A South African man was convicted of murder on Thursday after a prostitute stole his phone from his truck and found grisly footage of him torturing and killing a woman.
An Anchorage, Alaska, jury unanimously found Brian Steven Smith guilty of first-degree murder after less than two hours of deliberation, NBC News reported. Sex worker Valerie Casler, who became a key witness for the prosecution, obtained video of the murder after stealing Smith’s phone, copied it onto a memory card and turned it over to police,
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. https://t.co/w0kfii2jem
— NBC News (@NBCNews) February 23, 2024
Smith reportedly narrated the footage of Kathleen Henry’s murder, which involved “substantial physical torture,” according to the outlet. Jurors heard playback of the victim, an Alaska Native, gasping for air as she was repeatedly beaten and strangled to death in an Anchorage hotel room in 2019, NBC noted. (RELATED: Man Allegedly Kills Father, Shows Decapitated Head In Video Rant Slamming Biden Admin, Authorities Said: REPORT)
“In my movies, everybody always dies,” the narrator was heard saying in one video, according to the outlet. “What are my followers going to think of me? People need to know when they are being serial-killed.”
Casler has changed the story of how she obtained the memory card containing the video of Henry’s murder. She first said that she found the memory card on the ground labeled “Murder at the Midtown Marriott,” the outlet reported. Later, the sex worker said she stole the phone from Smith’s pickup truck while on a “date” with him.
Smith also admitted that he killed a second woman, Veronica Abouchuk, in 2018 or 2019, according to the outlet. Abouchuk’s body had been found previously but was incorrectly identified, NBC noted.
Both victims were from small villages in western Alaska and both had a history of homelessness, the outlet reported.