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A South African man who tortured an Alaska Native woman and narrated as he recorded a video of her dying was found guilty of first-degree murder on Thursday for killing her and another Native woman.

The Anchorage jury returned a unanimous verdict against Brian Steven Smith after deliberating for less than two hours.

Smith, a 52-year-old from South Africa, showed no reaction in court and stared ahead as the judge read the jury’s verdict. He was arrested after a woman stole his cellphone from his truck and discovered the gruesome footage from 2019. The woman, a sex worker who became a key witness during the trial in Anchorage, then copied the footage to a memory card and ultimately turned it over to police, prosecutors said.

Smith later confessed to killing another Alaska Native woman whose body had been found earlier but had been misidentified. Smith was found guilty of all 14 charges, including two counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of Kathleen Henry in 2019 and Veronica Abouchuk, either in 2018 or 2019. He was also convicted of multiple counts of sexual assault.

Sentencing was set for July 12 and July 19. Alaska does not have the death penalty.

Freda Dan, who is part of the Abouchuk family by marriage, sat through the trial nearly every day and gave high marks to law enforcement and the judicial system for their thorough work. “We weren’t invisible, and we are people,” said Dan, who is from the village of Stebbing, adding they were treated with respect. Other family members declined to comment.

Also attending the trial was Smith’s wife, Stephanie Bissland of Anchorage.

“He was very good for me, but he had another life, I guess,” she said, adding his problems were likely exacerbated by heavy drinking.

Bissland said when he was first jailed, he was in a very dark place. “He got better,” she said.

She plans to write him and visit him when he is transferred to a prison. Divorce is not in the cards. “I said my vows,” she said. Jurors stayed in the courtroom Thursday after delivering the verdict to hear more evidence about whether the first-degree murder conviction involved aggravating factors. They later found the murder involved “substantial physical torture” after hearing additional arguments from attorneys. That will subject Smith to a mandatory 99-year sentence.

For Abouchuk’s murder, he faces 30 to 99 years.

The graphic videos were only shown to the jury during the three-week trial, but audio could be heard in the gallery, where some heard Henry gasping for breath before dying. Prosecutors said he drove around with Henry’s body in the back of his pickup for two days before dumping her corpse on a rural road south of Anchorage.

The video never shows the man’s face but his distinctive accent is heard on the tape. He narrates as if to an audience and urges Henry to die as she’s repeatedly beaten and strangled in an Anchorage hotel room.


Former Illinois lawmaker and gubernatorial candidate William “Sam” McCann abruptly pleaded guilty on Thursday to nine felony counts of wire fraud, money laundering and tax evasion, halting his federal corruption trial over misusing up to $550,000 in campaign contributions.

McCann, who cut off negotiations over a plea deal last fall when he dismissed his court-appointed attorneys, made the reversal on the third day of a bench trial before U.S. District Court Judge Colleen Lawless. His latest lawyer, Jason Vincent, of Springfield, asked that he be released from custody as part of the deal, but Lawless nixed the idea, telling McCann his only option was to offer a no-strings open plea.

The seven counts of wire fraud and single count of money laundering each carry a sentence of up to 20 years in federal prison. For tax evasion, it’s three. But a complex set of advisory guidelines before Lawless, who set sentencing for June 20, will likely yield a far shorter term.

“Are you pleading guilty because you are in fact guilty?” Lawless asked. The 54-year-old McCann, wearing the gray-and-black striped jumpsuit of the nearby county jail where he’s held, replied, “Yes, your honor.”

Lawless set a hearing for Friday on McCann’s release request, but it’s certain to draw opposition from the government and not just because McCann violated probation last week when he left the state to check himself into a hospital with chest pains. Assistant U.S. Attorney Timothy Bass told Lawless he would introduce as further evidence of McCann’s unreliability a bizarre social media video posted just this week in which McCann claims a government conspiracy involving an “ungodly pack of lies” is against him.

A state senator from 2011 to 2019, McCann formed the Conservative Party of Illinois to campaign for governor in 2018. A criminal indictment in 2021 outlined numerous schemes McCann employed to convert contributions from his campaign committees to buy vehicles, pay an overdue loan, two mortgages, credit card bills and fund a family vacation, entertainment and other purchases.

For his unsuccessful run for governor, he collected more than $3 million dollars from Local 150 of the International Union of Operating Engineers alone. Despite being questioned four times by FBI and IRS agents in summer 2018 about alleged improper spending, he tore through $340,000 in leftover campaign funds for personal expenses in the year after the election.

McCann’s trial was repeatedly delayed. On the day it was supposed to start last November, McCann announced he had dismissed his court-appointed attorneys and would represent himself, telling reporters afterward, “God’s got this.” The proceeding was reset for Feb. 5, but McCann didn’t show, sending a weekend email that he was in a St. Louis-area hospital.


A Michigan jury convicted a school shooter’s mother of involuntary manslaughter Tuesday in the killings of four students in 2021, making her the first parent in the U.S. to be held responsible for a child carrying out a mass school attack.

Prosecutors say Jennifer Crumbley had a duty under state law to prevent her son, who was 15 at the time, from harming others. She was accused of failing to secure a gun and ammunition at home and failing to get help to support Ethan Crumbley’s mental health.

The four guilty verdicts — one for each student slain at Oxford High School — were returned after roughly 11 hours of deliberations. Jennifer Crumbley, 45, looked down and shook her head slightly as each juror was polled after the verdicts were read.

On her way out of the courtroom, prosecutor Karen McDonald hugged relatives of victims Justin Shilling and Madisyn Baldwin.

“Thank you,” a man whispered to her.

Jennifer and James Crumbley were the first parents in the U.S. to be charged in a mass school shooting committed by their child. James Crumbley faces trial in March.

“The cries have been heard, and I feel this verdict is gonna echo throughout every household in the country,” Justin’s father, Craig Shilling, said outside the courtroom.

“I feel it’s necessary, and I’m happy with the verdict. It’s still a sad situation to be in. It’s gotta stop. It’s an accountability, and this is what we’ve been asking for for a long time now,” Shilling said.

A gag order by the judge prevented McDonald and defense attorney Shannon Smith from speaking to reporters.

On the morning of Nov. 30, 2021, school staff members were concerned about a violent drawing of a gun, bullet and wounded man, accompanied by desperate phrases, on Ethan Crumbley’s math assignment. His parents were called to the school for a meeting, but they didn’t take the boy home.

A few hours later, Ethan Crumbley pulled a handgun from his backpack and shot 10 students and a teacher. No one had checked the backpack.

Outside the courthouse, the jury forewoman, who declined to give her name, said jurors were influenced by evidence that Jennifer Crumbley was the last adult to possess the gun. That “really hammered it home,” she told reporters.

Indeed, the jury saw images of Jennifer Crumbley leaving the shooting range with the gun in a box.

“You saw your son shoot the last practice round before the (school) shooting on Nov. 30. You saw how he stood. ... He knew how to use the gun,” assistant prosecutor Marc Keast said while cross-examining the mother last week.

In her closing argument Friday, McDonald said she filed the unprecedented charges because of the “unique, egregious” facts leading up to the massacre. School officials insisted they would not have agreed to keep Ethan Crumbley on campus that day if the parents had shared information about the new gun, which the boy on social media called his “beauty.”

The words with the disturbing drawing said: “The thoughts won’t stop. Help me. The world is dead. My life is useless.”

“He literally drew a picture of what he was going to do,” McDonald said. “It says, ‘Help me.’”

Besides 17-year-old Justin Shilling and 17-year old Madisyn Baldwin, Hana St. Juliana, 14, and Tate Myre, 16, were also killed. Seven people were wounded.

Ethan Crumbley, now 17, pleaded guilty to murder and terrorism and is serving a life sentence.


The Supreme Court on Monday said it will hear an appeal from Oklahoma death row inmate Richard Glossip, who has steadfastly maintained his innocence and averted multiple attempts by the state to execute him.

Glossip was sentenced in a 1997 murder-for-hire of the owner of the motel where he worked.

The case won’t be argued until the fall. Glossip now has the support of the state’s Republican attorney general, Gentner Drummond, who says Glossip’s life should be spared because he did not get a fair trial.

“Public confidence in the death penalty requires the highest standard of reliability, so it is appropriate that the U.S. Supreme Court will review this case,” Drummond said in a statement Monday. “As Oklahoma’s chief law officer, I will continue fighting to ensure justice is done in this case and every other.”

John Mills, an attorney for Glossip, said his client is innocent. “He has no criminal history, no history of misconduct during his entire time in prison, and has maintained his innocence throughout a quarter century wrongfully on death row. It is time – past time – for his nightmare to be over,” Mills said in a statement.

The Supreme Court blocked the latest effort to execute Glossip in early May.

Despite Drummond’s doubts about the trial, an Oklahoma appeals court upheld Glossip’s conviction, and the state’s pardon and parole board deadlocked in a vote to grant him clemency.

But Drummond also has said he does not believe Glossip is innocent of the murder-for-hire killing of his former boss, Barry Van Treese, in 1997. Another man, Justin Sneed, admitted robbing and killing Van Treese after Glossip promised to pay him $10,000. Sneed received a life sentence in exchange for his testimony and was the key witness against Glossip.

Two separate independent investigations have revealed problems with the prosecution’s case.

Drummond said that Sneed lied on the witness stand about his psychiatric condition and his reason for taking the mood-stabilizing drug lithium and that prosecutors knew Sneed was lying.

Also, evidence was destroyed, Drummond said.

Some Republican state lawmakers who support the death penalty have joined the growing chorus of Glossip supporters who are seeking to overturn his conviction.

Glossip’s case has been to the Supreme Court before. He was given a reprieve in 2015, although the court later ruled 5-4 against him in a case involving the drugs used in lethal executions.

Glossip has been just hours away from being executed three times. His last scheduled execution, in September 2015, was halted just moments before he was to be led to the death chamber when prison officials realized they had received the wrong lethal drug. That mix-up helped prompt a nearly seven-year moratorium on the death penalty in Oklahoma.


Moments after a defendant in a felony battery case tried to convince a Nevada judge that he was turning his violent past around and didn’t need to be locked up, his sentencing went sideways: He leaped over a defense table and the judge’s bench, landing atop her and sparking a bloody brawl with court officials and attorneys.

The violent scene on Wednesday was captured by courtroom video showing Clark County District Court Judge Mary Kay Holthus falling back from her seat against a wall as the defendant flung himself over the judge’s bench and grabbed her hair, toppling an American flag onto them. The judge suffered some injuries but was not hospitalized, courthouse officials said.

The defendant, Deobra Delone Redden, was jailed on $54,000 bail and refused to return to court on Thursday on new charges, so a judge rescheduled his next appearance for Jan. 9. Redden, 30, faces 13 counts including extortion and coercion with force. Seven of the new counts are battery on a protected person, referring to the judge and officers who came to her aid.

Redden had to be wrestled off the judge Wednesday by several court and jail officers and courtroom staff members — including some who were seen throwing punches. One courtroom marshal was hospitalized for treatment of a bleeding gash on his forehead and a dislocated shoulder.

Redden’s sentencing was not immediately rescheduled.

Clark County District Attorney Steve Wolfson said the suspect’s criminal record is marked by mostly violent offenses and includes prior convictions for three felonies and nine misdemeanors. He said Redden should be held without bail as “an extreme danger to the community and a flight risk.”

“He’s been violent his entire adult life,” Wolfson said.

Redden’s defense attorney on Wednesday, Caesar Almase, declined to comment Thursday.

At the sentencing hearing, Redden wasn’t shackled or in jail garb because he had been released from custody as part of a deal with prosecutors, in which he pleaded guilty in November to a reduced charge of attempted battery resulting in substantial injuries. He was initially charged in the baseball bat attack with assault with a deadly weapon, court records show.


A judge sentenced a Michigan teenager to life in prison Friday for killing four students and terrorizing others at Oxford High School, after listening to hours of gripping anguish from parents and wounded survivors.

Judge Kwame Rowe rejected pleas from defense lawyers for a shorter sentence and ensured that Ethan Crumbley, 17, will not get an opportunity for parole.

Moments before learning his fate, the teen apologized and appeared to agree with his victims that the stiffest punishment was appropriate.

“Any sentence that they ask for, I ask that you do impose it on me,” the shooter said. “I want them to be happy, and I want them to feel secure and safe. I do not want them to worry another day. I really am sorry for what I’ve done. ... But I can try my best in the future to help other people, and that is what I will do.”

Life sentences for teenagers are rare in Michigan since the U.S. Supreme Court and the state’s highest court said the acts of minors must be viewed differently than the crimes of adults. But Oakland County prosecutor Karen McDonald said a no-parole order fit the Oxford case.

“It’s not a moment to celebrate,” McDonald said outside court. “It’s tragic. And the voices today, I think, profoundly show that.”

Indeed, Rowe’s decision followed deeply emotional remarks by families of the deceased and survivors who said the tragedy had irreparably turned their lives upside down.

Crumbley, who was 15 when he committed the shooting, pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and terrorism. He brought a gun to school, but his backpack was never checked, even after his parents were summoned that same day about their son’s drawings, which included a gun and words: “The thoughts won’t stop. Help me.”

“I am a really bad person. I’ve done terrible things,” Crumbley said in court Friday.

The judge said the shooting was planned well in advance, and he noted that the shooter had plenty of time to stop as he walked through school.


Police are searching for a man suspected of fatally shooting a Maryland judge who had awarded custody of the suspect’s children to his wife on the day of the killing, authorities said Friday.

The judge was shot in his driveway Thursday evening while his wife and son were home and just hours after he ruled against the suspect in a divorce case, authorities said.

Washington County Sheriff Brian Albert said authorities are “actively working” to apprehend 49-year-old Pedro Argote for the “targeted attack” of Maryland Circuit Court Judge Andrew Wilkinson.

Wilkinson, 52, was found with gunshot wounds around 8 p.m. Thursday outside his home in Hagerstown, authorities said. Wilkinson was taken to Meritus Medical Center, where he died of his injuries.

Albert said at a news conference Friday that Argote is considered “armed and dangerous.” Albert declined to identify that type of weapon used in the slaying but said Argote legally owned a handgun.

Judges across the U.S. have been the target of threats and sometimes violence in recent years. President Joe Biden last year signed a bill to give around-the-clock security protection to the families of Supreme Court justices after the leak of a draft court opinion overturning the Roe v. Wade abortion-rights decision, which prompted protests outside of conservative U.S. Supreme Court justices’ homes.

Wilkinson had presided over a divorce proceeding involving Argote earlier Thursday, but Argote was not present for the hearing, Albert said. The judge gave custody of Argote’s children to his wife at the hearing, and that was the motive for the killing, the sheriff said.

Wilkinson issued a judgment Thursday, officially granting the divorce and awarding sole custody of the couple’s four children — ages 12, 11, 5 and 3 — to their mother, court records show. He ordered Argote to have no contact with the children and pay $1,120 a month in child support.

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