Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Alaska Murder Suspect Arrested... someone found an SD card with a record of the murder

Cannot imagine the look on his face when the cops nailed him with this...



https://www.ktuu.com/content/news/M...d-in-street-showing-video-562639431.html

Man charged with murder after SD card found in street showing video

(KTUU)
By Kortnie Horazdovsky & Grant Robinson | Posted: Wed 10:04 AM, Oct 09, 2019 | Updated: Wed 6:25 PM, Oct 09, 2019

ANCHORAGE (KTUU) - An SD memory card found in the street has led police to arrest a man for murder regarding the human remains found near the Seward Highway last week.

Anchorage Police say 48-year-old Brian Steven Smith has been arrested on a charge of first-degree murder in the death of the woman who police say is listed as a Jane Doe.

Police say a woman called them Monday, Sept. 30, to say she'd found an SD card that contained video of a homicide. The woman told police she'd found the SD card in the street in Fairview.

According to charging documents, the SD card was labeled "Homicide at midtown Marriott." The memory card contained 39 images and 12 videos showing the progression of a crime.

Two days later, on Oct. 2, officers were called to Milepost 108 of the Seward Highway, where human remains were found. Police now believe the remains are of the woman shown in the video.

"Once we viewed images on the SD card, we notified our detectives in the homicide unit and they took over that part of the investigations," APD spokesman MJ Thim said.

Thim says investigators were able to quickly identify the suspect in the video because detectives were familiar with him from a separate ongoing investigation. Thim would specify neither the nature of the separate investigation nor Smith's role in it.

According to the charging documents, after police obtained a warrant for Smith's cell phone records, they were able to trace his location to the area where the human remains were found within minutes of when the last still image on the SD card was created.

Smith was arrested at the Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport Tuesday without incident. Thim says he was returning to Anchorage when he was arrested. Thim says Smith is the only suspect in the case.

Police believe the crime took place in Anchorage in the first week of September at TownePlace Suites by Marriott in Midtown. APD says the first recording on the SD card was taken on September 4 and other images were created a few days later.

The Medical Examiner's office has not yet confirmed the woman's identity and manner of death.

Smith faces one charge of Murder 1. He was arraigned Wednesday afternoon.

Copyright KTUU 2019. All rights reserved.

Wow...

Wont be his only one.

You are probably very, very right...

That was not a thought that even occurred to me and I think that makes me feel a little better...

Yeah, dumb crooks...

Yeah, videoing and photoing his crime is not the behavior of a rookie murderer. I bet there's a bunch of places that he has been in will start looking at unsolved homicides of females.

I wonder if he had anything to do with the two hookers dismembered bodies that were found about 15-20 years ago that was never solved???

Ed

Serial killer no doubt about it. Hope they fry the fugger

Butcher baker comes to mind.

Not in Alaska. We are a kinder, gentler, no-kill state.

Hopefully they will extradite him to one that will execute him, in say, 20-30 years.

Incidently, I am a proponate of a much more quickly applied death sentence in cases where there is no possibility of doubt. But making that call is admittedly a fine line.

I have no doubt that OJ was guilty- just not enough proof/certainty to execute him had that faux-jury found him so.

The alleged killer was born in South Africa. No telling how many more people he killed here or other countries, states, etc.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/09/us/anchorage-murder-sd-card-video.html

Mr. Smith, meet crab pot.

I'm sure they're analyzing every computer and device he owns. If he videoed one, he probably videoed most of the rest.

What you got against crabs?

I thought they cleaned up several of those with Israel Keyes?

From Hudge's link above...

Memory Card Found With Brutal Videos and Photos Leads to Murder Arrest
The police in Anchorage, Alaska, say they recognized a man shown beating and strangling a woman at a midtown hotel.


ImageThe police in Anchorage, Alaska, believe the woman whose remains were found on the Seward Highway on Oct. 2 is the same woman shown on videos and pictures on a memory card found on Sept 30.
The police in Anchorage, Alaska, believe the woman whose remains were found on the Seward Highway on Oct. 2 is the same woman shown on videos and pictures on a memory card found on Sept 30.CreditCreditBill Roth/Anchorage Daily News, via Associated Press
By Aimee Ortiz
Oct. 9, 2019

Memory cards often hold troves of information. Well-meaning people have used the photos and videos stored on them to return lost cards found to their rightful owners.

But a memory card that someone recently picked up off the ground in Anchorage led to the arrest of a city resident this week on a first-degree murder charge.

The card, which the police say a woman discovered in the Fairview neighborhood and turned over to them on Sept. 30, contained videos and pictures of a man beating and strangling a woman in a midtown hotel room, the authorities said.

Two days later, on Oct. 2, a caller informed the police that human remains had been found outside the city, on Seward Highway near Rainbow Valley Road — about 18 miles from the hotel that was the setting in the videos and pictures found.

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“We had two investigations going on,” said MJ Thim, a spokesman for the Police Department.

The police believe that the woman seen in the photos and videos on the memory card is the same woman whose remains were found Oct. 2. She has not been identified.

As police detectives reviewed images on the memory card, they recognized the man seen in them from a previous investigation, Mr. Thim said. The police would not comment on the prior investigation.

The police checked with the hotel, TownePlace Suites by Marriott Anchorage Midtown, and learned that the man had been registered to a room there from Sept. 2 to Sept. 4. The carpet seen in the hotel room where the murder took place matches the hotel that the police visited.


ImageBrian Steven Smith was in custody after videos and pictures were found on a digital memory card depicting a woman being assaulted and killed, the police in Alaska said.
Brian Steven Smith was in custody after videos and pictures were found on a digital memory card depicting a woman being assaulted and killed, the police in Alaska said.CreditLoren Holmes/Anchorage Daily News, via Associated Press
On Tuesday, the authorities arrested the man, Brian Steven Smith, 48, of Anchorage, as he arrived at the Ted Stevens International Airport. During a brief court appearance on Wednesday, a judge said that he would appoint a lawyer to represent Mr. Smith, who said that he could not afford one, according to The Associated Press. Mr. Smith is being held in jail with bail set at $500,000.

The woman seen on the memory card had dark hair, according to a charging document, like the remains of the woman found along the highway.

The memory card, according to the police, contained 39 images and 12 videos, all of graphic nature, which begin on Sept. 4 at 12:59 a.m.

In the images and videos, a woman is seen being strangled by a man who “had some sort of an English sounding accent when he spoke,” according to the charging document. In one video, the woman is seen fighting back against her attacker, “attempting to scratch at the man’s wrist with her right hand to get him to stop,” as he pressed into her neck with his right hand.

In another video, according to the document, the man said that his hand was “getting tired” before stomping on the woman’s neck with his right foot, cursing and saying that she needed to die. In other videos, the woman is seen struggling to breathe as he “strangled her more and laughed about it.” One video shows the man, at one point, using a wire or cord on the woman.

One image taken on Sept. 4 shows the woman on a rolling hotel luggage cart near a black pickup truck, the authorities said. In at least seven images, prosecutors said, the woman is seen “lying face down on what appeared to be a black bed of a truck.” The last date for the images on the card was Sept. 6 at 1:12 a.m.

Mr. Smith, who was born in South Africa, owns a 1999 Ford Ranger pickup truck with his wife, according to prosecutors. After the police obtained his cellphone records through a warrant, they found that Mr. Smith’s phone pinged to a location on Rainbow Valley Road along the Seward Highway — near where the remains were found on Oct. 2 — at around 1:07 a.m. on Sept. 6. His phone would not ping an Anchorage location until 1:24 a.m., the police said.

Calls to Mr. Smith’s home on Wednesday night were not immediately returned.

The police credited the caller who reported the memory card as having provided a critical component in the case. “We believe that we have our suspect in custody,” Mr. Thim said, “and we are moving forward with determining the rest of the answers to this investigation.”

I hadn't heard that they had been part of his spree, but then, I have been wrong in the past. Just ask my ex-wife!

I hope they did clear those two cases. Having worked vice I knew, and had arrested both of them on various charges. They may have been prostitutes, but they certainly were not evil nor deserved an ending such as theirs.

I'm also glad this guy is off the streets!

Ed

Hope somebody shoots him...or sends him to Detroit to be a jail pussy. Literally.

'
https://www.ktuu.com/content/news/W...-victims-name-is-released-562777031.html

"He was a good husband" - Wife defends man suspected of recorded murder

Brian Stevens Smith at his arraignment on Oct. 9, 2019.

By Maria Downey | Posted: Thu 6:44 PM, Oct 10, 2019 | Updated: Thu 9:00 PM, Oct 10, 2019

ANCHORAGE (KTUU) Stephanie Bissland was visiting family in Virginia when she was approached by two Anchorage Police Department detectives.

What she found out shocked her: that her husband, in Anchorage, had been charged with a brutal rape and murder of a 30-year-old woman in a midtown hotel - all caught on camera.

Bissland told Channel 2 today that she was shocked by the accusations, and that police told her they wanted her to know before she heard it on the news.

That information was released to the public just moments after she was notified.

She says the news left her numb, "because he was a good husband ".

Bissland says there was never a hint of that man described by police and went on to say, "never in my life would I have thought what they are saying is going on ... I don't believe it ".

Her husband of five years, Brian Stevens Smith had just become a United States citizen on September 20.

Bissland said that Smith had much to celebrate and a future that looked bright.

"I'll stand behind him, beside him, while he's going through this," said Bissland.

Copyright 2019 KTUU. All rights reserved.

So the murder happened September 4th at the latest and he was not a US citizen until the 20th. I guess that means he was an illegal alien...

No he held a Green card.

He sounds like a meticulous Serial killer that wanted to be caught.

yep

So I have questions, how did the SD card all by itself end up in the street? Does the finder of the card have a connection with the involved?

Curious indeed. but the best laid plans.... Like poachers who backed their vehicle into a snowbank, leaving the imprsssion of the license plate, or the driver's license found under a gut pile, or the retriever who carefully goes and gets the 5 illegal hidden birds while the old man is talking to the warden.

I thought the female torsos, that washed up in Turnagain Arm, were tied to the escort/prostitution bust that went down a year or two after the remains were found. The cops suspected the guy killed the girls to keep the others in line, but couldn't pin anything on him. The murders stopped after he went to prison for other crimes related to the escort service.

Weak attempt on my part at a joke...

That tickled a memory or two. I think you are right.

Sadly, you are not wrong.

From tonight’s online ADN.

“Anchorage man accused of hotel killing charged in the death of another woman

The man charged in the brutal slaying of a 30-year-old Anchorage woman at a Midtown hotel last month is now charged with killing a second, unrelated victim more than a year ago.

Authorities say 48-year-old Brian Steven Smith is accused of killing two Alaska Native women and dumping their bodies to cover up his crimes.

The state is requesting that Smith’s bail be increased to $2 million from $750,000 to reflect his risk to the public, especially vulnerable populations, and the danger he might flee. Originally from South Africa, Smith has lived in Alaska for the past five years. Prosecutors say he became a naturalized United States citizen last month.

Smith already faced eight criminal counts in the death of Kathleen Jo Henry including murder, sexual assault and evidence tampering. A grand jury also found Henry’s killing involved torture.

During an Oct. 8 interview with homicide detectives after his arrest, Smith admitted he shot a woman between 2017 and 2018, authorities told reporters Thursday afternoon. He also provided the location of her body.

The second victim was identified as 52-year-old Veronica R. Abouchuk.

Abouchuk was reported missing in February and was last seen last year, authorities say. Her remains were found along the Old Glenn Highway in April, when Alaska State Troopers recovered a skull with a gunshot wound from an area east of the old Eklutna Power Plant.

Detectives showed Smith a photo of Abouchuk during his interview, court documents show. He admitted she was the woman he shot.

A missing-person alert from Anchorage police in July described Abouchuk as homeless. Her family last saw her in July 2018.

“These were two Alaska Native women, and I know that hits home here in Alaska. And we’re cognizant of that. We treat them with dignity and respect,” deputy district attorney Brittany Dunlop said Thursday. “As far as Mr. Smith’s motives, I can’t speak to that.”

Anchorage Deputy District Attorney Brittany Dunlop speaks to the media during an announcement at APD headquarters on Thursday that Brian Steven Smith had been indicted by a grand jury for the murder of a second unrelated female victim over a year ago. Smith was previously indicted for the murder of a woman at a Midtown hotel. (Bill Roth / ADN)
Anchorage Deputy District Attorney Brittany Dunlop speaks to the media during an announcement at APD headquarters on Thursday that Brian Steven Smith had been indicted by a grand jury for the murder of a second unrelated female victim over a year ago. Smith was previously indicted for the murder of a woman at a Midtown hotel. (Bill Roth / ADN)
When asked whether investigators believe Smith may have harmed others elsewhere, Anchorage Police Chief Justin Doll said that “we will look at every single aspect of the case and, if necessary, follow it wherever we need to.”

Both Doll and Dunlop cited the ongoing investigation when responding to questions about other potential victims and suspects, and the possibility of additional charges against Smith.

“We don’t believe that there’s a particular public safety threat at this point,” Doll said. “Of course, we will look at anybody else that might be involved as the investigation unfolds.” He stressed that only Smith has been charged in the crimes.

After handing down the original indictment against Smith on Monday, a grand jury issued a second, supplemental indictment Thursday adding five counts against him, including murder and evidence tampering. State prosecutors added to the indictment a misdemeanor count of misconduct involving a corpse.

Smith was arrested earlier this month after someone found a small memory card on the ground Sept. 30 near the Anchorage Carrs store at Gambell Street and East 13th Avenue. The card, labeled "Homicide at midtown Marriott,” contained 39 images and 12 videos taken from Sept. 4 to Sept. 6 — all documenting the horrifying scene at a local hotel, according to charging documents.

The images showed a naked woman, later identified as Henry, being beaten and strangled in a hotel room, charges say. She tried to fight back. Other footage showed a man detectives later identified as Smith yelling at her to die and laughing, according to the charges. The man is described as having an English-sounding accent.

Images also showed a body covered in a white sheet being moved through a parking lot to a truck, the charges say. Police identified Henry as the woman whose remains were found near the Seward Highway south of Anchorage on Oct. 2.

Smith, in his interview with homicide detectives Oct. 8 after his arrest, admitted disposing of Henry’s body along the highway and that he was the male in the images and videos on the card, according to a memo submitted with the state’s increased bail request.

Chief Justin Doll speaks to the media at APD headquarters in downtown Anchorage on Thursday. (Bill Roth / ADN)
Chief Justin Doll speaks to the media at APD headquarters in downtown Anchorage on Thursday. (Bill Roth / ADN)
Smith poses a significant public safety risk to “vulnerable, homeless women currently living on the streets of Anchorage," prosecutors argue in the memo.

He also poses a significant flight risk given his family ties in South Africa, the document says. Along with higher bail, the state is also asking that Smith surrender any passports he holds.”

Link to the above.

https://www.adn.com/alaska-news/cri...g-charged-in-the-death-of-another-woman/

More to come unless he "Keyes" himself.

Beat me to it...

Twisted puppy...

Or gets plastic surgery and runs off to Israel...

When we were up there on vacation, we saw the SAR dog teams working along the Seward highway. Glad the POS is out of circulation.

You have to wonder how many more did he kill...

Morbidly, what is the over/under?

If he is all Keyed up he will try to negotiate conditions with his admissions.

20

Let the speculation begin...

https://mustreadalaska.com/do-anchorage-police-have-a-serial-killer-in-custody/

HomeThe 907Do Anchorage Police Have A Serial Killer In Custody?
OCTOBER 18, 2019 AUTHOR: SUZANNE DOWNING1 COMMENT
Do Anchorage police have a serial killer in custody?

HOW MANY OTHERS ARE THERE?

Brian Steven Smith, 48, had been in custody since Oct. 8 for the gruesome murder of Kathleen Henry, an Alaska Native woman. He has pled not guilty to charges associated with that crime.

But oddly, he has confessed to a second murder.

Anchorage police announced Thursday that Smith is also the man who killed 53-year-old Veronica Rosaline Abouchuk, whose body was dumped at Mile 4.5 of the Old Glenn Highway in 2018, and was found in April of this year, a bullet hole in her skull.

Police had put out a Nixle alert for Abouchuk in July of 2019, saying her family had not seen her since July of 2018. “Abouchuk is homeless … and was last seen at Bean’s Café in October 2018. Family’s efforts to locate Abouchuk have been unsuccessful,” the Nixle report said.


Victims Kathleen Henry, Veronica Rosaline Abouchuk
Investigators drew the confession from Smith while interrogating him for the murder of Henry, the 30-year-old Native woman from Eek, whom police say Smith brutally beat and killed on Sept. 4, all while filming and photographing his carnage. Henry’s body was dumped near Mile 108 Seward Highway, south of Anchorage.

The digital card that was turned into authorities had 12 video and 39 photo images on it documenting Henry’s death. Police are saying it was found “on the street” by someone. The digital card was labeled “homicide at midtown Marriott” in Anchorage. The person who “found the digital card on the street” in Fairview took it to police on Sept. 30, according to the official account.

Police knew they had a killer, and they knew there was a dead woman out there somewhere. But where?

Henry’s body showed up on Oct. 2 near the Rainbow Trailhead along Seward Highway south of Anchorage. She had been sexually assaulted and was battered, like the one documented on the digital card turned in two days earlier.

The photos and videos show Henry fighting for her life and Smith could be seen stomping her throat and strangling her, laughing, screaming, and torturing her, according to officials.

But police knew that voice on the video tape. They recognized Smith and his distinctive South African accent because they were already investigating him for something else — something they haven’t yet revealed, yet something that involves his recognizable accent.

It could be his racist rants on Facebook that had drawn the attention of authorities. Smith, if his social media posts are any indication, has white supremacist leanings and an axe to grind against black South Africans and other persons of color.

Or detectives may have already suspected him in connection with other victims. At age 48, Smith is old enough to have a trail of bodies behind him from here to his homeland in South Africa. Rarely does a killer begin his gruesome beatings and killings in his mid-40s. There’s often a pattern of behavior.

Anchorage’s most notorious serial killer was Robert Hansen, a monster who preyed on and killed at least 17 women from 1971 to 1983. Police suspect there were more than 30 victims. Hansen, now known as the “Butcher Baker,” died in prison in 2014.

Israel Keyes was another serial killer who made his way to Alaska and used it as his base. He killed himself in prison in 2012, after a long career of rapes, kidnapping, arson, and murder across the United States. His last known victim was 18-year-old Samantha Koenig, a barista at a drive-through coffee stand in midtown Anchorage.

There are exceptions to the pattern theory. This summer in Anchorage, a teenager was killed by her alleged friends at the request of a 21-year-old man from out of state. None of the young perpetrators has yet been implicated in other murders.

[Read: Investigators say Schilmiller offered $9 million for murder of Cynthia Hoffman]

Brian Smith’s past movements in South Africa and the United States have drawn the attention of Interpol, the International Criminal Police Organization. The FBI is also providing assistance, and usually that means they’re alert to the possibility there could be victims in other states.

Smith, born near Queenstown, South Africa, immigrated to the U.S., married a former immigration officer, and became a citizen in September.

A warrant was issued for his arrest on Oct. 7. He was taken into custody at Ted Stevens International Airport on Oct. 8, as he returned from a trip Outside. Smith pleaded not guilty on Wednesday to the Henry murder. He’ll be arraigned on the Abouchuk murder separately.

Both deceased women were known to work in the prostitution field, a dangerous line of work that predators use to find their next victims.