SA-born killer gets 226 years sentence in Alaska

SA-born killer Brian Steven Smith has been sentenced by an Anchorage court to 226 years in an Alaskan jail for two savage murders. Smith, now 53, recorded himself raping, beating and killing homeless Alaskan woman Kathleen Jo Henry (30) on an SD card labelled ‘Homicide at Midtown Marriott’. The videos and images, which never showed Smith’s face were copied by a woman in possession of Smith’s phone and sent to police, says a Weekend Argus report. The 39 graphic pictures and 12 videos show a woman being brutally raped, beaten and murdered. Smith’s voice in the recordings led to his arrest in 2019. A detective reviewing the images recalled an earlier investigation of a man with the same unusual accent. He made the link to Smith – who grew up in Queenstown (Komani), South Africa – because of his accent which stood out as there were so few South Africans living in Anchorage. After Smith’s arrest, he confessed to shooting another woman, whose body was recovered and identified as Veronica Abouchuk (52).