Speaker 1: Sword and Scale contains adult themes and violence, and is
Speaker 1: not intended for all audiences.
Speaker 2: Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 3: Oh, for fuck's sake, are you still alive?
Speaker 4: Yes, it's been like about twenty minutes, so I think
Speaker 4: it's I think it's time we finishes fucking drop bitch.
Speaker 1: All right, beach, get your popcorn ready, because we've got
Speaker 1: some old school Sword of Scale bullshit coming your way.
Speaker 1: This one's gonna give you a little nostalgia episode pretty
Speaker 1: twenty here we go. We sure do love to talk
Speaker 1: about Florida here. It's kind of my thing, probably because
Speaker 1: that's where all the nutbags go to do their nut baggery.
Speaker 1: But there's another state in this great Union that's a
Speaker 1: haven for psychos, weirdos, and straight up degenerates that are
Speaker 1: looking for a place to hide in plain sight. And no,
Speaker 1: I'm not talking about California. Anchorage is Alaska's largest city,
Speaker 1: but it isn't these sprawling metropolis the Lower forty eight
Speaker 1: might expect. It's a place of contradictions, a city of
Speaker 1: modern industry and glass towers, yet still haunted by the
Speaker 1: lawlessness of the frontier. Here the wilderness isn't just beyond
Speaker 1: the city limits. It lurks in the streets, in the shadows,
Speaker 1: in the hearts of those who hunt. Tourists pass through,
Speaker 1: snapping photos of moose and suburban neighborhoods, never seeing the
Speaker 1: harsher reality beneath the postcard perfect city scape. Anchorage has
Speaker 1: a problem, a problem that thrives on Spinnard's sidewalks, in
Speaker 1: the shadows of the Midtown mall, and in the encampments
Speaker 1: that spread beneath the Glenn Highway overpass. A problem that
Speaker 1: makes victims of the vulnerable, where survival isn't just about
Speaker 1: and enduring the cold, but also the violence that comes
Speaker 1: with being unseen. A problem we've talked about here many times.
Speaker 5: Homelessness, Alaska native disappearing, gone dead, and then next thing
Speaker 5: you know, if you hear mona.
Speaker 1: News, the crisis is impossible to ignore. In the winter,
Speaker 1: the cold kills. In the summer, the streets swell with
Speaker 1: the unhoused, people searching for shelter, safety, or simply the
Speaker 1: next moment of peace.
Speaker 6: And this population is preyed upon by people who want to,
Speaker 6: you know, harm them in some way, taking any resources
Speaker 6: they may have. They're very, very vulnerable population.
Speaker 1: Among them Alaskan Native people are disproportionately represented. Is that
Speaker 1: what they say represented? It's a nice Karen like way
Speaker 1: to say it when you aren't close to it. It
Speaker 1: severs them from the land their ancestors thrived on and
Speaker 1: leaves them to navigate a city that too often turns
Speaker 1: its back on them. The reasons are many, generational trauma, displacement,
Speaker 1: addiction is a big one, and poverty. But the result
Speaker 1: is the same, a population visible and invisible at the
Speaker 1: same time, ignored until something terrible happens. And in September
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen, something terrible did indeed happen. It started with
Speaker 1: an SD card.
Speaker 7: Yes, it's brilliandad pictures.
Speaker 8: Okay, so it's got pictures of a homicide. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 8: how do you know that?
Speaker 3: And where did you find it?
Speaker 9: I found it on the ground.
Speaker 2: I thought there was music on it, so I put
Speaker 2: it in my phone see if they had some music
Speaker 2: in it.
Speaker 7: There was no music on it. Now it was titled
Speaker 7: there's a title on it. It says homicide and it has
Speaker 7: all these pictures of this lady and it shows to
Speaker 7: Mary out hotel.
Speaker 1: The responding officer arrived at the medical clinic on Lake
Speaker 1: Otis Parkway, where he met Valerie Castler. The call came
Speaker 1: in as a suspicious circumstances report, prompting a quick response
Speaker 1: from law enforcement, but the officer remained objective, neither discounting
Speaker 1: her claim nor fully believing it. You see, the idea
Speaker 1: that someone would find a random SD card with photographic
Speaker 1: evidence of a homicide was far fetched, say the least,
Speaker 1: more far fetched than thinking it was real was the
Speaker 1: idea that whoever took these photos would be careless enough
Speaker 1: to lose them.
Speaker 9: There's videos on it, and on one of them. He
Speaker 9: even told her. He leaned us in this hotel alive.
Speaker 9: You couldn't end up making me murdering. I was like,
Speaker 9: holy shit.
Speaker 1: The officer had seen plenty of hoaxes before. He braced
Speaker 1: himself for another, But then the first image loaded. He
Speaker 1: scrolled through the pictures on the SD card. Each photo
Speaker 1: was more gruesome than the last. Very quickly, he started
Speaker 1: to believe every word. Valerie said, this is very disturbing.
Speaker 9: Yeah it is.
Speaker 1: The officer didn't let it show, but the videos and
Speaker 1: images on the SD card were some of the most
Speaker 1: disturbing he'd ever seen. He knew this warranted an investigation
Speaker 1: and that detectives would want to speak with Valerie. A
Speaker 1: short time later, she sat down in a small gray
Speaker 1: room at the Anchorage Police Department, where Detective Lee sat
Speaker 1: across from her. The tiny woman wrapped in layers of
Speaker 1: worn clothing into it at long nights in the cold.
Speaker 10: And how about what address I needed to come talk
Speaker 10: to you?
Speaker 11: I will I'm homeless. I lived in the rooms by
Speaker 11: shiloh Okay.
Speaker 1: Her face was lined with exhaustion. She'd spent years navigating
Speaker 1: a system designed to forget women like her, but today
Speaker 1: she was holding something no one could ignore. On the
Speaker 1: night of September twenty eight, twenty nineteen, Valerie Castler was
Speaker 1: walking through Anchorage near the Car's Grocery store on Thirteenth Avenue.
Speaker 1: She often searched the area for discarded items, such as
Speaker 1: broken cell phones, and picked up items she thought had
Speaker 1: a little bit of value. That night, she found a
Speaker 1: small SD card on the ground.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I saw a cool life on another sc card.
Speaker 2: Maybe there's more music going because I found him a
Speaker 2: couple of months ago and had like three.
Speaker 9: Hundred ty my songs on it.
Speaker 1: Yes, D card was not like the last one.
Speaker 11: There were no music on that card shows some voice
Speaker 11: shit on there, and it's been freaking me out, okay,
Speaker 11: because I can't seem to get the pictures out.
Speaker 9: Of my head.
Speaker 1: The imagees haunted Valerie ever since she saw them. She'd
Speaker 1: been having nightmares. Still detectively needed her to describe what
Speaker 1: she saw.
Speaker 9: Okay.
Speaker 2: It showed her in the hotel room on the floor
Speaker 2: and he's beating her up, he's slapping her seph and
Speaker 2: he's talking to.
Speaker 9: Her the whole time.
Speaker 2: And then on the videos, you can't see no face.
Speaker 2: He doesn't have no face, but he's his accents is
Speaker 2: like polish, it's foreign.
Speaker 10: Okay.
Speaker 3: What was he saying?
Speaker 2: Some of them would be like, well, this is chapter one,
Speaker 2: like chapter one, chick one.
Speaker 3: And then there was one where.
Speaker 2: He says some no, you must want to get murdered
Speaker 2: tonight because you're not leaving this hotel.
Speaker 9: Because I'm gonna murder you.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 2: He's like slapping her, fondling her, and.
Speaker 9: She's not really.
Speaker 2: Seeing anything. She's not making no noises or anything.
Speaker 1: Instead of music, Valerie was met with something holy unexpected.
Speaker 1: Actually scrolled through the contents of the card, she saw
Speaker 1: a series of images and videos depicting what can only
Speaker 1: be described as torture and murder.
Speaker 12: And then the one that I presume that where he
Speaker 12: killed her is he had to sing around her and
Speaker 12: act it looked like a wire or some.
Speaker 2: And then next year, you know he he it was
Speaker 2: like he crosses them and then you hear this, and
Speaker 2: then it's like she wasn't moving or any anymore or anything.
Speaker 1: She said she had the card for two days, but
Speaker 1: a couple of reasons kept her from coming to the police. First,
Speaker 1: she was distrustful of them because of her troubled past.
Speaker 1: She didn't want to get into trouble, just trying to
Speaker 1: do the right thing. Second, she wasn't even sure if
Speaker 1: the contents of the SD card were even real. People
Speaker 1: have been known to act out some crazy sexual fantasies.
Speaker 2: Because it looks like to chill the sound and he's
Speaker 2: got her body in the back.
Speaker 9: Of the trush.
Speaker 13: How come he did in college right away when you
Speaker 13: saw it.
Speaker 9: I don't know.
Speaker 10: I don't know, judge know anything.
Speaker 3: I'm not alumni.
Speaker 10: It's just a question week it's gonna come up.
Speaker 9: I didn't even know if it was real or or okay.
Speaker 2: Or if Sony was Jesus staging something because I've been
Speaker 2: listening to the news and watching the news, and I
Speaker 2: didn't hear anything on the news about a woman missing,
Speaker 2: or you know, or them finding a body or anything.
Speaker 9: So I wasn't I wasn't sure.
Speaker 2: But the more I thought about it, and I couldn't
Speaker 2: go to sleep at night, I was having nightmares. And
Speaker 2: then I started thinking, well, it should be real, you know,
Speaker 2: just because if they haven't found a body doesn't mean
Speaker 2: that it didn't really happen, because it should do.
Speaker 1: Some Sure, she watched the news and read the papers
Speaker 1: every chance she got, waiting to see the headline body found.
Speaker 1: She hoped she never would. Then she could believe it
Speaker 1: was all fake. But the longer she sat with those
Speaker 1: images in her mind, the more she thought they had
Speaker 1: to be real.
Speaker 13: And you said you could hear the male's voice, could
Speaker 13: you ever see any part of his body and anything?
Speaker 14: No?
Speaker 9: No, no face at all?
Speaker 3: She just feet. What does he look like?
Speaker 12: There's one on there where he's got his foot on
Speaker 12: her throat, and then there's another one.
Speaker 2: Where it's just it looks like it's going in the hotel,
Speaker 2: and the hotel floor is like hard word floor.
Speaker 9: And he's got like a pair of few.
Speaker 2: Shoes or slippers or something. Okay, but why you hear
Speaker 2: his his voice and he's talking to her, just rambling on,
Speaker 2: you know, and then there's parts in there where Oh, bitch,
Speaker 2: you get your ass feet because you can drink all
Speaker 2: my alcohol. Bitch, I gotta go find another bitch because
Speaker 2: you're a viet non cooperative that she never moved.
Speaker 1: In the videos, a man with an unfamiliar accent is
Speaker 1: seen beating, berating, and torturing a woman in a hotel room.
Speaker 1: The woman is completely naked and seemingly unconscious. Her face
Speaker 1: is swollen, her lips are bruised and purple. Her left
Speaker 1: eye is swollen shut with blood trickling from under the lid.
Speaker 1: The man calls her names and stands on her neck,
Speaker 1: all while filming it, seemingly for an audience.
Speaker 13: Can you describe the female play for race slush in
Speaker 13: the way?
Speaker 3: Okay? Do you think she was?
Speaker 10: I don't know.
Speaker 2: It looks like she has.
Speaker 1: Because she's Valerie didn't know the woman, not that she
Speaker 1: could have recognized her with all the swelling anyway. The
Speaker 1: only elites were a strange accent, an accidental photo of
Speaker 1: the man's shoes, and the photo of his truck.
Speaker 2: All I want to know is when you do guys
Speaker 2: find it out? Can you let me know?
Speaker 15: Yeah?
Speaker 9: Yeah, no, I can, Yeah, I can let you know
Speaker 9: kind of.
Speaker 2: I'd like to know her name if you find out
Speaker 2: who she is, because you know, she's finally related.
Speaker 9: She is somebody out there that I know.
Speaker 12: You know.
Speaker 1: Y SD card showed everything, the torture, the suffering, the
Speaker 1: final moments of a woman's life, but it didn't show
Speaker 1: her name. She wasn't in any of the missing persons reports.
Speaker 1: No one was looking for her. The investigation had hit
Speaker 1: a dead end until the US Marshal recognized her face, battered, swollen,
Speaker 1: but familiar. He reached out to a corrections officer at
Speaker 1: Highland Mountain Correctional Facility for confirmation she had been processed
Speaker 1: there before. Her name was Kathleen Henry. She was thirty
Speaker 1: years old, five foot three, with long black hair. Like Valerie,
Speaker 1: she had spent years trapped in a rotation of homeless shelters, streets,
Speaker 1: and survival. Her family last saw her in August at
Speaker 1: a shelter. After that, she was seen in Fairview, a
Speaker 1: rough part of town where Anchorage's homeless gathered. She was struggling,
Speaker 1: but she was alive. Then she wasn't. On October tewod,
Speaker 1: nearly a month after her murder, railroad workers made a
Speaker 1: grisly discovery. Kathleen's remains were found near mile one oh
Speaker 1: eight of the Seward Highway. Her body was already decomposed,
Speaker 1: partially taken by the wilderness. Animals had scattered her remains.
Speaker 1: Her fingers and toes were missing, her left foot was gone.
Speaker 1: A red bag sat nearby, tangled with strands of her
Speaker 1: long black hair and scalp. Kathleen Henry's life didn't end
Speaker 1: the day she was murdered. It ended long before that,
Speaker 1: when the world stopped seeing her. Her death was the
Speaker 1: inevitable result of broken system, one that cycles vulnerable women
Speaker 1: through jails and shelters but never offers them a way out,
Speaker 1: a system where the unhoused commit crimes of survival, shoplifting
Speaker 1: for food, sleeping in abandoned buildings, resorting to prostitution, yeah
Speaker 1: not sex work, prostitution well, predators hunt them in the shadows.
Speaker 1: She was one of the many lost, forgotten, and disposable
Speaker 1: in the eyes of society, and the terrifying truth is
Speaker 1: there are countless others like her. Look around, how many
Speaker 1: more Kathleen Henry's are out there right now waiting to
Speaker 1: be found. The Anchorage police found themselves in possession of
Speaker 1: an SD card with evidence of murder. The videos showed
Speaker 1: the final moments of Kathleen Henry's life, but they didn't
Speaker 1: show the man behind the camera, and without a suspect,
Speaker 1: all the evidence in the world meant nothing. Police knew
Speaker 1: Kathleen hadn't just disappeared, she had been erased. There is
Speaker 1: no missing persons report, no family is searching for. Only
Speaker 1: the system recognized her because it had seen too many
Speaker 1: women like her before, processed, incarcerated, relief forgotten. And that
Speaker 1: wasn't unusual. Indigenous women in Alaska are murdered at rates
Speaker 1: ten times higher than the national average. When homelessness is
Speaker 1: added to the equation, the risks multiply. Kathleen's body confirmed
Speaker 1: what they already knew. Now they needed to find the
Speaker 1: man who put her there, and the SD card was
Speaker 1: about to give them their first clue. When homicide detective
Speaker 1: David Cordy was assigned to the case, he didn't immediately
Speaker 1: know why the case seemed so familiar, but after reviewing
Speaker 1: the videos. He started to recognize the man's method of violence,
Speaker 1: the control, the torture, the strangling. Kathleen Henry's murder wasn't random.
Speaker 1: It wasn't a heat of the moment crime. It was planned, controlled, performed.
Speaker 1: The footage ested that the man behind the camera had
Speaker 1: done this before. A year earlier, Detective Cordy worked on
Speaker 1: another case where a woman reported that her boyfriend had
Speaker 1: dark and disturbing sexual fantasies. At first, she was into it.
Speaker 9: I like rough sets.
Speaker 14: If you put your hand on my neck, I like
Speaker 14: that you can press down a little bit. Dusk did
Speaker 14: try to kill me on and break your nose, your nosing, and.
Speaker 9: He did a little too far.
Speaker 1: A couple of days ago, Alicia Youngblood, an Alaskan native,
Speaker 1: met this married man at work and before long started
Speaker 1: seeing him. It was a sexually charged relationship from the start.
Speaker 1: They shared taboo fantasies and rough sex scenarios. Alicia thought
Speaker 1: it was innocent role play until he shared a video clip.
Speaker 9: He told me he killed her two or three days ago.
Speaker 14: He showed me the video until last night, and then
Speaker 14: the pictures. The pictures are her breast and she's grabbing
Speaker 14: them so hard. I mean, like really hard that they're
Speaker 14: coming up and they're they're what is that called fatiguing
Speaker 14: and veined, and he's got them so hard that the
Speaker 14: blood is pulling.
Speaker 1: This wasn't the SD card. This was a year before
Speaker 1: Valerie Castler would make her discovery.
Speaker 14: He said he was standing over her like this and
Speaker 14: he felt like a a hunter standing over his kill,
Speaker 14: like a lion over zebra. And he said he just
Speaker 14: sat there and puffed his chest out, and he just felt.
Speaker 9: So in power.
Speaker 14: I keep seeing him over and over doing that to
Speaker 14: that girl, and I could hear her bodily fluids as
Speaker 14: he's scamming, you know, and he's slapping down on her legs,
Speaker 14: and you know, she's just so lifeless. That could have
Speaker 14: been any of our little girls that he thought it
Speaker 14: was okay to fish.
Speaker 9: He's dead.
Speaker 3: Him showing you this video is that kind of his?
Speaker 3: Does he his rocks off that? Or did anyone to
Speaker 3: have sex with you?
Speaker 14: Is? Yeah? He would tell you with me okay, And
Speaker 14: I had to pretend like I liked it.
Speaker 3: Did he say why.
Speaker 9: He did it to us? To release anger, to vent
Speaker 9: to get it out of you?
Speaker 1: He showed her pictures and videos of a woman who
Speaker 1: looked dead. He wasn't just into rough sex. He claimed
Speaker 1: he killed her.
Speaker 9: And he just looked at me and.
Speaker 14: He's like, you know, I I kicked her real hard
Speaker 14: in her pussy, trying to break her bone so I
Speaker 14: could get that whole fist in there. But that bone
Speaker 14: is tough. He's like, you would not believe how how
Speaker 14: tough a pubic bone is. He said, I put my
Speaker 14: foot lay up in there, and I was like, oh yeah.
Speaker 9: He's like yeah.
Speaker 14: He said that when she died, everything released, she pooved
Speaker 14: or whatever, and her opened up, he said it, and
Speaker 14: he he's he made his mouth like this, and he
Speaker 14: grabbed my finger and he said I just would have
Speaker 14: felt like okay, So wouldn't y'all believe him if you
Speaker 14: were on the other side of this.
Speaker 8: Wine needs you to believe that he's inside her after
Speaker 8: she passed.
Speaker 3: That is that what you're saying is.
Speaker 9: That, yeah, he was fit with our hands.
Speaker 14: He said he didn't put his penis center, but a
Speaker 14: water bottle his hands.
Speaker 9: He said he we got butter out of the fridge
Speaker 9: and put.
Speaker 14: That helps my two fingerprints and helps him get his
Speaker 14: hand in there because he wants to put fist in there, so.
Speaker 3: He got butter out of the fridge.
Speaker 14: The water bottle I didn't see, but I did ask him, like,
Speaker 14: why are your hands so shiny?
Speaker 8: You know?
Speaker 9: He's like, that's butter. I got better.
Speaker 1: As soon as she saw the images, she tensed up.
Speaker 9: You have to understand just weave and goes in love
Speaker 9: with this smith.
Speaker 1: Suddenly all her love for this man was replaced with fear.
Speaker 1: But she couldn't let him know that, so she kept
Speaker 1: playing along, as I haven't do things to me.
Speaker 14: That proved my loyalty and trust. Does that make sense sexually?
Speaker 14: Like put myself in a position that made me vulnerable
Speaker 14: and he thinks that because I've done that that I
Speaker 14: trust him, and now he trusts me. And hey, you're
Speaker 14: about to see these text messages. I want you to
Speaker 14: remember that I am playing into this. I am not
Speaker 14: a sick person. I am not enjoying any of what
Speaker 14: I told him.
Speaker 1: She thought they were indulging in taboo fantasies, but as
Speaker 1: soon as he showed her how far he was willing
Speaker 1: to go, Alicia got scared, but she was on his
Speaker 1: good side, bonded through the kinky sex, so she kept
Speaker 1: playing along for her safety. She faked jealousy. She scolded
Speaker 1: him for being with another woman. Even if he did
Speaker 1: kill her, he now had to make it up to her.
Speaker 1: Alicia told him he wasn't allowed to do this again
Speaker 1: unless she was there too. So you are role playing
Speaker 1: into the park and you would like to be part
Speaker 1: of this next event?
Speaker 14: Yeah, and his ultimate fantasy at this point. Okay, then
Speaker 14: I'm telling.
Speaker 8: You when it comes to sexual drives, and tell you
Speaker 8: what this man has.
Speaker 14: I've never seen anyone and maybe a fourteen year old boy,
Speaker 14: but who cannot quit playing with his self. I mean
Speaker 14: he's his every waking moment is about says, and really,
Speaker 14: you know, I knew he had fetishes.
Speaker 3: Is he sadistic? Does he like pain and torture on people?
Speaker 3: Or does he just yes?
Speaker 1: Alicia believed what he showed her was real and it
Speaker 1: scared the shit out of her. She played along, but
Speaker 1: not just for her safety. She wanted proof so she
Speaker 1: could go straight to the cops. Unfortunately, she didn't have
Speaker 1: copies of the images or the video. All she had
Speaker 1: were some filthy text conversations that didn't prove anything.
Speaker 9: I know what I saw is reel.
Speaker 14: It had been better, but I saw his face, you know,
Speaker 14: but I know what I saw is reel and I
Speaker 14: know that him telling me about it Israel.
Speaker 9: Apparently there's other clips. I believe you almost one hundred percent.
Speaker 3: I never believe everybody one hundred percent.
Speaker 15: Never.
Speaker 8: I haven't met a person on a Platt's one hundred
Speaker 8: percent troot ball tea.
Speaker 16: But right now, as far as concrete, fracts and evidence.
Speaker 10: We have very little.
Speaker 3: We have your text message, accid.
Speaker 10: We need more.
Speaker 14: Yeah.
Speaker 9: So if he is lying to me and this is awful, sit,
Speaker 9: he's good. But I don't think he's lying.
Speaker 14: That's what he's South African, Okay, Yeah, but you all
Speaker 14: have a British accent, heavy heavy British accent.
Speaker 9: Remember I talked to you. Had it really?
Speaker 14: Me and him have great time together. I mean others didn't.
Speaker 14: In fact, that she's a serial killer.
Speaker 9: He's a funny guy. We cruck each other up all day.
Speaker 1: Her story was disturbing, but there was no proof of
Speaker 1: a crime being committed. The images he showed her could
Speaker 1: have come from anywhere. The Internet is, after all, a
Speaker 1: big scary place. The detective Cordy's surprise, she called him
Speaker 1: the very next day, claiming her boyfriend showed her where
Speaker 1: he dumped the body. The site was far from town,
Speaker 1: hidden in a small clearing in the woods off the
Speaker 1: main road. When they arrived, there wasn't a body there.
Speaker 1: Alicia said her boyfriend thought maybe a bear had taken it,
Speaker 1: since it had been there for a long time. Detective
Speaker 1: Cordy found this unlikely, but followed Alicia as she tried
Speaker 1: to find the landmarks from the pictures. They searched for
Speaker 1: a while, but didn't see anything or smell any decomposition.
Speaker 1: If there was a body, it was gone, or maybe
Speaker 1: the guy was just making the whole thing up for
Speaker 1: some disturbing story fun time. Alicia hoped the murder was
Speaker 1: just a fantasy, but she feared it was real. Detective
Speaker 1: Cordy needed more evidence, though, He returned to the site
Speaker 1: with cadaver dogs and checked her boyfriend's phone data. The
Speaker 1: cadaver dogs found nothing, and the phone record showed her
Speaker 1: boyfriend was not near the site on that day, the
Speaker 1: day she said he dumped the body. The conversations between
Speaker 1: Alicia and her boyfriend seemed to be role play fantasies,
Speaker 1: dark ones, but still just fantasies. No body, no crime.
Speaker 1: A year later, Detective Cordy doubted that assumption. Now he
Speaker 1: had an st card with photos and videos matching Alicia's account.
Speaker 1: Her boyfriend, Brian Stephen Smith, was South African immigrant, had
Speaker 1: a thick accent like Valerie described, and drove a black
Speaker 1: Ford Ranger just like the one in one of the videos.
Speaker 1: Detective Cordy looked up Brian Smith's DMV records. The video
Speaker 1: showed the partial plate number eight seven, which matched Brian's
Speaker 1: plate number FSL eight seven eight. But one thing was
Speaker 1: bugging him.
Speaker 10: If it's any other way you found it, I don't
Speaker 10: really care.
Speaker 13: I just we need to know the truth because this
Speaker 13: is a obviously you saw what.
Speaker 2: I found it on the ground. Honest to god, I
Speaker 2: found it on the ground.
Speaker 5: We're not worried about anything other than where the card game.
Speaker 9: Okay, that guy picked me up.
Speaker 17: That night, Okay, guy in the videos.
Speaker 5: Yeah he picked me up.
Speaker 3: Okay, can you tell me about that?
Speaker 9: You picked me up?
Speaker 17: I was on my way home.
Speaker 9: It was he picked me up. He wanted to do
Speaker 9: a date.
Speaker 7: He's went to the show ron on me to the
Speaker 7: Shill station and it was in his car on his
Speaker 7: dash and I just picked it up.
Speaker 2: That's how I got it.
Speaker 1: Valerie hadn't told the truth at first, not just because
Speaker 1: of the prostitution and theft, but because women like her,
Speaker 1: homeless and struggling with addiction, knew how easily they could
Speaker 1: be ignored or punished instead of helped. Kathleen had disappeared
Speaker 1: without notice, and Valerie was afraid that this might be
Speaker 1: her fate as well. But with a murderer on the loose,
Speaker 1: the cops didn't care about her past. They just needed
Speaker 1: to stop him.
Speaker 7: He's white on he's got short, short hair.
Speaker 2: And it's like a grayish white.
Speaker 3: Okay, okay, what kind of vehicle was he?
Speaker 2: It was a black truck. It was a black truck.
Speaker 7: And like the camper, like how I described the camper,
Speaker 7: and it was a white camper.
Speaker 1: Valerie's full truth confirmed the detective's suspicions. Brian Smith was
Speaker 1: their guy. Quickly, the police coordinated with the FBI and
Speaker 1: Homeland Security to track him down. They found him on
Speaker 1: vacation in Washington, d C. Of all places, with his
Speaker 1: wife in tow. His scheduled return to Anchorage was on
Speaker 1: October eighth. A multi agency operation was set up and
Speaker 1: plans were made to simultaneously serve search warrants on Brian's person, house, truck,
Speaker 1: and workplace. He was arrested as soon as he stepped
Speaker 1: up to the baggage claim. At the same time, detectives
Speaker 1: were in DC confronting his wife. As soon as poor
Speaker 1: Stephanie Bislin stepped out of a local restaurant, she was
Speaker 1: greeted by local detectives and detectives from Anchorage. She asked
Speaker 1: for their credentials, as everyone should, by the way, and
Speaker 1: then agreed to talk.
Speaker 18: So, so the things that we would like to talk
Speaker 18: to you about involved your husband.
Speaker 9: Perhaps he did just become a citizen, and.
Speaker 3: I don't think it was.
Speaker 9: Stephany should know it was. I think the friday before
Speaker 9: we came down here.
Speaker 2: It was so yeah, So he he's his.
Speaker 11: Truck was broken into, kind of took his.
Speaker 9: Bracefist that had all his South African documents. So that's
Speaker 9: where he's from. Yah, South Africa. Where did you guys
Speaker 9: meet in South Africa playing a game? Have you mest
Speaker 9: playing a game?
Speaker 1: Yes, Stephanie met Brian Smith online. He was twenty three
Speaker 1: years younger than her. They played a game called Realm
Speaker 1: of Empires together and hit it off. He managed a
Speaker 1: small hotel in his home country, and his accent gave
Speaker 1: him somewhat of a die ant. Would mystique flash forward
Speaker 1: to the present. They had been married for five years
Speaker 1: and Brian had just gotten his US citizenship?
Speaker 9: Are we taving aria? Is that who you're wanting to
Speaker 9: talk about? Yes? So did you guys ever? Do you
Speaker 9: guys ever? Have your moments?
Speaker 18: I think every relationship, right, every marriage has your moments?
Speaker 19: Right?
Speaker 9: How are those? How would you describe them? Excuse me?
Speaker 11: He tends to slam.
Speaker 1: He'll get and he might leave, and then he'll go back,
Speaker 1: you know where he's calmed out.
Speaker 18: Has he Has he ever threatened you or been or
Speaker 18: made you feel unsafe in any way?
Speaker 9: I have a foidure a couple of times.
Speaker 11: The reason that he left was he was getting so
Speaker 11: mad that he might so he left and they're talking about.
Speaker 9: It, then he might hit me.
Speaker 1: She revealed that Brian had a bit of a temper,
Speaker 1: but was never violent with her. He would leave rather
Speaker 1: than argue. The only thing is sometimes he would leave
Speaker 1: for several days without a word.
Speaker 18: Do you know if he happened to go up to
Speaker 18: or go out of town or do something around the
Speaker 18: first part of September, Can you tell me more?
Speaker 14: So?
Speaker 18: There are some concerns that we have that he may
Speaker 18: or may not be involved with, and so I'm just
Speaker 18: trying to, okay, find out.
Speaker 9: You know, we had a fight. I don't remember exactly
Speaker 9: what it was. So he was on for four days.
Speaker 1: She answered their questions slowly, realizing the situation was way
Speaker 1: more serious than they were letting on. Questions became more personal,
Speaker 1: and Stephanie felt a sense of fear as she wondered
Speaker 1: what this was all about.
Speaker 9: Can I ask you something really personal?
Speaker 10: How's the sex?
Speaker 9: None for a long time? Okay? Like what's a long time? Movies?
Speaker 9: Two years?
Speaker 17: Okay?
Speaker 9: And there wasn't a lot anyway?
Speaker 3: Okay?
Speaker 15: Is and why is that?
Speaker 9: I think I think he thinks he was hurting me
Speaker 9: because he's heavy. I didn't think anybody told him.
Speaker 1: How to be with a girl, that's for damn sure.
Speaker 9: Did somebody say that he did something special? There are
Speaker 9: reports that he may have hurt some women. Really an
Speaker 9: Anchorage an angriage.
Speaker 18: Did you ever feel like he may have been cheating
Speaker 18: on you?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 10: Okay?
Speaker 18: So your husband right now is being interviewed in Anchorage
Speaker 18: by police detectives and he is being.
Speaker 9: Arrested for homicide. No, I'm a woman. I'm sorry that
Speaker 9: I had to be the one to tell you this.
Speaker 9: Was it in my house when I was out? Was
Speaker 9: it Alabar? Was it on a workforce? Was it on
Speaker 9: the side of the road?
Speaker 20: What I want to know?
Speaker 1: Stephanie seemed to be entirely in the dark about Brian's
Speaker 1: extramarital activities. She sat there stunned at the news the
Speaker 1: man she had fallen in love with, helped immigrate to
Speaker 1: the US, married, and had been on vacation with, had
Speaker 1: been accused of murdering a woman. She couldn't reconcile what
Speaker 1: they were saying against the man she knew. She was
Speaker 1: utterly dumbfounded. Well, the seriousness of the matter sank in
Speaker 1: for Stephanie. Brian was just then sitting down with detectives.
Speaker 1: Brian was an unassuming man, of average height, maybe a
Speaker 1: little shorter, and he had short, graying hair. He had
Speaker 1: a large nose and a mouth that seemed to be
Speaker 1: in a perpetual frown. His eyes were trusting, except when
Speaker 1: he furled his brow. Then there was a sense of
Speaker 1: the untamed behind his eyes.
Speaker 13: So like I said, we have some we have some
Speaker 13: matters we need to clear up with you, and I
Speaker 13: just wanted to ask you if you have any any idea,
Speaker 13: any thought in your head about what we might.
Speaker 10: Want to talk to you today about.
Speaker 3: No, my truck was broken into.
Speaker 13: The thing we need to talk about is recently some
Speaker 13: property was brought to APD, and we have to I
Speaker 13: was given that property as a little SD card. I
Speaker 13: viewed the images and the videos on that SD card. Yeah,
Speaker 13: and that's obviously it led. That's how I got to you.
Speaker 13: That's how I figured out who you are, Okay, and
Speaker 13: that's what that's what we need to We need to
Speaker 13: clear up that matter.
Speaker 10: What's on that SD card?
Speaker 3: Okay, what's on the called?
Speaker 1: The card showed a picture of his truck outside the
Speaker 1: Midtown Marriott. He admitted that it was his truck on
Speaker 1: the card. He might have used it for something, but
Speaker 1: he didn't know what they were getting at. So detectives
Speaker 1: asked how often he stayed at the Marriott.
Speaker 3: A few weeks ago, probably a month or two.
Speaker 16: I had a fact of my life and I went
Speaker 16: and stated it.
Speaker 21: And Marriott, Yeah, so what about what day do you
Speaker 21: think that was?
Speaker 9: Okay?
Speaker 10: And how many How many knights did you rent them?
Speaker 10: Do you have to as an employee? Do you have
Speaker 10: to rent the room or how does that work?
Speaker 3: The room?
Speaker 9: Yeah? Okay?
Speaker 10: How many NICs did you rent the room for?
Speaker 3: Probably about two nights?
Speaker 9: Yeah?
Speaker 3: What was your eve name?
Speaker 9: Like?
Speaker 17: Well, I.
Speaker 3: Also falk with you off. You usually drink a hell
Speaker 3: of a lot, so it didn't involve quite a bit
Speaker 3: of alcohol. So okay, did you go anywhere?
Speaker 21: I probably would have driven around a bit, going in
Speaker 21: put some food and stuff.
Speaker 13: Okay, did you meet up with anybody, talk to anybody?
Speaker 3: I probably would have.
Speaker 16: Yeah, between us, I have been known to sometimes go
Speaker 16: out and find a.
Speaker 3: Companion, you know. Okay, did you do that anything that
Speaker 3: particular night? I probably did.
Speaker 13: And I told you I viewed everything on the SD
Speaker 13: card and I did see your truck on there. Anything
Speaker 13: else on that SD card that we need to talk about.
Speaker 3: No, you can show me the card and see. You
Speaker 3: can show me what's on me if you want to.
Speaker 1: Okay, he slid a photo across the table. It was
Speaker 1: a picture of Kathleen.
Speaker 13: I just wanted to show you picture c DA would
Speaker 13: help you kind of refresh the girl from that night.
Speaker 10: No, that's not it not just short for here, okay.
Speaker 1: Then he slid a photo of his truck in front
Speaker 1: of the hotel across the table.
Speaker 10: I mentioned I told you on there that how I
Speaker 10: found you as.
Speaker 3: I saw your drug is that that's that's my truck.
Speaker 3: That's your trug.
Speaker 16: Okay, I recognized the rooms and my gray kenopy.
Speaker 1: Then he slid a photo of a man's shoes across
Speaker 1: the table.
Speaker 13: This is one of the images on there. Part of
Speaker 13: it is kind of cut down a little bit. But
Speaker 13: can you tell me what's in that photo?
Speaker 21: There's somebody's feet, Okay, whose feet are those?
Speaker 3: I don't know?
Speaker 10: Okay, I'm gonna shoot. I mean it looks looks like
Speaker 10: the shoes you wear right now?
Speaker 3: Yeah, it does, so okay, it's it safe to say those.
Speaker 10: Are your feet in that picture?
Speaker 3: I don't okay, I'm not that he puts in his
Speaker 3: shoes like this.
Speaker 1: Detectives had seen all kinds of reactions before, anger, denial, fear,
Speaker 1: but Brian was different. When they showed him the picture,
Speaker 1: he only shrugged. The detective didn't dwell on his shoes,
Speaker 1: even though they were obviously the exact same pair he
Speaker 1: was wearing. Next He slid more photos of Kathleen over,
Speaker 1: but these were from the SD card.
Speaker 3: So what can you.
Speaker 10: Tell me about this?
Speaker 3: This looks like someone that's already been beaten up a bit.
Speaker 13: Okay, And these are these are images, these are these
Speaker 13: are images. But there's also videos of this person. Yeah,
Speaker 13: and another person in the room as well. And that's
Speaker 13: what I'm that's why we're here to talk to you about.
Speaker 3: You think I hit this goal?
Speaker 10: Well, I said, there's video. There's videos of it. There's
Speaker 10: a video of it, there's audio of it.
Speaker 13: There's a voice that's I've been talking to you now
Speaker 13: for almost thirty.
Speaker 10: Forty minutes, and I know it was your voice. I
Speaker 10: could hear in the video.
Speaker 1: Then he played the video.
Speaker 3: Camera bitch.
Speaker 4: Dying, fucking mind, seem tired, her fucking horrible.
Speaker 3: Just I'm being too long soon, Just king, is Jesus
Speaker 3: what's happening?
Speaker 13: When that's what's happening is on this video, on these images,
Speaker 13: the person that's recording it is holding the recorder and
Speaker 13: is standing basically above this girl and and strangling her.
Speaker 3: Okay, I don't.
Speaker 13: I'm not.
Speaker 3: I'm not denying. I'm not.
Speaker 14: I'm not.
Speaker 3: I'm not saying you're lying, but I don't.
Speaker 13: Remember anything not this, So what you're saying is definitely
Speaker 13: you talking on the recording, on the idea.
Speaker 16: There, so that you don't recall that that that's about
Speaker 16: That sounds about voice.
Speaker 3: I've got a unique voice. It's English mixed with the Dutch.
Speaker 1: Check mate, Brian was polite and presentable. It was hard
Speaker 1: to believe you could do what he did, but they
Speaker 1: had video evidence. You seem to have no recollection of
Speaker 1: doing anything like that to anyone. Then he paused, swallowed hard,
Speaker 1: and acknowledged how serious this was.
Speaker 3: Look this, this sounds very serious. No matter what, I'm
Speaker 3: gonna be in deep shipped. So okay, I'll tell you
Speaker 3: what I remember. The next day it worked.
Speaker 21: I saw something dropping out the back of my truck
Speaker 21: and I was I loved that hell. And I opened
Speaker 21: up and there was somebody there underneath.
Speaker 3: There was a blue like a top with the back
Speaker 3: of my mut truck. I was thinking for a long time,
Speaker 3: what the hell what m was I do?
Speaker 21: And being the one I've got to get rid of this.
Speaker 3: A colant and I drove out and I did, went
Speaker 3: him do.
Speaker 1: It detectively, thanked him for his honesty and chose not
Speaker 1: to press the whole I don't remember excuse. Instead, he
Speaker 1: asked about Alicia Youngblood.
Speaker 10: I want to ask you to kind of shift care
Speaker 10: a little bit. Alicia young Blood?
Speaker 3: Can we talk about her for a little bit? Okay, okay,
Speaker 3: why can you tell me about Alicia? Don't tell my
Speaker 3: wife about it? But he said, last year we had
Speaker 3: a small little off a.
Speaker 13: So I've seen the stuff you've chatted about, the stuff
Speaker 13: you and Alicia talked about, and that's what I want
Speaker 13: to talk to you about.
Speaker 3: Okay. Alisha and I did do some fantasy stuff.
Speaker 21: I'm usually quite conservative about six and then she lost
Speaker 21: me to slaper, you know, and we made we actually
Speaker 21: made up fantasies almost like this, you know, you kill somebody?
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, and right and all that. I mean,
Speaker 3: we sweep.
Speaker 10: Did you guys would talk about that?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Yeah, fantasy. That's fantasy stuff.
Speaker 1: Then why are freaks like this never freaky with their
Speaker 1: own spouses? That's what they're for. I mean, why even
Speaker 1: get married if you're not gonna be open and honest
Speaker 1: about your kinks with the person you allegedly love. Listen
Speaker 1: to me trying to rationalize the psychic paths actions. It's
Speaker 1: no wonder if some of you think I'm a dumbass.
Speaker 1: You're sure detectively that all the talk with this show
Speaker 1: was pure fantasy, which was hard to say considering the
Speaker 1: images and videos on the SD card. Detectives couldn't look
Speaker 1: past the striking similarities between Brian's fantasies and what he
Speaker 1: actually did in those videos.
Speaker 13: Is it possible that, like on this evening you some
Speaker 13: of those fantasies were coming out, because I mean, that's
Speaker 13: exactly what she did on those videos. That's what she
Speaker 13: did to this girl, except she wasn't she wasn't enjoying it, and.
Speaker 10: You were talking to her.
Speaker 3: I mean, that's my books.
Speaker 13: But you were talking to her clearly as we're talking
Speaker 13: right now, and pointing out things and and laughing and
Speaker 13: saying things. And in my movies, sadly everybody dies. Bitch,
Speaker 13: what are my followers going to think of you? People
Speaker 13: need to know when they're being serial killed. These are
Speaker 13: things you're saying to.
Speaker 10: Her while you're doing that.
Speaker 3: I say, that's that's what.
Speaker 8: You don't remember this particular one because you've killed so
Speaker 8: many You've told.
Speaker 3: Me that she's being serial killed.
Speaker 8: No, we need to be investigating you for killing people here,
Speaker 8: killing people in South Africa.
Speaker 16: We need to I mean, no, this thing was a
Speaker 16: nish kidding people. That's just me and trying to outdo
Speaker 16: each other on Don't.
Speaker 3: You tell her the same thing?
Speaker 10: That's what you tell her in the video.
Speaker 13: You're telling her that as you're strangling her, as you're
Speaker 13: stepping your foot onto her throat, as you're punching her
Speaker 13: in the vagina as.
Speaker 3: Hard as you can and kicking her into the vagina.
Speaker 13: Poking her in the eye and laughing about it, talking
Speaker 13: about killing her and die bitch, and telling her to
Speaker 13: die and getting mad when she starts gasping, interfering with
Speaker 13: my drinking time.
Speaker 3: It sounds like something I would say.
Speaker 1: You did say it, Yeah, sounds like something I would say,
Speaker 1: What the fuck?
Speaker 21: I shouldn't have spoken just Alicia got stupid things like it,
Speaker 21: you know.
Speaker 10: But you didn't just speak to her about it.
Speaker 13: You showed her videos of you punching the women in
Speaker 13: the vagina, buttering up your fist and shoving it into
Speaker 13: the vagina, kicking them in the vagina. You showed she
Speaker 13: saw these things, and she was frankly, and you.
Speaker 10: Told her if I whether it was was.
Speaker 13: Oh no, man, And it's exactly the same thing to
Speaker 13: ever seen in these videos.
Speaker 16: If I was going to have a fantasy going further on,
Speaker 16: I could have carried on with Alisha.
Speaker 3: You know this is a year later, except Alicia.
Speaker 10: Yeah, you have a history with Alicia. She's You know
Speaker 10: how easy it would be to find out who killed Alicia.
Speaker 8: He would have had a several months relationship if Alicia
Speaker 8: was killed, But it wouldn't It wouldn't be difficult to
Speaker 8: pinpoint you for it.
Speaker 3: But if you pick up.
Speaker 8: Somebody in the in the darken of the night, who's
Speaker 8: an injured person, homeless person down by the homeless.
Speaker 10: Shelter, these are the type of people that are.
Speaker 3: Perfect for this.
Speaker 1: Throughout the conversation with Brian, detectives learned that he often
Speaker 1: cruised the streets near homeless shelters looking for companions, and
Speaker 1: by often, I mean a lot. For Brian Smith, ank
Speaker 1: Ridge's homeless shelters were hunting grounds. The same women society
Speaker 1: ignored he targeted. Alaskan Natives, making up a fraction of
Speaker 1: the city's population, were excessively among the unhoused, living in shelters,
Speaker 1: deserted buildings, or braving the brutal winters outside, and Brian
Speaker 1: knew that no one would come looking for them.
Speaker 8: So you really you said maybe three times in a
Speaker 8: couple of years, and now we've already have Now we
Speaker 8: already have three, three in about a month.
Speaker 10: So are we sure that you.
Speaker 3: Well before before this go from this not?
Speaker 22: There was probably about three times that I picked up
Speaker 22: a goal, so maybe six.
Speaker 21: Yeah, so sorry when you and I say three, it
Speaker 21: was three before.
Speaker 3: So we also three full five six?
Speaker 1: Yeah, motherfucker can count, but not do basic math.
Speaker 8: Apparently anything about this these particular type of people as
Speaker 8: it is, Does he have something that against Native women?
Speaker 3: I've asked myself that question. Is it a racial thing?
Speaker 3: And it's no, it's incidence they have unto.
Speaker 10: The danges in the people.
Speaker 9: They had to be.
Speaker 22: Easy angry that they make a to the not an
Speaker 22: oobposent to the angless people.
Speaker 1: What an asshole? Anybody with a hair collect that you
Speaker 1: know as an asshole. According to the Anchorage Coalition to
Speaker 1: End Homelessness, in twenty twenty four, there were nine five
Speaker 1: and twenty four homeless people registered in their programs. Of those,
Speaker 1: ninety five hundred forty seven point three percent were Alaskan Natives.
Speaker 1: That's a very high number when you consider that Alaskan
Speaker 1: Natives only make up fifteen point six percent of the
Speaker 1: state's population. That means five percent of all Alaskan Natives
Speaker 1: are homeless, probably due to the white man's delicious alcoholic beverages.
Speaker 1: The longer they talked to Brian, the more he revealed
Speaker 1: he wasn't panicked, he wasn't even defensive. Admitted it was
Speaker 1: his truck in the pictures and his voice in the videos,
Speaker 1: but he still claimed he couldn't remember anything about that night.
Speaker 10: So she did she want to leave that night and
Speaker 10: you didn't want her to go.
Speaker 3: I'm serious, I don't remember this girl. I believe, I
Speaker 3: believe everything you're saying. I honestly don't remember anything up
Speaker 3: until the morning I woke up. I opened the back
Speaker 3: of my truck and yeah, it was a person line there.
Speaker 3: No one else could have put it there. I must have.
Speaker 3: You've got photograph of you could of being putting the there.
Speaker 3: But I do not remember it.
Speaker 10: You think everybody's gonna understand.
Speaker 3: That, no one's going to believe it. I don't believe
Speaker 3: it's going to make that happen because we're gonna go.
Speaker 10: We have more than we have evidence showed.
Speaker 1: It happened, and the evidence was a lot. They had
Speaker 1: Valerie's statement that she got the SD card from him.
Speaker 1: They had the timestamps on the images and videos that
Speaker 1: matched his stead at the hotel. They had the GPS
Speaker 1: data putting him at the dump site. They had the
Speaker 1: image of his truck with part of his license plate showing,
Speaker 1: and of course they had his voice on video.
Speaker 21: You've got of lends me outdone that you're putting stories
Speaker 21: in my head that maybe it's a fantasy gone all
Speaker 21: for it's something how I didn't remember.
Speaker 10: Well, I actually don't think it's any of those things.
Speaker 3: I think you remember.
Speaker 8: So knowing that this this person is this person, and
Speaker 8: this person's dead and that you only wants dumped her
Speaker 8: body out on the highway.
Speaker 3: Do you have remorse? You see? And yeah, I don't
Speaker 3: like to know that I've done it to someone. I
Speaker 3: don't like that.
Speaker 1: Science, and by science I mean chat GPT tells us
Speaker 1: that amnesia is a real phenomenon. I have my doubts.
Speaker 1: It's especially doubtful when the amnesia is selective, like remembering
Speaker 1: Kathleen but not remembering what you did to her. It's
Speaker 1: pretty convenient that nobody can actually verify this, Like we
Speaker 1: can't put on a headset like Christopher Walking and Brainstorm
Speaker 1: and step inside someone's mind to see what they actually
Speaker 1: remember or don't. Sorry for the eighties movie reference, Millennials,
Speaker 1: but Brian never admitted to killing Kathleen. He only admitted
Speaker 1: that it must have been him. To the detectives. It
Speaker 1: was way too convenient to have no memory of the murder,
Speaker 1: but they had plenty of evidence even if he didn't
Speaker 1: actually confess. The video told more than who did what.
Speaker 1: It showed a man with experience.
Speaker 8: Have you been involved in any missing persons or any
Speaker 8: other murders in the state of Alaska?
Speaker 14: No?
Speaker 15: I haven't.
Speaker 8: No, it's just this one.
Speaker 10: This is the only person you've ever killed. Yes.
Speaker 3: Are you gonna taking off to prison? Yes, that's that's
Speaker 3: the step at the end of this night. Okay.
Speaker 1: After speaking with Brian for over five hours, they were
Speaker 1: convinced he had more to tell, but they were satisfied
Speaker 1: they already had him dead to rights, so they left
Speaker 1: the room and let him stew for a while. When
Speaker 1: they returned, they had paperwork for him to sign, but
Speaker 1: he blurted something out.
Speaker 3: Oh you guys in a rush to go, and we
Speaker 3: had to rush. Yeah, you want to talk some more?
Speaker 23: Sometime, I thought, Emily, I big type of very drunk gool.
Speaker 3: All life was gone.
Speaker 23: She was away for the weekend, not to go home,
Speaker 23: and I I.
Speaker 1: Shot for all his denial, all his I can't remember.
Speaker 1: He openly admitted that Kathleen wasn't the first, she wasn't
Speaker 1: the only one. Ain't that weird? Ain't that something?
Speaker 9: Boy?
Speaker 1: Guess Mike was right again? Give me a second while
Speaker 1: I pat myself on the back. Ow I forgot how
Speaker 1: old I am. I shouldn't be stretching like that. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna pull something anyway. Despite Brian's sudden re emergence of
Speaker 1: memory and his humble brag, y'all haven't seen anything yet.
Speaker 1: When the truth of what this South African scumbag did
Speaker 1: played out in court, even the most hardened jurors weren't
Speaker 1: prepared for what they were about to see. After detectives
Speaker 1: confirmed Brian Smith was the owner of the SD card
Speaker 1: and confronted him with the pictures and videos on it,
Speaker 1: he claimed to have no memory of it. He admitted
Speaker 1: to dumping Kathleen Henry's body after finding her in the
Speaker 1: back of his truck the next morning. But the conversation
Speaker 1: with Brian revealed that he often sought the companion of
Speaker 1: anchoragees homeless, begging the question are there more murdered Indigenous
Speaker 1: women out there waiting to be found? When they asked Brian,
Speaker 1: he said no, But moments later he suddenly remembered things
Speaker 1: and he confessed to a different murder he committed years earlier.
Speaker 3: She actually seemed like a last person.
Speaker 21: I picked up and I said, hey, you want some
Speaker 21: warm food in a warm place at sleep stunt And
Speaker 21: she was like, yeah, sure, she jumped you, but she
Speaker 21: was she was.
Speaker 3: She was really drunk. She was slurring it.
Speaker 21: And I took her home and she fell asleep on
Speaker 21: the on the couch in front of the TV. And
Speaker 21: she was smelling, and I knew she was homeless thing,
Speaker 21: you know, she was she was thinking and I was
Speaker 21: getting up, said and I said to her, go to
Speaker 21: take a shower, you know, because now there's smelling in
Speaker 21: the house.
Speaker 3: You know. She wouldn't do it, she says.
Speaker 21: She'd kept saying no, no, and I was worried she's
Speaker 21: gonna bomber now, because then I realized that she really
Speaker 21: had been drinking a lot, no excuse, but I had
Speaker 21: also been drinking.
Speaker 3: I clearly remember this, and again I'm not lying to you.
Speaker 3: I don't remember. I can't visualize this, this this girl.
Speaker 3: But I went through to the garage and I got
Speaker 3: my little pistol there.
Speaker 21: I said to go to the shower, and she wouldn't.
Speaker 21: She wouldn't, you wouldn't, And I just did it, and
Speaker 21: I got.
Speaker 3: Well, she was on the couch. Yeah, I just did.
Speaker 3: I just chopped it. They missed that thing. I can
Speaker 3: tell you honestly, being there was no emotion. Now, I
Speaker 3: just just you're not listening to me. Shower.
Speaker 1: He shot her in his own home because she was
Speaker 1: smelly and wouldn't take a shower. This chilling confession came
Speaker 1: out of Brian almost nonchalantly.
Speaker 3: So do you remember if she was white?
Speaker 17: Black?
Speaker 3: All those people they are native the murname? No?
Speaker 8: No, do you remember reading anything about any remains being found?
Speaker 16: And I actually did look Okay, yeah, so.
Speaker 3: Actually I did. Last you guys, those pictures I showed Lesia,
Speaker 3: they were the real ones of what of her. I
Speaker 3: did have a photo of me trying to stick monthingus into.
Speaker 8: The giant, So that was a real photo of you
Speaker 8: doing that to the person you shot, was up before
Speaker 8: or after you shot her.
Speaker 1: Often the photos and videos he shared with Alicia were real.
Speaker 1: She had been right all long. Detective Lee laid out
Speaker 1: some photos of missing women, and Brian immediately picked out
Speaker 1: his first victim. Her name was Veronica Abauchuk. She was
Speaker 1: fifty two and, like Valerie and Kathleen, battled addiction and homelessness.
Speaker 1: She was last seen in July of twenty eighteen by
Speaker 1: her family at a local shelter. Shortly after that, she
Speaker 1: stopped communicating with them, but, unlike Kathleen, Veronica's family reported
Speaker 1: her missing in early twenty nineteen. Her remains were discovered
Speaker 1: in April, but never identified. Brian later led police to
Speaker 1: the site where he dumped her, the same site where
Speaker 1: he took Alicia to. Brian Smith was arrested for the
Speaker 1: murder of Kathleen Henry, charged with multiple counts of first
Speaker 1: degree murder, second degree murder, second degree sexual assault, tampering
Speaker 1: with evidence, and misconduct involving a corpse, But after he
Speaker 1: confessed to the murder of another homeless Alaskan native, Veronica Abauchuk.
Speaker 1: A grand jury indicted him for her murder as well.
Speaker 1: They added more counts for first degree murder, second degree murder,
Speaker 1: tampering with evidence, and misconduct involving a corpse. It all
Speaker 1: added up to fourteen individual charges against Brian. During his arraignment,
Speaker 1: he pleaded not guilty to all charges, wasting the court's
Speaker 1: time and the taxpayers money. In the trial, the defense
Speaker 1: would argue that the most substantial evidence came from an
Speaker 1: unreliable source. They decided that Valerie stole the card and
Speaker 1: that she had more than enough time for the images
Speaker 1: and videos to be doctored. Now, I don't know about you,
Speaker 1: but I'm not willing to believe that a homeless Indigenous
Speaker 1: person in Alaska is an expert at photoshop. It was
Speaker 1: a pretty weak argument, to say the least. When the
Speaker 1: prosecution played the videos for the jury, warning and I
Speaker 1: would take this one seriously. What you're about to hear
Speaker 1: is Kathleen Henry taking her last breaths at the hands
Speaker 1: of Brian Smith. She's already very beaten and seemingly unconscious.
Speaker 1: But the following audio is rough, to say the least.
Speaker 19: And you're live, you die, you're lie, you die, you live,
Speaker 19: you die, you live, you die, you die.
Speaker 3: Sadly.
Speaker 24: In my movies, everyone dies.
Speaker 3: I get the Oscar bitch.
Speaker 1: Oh, Nina, I get the Oscar bitch. So that's what
Speaker 1: it takes. He toys with her, laughing, hysterically, taught her
Speaker 1: with a brief release, only to strangle her harder. All
Speaker 1: the while, he talks to the camera as if someone
Speaker 1: is watching him, as if this shit is going up
Speaker 1: on YouTube or something.
Speaker 25: Take seven, Part five, subsection C. The bitch would not
Speaker 25: fucking go away. It's called like, we don't like you anymore,
Speaker 25: so just fuck off. You're resisting me, okay, fucking So,
Speaker 25: here's the throat.
Speaker 3: Here's the heir. Yes, the string of God a stringer.
Speaker 4: If I'm gonna pull the string, yeah, it's pull tartanized
Speaker 4: your face, fucking Ford, You fucking strap posing bitch.
Speaker 9: Jesus.
Speaker 24: Fuck do people have to be taught out dark these days?
Speaker 24: After fucking fucking twenty thousand fucking years of evolution, you
Speaker 24: haven't learned to die yet?
Speaker 15: Eh?
Speaker 9: Fuck bitch, Jesus.
Speaker 3: Fuck.
Speaker 24: I don't fucking calm for your ship.
Speaker 9: You're fucking up my.
Speaker 26: Drinking, fucking fucking half bottle of whiskey still to go
Speaker 26: through and it's really like fucking leaving fucking out, fucking bitch.
Speaker 1: It's important to notice that there is no evidence that
Speaker 1: Brian uploaded any pictures or videos to the Internet, yet
Speaker 1: he still addresses the camera as the audience. He feels
Speaker 1: that he is performing, but he is getting tired.
Speaker 4: We're going on for no fucking lives. He's like fucking
Speaker 4: half an hour and we're going on half an hour
Speaker 4: and now, fuck, bitch, you are taking so the longest ever.
Speaker 4: He secure you fucking sort of lost down to my
Speaker 4: fucking car and can dump you fucking somewhere.
Speaker 3: You just fucked up mind time fucking.
Speaker 26: An evenion, bitch. I'm gonna fuck you up sbtly You're
Speaker 26: gonna need to change your lids and oh Jesus, now
Speaker 26: you want to fucking people need to corporate people need
Speaker 26: to know when they're fucking mean, serial killed fucked the
Speaker 26: shirt bitch, and you're like a god be on my
Speaker 26: fucking hand.
Speaker 9: What the fuck.
Speaker 1: Do you want to give me?
Speaker 24: A fucking NIPDDA is fucking d e if in g
Speaker 24: and Kenya wasn't fucking just fucking die.
Speaker 1: He was the producer, director, and star of the film.
Speaker 1: He called her names, knelt on her chest, and slapped her.
Speaker 1: He strangled her over and over. He showcased her injuries
Speaker 1: to the camera, but when he got tired, he stood
Speaker 1: on her neck until she died. And when it was over, the.
Speaker 3: Hate the log button.
Speaker 17: Please.
Speaker 1: I don't like the death penalty. I don't like the
Speaker 1: idea of giving the state the power to kill its
Speaker 1: own citizens. But after watching this performance, it's hard to
Speaker 1: argue against it, really hard. Inside the courtroom, the jury
Speaker 1: watched the twelve videos without blinking. The families of Kathleen
Speaker 1: Henry and Veronica Abautchuk couldn't see the videos, but they
Speaker 1: could hear them. They sat there silently, watching the jury's
Speaker 1: horrified reactions. For somebody who couldn't stop narrating a murder,
Speaker 1: Brian was silent throughout the entire trial. Outside the courthouse,
Speaker 1: a group of people seemed to reflect the inner turmoil
Speaker 1: of the jury's ghastly expressions. A protest had gathered. A
Speaker 1: deleted photo was recovered from Brian's phone. It showed a
Speaker 1: third Native woman. She appeared passed out on the grass.
Speaker 1: Either that or she was already dead.
Speaker 5: He asked me if I could look at another photograph
Speaker 5: that was actually in Brian Steven Smith's phone and his
Speaker 5: deleted files, and I says, sure. So I looked through
Speaker 5: FaceTime and I could see through faith time that yes,
Speaker 5: it was Cassandra.
Speaker 3: It took a.
Speaker 5: Double book, but yeah, And I instantly just started crying.
Speaker 1: The family of Cassandra Boskovsky was convinced it was her,
Speaker 1: and the fact that her picture was found on Brian's
Speaker 1: phone made them fear the worst. Unfortunately, Brian was done confessing,
Speaker 1: and once again there was no body. Even if it
Speaker 1: was Cassandra on Brian's phone, they couldn't prove a crime
Speaker 1: had been committed. Kexander was just another missing, homeless Alaskan native. Later,
Speaker 1: her family would have her declared legally dead without ever
Speaker 1: knowing what happened to her. Back inside the courtroom, the
Speaker 1: family of Kathleen Henry had to learn that although Brian
Speaker 1: didn't upload his heinous crime to the internet, he did
Speaker 1: share what he had done to someone.
Speaker 3: This is from Smith's filone.
Speaker 20: I have something to show you, period, something I can't
Speaker 20: keep for too long. Need to find a secluded spot
Speaker 20: to meet and he responds, I was not upcomma sounds
Speaker 20: like you were.
Speaker 10: Having a lot of fun. I did have fun, wanted
Speaker 10: to share.
Speaker 1: The man Brian was texting met him after the murder
Speaker 1: of Kathleen so he could see the body too. What
Speaker 1: a couple of sick fucks, he pleaded the fifth didn't
Speaker 1: have to testify and get this was never charged. What horseship.
Speaker 1: I can't for a meme, But this assholes walk around
Speaker 1: society doing just fine.
Speaker 17: Okay, ass Henry was slowly beaten to death and strangled
Speaker 17: to death and tortured to death. As about chick, didn't
Speaker 17: it actually suffer as much? But she was treated like
Speaker 17: a thing to be used and cast aside. Both were
Speaker 17: treated about as horribly as a person can be treated.
Speaker 17: Killings like this that are publicized affect all of society,
Speaker 17: and especially women in our society. It's the stuff of nightmares.
Speaker 17: They strip women of any feelings of safety in their
Speaker 17: own neighborhoods. That damage continues long after the crimes are solved.
Speaker 1: As no surprise, Brian was unanimously found guilty of all
Speaker 1: fourteen charges. He was sentenced to ninety nine years for
Speaker 1: each and two counts of first degree premeditated merd her.
Speaker 1: All the other charges, including the aggravating factor that he
Speaker 1: tortured Kathleen, which eliminated any chance of parole, added up
Speaker 1: to another twenty eight years. All in all, Brian Stephen
Speaker 1: Smith was sentenced to two hundred and twenty six years
Speaker 1: in prison to run consecutively. They left the families of
Speaker 1: Kathleen and Veronica feeling just a little bit better.
Speaker 10: They're at peace now.
Speaker 15: That's the most important. And for me, her sister, Veronica,
Speaker 15: Ronica's sister, and Kathleen's family, it's been too long and
Speaker 15: today is life celebration and spiritual celebration.
Speaker 1: But Brian's wife, Stephanie, was left completely dumbfounded and questioning
Speaker 1: her own intelligence. Can you blame her?
Speaker 9: I've never seen anything that dark in him. When I
Speaker 9: think about that, I think, how could I have missed?
Speaker 9: How can you missed something like that?
Speaker 14: You know?
Speaker 1: To add insult to injury. Two months after his conviction
Speaker 1: of federal grand jury charged him with one count of
Speaker 1: unlawful procurement of naturalization and one count of unlawful procurement
Speaker 1: of naturalization by an ineligible person. You see, one of
Speaker 1: the questions they ask you when applying for naturalization is
Speaker 1: have you ever been involved in a killing, sexual assault,
Speaker 1: or have you ever committed or assisted in committing or
Speaker 1: attempted to commit a crime you were not arrested for
Speaker 1: Brian answered no. If convicted, which is likely, his citizenship
Speaker 1: will be revoked and he will be deported, and then
Speaker 1: some dumb bitch with a septum ring and clown hair
Speaker 1: will protest about it on the streets of Portland and
Speaker 1: uploaded to TikTok, because that's the fucked up country of morons.
Speaker 1: We live in America, Land of the woke, home of
Speaker 1: the dump. Brian Smith is behind bars, but the crisis
Speaker 1: is far from over. Justice first victims doesn't fix the
Speaker 1: real problem. Kathleen Henry and Veronica Aboutchuk weren't just murdered.
Speaker 1: They were failed. Failed by a system that allows Indigenous
Speaker 1: women to disappear without a trace, failed by a society
Speaker 1: that barely notices when the most vulnerable go missing. And
Speaker 1: if Valerie Castler had never stolen that SD card, would
Speaker 1: Brian Smith have ever been caught? Probably not.
Speaker 3: Well, I can tell you that day roll was me.
Speaker 21: I mean, it's obviously it's a second top, so's would
Speaker 21: be that's to I didn't There's no way to come
Speaker 21: back from that.
Speaker 3: There's no way, well, not personally.
Speaker 21: Even it's yeah, I'm not I'm not timpering in saying
Speaker 21: I'm not not anything like it.
Speaker 22: I am saying I know exactly what i've but yeah,
Speaker 22: I've gone too far. I don't want to go on.
Speaker 22: Are you glad of that? I'm glad.
Speaker 3: You're glad You're not gonna be able to hurt anybody else.
Speaker 1: Yeah, somewhere in Anchorage, on the streets and the shelters
Speaker 1: and the shadows, another woman is disappearing right now and
Speaker 1: no one is paying attention. Bryan Smith knew what kind
Speaker 1: of women wouldn't be missed. He counted on it, he
Speaker 1: thrived on it, and the system proved him right again
Speaker 1: and again. Kathleen, Henry Veronica about Check weren't the first
Speaker 1: to be forgotten, and unless things change, they won't be
Speaker 1: the last. Right now is a great time to go
Speaker 1: check out Sword and Scale Television. If you've been curious
Speaker 1: about it. For just twenty bucks, you can binge through
Speaker 1: all twenty episodes. That's a steal. You can find it
Speaker 1: at swordscale dot com.