A convicted prostitute who stole a memory card on a date was horrified after discovering gruesome footage of a woman being beaten and strangled. The stolen card is now at the center of a double murder trial.
According to court documents from the trial of 52-year-old Brian Steven Smith, an unidentified thief stole an SD card from the center console of his date’s truck during a date in Alaska and discovered the horrifying contents of it. He handed it over to the police a week later. 1 year old new American citizen.
The document, labeled “Murder at Midtown Marriott,” was smuggled out of an Anchorage hotel in 2019 after he was assaulted, strangled, and hidden under a blanket in a luggage cart. It included nearly 40 photos and more than a dozen videos of 30-year-old Kathleen Henry. To tell.
It included the killer saying “die, you bitch” as he stomped on her throat.
“In my movies, everyone always dies,” the man said. “What will my followers think of me? People need to know when they’re going to get serial killers.”
The photo also showed Henry “lying on the floor next to the bed…completely naked and on his back,” according to the indictment. Obtained by South African outlet IOL.
“In the recording, the man said things like, ‘My hands are getting tired,’ and then stepped on the woman’s throat with his right foot,” the document states.
“I can hear the male saying things like ‘die, bitch’ and ‘I hope you die’.”
During a preliminary investigation, police recognized the distinctive voice of Smith, a married South African, according to court documents.
Authorities believe the video was taken at the TownePlace Suites by Marriott in Anchorage, where Smith was registered to stay from September 2, 2019 to September 4, 2019. Ta.
The first image showing Henry’s body is time stamped around 1 a.m. on September 4th (when he was still at the hotel), and the last photo is from the early morning hours of September 6th, showing a black Ford Ranger pickup. Henry’s body is seen in the back of the truck. Documents allege it belonged to Smith.
Smith’s phone was also traced to the location where Henry’s body was later found.
While being questioned about Henry’s death, Smith also admitted to killing Veronica Abchuk, 52, and allegedly provided authorities with the location of her body.
“Without any prompting, he told the officers in the bathroom, ‘I’m going to make you famous,'” District Attorney Brittany Dunlop said during a hearing last week.
“He came back and said, ‘Do you have a little more time? Do you want to continue talking?’ And he exposed this other murder.”
Abchuk was 52 years old when his family officially reported him missing in February 2019, several months after he was last seen. Like Henry, she had also experienced periods of homelessness.
In 2018, Alaska State Troopers incorrectly identified another body as Abchuk’s because his identification card was found with it, but the reason remains unclear.
However, authorities said dental records later confirmed that Smith was the woman whose skull was found with a bullet wound that he directed police to examine.
Smith later pleaded not guilty to 14 charges, including first- and second-degree murder, sexual assault and tampering with evidence. If convicted, he could receive 99 years in prison.
His lawyer, Timothy Eyre, unsuccessfully tried to have any mention of the memory card or its contents excluded from the trial, leaving prosecutors wondering whether the 39 photos and 12 videos were original or altered. He claimed that he could not prove that.
“The state cannot produce witnesses who will testify that the video fairly and accurately depicts the conduct that actually occurred,” the attorneys argued in court documents.
But Third Judicial District Judge Kevin Saxby ruled late Friday that the woman who snatched the SD card could testify that she carried it with her for a week before turning it in to police, and that the recording could be properly authenticated. handed down the verdict.
The trial is scheduled to begin with jury selection on Monday and is expected to take three to four weeks to complete.
Authorities said Smith came to Alaska in 2014 and became a naturalized U.S. citizen the same month Henry was killed.
His wife, Stephanie Bisland, of Anchorage, and his sister, who serves as the family’s spokesperson in South Africa, declined to comment until the trial is over.
Comes with post wire.
