ANCHORAGE, Alaska — a man who murdered two native Alaskan women and was heard filming the tortured death. He said that in his films “everyone always dies,” was sentenced to 226 years in prison on Friday.
Brian Steven Smith was each sentenced to 99 years in 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 of them were treated in the most horrific manner imaginable,” Alaska Superior Court Judge Kevin Saxby said as he imposed the sentence.
“It’s the stuff of nightmares,” Saxby said.
The remaining 28 years were for other charges, including sexual assault and tampering with evidence. Alaska does not have the death penalty.
Smith, born in South Africa, had become a naturalized U.S. citizen shortly before he tortured and murdered Henry in an Anchorage hotel in September 2019. He showed no emotion during the sentencing.
He also showed no emotion at all then a jury deliberated for less than two hours and was found guilty after a three-week trial in February.
During the trial, the victims were not named, only by their initials. Saxby said during the sentencing that their names would be used to restore their identities.
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 footage was eventually copied to a memory card and she turned it in to the police.
Smith eventually confessed to killing Henry and Abouchuk. Their bodies had been found earlier but misidentified.
Both Native Alaskan women came from small towns in western Alaska and became homeless while living in Anchorage.
Authorities identified Henry as the victim whose death was recorded at the TownePlace Suites by Marriott in Midtown Anchorage. Smith, who worked at the hotel, was registered to stay there from Sept. 2-4, 2019. The first images from the card showed Henry’s body and were time-stamped around 1 a.m. on Sept. 4, police said.
The last image, dated early Sept. 6, showed Henry’s body in the back of a black pickup truck. According to charging documents, location data from Smith’s phone showed him 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 to the jury during the trial, but were hidden from the gallery. Smith’s face was never seen in the videos, but his distinctive South African accent — which police eventually recognized from earlier encounters — could be heard as he spoke as if there was an audience. On the tape, he repeatedly urged Henry to die as he beat and strangled her.
“In my movies, everyone always dies,” the voice says in a video. “What will my followers think of me? People need to know when they’re committing serial murder.”
During the eight-hour videotaped police interrogation, Smith confessed to killing Abouchuk after picking her up in Anchorage while his wife was out of town. He took her to his home and she refused when he asked her to take a shower because of an odor.
Smith said he became angry, grabbed a gun from the garage and shot her in the head, then dumped her body north of Anchorage. He told police the location, where authorities later found a skull with a bullet wound.