigabyte Xbox console.

It went on sale in U.S. stores November 4, although many customers had pre-ordered units, likely causing a spike in early sales. Microsoft is hoping sales will stay hot as the day after Thanksgiving -- one of the biggest shopping days of the year, known as 'Black Friday' -- approaches on November 26.

More than 30,000 U.S. stores are selling Kinect in the United States, including branches of Wal-Mart Stores Inc, Target Corp, Best Buy Co, GameStop Corp and online at Amazon.com. It went on sale on November 10 in Europe and is due to go on sale in Asia on November 18.

Ultimately, Microsoft is hoping the new technology will help extend the role of its Xbox 360, which has sold 45 million units, and introduce a concept that is expected to feature in forms of electronics and computers in the next few years.

Microsoft shares were trading unchanged after hours, after closing down 7 cents at $26.20 on Nasdaq.

(Reporting by Bill Rigby; Editing by Bernard Orr)

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