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SALT LAKE CITY (AP) -- Mary Katherine Smart has made her first public comments about being the only witness to the abduction of her older sister, Elizabeth, three years ago.
Mary Katherine's three-month old interview with ABC News will appear Thursday night on "Primetime Live."
"It's a piece they're doing on little heroes," said Ed Smart, Mary Katherine's father.
The show will feature stories about five children who took heroic measures in horrible situations, he said.
Elizabeth, now 17, has spoken little of the abduction during several national television interviews, only saying she didn't think she had changed much because of her nine-month ordeal.
"It was interesting to me what Mary Katherine had to say," he said. "To hear her side of it, to me as a father, I hadn't previously (heard) all she had to say. I had not heard that story the way she told it," he said of the interview with Diane Sawyers.
Mary Katherine was 9 years old on June 5, 2002, when a man took Elizabeth from the bed they shared. The younger sister pretended to sleep as Elizabeth was forced to leave with him.
Mary Katherine didn't see the man's face but heard his voice. But she couldn't put that voice with a name until four months later, when she told her family and police that the man who took her resembled Brian David Mitchell, who also went by the name Immanuel when he did roof repair work for the Smarts in November 2001.
When she told her parents she thought the abductor was Immanuel, they wondered how she'd come up with his name.
"(S)he told us that she'd been reading the 'Guinness Book of World Records.' She saw a photo of a very muscular woman, and something triggered her memory of who took her sister the morning of June 5. It's strange, because Brian David Mitchell was a thin man," Ed and Lois Smart wrote in their 2002 book about Elizabeth's abduction, "Bringing Elizabeth Home: A Journey of Faith and Hope."
Elizabeth was found March 12, 2003, in Sandy along with Mitchell and his wife, Wanda Barzee.
Mitchell, 51, and Barzee, 59, were charged with kidnapping, aggravated sexual assault, aggravated burglary and attempted aggravated kidnapping in Elizabeth's disappearance. He also is charged in the attempted abduction of Elizabeth's cousin.
Barzee, who has filed for divorce, was found incompetent to stand trial and is being treated at a state hospital. A judge has yet to determine Mitchell's competence.
Mary Katherine and Elizabeth were in Ireland this week attending the International World Harp Conference.
(Copyright 2005 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
