When the news broke about the kidnapping of 14-year-old Elizabeth Smart in June 2002, the story quickly gained widespread attention, captivating the public with the shocking nature of the crime.
The initial search for Smart dominated headlines for the nine months she was held in captivity, and even long after she was found in March 2003, her story continued to grip the nation. It has since sparked several media portrayals about the harrowing event, including Netflix’s 2026 documentary Kidnapped: Elizabeth Smart.
But Smart is not alone in her experience. She is just one of several other young women whose abductions have turned into a major media frenzy.
Here's what you should know about six of the most famous kidnapping cases in history.
Jaycee Dugard
In June 1991, 11-year-old Jaycee Dugard was kidnapped outside of her home in South Lake Tahoe, California. Her stepfather witnessed her abduction and immediately contacted the authorities, but Jaycee could not be located. She had been transported almost 200 miles away to the town of Antioch, where she was held prisoner by a convicted rapist named Phillip Garrido and his wife, Nancy.
For the next 18 years, Dugard would be their prisoner and would end up bearing two children by Garrido, who felt he had religious justification for his actions. “The Creator has given me the ability to speak in the tongue of angels in order to provide a wake-up call that will in time include the salvation of the whole world,” he wrote in a blog post.
While distributing fliers related to his new church, God's Desire, on the University of California campus at Berkeley, campus police asked Garrido to register his organization. They soon discovered his criminal record, which led them to Jaycee's rescue.
In August 2009, Dugard reunited with her family and attempted to reclaim her life, establishing the JAYC Foundation to help trauma victims. Two years later, she published the memoir A Stolen Life, a wrenching account of her years of captivity, and followed up with Freedom: My Book of Firsts in 2016.
Patty Hearst
The University of California at Berkeley was also the site of the highest-profile kidnapping in American history 35 years earlier. Except for the Lindbergh baby kidnapping, no other case has inspired as much media attention and commentary as the abduction of Patty Hearst.
Granddaughter of newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst, Patricia Campbell Hearst was 19 when she was kidnapped at UC Berkeley by the militant revolutionary group the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA) in February 1974. While held by the SLA, Hearst was indoctrinated into their radical ideology, eventually adopting it as her own in taped messages to the media. She renamed herself Tania and was seen taking part in a bank robbery in San Francisco, as well as a shoot-out at a sporting goods store in Los Angeles.
In September 1975, the FBI pursued and finally captured Hearst, who denied joining the revolutionaries and maintained that she was drugged and coerced. Nevertheless, she was found guilty of participating in the bank robbery and sentenced to seven years in prison.
But after just 22 months behind bars, Hearst’s sentence was commuted by President Jimmy Carter in 1979. More than two decades later, President Bill Clinton pardoned her in 2001, granting her official absolution. In the years after her release, Hearst compiled several onscreen credits and wrote a mystery novel before going on to find success on the competitive dog show circuit. She remains a controversial figure, and some critics still consider her not entirely blameless in the crimes committed by the SLA.
Elizabeth Smart
In June 2002, 14-year-old Elizabeth Smart was kidnapped at knifepoint in her Salt Lake City home while she slept in the bedroom that she shared with her sister. Smart was dragged into the Utah woods and held prisoner by Brian David Mitchell and his wife, Wanda Barzee. Mitchell starved the girl, forced her to consume drugs and alcohol, and raped her daily in an attempt to brainwash her into believing that he was a prophet. Mitchell and Barzee roamed Utah and California for almost nine months with Smart in tow before they were discovered and arrested.
The key to breaking the case was Smart's sister. Terrified, she had stayed still during the kidnapping, but she saw the man and later recognized him as a former handyman hired by the Smarts. Police identified Mitchell, and his photograph was shown on the TV show America's Most Wanted. Less than a month later, Mitchell and Barzee were caught and Smart was returned to her family in March 2003.
Despite her harrowing experience, Smart quickly resumed her life. She finished high school, attended Brigham Young University, and became a noted advocate for kidnapping survivors. After helping to author the U.S. Department of Justice's 2008 handbook for kidnapping survivors, You Are Not Alone, she launched her own foundation for victims and published her 2013 memoir, My Story. Through the Elizabeth Smart Foundation, the activist later introduced the podcast Smart Talks and formed the Smart Defense initiative to empower women to fight back against would-be attackers.
Amanda Berry, Michelle Knight, and Gina DeJesus
Between August 2002 and April 2004, Amanda Berry, age 16, Michelle Knight, 21, and Gina DeJesus, 14, were abducted after accepting a ride home while walking on Lorain Avenue in Cleveland, Ohio. The perpetrator was former bus driver Ariel Castro, who raped, tortured and starved them over the course of a decade. Berry gave birth to a daughter while in captivity and Knight was also reportedly impregnated multiple times.
In May 2013, The three were discovered after Castro left the house and Berry screamed for help at the front door. Her neighbors soon kicked the door in and Berry ran across the street with her 6-year-old daughter to dial 911, summoning authorities to rescue the other two. Castro was indicted on 329 charges, including 177 counts of kidnapping and 139 counts of rape. However, one month after he was sentenced to life in prison plus 1,000 years, he was found hanging from a bedsheet in his cell.
The three women managed to rebuild their lives and cope with the trauma of their experiences. Knight authored two books, Finding Me: A Decade of Darkness, A Life Reclaimed (2014) and Life After Darkness: Finding Healing and Happiness After the Cleveland Kidnapping (2018), while Berry and DeJesus teamed up to pen 2015's Hope: A Memoir of Survival in Cleveland. Berry also became host of a local news station's segment on missing persons, while DeJesus founded The Cleveland Family Center for Missing Children and Adults not far from the house of horrors they were held captive in for many years.
Kyoko Chan Cox
Yoko Ono is most famous for being the wife of John Lennon, but before she met Lennon, she was married twice. During her second marriage to film producer and art promoter Anthony Cox, she gave birth in 1963 to her daughter Kyoko, who soon became the subject of an intense custody battle and subsequent abduction.
After Ono and Cox divorced in 1969, they engaged in a two-year custody battle, which ended with the court ruling against Cox in 1971. In violation of the order, he took Kyoko, who was 7 years old at the time, and disappeared. He soon joined a Christian cult called the Living Word Fellowship, renamed her Rosemary.
Throughout most the decade, Kyoko and her father lived an underground existence until Cox left the cult in 1977, only to join the Jesus People USA commune in Chicago. Kyoko, primarily raised by Cox even when her parents were together, admitted that “it was painful losing my mom,” but that she loved her father and chose to stay with him.
In 1980, Cox contacted Ono to express condolences for Lennon’s death. Ono admitted publicly that she would not seek to prosecute Cox for violation of the court order. It wasn’t until the late 1990s that Kyoko, reportedly married and working as a teacher, was reunited with her mother.
Elisabeth Fritzl
Cox’s abduction by her father, although unfortunate, is benign compared to the story of Elisabeth Fritzl, the victim of one of the most horrifying cases of abuse and imprisonment by a family member on record.
Sexually abused by her father Joseph from the age of 11, Fritzl was lured into a specially prepared cellar in her house in Amstetten, Austria in August 1984 when she was 18 years old. Joseph locked her in the cellar and held her captive, telling police that his daughter had run away from home to join a cult. For the next 24 years, Joseph physically assaulted Fritzl and impregnated her eight times. Three of the children were raised “upstairs,” while three others stayed with Fritzl in the cellar in semi-darkness as part of the “downstairs” family. The other two children died.
In April 2008, when one of the “downstairs” children went into kidney failure, Joseph was forced to seek medical attention and let Fritzl out of the cellar. At the hospital, authorities began to question Joseph’s information. Just over a week later, Fritzl told her full story to the police, and her father was arrested and later sentenced to life in prison in 2009.
Fritzl took on a new identity in an undisclosed location in Austria known as “Village X ”and reportedly adjusted to life above ground, bringing all of her children into one family and finding love with the security guard assigned to protect her.
Catherine Caruso joined the Biography.com staff in August 2024, having previously worked as a freelance journalist for several years. She is a graduate of Syracuse University, where she studied English literature. When she’s not working on a new story, you can find her reading, hitting the gym, or watching too much TV.
