One of Smart's abductors, Brian David Mitchell, was born on October 18, 1953, in Salt Lake City, Utah, the third of six children in a Mormon family. His mother was a teacher and his father was a social worker. In order to teach Mitchell about sex, his father reportedly showed his adolescent son explicit photos from a medical journal, and, in order to teach him about independence, he would drive Mitchell to unfamiliar parts of Salt Lake City, and drop him off, leaving him to find his way home.