In a post titled to Hit & Run five days ago called “Ilde Speculation,” Reason’s Jesse Walker wrote:

People finally seem to be getting suspicious about this whole Elizabeth Smart abduction thing, but I haven’t seen anyone else espouse my pet theory about the affair. It’s probably wrong but I’m posting it here anyway so that, if it’s right, I can claim to be prescient: She was gone for nine months. She came back “puffier” and more “womanly.” Am I the only person who thinks she might have run off to, you know, have a baby?

Today, the Chicago Tribune’s Judith Graham reported:

Elizabeth Smart was raped or sexually abused the night of her kidnapping nine months ago after being led in her pajamas 4 miles up a dirt road to an isolated campsite in the dead of the night, according to criminal charges filed in district court here Tuesday.

Telling her he would harm or kill her family if she resisted, Brian David Mitchell allegedly abducted the 14-year-old girl to become his “plural wife”–a term used by polygamists–and sexually abused her for several months, Salt Lake County District Atty. David Yocom said.

During at least part of that time, Smart was bound with a cable to a tree and unable to escape, prosecutors allege. “She was under threat of death,” Yocom said, held in the hills and mountains above Salt Lake City until Oct. 8 and then taken to California. She was even buried under boards and dirt. …

At a campsite in a rugged canyon 4 miles from the Smarts’ home, Barzee waited in the darkness for her husband and the girl, Yocom said. When they arrived and she tried to remove Smart’s pajamas, the girl resisted. Only after the woman threatened that Mitchell would forcibly remove her clothing did Smart succumb to Barzee’s demands.

Yes, Jesse, it was wrong to speculate as you did. There are evildoers out there, as our president would say. Get used to it. Not every story has an angle. Some are just too terrible to be true.

By the way, Elizabeth Smart is fortunate only in the sense that Brian David Mitchell is not only a vicious sexual predator but a religious nut as well. If not for the latter, she probably would not be alive today.