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.
