ANKERAGE, Alaska — A woman with a lengthy criminal history, including theft, assault and prostitution, got into a truck with a man who had picked her up for a “date” near downtown Anchorage. When he left her alone in the car, she stole a digital memory card from the center console.
Now, more than four years later, what she found on that card is the key to a double-murder trial that begins this week: gruesome photos and videos of a woman being beaten and strangled in a Marriott hotel while her attacker shot her with a speaks in a strong accent as he urged her to die, while her blanket-covered body was sneaked out on a luggage cart.
“In my films, everyone always dies,” says the voice in one video. “What are my followers going to think of me? People need to know when they are being serially murdered.”
About a week after taking the SD card, the woman handed it over to police, who said they recognized the voice as that of Brian Steven Smith, now 52, a South African resident they knew from a previous investigation , according to court documents.
Smith has pleaded not guilty to 14 charges, including first- and second-degree murder, assault and tampering with evidence, in the deaths of Kathleen Henry, 30, and Veronica Abouchuk, who was 52 when her family reported her missing in February 2019. , seven months after they last saw her.
Henry and Abouchuk were both Alaska Native women who had experienced homelessness. They came from small towns in western Alaska, Henry from Eek and Abouchuk from Stebbins.
Authorities say Henry was the victim whose death was recorded at the TownePlace Suites by Marriott, a hotel in downtown Anchorage. Smith was registered to stay there from September 2 to September 4, 2019; The first images showing her body were timestamped around 1 a.m. on September 4, police said.
The last photos on the card were taken early on Sept. 6 and show Henry’s body in the back of a black pickup, according to charging documents. Location data showed that at the time the photo was taken, Smith’s phone was near Rainbow Valley Road, along the Seward Highway south of Anchorage, the same area where Henry’s body was found several weeks later, police said .
When detectives questioned Smith about the Marriott case, authorities said, he gave more information to police who escorted him to a bathroom: He had killed another woman and he then identified her — Abouchuk — from a photo and gave the location. of her remains, along the Old Glenn Highway north of Anchorage.
“Without any prompting, he tells the officers in the bathroom, ‘I’m going to make you famous,’” prosecutor Brittany Dunlop said during a court hearing last week. ‘He comes back and says… ‘Do you still have some time? Do you want to keep talking?’ And then reveals this other murder.
Alaska State Troopers in 2018 incorrectly identified another body as Abouchuk’s because Abouchuk’s ID was discovered with it, for reasons that remain unclear. But with the information Smith provided, investigators reexamined the case and used dental records to confirm that a skull with a gunshot wound was found in the area Smith believed was Abouchuk’s, authorities say.
Smith’s attorney, Timothy Ayer, tried unsuccessfully to exclude evidence of the digital memory card — or even mention of it — during the trial. The woman who turned in the card initially claimed that she had simply found it on the street, and only during a second interview did she confess that she had stolen the card from Smith’s truck while he was trying to get money from an ATM and she had done. for a week before giving it to police, he said.
For that reason, he argued, prosecutors would not be able to prove the provenance of the 39 photos and 12 videos, determine whether they were originals or duplicates, or say with certainty whether they had been tampered with.
“The state cannot present a witness who can testify that the video is a fair and accurate representation of any act that actually occurred,” Ayer wrote.
However, Third Judicial District Judge Kevin Saxby ruled late Friday that the woman can testify about her possession of the card until she turns it over to police and that the recordings can be properly verified.
Henry’s family has not spoken publicly about her death and efforts to reach relatives have been unsuccessful. Abouchuk’s family did not return messages from The Associated Press.
“These were two Alaska Native women,” Dunlop, then an assistant district attorney, said in 2019 after Smith was charged. “And I know this is hitting here in Alaska, and we are aware of that. We treat them with dignity and respect.”
Authorities said Smith, who is in custody at the Anchorage Correctional Facility, came to Alaska in 2014 and became a naturalized U.S. citizen the same month Henry was killed.
In a 2019 letter to the AP, he declined to discuss the case. He added that he was doing well: “I’ve lost weight, I have a lot less stress and I’m sober.”
His wife, Stephanie Bissland of Anchorage, and a sister who acted as spokesperson for the family in South Africa, both declined to comment until after the trial.
The trial, expected to last three to four weeks, was scheduled to begin Monday with jury selection.
Prosecutors had raised the possibility of closing the courtroom to prevent the public from seeing the gruesome videos. The Associated Press, the Anchorage Daily News, Alaska’s News Source and Alaska Public Media objected to such a move in a letter to the court’s president.
Afterward, Saxby said he does not plan to keep the public out of the courtroom, but that there will be safeguards in place to prevent those sitting in the stands or watching the livestream of the trial from seeing them.
