Alaska: A man was sentenced to a staggering 226 years in prison for killing two women and videotaping the gruesome torture of one victim that was described as the "stuff of nightmares". Brian Steven Smith, who received 99-year sentences for the deaths of the two women, was heard saying "everybody always dies" in the torture video of one of the victims.
Smith was sentenced to prison for 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. "Both were treated about as horribly as a person can be treated," Alaska Superior Court Judge Kevin Saxby said when imposing the sentence. "It's the stuff of nightmares."
This was the highest penalty the state could offer since Alaska does not have a death penalty. The remaining 28 years in Smith's sentence were added for other charges like sexual assault and tampering with evidence. Smith was a native of South Africa who became a naturalised US citizen shortly before torturing and murdering Henry in a hotel in 2019.
What happened?
Smith showed no emotion during sentencing, and maintained the same demeanour when a jury deliberated for less than two hours and found him guilty after a three-week trial in February. Saxby said during sentencing that the names of the victims would be used in order to restore their personhood.
Smith was arrested in 2019 when a sex worker stole his cell phone from his truck and found the gruesome footage of Henry's torture and murder. The images were eventually copied onto a memory card, and she turned it over to the police. He eventually confessed to killing Henry and Abouchuk, whose body had been found earlier but was misidentified.
Henry was identified as the victim after her death was recorded at the TownePlace Suites hotel by Marriott in Anchorage. Smith, who worked at the hotel, was registered to stay there from September 2-4, 2019. The first images from the card showed Henry's body and were time-stamped at about 1 am on September 4, police said.
How authorities identified Smith as the killer?
The last image, dated early September 6, showed Henry's body in the back of a black pickup truck. Charging documents said location data showed Smith's phone in the same rural area south of Anchorage where Henry's body was found a few weeks later. Videos from the memory card were shown during the trial to the jury but hidden from the gallery.
Although Smith's face was never seen in the videos, his distinctive South African accent — which police eventually recognised from previous encounters — was heard narrating as if there were an audience. On the tape, he repeatedly urged Henry to die as he beat and strangled her.
“In my movies, everybody always dies,” the voice says in one video. “What are my followers going to think of me? People need to know when they are being serial-killed.” Smith also confessed to killing Abouchuk during the hours-long interrogation, after he picked her up in Anchorage when his wife was out of town.
He took her to his home, and she refused when he asked her to shower because of an odour. Smith said he became upset, retrieved a pistol from the garage and shot her in the head, dumping her body north of Anchorage. He told police the location, where authorities later found a skull with a bullet wound in it. Both women were natives from small villages in western Alaska who experienced homelessness.
(with inputs from agency)
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