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Inside the memory card killings that claimed the lives of Alaska Natives Kathleen Jo Henry and Veronica Abouchuk
Mark Thiessen/AP Photo; Bill Roth/Anchorage Daily News AP
With nothing else to do for the night, Valerie Casler was hanging out near a grocery store in Anchorage, Alaska, on Sept. 19, 2019, when a guy with a foreign accessory pulled up in a black Ford Ranger and asked if she was looking for a ride.
Casler, who at the time was homeless and a drug addict, hopped on the truck for what became an hour-long cruise through the city’s streets. When the driver stopped at a gas station and went inside to pick up cash, he reached out over the center. console and put his phone in his pocket.
Later that night, back at the tent where he was staying, he opened his phone and was horrified by what he discovered: dozens of explicit photographs and videos of a naked woman being beaten and strangled in a hotel room that looked familiar to Casler. .
“He had been drinking and high for about two weeks straight,” Casler, 52, testified of seeing the footage in an Anchorage courtroom on Feb. 7. “And then I turned it on and I was sober in less than five minutes. “”.
Casler downloaded the disturbing information onto a memory card, which he later admitted to stealing, and classified it as “Homicide at Midtown Marriott. “Ten days later, he handed over the data to police, triggering an investigation that led to the arrest of a South African immigrant. suspected of murdering two Alaska Native women.
Investigators had analyzed images of a guy bragging and taunting his victim. “In my films,” he says in a terrifying sequence, “everyone dies. What will my fans think of you? People want to know when they’re being serially murdered.
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Authorities say the face of the assailant who made the video is never seen on camera. But luckily, one of the detectives who reviewed the footage without delay identified the man’s unique accent as well as the black pickup truck. Casler told police that he was driving, as belonging to someone involved, but never charged, in a previous case. Case: Brian Smith, born in South Africa, recently became a U. S. citizen.
Kathleen Henry/Facebook; Anchorage Police Department/Facebook
During an eight-hour police interview on Oct. 8, 2019, Smith, who was arrested at the Anchorage airport while returning from a vacation in Washington, D. C. , first claimed that he had not forgotten the violent incident noted in the video, but eventually admitted that after a night of drinking, he had discovered the body of a woman later known as Kathleen Jo Henry, 30-year-old, in the bed of his truck.
After a bathroom break, in which Smith told a police officer escorting him that he was “going to make you famous,” Smith confessed to murdering another woman he had met on the streets of Anchorage, 52-year-old Veronica Abouchuk, who, like Henry, had experienced homelessness and addiction. And in another shocking admission, Smith told police he took a photo of himself caressing the woman’s corpse and shared it with a friend.
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AP Photo/Mark Thiessen
After a two-and-a-half-week delayed trial due to COVID shutdowns, a jury earlier this year found Smith, 53, guilty of 14 felonies, first-degree murder, sexual assault, tampering with evidence and misconduct related to a corpse. in the deaths of Henry and Abouchuk.
“The criminal justice formula doesn’t provide all the answers, but we believe a fair verdict was reached,” Anchorage District Attorney Brittany Dunlop and Deputy District Attorney Heather Nobrega told People after the Feb. 22 sentencing. crimes committed against some of the most vulnerable people in our community. They were kind and exclusive women, enjoyed and appreciated through their families.
Smith, who faces a 99-year prison sentence, is expected to be sentenced in July.
The lost women, Abouchuk and Henry, miss their communities very much. A mother of four, Abouchuk grew up in the small town of St. Petersburg. John’s. Michael, Alaska, before moving to Anchorage. “He has a very big heart and not a single bone in his body,” says his older sister Margaret Lestenkof, 62, who occasionally left her two daughters in Abouchuk’s care when they were younger. Although he rarely slept on the streets, Abouchuk kept in touch with friends and family and showed up unannounced at his sister’s house during the holidays.
AP Photo/Mark Thiessen
But on Thanksgiving 2018, she wasn’t there. “It’s strange,” Lestenkof recalled.
Authorities say Smith, an Anchorage hotel handyman who moved to Alaska in 2014 to marry a woman he had met online, 73-year-old Stephanie Bissland, met with Abouchuk and presented her with “hot food and a warm sleeping position” while his wife was out of town in August 2018.
Related: Woman stole phone from man’s van. It contained graphic photographs of a murder, which resulted in 2 convictions.
When he returned home, Smith told police he had asked Abouchuk to take a shower. When she refused, Smith pulled an Array. 22 handgun from his garage and shot her in the head, he said. Police searched his home and discovered the weapon, as well as a USB stick containing deleted but recoverable video clips of Abouchuk before and after his death. His decomposed head was found on the side of a road by two mushroom pickers on April 10, 2019 and known through his dental records.
A few months later, Henry, who grew up in Eek, Alaska, earned a G. E. D. and she was known for writing poetry; She was hoping for a brief respite from homelessness when she joined Smith to stay at a downtown Anchorage hotel on Sept. 4, 2019. At Smith’s trial, jurors saw hard-to-see footage of Smith torturing her.
“Just take it. You’re living. You’re dying. . . to live. You’re dying,” he said in the video, alternating between applying tension to Smith’s throat and then releasing it. A coroner later decided the cause of death was asphyxia by strangulation.
“I’m glad Smith was found guilty and that he can never harm another woman,” said Natasha Gamache, an advocate for Alaska Native women, who attended a hearing in Smith’s case to show her support to the victims’ families. I’m glad the criminal justice formula worked well, because it’s wrong. Alaska Native women are perceived as invisible, but we are not.
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