Episode 320

When a homeless woman in Anchorage finds a discarded SD card, she hopes it holds music. Instead, she uncovers something far more disturbing - graphic videos documenting the torture and murder of a woman later identified as 30-year-old Kathleen Henry. The footage is so brutal even seasoned detectives struggle to comprehend it. But it’s not just a one-time horror - it’s the calling card of a serial predator hiding in plain sight.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Sword and Scale contains adult themes and violence, and is
not intended for all audiences.

Speaker 2 (00:06):
Listener discretion is advised.

Speaker 3 (00:12):
Oh, for fuck's sake, are you still alive?

Speaker 4 (00:16):
Yes, it's been like about twenty minutes, so I think
it's I think it's time we finishes fucking drop bitch.

Speaker 1 (00:27):
All right, beach, get your popcorn ready, because we've got
some old school Sword of Scale bullshit coming your way.
This one's gonna give you a little nostalgia episode pretty
twenty here we go. We sure do love to talk

(01:35):
about Florida here. It's kind of my thing, probably because
that's where all the nutbags go to do their nut baggery.
But there's another state in this great Union that's a
haven for psychos, weirdos, and straight up degenerates that are
looking for a place to hide in plain sight. And no,

(01:57):
I'm not talking about California. Anchorage is Alaska's largest city,
but it isn't these sprawling metropolis the Lower forty eight
might expect. It's a place of contradictions, a city of
modern industry and glass towers, yet still haunted by the
lawlessness of the frontier. Here the wilderness isn't just beyond

(02:22):
the city limits. It lurks in the streets, in the shadows,
in the hearts of those who hunt. Tourists pass through,
snapping photos of moose and suburban neighborhoods, never seeing the
harsher reality beneath the postcard perfect city scape. Anchorage has

(02:45):
a problem, a problem that thrives on Spinnard's sidewalks, in
the shadows of the Midtown mall, and in the encampments
that spread beneath the Glenn Highway overpass. A problem that
makes victims of the vulnerable, where survival isn't just about
and enduring the cold, but also the violence that comes

(03:09):
with being unseen. A problem we've talked about here many times.

Speaker 5 (03:16):
Homelessness, Alaska native disappearing, gone dead, and then next thing
you know, if you hear mona.

Speaker 1 (03:29):
News, the crisis is impossible to ignore. In the winter,
the cold kills. In the summer, the streets swell with
the unhoused, people searching for shelter, safety, or simply the
next moment of peace.

Speaker 6 (03:46):
And this population is preyed upon by people who want to,
you know, harm them in some way, taking any resources
they may have. They're very, very vulnerable population.

Speaker 1 (03:58):
Among them Alaskan Native people are disproportionately represented. Is that
what they say represented? It's a nice Karen like way
to say it when you aren't close to it. It
severs them from the land their ancestors thrived on and
leaves them to navigate a city that too often turns

(04:19):
its back on them. The reasons are many, generational trauma, displacement,
addiction is a big one, and poverty. But the result
is the same, a population visible and invisible at the
same time, ignored until something terrible happens. And in September

(04:41):
twenty nineteen, something terrible did indeed happen. It started with
an SD card.

Speaker 7 (04:49):
Yes, it's brilliandad pictures.

Speaker 8 (04:52):
Okay, so it's got pictures of a homicide. Yeah, okay,
how do you know that?

Speaker 3 (05:00):
And where did you find it?

Speaker 9 (05:02):
I found it on the ground.

Speaker 2 (05:03):
I thought there was music on it, so I put
it in my phone see if they had some music
in it.

Speaker 7 (05:08):
There was no music on it. Now it was titled
there's a title on it. It says homicide and it has
all these pictures of this lady and it shows to
Mary out hotel.

Speaker 1 (05:20):
The responding officer arrived at the medical clinic on Lake
Otis Parkway, where he met Valerie Castler. The call came
in as a suspicious circumstances report, prompting a quick response
from law enforcement, but the officer remained objective, neither discounting
her claim nor fully believing it. You see, the idea

(05:44):
that someone would find a random SD card with photographic
evidence of a homicide was far fetched, say the least,
more far fetched than thinking it was real was the
idea that whoever took these photos would be careless enough
to lose them.

Speaker 9 (06:03):
There's videos on it, and on one of them. He
even told her. He leaned us in this hotel alive.
You couldn't end up making me murdering. I was like,
holy shit.

Speaker 1 (06:17):
The officer had seen plenty of hoaxes before. He braced
himself for another, But then the first image loaded. He
scrolled through the pictures on the SD card. Each photo
was more gruesome than the last. Very quickly, he started
to believe every word. Valerie said, this is very disturbing.

Speaker 9 (06:39):
Yeah it is.

Speaker 1 (06:41):
The officer didn't let it show, but the videos and
images on the SD card were some of the most
disturbing he'd ever seen. He knew this warranted an investigation
and that detectives would want to speak with Valerie. A
short time later, she sat down in a small gray
room at the Anchorage Police Department, where Detective Lee sat

(07:01):
across from her. The tiny woman wrapped in layers of
worn clothing into it at long nights in the cold.

Speaker 10 (07:10):
And how about what address I needed to come talk
to you?

Speaker 11 (07:12):
I will I'm homeless. I lived in the rooms by
shiloh Okay.

Speaker 1 (07:17):
Her face was lined with exhaustion. She'd spent years navigating
a system designed to forget women like her, but today
she was holding something no one could ignore. On the
night of September twenty eight, twenty nineteen, Valerie Castler was
walking through Anchorage near the Car's Grocery store on Thirteenth Avenue.

(07:42):
She often searched the area for discarded items, such as
broken cell phones, and picked up items she thought had
a little bit of value. That night, she found a
small SD card on the ground.

Speaker 2 (07:56):
Yeah, I saw a cool life on another sc card.
Maybe there's more music going because I found him a
couple of months ago and had like three.

Speaker 9 (08:02):
Hundred ty my songs on it.

Speaker 1 (08:05):
Yes, D card was not like the last one.

Speaker 11 (08:08):
There were no music on that card shows some voice
shit on there, and it's been freaking me out, okay,
because I can't seem to get the pictures out.

Speaker 9 (08:18):
Of my head.

Speaker 1 (08:20):
The imagees haunted Valerie ever since she saw them. She'd
been having nightmares. Still detectively needed her to describe what
she saw.

Speaker 9 (08:31):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (08:32):
It showed her in the hotel room on the floor
and he's beating her up, he's slapping her seph and
he's talking to.

Speaker 9 (08:38):
Her the whole time.

Speaker 2 (08:40):
And then on the videos, you can't see no face.
He doesn't have no face, but he's his accents is
like polish, it's foreign.

Speaker 10 (08:53):
Okay.

Speaker 3 (08:54):
What was he saying?

Speaker 2 (08:57):
Some of them would be like, well, this is chapter one,
like chapter one, chick one.

Speaker 3 (09:06):
And then there was one where.

Speaker 2 (09:09):
He says some no, you must want to get murdered
tonight because you're not leaving this hotel.

Speaker 9 (09:13):
Because I'm gonna murder you.

Speaker 3 (09:15):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (09:16):
He's like slapping her, fondling her, and.

Speaker 9 (09:21):
She's not really.

Speaker 2 (09:23):
Seeing anything. She's not making no noises or anything.

Speaker 1 (09:28):
Instead of music, Valerie was met with something holy unexpected.
Actually scrolled through the contents of the card, she saw
a series of images and videos depicting what can only
be described as torture and murder.

Speaker 12 (09:44):
And then the one that I presume that where he
killed her is he had to sing around her and
act it looked like a wire or some.

Speaker 2 (09:56):
And then next year, you know he he it was
like he crosses them and then you hear this, and
then it's like she wasn't moving or any anymore or anything.

Speaker 1 (10:10):
She said she had the card for two days, but
a couple of reasons kept her from coming to the police. First,
she was distrustful of them because of her troubled past.
She didn't want to get into trouble, just trying to
do the right thing. Second, she wasn't even sure if
the contents of the SD card were even real. People

(10:31):
have been known to act out some crazy sexual fantasies.

Speaker 2 (10:35):
Because it looks like to chill the sound and he's
got her body in the back.

Speaker 9 (10:40):
Of the trush.

Speaker 13 (10:42):
How come he did in college right away when you
saw it.

Speaker 9 (10:45):
I don't know.

Speaker 10 (10:46):
I don't know, judge know anything.

Speaker 3 (10:47):
I'm not alumni.

Speaker 10 (10:49):
It's just a question week it's gonna come up.

Speaker 9 (10:51):
I didn't even know if it was real or or okay.

Speaker 2 (10:55):
Or if Sony was Jesus staging something because I've been
listening to the news and watching the news, and I
didn't hear anything on the news about a woman missing,
or you know, or them finding a body or anything.

Speaker 9 (11:09):
So I wasn't I wasn't sure.

Speaker 2 (11:11):
But the more I thought about it, and I couldn't
go to sleep at night, I was having nightmares. And
then I started thinking, well, it should be real, you know,
just because if they haven't found a body doesn't mean
that it didn't really happen, because it should do.

Speaker 1 (11:30):
Some Sure, she watched the news and read the papers
every chance she got, waiting to see the headline body found.
She hoped she never would. Then she could believe it
was all fake. But the longer she sat with those
images in her mind, the more she thought they had

(11:51):
to be real.

Speaker 13 (11:52):
And you said you could hear the male's voice, could
you ever see any part of his body and anything?

Speaker 14 (11:57):
No?

Speaker 9 (11:57):
No, no face at all?

Speaker 3 (11:59):
She just feet. What does he look like?

Speaker 12 (12:03):
There's one on there where he's got his foot on
her throat, and then there's another one.

Speaker 2 (12:09):
Where it's just it looks like it's going in the hotel,
and the hotel floor is like hard word floor.

Speaker 9 (12:18):
And he's got like a pair of few.

Speaker 2 (12:20):
Shoes or slippers or something. Okay, but why you hear
his his voice and he's talking to her, just rambling on,
you know, and then there's parts in there where Oh, bitch,
you get your ass feet because you can drink all
my alcohol. Bitch, I gotta go find another bitch because

(12:41):
you're a viet non cooperative that she never moved.

Speaker 1 (12:47):
In the videos, a man with an unfamiliar accent is
seen beating, berating, and torturing a woman in a hotel room.
The woman is completely naked and seemingly unconscious. Her face
is swollen, her lips are bruised and purple. Her left
eye is swollen shut with blood trickling from under the lid.

(13:10):
The man calls her names and stands on her neck,
all while filming it, seemingly for an audience.

Speaker 13 (13:17):
Can you describe the female play for race slush in
the way?

Speaker 3 (13:21):
Okay? Do you think she was?

Speaker 10 (13:24):
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (13:24):
It looks like she has.

Speaker 1 (13:27):
Because she's Valerie didn't know the woman, not that she
could have recognized her with all the swelling anyway. The
only elites were a strange accent, an accidental photo of
the man's shoes, and the photo of his truck.

Speaker 2 (13:45):
All I want to know is when you do guys
find it out? Can you let me know?

Speaker 15 (13:50):
Yeah?

Speaker 9 (13:50):
Yeah, no, I can, Yeah, I can let you know
kind of.

Speaker 2 (13:53):
I'd like to know her name if you find out
who she is, because you know, she's finally related.

Speaker 9 (14:00):
She is somebody out there that I know.

Speaker 12 (14:02):
You know.

Speaker 1 (14:04):
Y SD card showed everything, the torture, the suffering, the
final moments of a woman's life, but it didn't show
her name. She wasn't in any of the missing persons reports.
No one was looking for her. The investigation had hit
a dead end until the US Marshal recognized her face, battered, swollen,

(14:29):
but familiar. He reached out to a corrections officer at
Highland Mountain Correctional Facility for confirmation she had been processed
there before. Her name was Kathleen Henry. She was thirty
years old, five foot three, with long black hair. Like Valerie,

(14:52):
she had spent years trapped in a rotation of homeless shelters, streets,
and survival. Her family last saw her in August at
a shelter. After that, she was seen in Fairview, a
rough part of town where Anchorage's homeless gathered. She was struggling,
but she was alive. Then she wasn't. On October tewod,

(15:17):
nearly a month after her murder, railroad workers made a
grisly discovery. Kathleen's remains were found near mile one oh
eight of the Seward Highway. Her body was already decomposed,
partially taken by the wilderness. Animals had scattered her remains.
Her fingers and toes were missing, her left foot was gone.

(15:40):
A red bag sat nearby, tangled with strands of her
long black hair and scalp. Kathleen Henry's life didn't end
the day she was murdered. It ended long before that,
when the world stopped seeing her. Her death was the
inevitable result of broken system, one that cycles vulnerable women

(16:04):
through jails and shelters but never offers them a way out,
a system where the unhoused commit crimes of survival, shoplifting
for food, sleeping in abandoned buildings, resorting to prostitution, yeah
not sex work, prostitution well, predators hunt them in the shadows.

(16:28):
She was one of the many lost, forgotten, and disposable
in the eyes of society, and the terrifying truth is
there are countless others like her. Look around, how many
more Kathleen Henry's are out there right now waiting to

(16:49):
be found. The Anchorage police found themselves in possession of

(17:24):
an SD card with evidence of murder. The videos showed
the final moments of Kathleen Henry's life, but they didn't
show the man behind the camera, and without a suspect,
all the evidence in the world meant nothing. Police knew
Kathleen hadn't just disappeared, she had been erased. There is

(17:47):
no missing persons report, no family is searching for. Only
the system recognized her because it had seen too many
women like her before, processed, incarcerated, relief forgotten. And that
wasn't unusual. Indigenous women in Alaska are murdered at rates

(18:08):
ten times higher than the national average. When homelessness is
added to the equation, the risks multiply. Kathleen's body confirmed
what they already knew. Now they needed to find the
man who put her there, and the SD card was
about to give them their first clue. When homicide detective

(18:31):
David Cordy was assigned to the case, he didn't immediately
know why the case seemed so familiar, but after reviewing
the videos. He started to recognize the man's method of violence,
the control, the torture, the strangling. Kathleen Henry's murder wasn't random.

(18:51):
It wasn't a heat of the moment crime. It was planned, controlled, performed.
The footage ested that the man behind the camera had
done this before. A year earlier, Detective Cordy worked on
another case where a woman reported that her boyfriend had
dark and disturbing sexual fantasies. At first, she was into it.

Speaker 9 (19:15):
I like rough sets.

Speaker 14 (19:18):
If you put your hand on my neck, I like
that you can press down a little bit. Dusk did
try to kill me on and break your nose, your nosing, and.

Speaker 9 (19:27):
He did a little too far.

Speaker 1 (19:28):
A couple of days ago, Alicia Youngblood, an Alaskan native,
met this married man at work and before long started
seeing him. It was a sexually charged relationship from the start.
They shared taboo fantasies and rough sex scenarios. Alicia thought
it was innocent role play until he shared a video clip.

Speaker 9 (19:53):
He told me he killed her two or three days ago.

Speaker 14 (19:55):
He showed me the video until last night, and then
the pictures. The pictures are her breast and she's grabbing
them so hard. I mean, like really hard that they're
coming up and they're they're what is that called fatiguing
and veined, and he's got them so hard that the
blood is pulling.

Speaker 1 (20:17):
This wasn't the SD card. This was a year before
Valerie Castler would make her discovery.

Speaker 14 (20:23):
He said he was standing over her like this and
he felt like a a hunter standing over his kill,
like a lion over zebra. And he said he just
sat there and puffed his chest out, and he just felt.

Speaker 9 (20:37):
So in power.

Speaker 14 (20:40):
I keep seeing him over and over doing that to
that girl, and I could hear her bodily fluids as
he's scamming, you know, and he's slapping down on her legs,
and you know, she's just so lifeless. That could have
been any of our little girls that he thought it
was okay to fish.

Speaker 9 (21:00):
He's dead.

Speaker 3 (21:01):
Him showing you this video is that kind of his?
Does he his rocks off that? Or did anyone to
have sex with you?

Speaker 14 (21:06):
Is? Yeah? He would tell you with me okay, And
I had to pretend like I liked it.

Speaker 3 (21:12):
Did he say why.

Speaker 9 (21:12):
He did it to us? To release anger, to vent
to get it out of you?

Speaker 1 (21:20):
He showed her pictures and videos of a woman who
looked dead. He wasn't just into rough sex. He claimed
he killed her.

Speaker 9 (21:30):
And he just looked at me and.

Speaker 14 (21:31):
He's like, you know, I I kicked her real hard
in her pussy, trying to break her bone so I
could get that whole fist in there. But that bone
is tough. He's like, you would not believe how how
tough a pubic bone is. He said, I put my
foot lay up in there, and I was like, oh yeah.

Speaker 9 (21:49):
He's like yeah.

Speaker 14 (21:50):
He said that when she died, everything released, she pooved
or whatever, and her opened up, he said it, and
he he's he made his mouth like this, and he

(22:11):
grabbed my finger and he said I just would have
felt like okay, So wouldn't y'all believe him if you
were on the other side of this.

Speaker 8 (22:22):
Wine needs you to believe that he's inside her after
she passed.

Speaker 3 (22:26):
That is that what you're saying is.

Speaker 9 (22:27):
That, yeah, he was fit with our hands.

Speaker 14 (22:30):
He said he didn't put his penis center, but a
water bottle his hands.

Speaker 9 (22:35):
He said he we got butter out of the fridge
and put.

Speaker 14 (22:37):
That helps my two fingerprints and helps him get his
hand in there because he wants to put fist in there, so.

Speaker 3 (22:42):
He got butter out of the fridge.

Speaker 14 (22:45):
The water bottle I didn't see, but I did ask him, like,
why are your hands so shiny?

Speaker 8 (22:50):
You know?

Speaker 9 (22:50):
He's like, that's butter. I got better.

Speaker 1 (22:53):
As soon as she saw the images, she tensed up.

Speaker 9 (22:57):
You have to understand just weave and goes in love
with this smith.

Speaker 1 (23:00):
Suddenly all her love for this man was replaced with fear.
But she couldn't let him know that, so she kept
playing along, as I haven't do things to me.

Speaker 14 (23:11):
That proved my loyalty and trust. Does that make sense sexually?
Like put myself in a position that made me vulnerable
and he thinks that because I've done that that I
trust him, and now he trusts me. And hey, you're
about to see these text messages. I want you to
remember that I am playing into this. I am not

(23:33):
a sick person. I am not enjoying any of what
I told him.

Speaker 1 (23:39):
She thought they were indulging in taboo fantasies, but as
soon as he showed her how far he was willing
to go, Alicia got scared, but she was on his
good side, bonded through the kinky sex, so she kept
playing along for her safety. She faked jealousy. She scolded
him for being with another woman. Even if he did

(24:02):
kill her, he now had to make it up to her.
Alicia told him he wasn't allowed to do this again
unless she was there too. So you are role playing
into the park and you would like to be part
of this next event?

Speaker 14 (24:18):
Yeah, and his ultimate fantasy at this point. Okay, then
I'm telling.

Speaker 8 (24:22):
You when it comes to sexual drives, and tell you
what this man has.

Speaker 14 (24:27):
I've never seen anyone and maybe a fourteen year old boy,
but who cannot quit playing with his self. I mean
he's his every waking moment is about says, and really,
you know, I knew he had fetishes.

Speaker 3 (24:44):
Is he sadistic? Does he like pain and torture on people?
Or does he just yes?

Speaker 1 (24:49):
Alicia believed what he showed her was real and it
scared the shit out of her. She played along, but
not just for her safety. She wanted proof so she
could go straight to the cops. Unfortunately, she didn't have
copies of the images or the video. All she had
were some filthy text conversations that didn't prove anything.

Speaker 9 (25:13):
I know what I saw is reel.

Speaker 14 (25:15):
It had been better, but I saw his face, you know,
but I know what I saw is reel and I
know that him telling me about it Israel.

Speaker 9 (25:22):
Apparently there's other clips. I believe you almost one hundred percent.

Speaker 3 (25:26):
I never believe everybody one hundred percent.

Speaker 15 (25:28):
Never.

Speaker 8 (25:28):
I haven't met a person on a Platt's one hundred
percent troot ball tea.

Speaker 16 (25:32):
But right now, as far as concrete, fracts and evidence.

Speaker 10 (25:35):
We have very little.

Speaker 3 (25:36):
We have your text message, accid.

Speaker 10 (25:38):
We need more.

Speaker 14 (25:39):
Yeah.

Speaker 9 (25:40):
So if he is lying to me and this is awful, sit,
he's good. But I don't think he's lying.

Speaker 14 (25:49):
That's what he's South African, Okay, Yeah, but you all
have a British accent, heavy heavy British accent.

Speaker 9 (25:55):
Remember I talked to you. Had it really?

Speaker 14 (26:00):
Me and him have great time together. I mean others didn't.
In fact, that she's a serial killer.

Speaker 9 (26:05):
He's a funny guy. We cruck each other up all day.

Speaker 1 (26:09):
Her story was disturbing, but there was no proof of
a crime being committed. The images he showed her could
have come from anywhere. The Internet is, after all, a
big scary place. The detective Cordy's surprise, she called him
the very next day, claiming her boyfriend showed her where

(26:30):
he dumped the body. The site was far from town,
hidden in a small clearing in the woods off the
main road. When they arrived, there wasn't a body there.
Alicia said her boyfriend thought maybe a bear had taken it,
since it had been there for a long time. Detective
Cordy found this unlikely, but followed Alicia as she tried

(26:52):
to find the landmarks from the pictures. They searched for
a while, but didn't see anything or smell any decomposition.
If there was a body, it was gone, or maybe
the guy was just making the whole thing up for
some disturbing story fun time. Alicia hoped the murder was
just a fantasy, but she feared it was real. Detective

(27:17):
Cordy needed more evidence, though, He returned to the site
with cadaver dogs and checked her boyfriend's phone data. The
cadaver dogs found nothing, and the phone record showed her
boyfriend was not near the site on that day, the
day she said he dumped the body. The conversations between
Alicia and her boyfriend seemed to be role play fantasies,

(27:40):
dark ones, but still just fantasies. No body, no crime.
A year later, Detective Cordy doubted that assumption. Now he
had an st card with photos and videos matching Alicia's account.
Her boyfriend, Brian Stephen Smith, was South African immigrant, had

(28:02):
a thick accent like Valerie described, and drove a black
Ford Ranger just like the one in one of the videos.
Detective Cordy looked up Brian Smith's DMV records. The video
showed the partial plate number eight seven, which matched Brian's

(28:22):
plate number FSL eight seven eight. But one thing was
bugging him.

Speaker 10 (28:31):
If it's any other way you found it, I don't
really care.

Speaker 13 (28:33):
I just we need to know the truth because this
is a obviously you saw what.

Speaker 2 (28:37):
I found it on the ground. Honest to god, I
found it on the ground.

Speaker 5 (28:41):
We're not worried about anything other than where the card game.

Speaker 9 (28:46):
Okay, that guy picked me up.

Speaker 17 (28:49):
That night, Okay, guy in the videos.

Speaker 5 (28:53):
Yeah he picked me up.

Speaker 3 (28:55):
Okay, can you tell me about that?

Speaker 9 (28:57):
You picked me up?

Speaker 17 (28:58):
I was on my way home.

Speaker 9 (28:59):
It was he picked me up. He wanted to do
a date.

Speaker 7 (29:03):
He's went to the show ron on me to the
Shill station and it was in his car on his
dash and I just picked it up.

Speaker 2 (29:13):
That's how I got it.

Speaker 1 (29:15):
Valerie hadn't told the truth at first, not just because
of the prostitution and theft, but because women like her,
homeless and struggling with addiction, knew how easily they could
be ignored or punished instead of helped. Kathleen had disappeared
without notice, and Valerie was afraid that this might be

(29:36):
her fate as well. But with a murderer on the loose,
the cops didn't care about her past. They just needed
to stop him.

Speaker 7 (29:48):
He's white on he's got short, short hair.

Speaker 2 (29:53):
And it's like a grayish white.

Speaker 3 (29:56):
Okay, okay, what kind of vehicle was he?

Speaker 2 (30:00):
It was a black truck. It was a black truck.

Speaker 7 (30:04):
And like the camper, like how I described the camper,
and it was a white camper.

Speaker 1 (30:10):
Valerie's full truth confirmed the detective's suspicions. Brian Smith was
their guy. Quickly, the police coordinated with the FBI and
Homeland Security to track him down. They found him on
vacation in Washington, d C. Of all places, with his
wife in tow. His scheduled return to Anchorage was on

(30:31):
October eighth. A multi agency operation was set up and
plans were made to simultaneously serve search warrants on Brian's person, house, truck,
and workplace. He was arrested as soon as he stepped
up to the baggage claim. At the same time, detectives

(30:51):
were in DC confronting his wife. As soon as poor
Stephanie Bislin stepped out of a local restaurant, she was
greeted by local detectives and detectives from Anchorage. She asked
for their credentials, as everyone should, by the way, and
then agreed to talk.

Speaker 18 (31:11):
So, so the things that we would like to talk
to you about involved your husband.

Speaker 9 (31:17):
Perhaps he did just become a citizen, and.

Speaker 3 (31:21):
I don't think it was.

Speaker 9 (31:24):
Stephany should know it was. I think the friday before
we came down here.

Speaker 2 (31:31):
It was so yeah, So he he's his.

Speaker 11 (31:36):
Truck was broken into, kind of took his.

Speaker 9 (31:40):
Bracefist that had all his South African documents. So that's
where he's from. Yah, South Africa. Where did you guys
meet in South Africa playing a game? Have you mest
playing a game?

Speaker 1 (31:55):
Yes, Stephanie met Brian Smith online. He was twenty three
years younger than her. They played a game called Realm
of Empires together and hit it off. He managed a
small hotel in his home country, and his accent gave
him somewhat of a die ant. Would mystique flash forward

(32:17):
to the present. They had been married for five years
and Brian had just gotten his US citizenship?

Speaker 9 (32:24):
Are we taving aria? Is that who you're wanting to
talk about? Yes? So did you guys ever? Do you
guys ever? Have your moments?

Speaker 18 (32:29):
I think every relationship, right, every marriage has your moments?

Speaker 19 (32:34):
Right?

Speaker 9 (32:35):
How are those? How would you describe them? Excuse me?

Speaker 11 (32:38):
He tends to slam.

Speaker 1 (32:43):
He'll get and he might leave, and then he'll go back,
you know where he's calmed out.

Speaker 18 (32:51):
Has he Has he ever threatened you or been or
made you feel unsafe in any way?

Speaker 9 (32:59):
I have a foidure a couple of times.

Speaker 11 (33:02):
The reason that he left was he was getting so
mad that he might so he left and they're talking about.

Speaker 9 (33:08):
It, then he might hit me.

Speaker 1 (33:10):
She revealed that Brian had a bit of a temper,
but was never violent with her. He would leave rather
than argue. The only thing is sometimes he would leave
for several days without a word.

Speaker 18 (33:23):
Do you know if he happened to go up to
or go out of town or do something around the
first part of September, Can you tell me more?

Speaker 14 (33:34):
So?

Speaker 18 (33:35):
There are some concerns that we have that he may
or may not be involved with, and so I'm just
trying to, okay, find out.

Speaker 9 (33:44):
You know, we had a fight. I don't remember exactly
what it was. So he was on for four days.

Speaker 1 (33:52):
She answered their questions slowly, realizing the situation was way
more serious than they were letting on. Questions became more personal,
and Stephanie felt a sense of fear as she wondered
what this was all about.

Speaker 9 (34:07):
Can I ask you something really personal?

Speaker 10 (34:10):
How's the sex?

Speaker 9 (34:12):
None for a long time? Okay? Like what's a long time? Movies?
Two years?

Speaker 17 (34:17):
Okay?

Speaker 9 (34:18):
And there wasn't a lot anyway?

Speaker 3 (34:20):
Okay?

Speaker 15 (34:21):
Is and why is that?

Speaker 9 (34:24):
I think I think he thinks he was hurting me
because he's heavy. I didn't think anybody told him.

Speaker 1 (34:35):
How to be with a girl, that's for damn sure.

Speaker 9 (34:39):
Did somebody say that he did something special? There are
reports that he may have hurt some women. Really an
Anchorage an angriage.

Speaker 18 (34:55):
Did you ever feel like he may have been cheating
on you?

Speaker 3 (34:59):
No?

Speaker 10 (35:00):
Okay?

Speaker 18 (35:02):
So your husband right now is being interviewed in Anchorage
by police detectives and he is being.

Speaker 9 (35:11):
Arrested for homicide. No, I'm a woman. I'm sorry that
I had to be the one to tell you this.
Was it in my house when I was out? Was
it Alabar? Was it on a workforce? Was it on
the side of the road?

Speaker 20 (35:31):
What I want to know?

Speaker 1 (35:34):
Stephanie seemed to be entirely in the dark about Brian's
extramarital activities. She sat there stunned at the news the
man she had fallen in love with, helped immigrate to
the US, married, and had been on vacation with, had
been accused of murdering a woman. She couldn't reconcile what

(35:55):
they were saying against the man she knew. She was
utterly dumbfounded. Well, the seriousness of the matter sank in
for Stephanie. Brian was just then sitting down with detectives.
Brian was an unassuming man, of average height, maybe a
little shorter, and he had short, graying hair. He had

(36:18):
a large nose and a mouth that seemed to be
in a perpetual frown. His eyes were trusting, except when
he furled his brow. Then there was a sense of
the untamed behind his eyes.

Speaker 13 (36:32):
So like I said, we have some we have some
matters we need to clear up with you, and I
just wanted to ask you if you have any any idea,
any thought in your head about what we might.

Speaker 10 (36:38):
Want to talk to you today about.

Speaker 3 (36:41):
No, my truck was broken into.

Speaker 13 (36:44):
The thing we need to talk about is recently some
property was brought to APD, and we have to I
was given that property as a little SD card. I
viewed the images and the videos on that SD card. Yeah,
and that's obviously it led. That's how I got to you.
That's how I figured out who you are, Okay, and
that's what that's what we need to We need to
clear up that matter.

Speaker 10 (37:06):
What's on that SD card?

Speaker 3 (37:07):
Okay, what's on the called?

Speaker 1 (37:10):
The card showed a picture of his truck outside the
Midtown Marriott. He admitted that it was his truck on
the card. He might have used it for something, but
he didn't know what they were getting at. So detectives
asked how often he stayed at the Marriott.

Speaker 3 (37:27):
A few weeks ago, probably a month or two.

Speaker 16 (37:30):
I had a fact of my life and I went
and stated it.

Speaker 21 (37:35):
And Marriott, Yeah, so what about what day do you
think that was?

Speaker 9 (37:41):
Okay?

Speaker 10 (37:43):
And how many How many knights did you rent them?
Do you have to as an employee? Do you have
to rent the room or how does that work?

Speaker 3 (37:49):
The room?

Speaker 9 (37:49):
Yeah? Okay?

Speaker 10 (37:50):
How many NICs did you rent the room for?

Speaker 3 (37:53):
Probably about two nights?

Speaker 9 (37:55):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (37:56):
What was your eve name?

Speaker 9 (37:56):
Like?

Speaker 17 (37:59):
Well, I.

Speaker 3 (38:01):
Also falk with you off. You usually drink a hell
of a lot, so it didn't involve quite a bit
of alcohol. So okay, did you go anywhere?

Speaker 21 (38:11):
I probably would have driven around a bit, going in
put some food and stuff.

Speaker 13 (38:15):
Okay, did you meet up with anybody, talk to anybody?

Speaker 3 (38:19):
I probably would have.

Speaker 16 (38:20):
Yeah, between us, I have been known to sometimes go
out and find a.

Speaker 3 (38:27):
Companion, you know. Okay, did you do that anything that
particular night? I probably did.

Speaker 13 (38:32):
And I told you I viewed everything on the SD
card and I did see your truck on there. Anything
else on that SD card that we need to talk about.

Speaker 3 (38:42):
No, you can show me the card and see. You
can show me what's on me if you want to.

Speaker 1 (38:46):
Okay, he slid a photo across the table. It was
a picture of Kathleen.

Speaker 13 (38:54):
I just wanted to show you picture c DA would
help you kind of refresh the girl from that night.

Speaker 10 (39:00):
No, that's not it not just short for here, okay.

Speaker 1 (39:04):
Then he slid a photo of his truck in front
of the hotel across the table.

Speaker 10 (39:09):
I mentioned I told you on there that how I
found you as.

Speaker 3 (39:12):
I saw your drug is that that's that's my truck.
That's your trug.

Speaker 16 (39:16):
Okay, I recognized the rooms and my gray kenopy.

Speaker 1 (39:22):
Then he slid a photo of a man's shoes across
the table.

Speaker 13 (39:28):
This is one of the images on there. Part of
it is kind of cut down a little bit. But
can you tell me what's in that photo?

Speaker 21 (39:35):
There's somebody's feet, Okay, whose feet are those?

Speaker 3 (39:38):
I don't know?

Speaker 10 (39:39):
Okay, I'm gonna shoot. I mean it looks looks like
the shoes you wear right now?

Speaker 3 (39:45):
Yeah, it does, so okay, it's it safe to say those.

Speaker 10 (39:47):
Are your feet in that picture?

Speaker 3 (39:49):
I don't okay, I'm not that he puts in his
shoes like this.

Speaker 1 (39:54):
Detectives had seen all kinds of reactions before, anger, denial, fear,
but Brian was different. When they showed him the picture,
he only shrugged. The detective didn't dwell on his shoes,
even though they were obviously the exact same pair he
was wearing. Next He slid more photos of Kathleen over,

(40:16):
but these were from the SD card.

Speaker 3 (40:19):
So what can you.

Speaker 10 (40:20):
Tell me about this?

Speaker 3 (40:22):
This looks like someone that's already been beaten up a bit.

Speaker 13 (40:25):
Okay, And these are these are images, these are these
are images. But there's also videos of this person. Yeah,
and another person in the room as well. And that's
what I'm that's why we're here to talk to you about.

Speaker 3 (40:38):
You think I hit this goal?

Speaker 10 (40:41):
Well, I said, there's video. There's videos of it. There's
a video of it, there's audio of it.

Speaker 13 (40:45):
There's a voice that's I've been talking to you now
for almost thirty.

Speaker 10 (40:48):
Forty minutes, and I know it was your voice. I
could hear in the video.

Speaker 1 (40:52):
Then he played the video.

Speaker 3 (41:00):
Camera bitch.

Speaker 4 (41:03):
Dying, fucking mind, seem tired, her fucking horrible.

Speaker 3 (41:09):
Just I'm being too long soon, Just king, is Jesus
what's happening?

Speaker 13 (41:23):
When that's what's happening is on this video, on these images,
the person that's recording it is holding the recorder and
is standing basically above this girl and and strangling her.

Speaker 3 (41:35):
Okay, I don't.

Speaker 13 (41:38):
I'm not.

Speaker 3 (41:39):
I'm not denying. I'm not.

Speaker 14 (41:40):
I'm not.

Speaker 3 (41:41):
I'm not saying you're lying, but I don't.

Speaker 13 (41:44):
Remember anything not this, So what you're saying is definitely
you talking on the recording, on the idea.

Speaker 16 (41:49):
There, so that you don't recall that that that's about
That sounds about voice.

Speaker 3 (41:54):
I've got a unique voice. It's English mixed with the Dutch.

Speaker 1 (42:00):
Check mate, Brian was polite and presentable. It was hard
to believe you could do what he did, but they
had video evidence. You seem to have no recollection of
doing anything like that to anyone. Then he paused, swallowed hard,
and acknowledged how serious this was.

Speaker 3 (42:23):
Look this, this sounds very serious. No matter what, I'm
gonna be in deep shipped. So okay, I'll tell you
what I remember. The next day it worked.

Speaker 21 (42:37):
I saw something dropping out the back of my truck
and I was I loved that hell. And I opened
up and there was somebody there underneath.

Speaker 3 (42:48):
There was a blue like a top with the back
of my mut truck. I was thinking for a long time,
what the hell what m was I do?

Speaker 21 (42:56):
And being the one I've got to get rid of this.

Speaker 3 (43:01):
A colant and I drove out and I did, went
him do.

Speaker 1 (43:06):
It detectively, thanked him for his honesty and chose not
to press the whole I don't remember excuse. Instead, he
asked about Alicia Youngblood.

Speaker 10 (43:18):
I want to ask you to kind of shift care
a little bit. Alicia young Blood?

Speaker 3 (43:21):
Can we talk about her for a little bit? Okay, okay,
why can you tell me about Alicia? Don't tell my
wife about it? But he said, last year we had
a small little off a.

Speaker 13 (43:36):
So I've seen the stuff you've chatted about, the stuff
you and Alicia talked about, and that's what I want
to talk to you about.

Speaker 3 (43:45):
Okay. Alisha and I did do some fantasy stuff.

Speaker 21 (43:51):
I'm usually quite conservative about six and then she lost
me to slaper, you know, and we made we actually
made up fantasies almost like this, you know, you kill somebody?

Speaker 3 (44:05):
Yeah, you know, and right and all that. I mean,
we sweep.

Speaker 10 (44:09):
Did you guys would talk about that?

Speaker 3 (44:12):
Yeah? Yeah, fantasy. That's fantasy stuff.

Speaker 1 (44:15):
Then why are freaks like this never freaky with their
own spouses? That's what they're for. I mean, why even
get married if you're not gonna be open and honest
about your kinks with the person you allegedly love. Listen
to me trying to rationalize the psychic paths actions. It's
no wonder if some of you think I'm a dumbass.

(44:35):
You're sure detectively that all the talk with this show
was pure fantasy, which was hard to say considering the
images and videos on the SD card. Detectives couldn't look
past the striking similarities between Brian's fantasies and what he
actually did in those videos.

Speaker 13 (44:55):
Is it possible that, like on this evening you some
of those fantasies were coming out, because I mean, that's
exactly what she did on those videos. That's what she
did to this girl, except she wasn't she wasn't enjoying it, and.

Speaker 10 (45:09):
You were talking to her.

Speaker 3 (45:10):
I mean, that's my books.

Speaker 13 (45:12):
But you were talking to her clearly as we're talking
right now, and pointing out things and and laughing and
saying things. And in my movies, sadly everybody dies. Bitch,
what are my followers going to think of you? People
need to know when they're being serial killed. These are

(45:34):
things you're saying to.

Speaker 10 (45:36):
Her while you're doing that.

Speaker 3 (45:37):
I say, that's that's what.

Speaker 8 (45:42):
You don't remember this particular one because you've killed so
many You've told.

Speaker 3 (45:44):
Me that she's being serial killed.

Speaker 8 (45:47):
No, we need to be investigating you for killing people here,
killing people in South Africa.

Speaker 16 (45:53):
We need to I mean, no, this thing was a
nish kidding people. That's just me and trying to outdo
each other on Don't.

Speaker 3 (46:03):
You tell her the same thing?

Speaker 10 (46:06):
That's what you tell her in the video.

Speaker 13 (46:09):
You're telling her that as you're strangling her, as you're
stepping your foot onto her throat, as you're punching her
in the vagina as.

Speaker 3 (46:16):
Hard as you can and kicking her into the vagina.

Speaker 13 (46:18):
Poking her in the eye and laughing about it, talking
about killing her and die bitch, and telling her to
die and getting mad when she starts gasping, interfering with
my drinking time.

Speaker 3 (46:30):
It sounds like something I would say.

Speaker 1 (46:32):
You did say it, Yeah, sounds like something I would say,
What the fuck?

Speaker 21 (46:37):
I shouldn't have spoken just Alicia got stupid things like it,
you know.

Speaker 10 (46:41):
But you didn't just speak to her about it.

Speaker 13 (46:42):
You showed her videos of you punching the women in
the vagina, buttering up your fist and shoving it into
the vagina, kicking them in the vagina. You showed she
saw these things, and she was frankly, and you.

Speaker 10 (46:52):
Told her if I whether it was was.

Speaker 13 (46:55):
Oh no, man, And it's exactly the same thing to
ever seen in these videos.

Speaker 16 (47:00):
If I was going to have a fantasy going further on,
I could have carried on with Alisha.

Speaker 3 (47:04):
You know this is a year later, except Alicia.

Speaker 10 (47:07):
Yeah, you have a history with Alicia. She's You know
how easy it would be to find out who killed Alicia.

Speaker 8 (47:12):
He would have had a several months relationship if Alicia
was killed, But it wouldn't It wouldn't be difficult to
pinpoint you for it.

Speaker 3 (47:18):
But if you pick up.

Speaker 8 (47:19):
Somebody in the in the darken of the night, who's
an injured person, homeless person down by the homeless.

Speaker 10 (47:25):
Shelter, these are the type of people that are.

Speaker 3 (47:27):
Perfect for this.

Speaker 1 (47:30):
Throughout the conversation with Brian, detectives learned that he often
cruised the streets near homeless shelters looking for companions, and
by often, I mean a lot. For Brian Smith, ank
Ridge's homeless shelters were hunting grounds. The same women society
ignored he targeted. Alaskan Natives, making up a fraction of

(47:55):
the city's population, were excessively among the unhoused, living in shelters,
deserted buildings, or braving the brutal winters outside, and Brian
knew that no one would come looking for them.

Speaker 8 (48:09):
So you really you said maybe three times in a
couple of years, and now we've already have Now we
already have three, three in about a month.

Speaker 10 (48:17):
So are we sure that you.

Speaker 3 (48:20):
Well before before this go from this not?

Speaker 22 (48:25):
There was probably about three times that I picked up
a goal, so maybe six.

Speaker 21 (48:29):
Yeah, so sorry when you and I say three, it
was three before.

Speaker 3 (48:33):
So we also three full five six?

Speaker 1 (48:39):
Yeah, motherfucker can count, but not do basic math.

Speaker 8 (48:44):
Apparently anything about this these particular type of people as
it is, Does he have something that against Native women?

Speaker 3 (48:52):
I've asked myself that question. Is it a racial thing?
And it's no, it's incidence they have unto.

Speaker 10 (49:00):
The danges in the people.

Speaker 9 (49:01):
They had to be.

Speaker 22 (49:02):
Easy angry that they make a to the not an
oobposent to the angless people.

Speaker 1 (49:09):
What an asshole? Anybody with a hair collect that you
know as an asshole. According to the Anchorage Coalition to
End Homelessness, in twenty twenty four, there were nine five
and twenty four homeless people registered in their programs. Of those,
ninety five hundred forty seven point three percent were Alaskan Natives.

(49:32):
That's a very high number when you consider that Alaskan
Natives only make up fifteen point six percent of the
state's population. That means five percent of all Alaskan Natives
are homeless, probably due to the white man's delicious alcoholic beverages.
The longer they talked to Brian, the more he revealed

(49:55):
he wasn't panicked, he wasn't even defensive. Admitted it was
his truck in the pictures and his voice in the videos,
but he still claimed he couldn't remember anything about that night.

Speaker 10 (50:09):
So she did she want to leave that night and
you didn't want her to go.

Speaker 3 (50:14):
I'm serious, I don't remember this girl. I believe, I
believe everything you're saying. I honestly don't remember anything up
until the morning I woke up. I opened the back
of my truck and yeah, it was a person line there.
No one else could have put it there. I must have.
You've got photograph of you could of being putting the there.

(50:34):
But I do not remember it.

Speaker 10 (50:36):
You think everybody's gonna understand.

Speaker 3 (50:38):
That, no one's going to believe it. I don't believe
it's going to make that happen because we're gonna go.

Speaker 10 (50:45):
We have more than we have evidence showed.

Speaker 1 (50:47):
It happened, and the evidence was a lot. They had
Valerie's statement that she got the SD card from him.
They had the timestamps on the images and videos that
matched his stead at the hotel. They had the GPS
data putting him at the dump site. They had the
image of his truck with part of his license plate showing,

(51:09):
and of course they had his voice on video.

Speaker 21 (51:14):
You've got of lends me outdone that you're putting stories
in my head that maybe it's a fantasy gone all
for it's something how I didn't remember.

Speaker 10 (51:23):
Well, I actually don't think it's any of those things.

Speaker 3 (51:25):
I think you remember.

Speaker 8 (51:27):
So knowing that this this person is this person, and
this person's dead and that you only wants dumped her
body out on the highway.

Speaker 3 (51:35):
Do you have remorse? You see? And yeah, I don't
like to know that I've done it to someone. I
don't like that.

Speaker 1 (51:44):
Science, and by science I mean chat GPT tells us
that amnesia is a real phenomenon. I have my doubts.
It's especially doubtful when the amnesia is selective, like remembering
Kathleen but not remembering what you did to her. It's
pretty convenient that nobody can actually verify this, Like we

(52:06):
can't put on a headset like Christopher Walking and Brainstorm
and step inside someone's mind to see what they actually
remember or don't. Sorry for the eighties movie reference, Millennials,
but Brian never admitted to killing Kathleen. He only admitted
that it must have been him. To the detectives. It

(52:28):
was way too convenient to have no memory of the murder,
but they had plenty of evidence even if he didn't
actually confess. The video told more than who did what.
It showed a man with experience.

Speaker 8 (52:44):
Have you been involved in any missing persons or any
other murders in the state of Alaska?

Speaker 14 (52:49):
No?

Speaker 15 (52:49):
I haven't.

Speaker 8 (52:50):
No, it's just this one.

Speaker 10 (52:51):
This is the only person you've ever killed. Yes.

Speaker 3 (52:57):
Are you gonna taking off to prison? Yes, that's that's
the step at the end of this night. Okay.

Speaker 1 (53:04):
After speaking with Brian for over five hours, they were
convinced he had more to tell, but they were satisfied
they already had him dead to rights, so they left
the room and let him stew for a while. When
they returned, they had paperwork for him to sign, but
he blurted something out.

Speaker 3 (53:24):
Oh you guys in a rush to go, and we
had to rush. Yeah, you want to talk some more?

Speaker 23 (53:33):
Sometime, I thought, Emily, I big type of very drunk gool.

Speaker 3 (53:45):
All life was gone.

Speaker 23 (53:48):
She was away for the weekend, not to go home,
and I I.

Speaker 1 (53:55):
Shot for all his denial, all his I can't remember.
He openly admitted that Kathleen wasn't the first, she wasn't
the only one. Ain't that weird? Ain't that something?

Speaker 9 (54:13):
Boy?

Speaker 1 (54:14):
Guess Mike was right again? Give me a second while
I pat myself on the back. Ow I forgot how
old I am. I shouldn't be stretching like that. I'm
gonna pull something anyway. Despite Brian's sudden re emergence of
memory and his humble brag, y'all haven't seen anything yet.
When the truth of what this South African scumbag did

(54:37):
played out in court, even the most hardened jurors weren't
prepared for what they were about to see. After detectives

(55:14):
confirmed Brian Smith was the owner of the SD card
and confronted him with the pictures and videos on it,
he claimed to have no memory of it. He admitted
to dumping Kathleen Henry's body after finding her in the
back of his truck the next morning. But the conversation
with Brian revealed that he often sought the companion of

(55:36):
anchoragees homeless, begging the question are there more murdered Indigenous
women out there waiting to be found? When they asked Brian,
he said no, But moments later he suddenly remembered things
and he confessed to a different murder he committed years earlier.

Speaker 3 (55:56):
She actually seemed like a last person.

Speaker 21 (56:00):
I picked up and I said, hey, you want some
warm food in a warm place at sleep stunt And
she was like, yeah, sure, she jumped you, but she
was she was.

Speaker 3 (56:09):
She was really drunk. She was slurring it.

Speaker 21 (56:11):
And I took her home and she fell asleep on
the on the couch in front of the TV. And
she was smelling, and I knew she was homeless thing,
you know, she was she was thinking and I was
getting up, said and I said to her, go to
take a shower, you know, because now there's smelling in
the house.

Speaker 3 (56:30):
You know. She wouldn't do it, she says.

Speaker 21 (56:32):
She'd kept saying no, no, and I was worried she's
gonna bomber now, because then I realized that she really
had been drinking a lot, no excuse, but I had
also been drinking.

Speaker 3 (56:44):
I clearly remember this, and again I'm not lying to you.
I don't remember. I can't visualize this, this this girl.
But I went through to the garage and I got
my little pistol there.

Speaker 21 (56:58):
I said to go to the shower, and she wouldn't.
She wouldn't, you wouldn't, And I just did it, and
I got.

Speaker 3 (57:09):
Well, she was on the couch. Yeah, I just did.
I just chopped it. They missed that thing. I can
tell you honestly, being there was no emotion. Now, I
just just you're not listening to me. Shower.

Speaker 1 (57:24):
He shot her in his own home because she was
smelly and wouldn't take a shower. This chilling confession came
out of Brian almost nonchalantly.

Speaker 3 (57:35):
So do you remember if she was white?

Speaker 17 (57:37):
Black?

Speaker 3 (57:40):
All those people they are native the murname? No?

Speaker 8 (57:44):
No, do you remember reading anything about any remains being found?

Speaker 16 (57:48):
And I actually did look Okay, yeah, so.

Speaker 3 (57:51):
Actually I did. Last you guys, those pictures I showed Lesia,
they were the real ones of what of her. I
did have a photo of me trying to stick monthingus into.

Speaker 8 (58:05):
The giant, So that was a real photo of you
doing that to the person you shot, was up before
or after you shot her.

Speaker 1 (58:12):
Often the photos and videos he shared with Alicia were real.
She had been right all long. Detective Lee laid out
some photos of missing women, and Brian immediately picked out
his first victim. Her name was Veronica Abauchuk. She was

(58:33):
fifty two and, like Valerie and Kathleen, battled addiction and homelessness.
She was last seen in July of twenty eighteen by
her family at a local shelter. Shortly after that, she
stopped communicating with them, but, unlike Kathleen, Veronica's family reported

(58:53):
her missing in early twenty nineteen. Her remains were discovered
in April, but never identified. Brian later led police to
the site where he dumped her, the same site where
he took Alicia to. Brian Smith was arrested for the
murder of Kathleen Henry, charged with multiple counts of first
degree murder, second degree murder, second degree sexual assault, tampering

(59:18):
with evidence, and misconduct involving a corpse, But after he
confessed to the murder of another homeless Alaskan native, Veronica Abauchuk.
A grand jury indicted him for her murder as well.
They added more counts for first degree murder, second degree murder,
tampering with evidence, and misconduct involving a corpse. It all

(59:43):
added up to fourteen individual charges against Brian. During his arraignment,
he pleaded not guilty to all charges, wasting the court's
time and the taxpayers money. In the trial, the defense
would argue that the most substantial evidence came from an
unreliable source. They decided that Valerie stole the card and

(01:00:07):
that she had more than enough time for the images
and videos to be doctored. Now, I don't know about you,
but I'm not willing to believe that a homeless Indigenous
person in Alaska is an expert at photoshop. It was
a pretty weak argument, to say the least. When the
prosecution played the videos for the jury, warning and I

(01:00:31):
would take this one seriously. What you're about to hear
is Kathleen Henry taking her last breaths at the hands
of Brian Smith. She's already very beaten and seemingly unconscious.
But the following audio is rough, to say the least.

Speaker 19 (01:01:06):
And you're live, you die, you're lie, you die, you live,
you die, you live, you die, you die.

Speaker 3 (01:01:28):
Sadly.

Speaker 24 (01:01:29):
In my movies, everyone dies.

Speaker 3 (01:01:34):
I get the Oscar bitch.

Speaker 1 (01:01:37):
Oh, Nina, I get the Oscar bitch. So that's what
it takes. He toys with her, laughing, hysterically, taught her
with a brief release, only to strangle her harder. All
the while, he talks to the camera as if someone
is watching him, as if this shit is going up

(01:01:57):
on YouTube or something.

Speaker 25 (01:02:00):
Take seven, Part five, subsection C. The bitch would not
fucking go away. It's called like, we don't like you anymore,
so just fuck off. You're resisting me, okay, fucking So,

(01:02:21):
here's the throat.

Speaker 3 (01:02:23):
Here's the heir. Yes, the string of God a stringer.

Speaker 4 (01:02:28):
If I'm gonna pull the string, yeah, it's pull tartanized
your face, fucking Ford, You fucking strap posing bitch.

Speaker 9 (01:02:44):
Jesus.

Speaker 24 (01:02:44):
Fuck do people have to be taught out dark these days?
After fucking fucking twenty thousand fucking years of evolution, you
haven't learned to die yet?

Speaker 15 (01:02:55):
Eh?

Speaker 9 (01:02:57):
Fuck bitch, Jesus.

Speaker 3 (01:02:59):
Fuck.

Speaker 24 (01:02:59):
I don't fucking calm for your ship.

Speaker 9 (01:03:02):
You're fucking up my.

Speaker 26 (01:03:04):
Drinking, fucking fucking half bottle of whiskey still to go
through and it's really like fucking leaving fucking out, fucking bitch.

Speaker 1 (01:03:16):
It's important to notice that there is no evidence that
Brian uploaded any pictures or videos to the Internet, yet
he still addresses the camera as the audience. He feels
that he is performing, but he is getting tired.

Speaker 4 (01:03:32):
We're going on for no fucking lives. He's like fucking
half an hour and we're going on half an hour
and now, fuck, bitch, you are taking so the longest ever.
He secure you fucking sort of lost down to my

(01:03:53):
fucking car and can dump you fucking somewhere.

Speaker 3 (01:03:58):
You just fucked up mind time fucking.

Speaker 26 (01:04:00):
An evenion, bitch. I'm gonna fuck you up sbtly You're
gonna need to change your lids and oh Jesus, now
you want to fucking people need to corporate people need
to know when they're fucking mean, serial killed fucked the
shirt bitch, and you're like a god be on my

(01:04:21):
fucking hand.

Speaker 9 (01:04:22):
What the fuck.

Speaker 1 (01:04:25):
Do you want to give me?

Speaker 24 (01:04:26):
A fucking NIPDDA is fucking d e if in g
and Kenya wasn't fucking just fucking die.

Speaker 1 (01:04:38):
He was the producer, director, and star of the film.
He called her names, knelt on her chest, and slapped her.
He strangled her over and over. He showcased her injuries
to the camera, but when he got tired, he stood
on her neck until she died. And when it was over, the.

Speaker 3 (01:05:03):
Hate the log button.

Speaker 17 (01:05:04):
Please.

Speaker 1 (01:05:06):
I don't like the death penalty. I don't like the
idea of giving the state the power to kill its
own citizens. But after watching this performance, it's hard to
argue against it, really hard. Inside the courtroom, the jury
watched the twelve videos without blinking. The families of Kathleen

(01:05:27):
Henry and Veronica Abautchuk couldn't see the videos, but they
could hear them. They sat there silently, watching the jury's
horrified reactions. For somebody who couldn't stop narrating a murder,
Brian was silent throughout the entire trial. Outside the courthouse,

(01:05:49):
a group of people seemed to reflect the inner turmoil
of the jury's ghastly expressions. A protest had gathered. A
deleted photo was recovered from Brian's phone. It showed a
third Native woman. She appeared passed out on the grass.

(01:06:14):
Either that or she was already dead.

Speaker 5 (01:06:17):
He asked me if I could look at another photograph
that was actually in Brian Steven Smith's phone and his
deleted files, and I says, sure. So I looked through
FaceTime and I could see through faith time that yes,
it was Cassandra.

Speaker 3 (01:06:33):
It took a.

Speaker 5 (01:06:33):
Double book, but yeah, And I instantly just started crying.

Speaker 1 (01:06:38):
The family of Cassandra Boskovsky was convinced it was her,
and the fact that her picture was found on Brian's
phone made them fear the worst. Unfortunately, Brian was done confessing,
and once again there was no body. Even if it
was Cassandra on Brian's phone, they couldn't prove a crime

(01:06:58):
had been committed. Kexander was just another missing, homeless Alaskan native. Later,
her family would have her declared legally dead without ever
knowing what happened to her. Back inside the courtroom, the
family of Kathleen Henry had to learn that although Brian
didn't upload his heinous crime to the internet, he did

(01:07:21):
share what he had done to someone.

Speaker 3 (01:07:24):
This is from Smith's filone.

Speaker 20 (01:07:26):
I have something to show you, period, something I can't
keep for too long. Need to find a secluded spot
to meet and he responds, I was not upcomma sounds
like you were.

Speaker 10 (01:07:37):
Having a lot of fun. I did have fun, wanted
to share.

Speaker 1 (01:07:41):
The man Brian was texting met him after the murder
of Kathleen so he could see the body too. What
a couple of sick fucks, he pleaded the fifth didn't
have to testify and get this was never charged. What horseship.
I can't for a meme, But this assholes walk around

(01:08:02):
society doing just fine.

Speaker 17 (01:08:05):
Okay, ass Henry was slowly beaten to death and strangled
to death and tortured to death. As about chick, didn't
it actually suffer as much? But she was treated like
a thing to be used and cast aside. Both were
treated about as horribly as a person can be treated.
Killings like this that are publicized affect all of society,

(01:08:32):
and especially women in our society. It's the stuff of nightmares.
They strip women of any feelings of safety in their
own neighborhoods. That damage continues long after the crimes are solved.

Speaker 1 (01:08:48):
As no surprise, Brian was unanimously found guilty of all
fourteen charges. He was sentenced to ninety nine years for
each and two counts of first degree premeditated merd her.
All the other charges, including the aggravating factor that he
tortured Kathleen, which eliminated any chance of parole, added up

(01:09:10):
to another twenty eight years. All in all, Brian Stephen
Smith was sentenced to two hundred and twenty six years
in prison to run consecutively. They left the families of
Kathleen and Veronica feeling just a little bit better.

Speaker 10 (01:09:28):
They're at peace now.

Speaker 15 (01:09:31):
That's the most important. And for me, her sister, Veronica,
Ronica's sister, and Kathleen's family, it's been too long and
today is life celebration and spiritual celebration.

Speaker 1 (01:09:48):
But Brian's wife, Stephanie, was left completely dumbfounded and questioning
her own intelligence. Can you blame her?

Speaker 9 (01:09:58):
I've never seen anything that dark in him. When I
think about that, I think, how could I have missed?
How can you missed something like that?

Speaker 14 (01:10:10):
You know?

Speaker 1 (01:10:12):
To add insult to injury. Two months after his conviction
of federal grand jury charged him with one count of
unlawful procurement of naturalization and one count of unlawful procurement
of naturalization by an ineligible person. You see, one of
the questions they ask you when applying for naturalization is

(01:10:33):
have you ever been involved in a killing, sexual assault,
or have you ever committed or assisted in committing or
attempted to commit a crime you were not arrested for
Brian answered no. If convicted, which is likely, his citizenship
will be revoked and he will be deported, and then

(01:10:55):
some dumb bitch with a septum ring and clown hair
will protest about it on the streets of Portland and
uploaded to TikTok, because that's the fucked up country of morons.
We live in America, Land of the woke, home of
the dump. Brian Smith is behind bars, but the crisis
is far from over. Justice first victims doesn't fix the

(01:11:17):
real problem. Kathleen Henry and Veronica Aboutchuk weren't just murdered.
They were failed. Failed by a system that allows Indigenous
women to disappear without a trace, failed by a society
that barely notices when the most vulnerable go missing. And

(01:11:38):
if Valerie Castler had never stolen that SD card, would
Brian Smith have ever been caught? Probably not.

Speaker 3 (01:11:49):
Well, I can tell you that day roll was me.

Speaker 21 (01:11:53):
I mean, it's obviously it's a second top, so's would
be that's to I didn't There's no way to come
back from that.

Speaker 3 (01:12:03):
There's no way, well, not personally.

Speaker 21 (01:12:05):
Even it's yeah, I'm not I'm not timpering in saying
I'm not not anything like it.

Speaker 22 (01:12:10):
I am saying I know exactly what i've but yeah,
I've gone too far. I don't want to go on.
Are you glad of that? I'm glad.

Speaker 3 (01:12:27):
You're glad You're not gonna be able to hurt anybody else.

Speaker 1 (01:12:30):
Yeah, somewhere in Anchorage, on the streets and the shelters
and the shadows, another woman is disappearing right now and
no one is paying attention. Bryan Smith knew what kind
of women wouldn't be missed. He counted on it, he

(01:12:52):
thrived on it, and the system proved him right again
and again. Kathleen, Henry Veronica about Check weren't the first
to be forgotten, and unless things change, they won't be
the last. Right now is a great time to go

(01:13:54):
check out Sword and Scale Television. If you've been curious
about it. For just twenty bucks, you can binge through
all twenty episodes. That's a steal. You can find it
at swordscale dot com.