Man who filmed deadly torture learns fate in killings of Alaska women

A man who killed two Alaska Native women and was heard in a video of the torture death of one of them saying that in his movies "everybody always dies" was sentenced Friday to 226 years in prison.

Brian Steven Smith received 99-year sentences each for the deaths of Kathleen Henry, 30, and Veronica Abouchuk, who was 52 when her family reported her missing in February 2019, seven months after they last saw her.

"Both were treated about as horribly as a person can be treated," Alaska Superior Court Judge Kevin Saxby said when imposing the sentence.

"It's the stuff of nightmares," Saxby said.

The remaining 28 years were for other charges, like sexual assault and tampering with evidence. Alaska does not have the death penalty.

Two of the jurors attended the sentencing, the Anchorage Daily News reported , and one of them said the sentence was justified.

"It was the law being executed to the letter," juror Michael Stewart said.

Smith, a native of South Africa who became a naturalized U.S. citizen shortly before torturing and killing Henry at an Anchorage hotel in September 2019, showed no emotion during sentencing.

He also displayed no emotion when a jury deliberated for fewer than two hours and found him guilty after a three-week trial in February.

During the trial, the victims were not identified by name, only initials. Saxby said during sentencing that their names would be used in order to restore their personhood.

"The essence of what happened to the two women — they were treated as something other than human," Saxby said, according to the Anchorage Daily News. "They were dehumanized. It seems to me that the more respectful thing to do is refer to them by name, rather than by something less."

Smith was arrested in 2019 when a sex worker stole his cell phone from his truck and found the gruesome footage of Henry's torture and murder. The images were eventually copied onto a memory card , and she turned it over to the police.

Smith eventually confessed to killing Henry and Abouchuk, whose body had been found earlier but was misidentified.

Both Alaska Native women were from small villages in western Alaska and experienced homelessness when living in Anchorage.

Authorities identified Henry as the victim whose death was recorded at TownePlace Suites by Marriott in midtown Anchorage. Smith, who worked at the hotel, was registered to stay there from Sept. 2-4, 2019. The first images from the card showed Henry's body and were time-stamped at about 1 a.m. Sept. 4, police said.

The last image, dated early Sept. 6, showed Henry's body in the back of a black pickup. Charging documents said location data showed Smith's phone in the same rural area south of Anchorage where Henry's body was found a few weeks later.

Videos from the memory card were shown during the trial to the jury but hidden from the gallery. Smith's face was never seen in the videos, but his distinctive South African accent - which police eventually recognized from previous encounters - was heard narrating as if there were an audience. On the tape, he repeatedly urged Henry to die as he beat and strangled her.

"In my movies, everybody always dies," the voice says in one video. "What are my followers going to think of me? People need to know when they are being serial-killed."

During the eight-hour videotaped police interrogation, Smith confessed to killing Abouchuk after picking her up in Anchorage when his wife was out of town. He took her to his home, and she refused when he asked her to shower because of an odor.

Smith said he became upset, retrieved a pistol from the garage and shot her in the head, dumping her body north of Anchorage. He told police the location, where authorities later found a skull with a bullet wound in it.

Abouchuk's daughter, Kristy Grimaldi, gave the only victim impact statement during the sentencing, the Anchorage Daily News reported, saying that Smith would "rot in prison."

Smith's lengthy sentence comes just a few months after two other long prison terms were handed down in Alaska. In February, Denali Dakota Skye Brehmer, one of two young people charged in the 2019 killing of Alaska teenager Cynthia Hoffman in a murder-for-hire scheme, was sentenced to 99 years in prison. The month before that, Darin Schilmiller was sentenced to 99 years in prison for his role in the murder.

In Alaska, the sentencing range for first-degree murder is 30 to 99 years in prison.