Cape Town — A South African man living in the USA was sentenced to 226 years in prison for the murder of two Alaskan women who had been missing since 2019.
The man was identified as 53-year-old Brian Steven Smith, who was born in Queenstown in the Eastern Cape. He was identified as the murderer of 30-year-old Kathleen Henry and 52-year-old Veronica Abouchuk in Anchorage, Alaska, SABC News reported.
Smith became an American citizen shortly before he killed and tortured Henry in an Anchorage hotel in 2019. He was charged with Abouchuk’s murder more than one year earlier.
Authorities confirmed that the location Smith gave for disposing of her body was the same site where Alaska state troopers recovered her skull with a gunshot wound in April 2019.
One of Smith’s murders was filmed and, upon questioning, he admitted that he was the man in the footage and had disposed of the victim’s body.
Smith was identified as a South African, due to his strong accent, through the torture video which was found on a digital camera that was turned over to the police.
South African-born killer Brian Steven Smith (53) was sentenced to 226 years in Alaska for 2 murders and 14 other crimes. Smith recorded himself raping and killing a homeless Alaskan Woman Kathleen Jo Henry (30) and Veronica Abouchuk (50). The videos and images were copied by a… pic.twitter.com/ee3T4KvcKG
— CrimeInSA (@sa_crime) July 22, 2024
As reported by The Citizen, Superior Court Judge, Kevin Saxby, handed down the sentence to Smith and said the only course of action was so Smith would not see the light of day again.
“There is no hope. There is no restoration. There is only preventing Mr. Smith from killing again,” he said.
“The video, along with photos found on the device, showed that Smith had tortured a then unknown woman before killing her, disposing of her body, and attempting to hide the evidence,” the department said.
According to Court TV, the jury watched a five-and-a-half-hour interview that police did with Smith, during which he told officers: “That sounds like me. I’m convinced I have done this, I know I must have done this. That is me. That is my stomach, that is me,” when shown clips of the murder.
While vehemently denying any memory of the murders, Smith told police during the interview: “This is my fault. I have dug my own grave, I cannot blame anyone else.”
Videos from the memory card were shown during the trial.
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.”
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Compiled by Matthew Petersen
