[Intro Music]
Hello and welcome to another spine-chilling episode of Beyond the Unknown. I'm your host, Joli, and I’m Quinn, and today, we’re diving into a case where an act of theft uncovered gruesome murders that would shock police and the people of Alaska.
[Transition Music]
DISCLAIMER: The following episode covers a case of sexual violence against women. Listeners discretion is advised.
The story starts in September of 2019, in Ankorage, Alaska, when Valerie Casler, a unhoused woman from the area, is on a date with a John. Typical to most dates, they drive around, drink a little, and then they go to a shell gas station so the John can get some cash from the ATM. While she’s waiting alone in the vehicle, she sees his phone in the center console and decides to snag it. You see, Valerie wasn’t in the best place. She was unhoused, living in a tent behind the Shiloh Missionary Baptist Church, and the phone could go a long way if she sold it.
After the date, Valerie, and the stolen phone, leave the Johns black truck. It’s unclear when, but sometime after the date, Valerie decides to look through the device, and what she finds is horrifying.
On the phone, she found several photos and videos of a woman being raped, tortured, and murdered in a hotel. The woman was so badly beaten that she was unrecognizable but she could tell by the voice that it was her friend who had vanished earlier in the month, 30-year old Kathleen Jo Henry, who was an indigenous woman from the village of Eek before moving to Anchorage. She knew she needed to hand these files to the police because this person might hurt someone else if she didn’t act fast enough.
Worried that the phone theft or sex work might land her in some hot water, Valerie copies the files to an SD memory card, and labels it “Murder at Midtown Marriott.” So, on September 30th, Valerie phones the police to tell them about the discovery and claims she found the memory card on the road.
The police quickly jump into gear and analyze the footage on the memory card. They see the graphic and violent content of this defenceless woman who lay covered in blood and bruises next to a hotel bed. The video depicted acts of torture that were being narrated by a man with a thick South African accent. So trigger warning for anyone listening, skip the next 30-seconds.
In the video, this man is seen repeatedly strangling a woman with his bare hands, stepping on her throat, her stomach, and pinching her body. He narrates the acts he is doing to her and at one point tells her that she is going to die at this hotel. The most chilling quote from the clip is when the man says this:
“In my movies, everybody always dies. What are my followers going to think of me? People need to know when they are being serial-killed.”
Serial killed!!?!?
Although the police had actual murder tapes and potentially an identity for the victim, they didn’t have any video footage of the killer himself nor the name. All Valerie knew about the guy was that he was South African and drove a big black truck.
And two days later, after the delivery of this evidence, police responded to a call made by Alaska Railway employees about human remains that were found along the along the railroad tracks near mile 108.5 of the Seward Highway. They were almost certain this was the woman from the video.
Police were able to match the carpet from the video to the carpet at TownePlace Suites by Marriott. The same hotel brand that Valerie suspected. Remember, she labeled the memory stick the “Murder at Midtown Marriott.”
Now they have the likely hotel, and hotel room since in the footage they could see the room where the murder took place, was room #329. They also had a date/time stamp from the video which indicated that the murderer and victim were in that room at 1am on September 4th, 2019.
So, the real question that’s on everyones mind… WHO BOOKED HOTEL 329. The staff at the Marriott were able to identify that the room was booked on September 2nd to 4th 2019 by an employee named Brian Steven Smith.
Brian Smith, was apparently already known to police at the time but I couldn’t find any other details about why.
Regardless, Brian Smith was apprehended by police at the Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport as he stepped off the plane returning home from Washington, D.C.
The police interrogated him at the airport in a holding area for hours on end. They showed Smith the videos to which he said “That’s my truck. That’s my voice. That looks like my shoes.” But tried to say that he doesn’t remember the incident. All he remembers is waking up from a night of binge drinking and finding a dead body wrapped in blankets and a tarp in the back of his black pick up truck. Apparently he was worried no one would believe him that this wrapped body just ended up in his truck without his knowledge so he disposed it out of panic.
His story about where he disposed of the body and where they found the body of Kathleen Jo Henry aligned. And to go one step further, they checked the location tag on one of the phone images which showed Kathleens body in the back of his pick up near the location where they found her. GPS coordinates are one of the types of meta data you can get from images taken on a mobile phone, others things you can get are a time stamp and device model.
Brian Steven Smith told interrogators after many hours of questioning that he frequently would pick up unhoused women, sometimes even from the Brother Francis Shelter. He said most times he would pick them up, drive around and drink and then have sex. Other times he would rent a room at a Marriott hotel using his employee discount. Poor look for Marriott now that this story came out and their name is being mentioned often. Anyways, back to the crimes. One of the most disturbing things he said was that sometimes they’d be so drunk, he wouldn’t have to pay. Meaning they were so intoxicated, that he sexually assaulted them.
I should probably mention at this point that Smith is married to a woman whom he lived with in Anchorage and she apparently had NO IDEA that he was cheating on her, let alone a murderer. According to her statement, she was an early bird and he was a night owl so it wasn’t out of the ordinary for her to go to bed without him. She always thought that he was out working late at the hotel or with friends, which might excuse his scent of alcohol, if she was ever awake to smell him.
For investigators, having the video and photo evidence, gps coordinates linking Smiths truck with Henrys body, and his weird kind of confession, it was a slam dunk. Case closed in their eyes.
But, it soon unravelled after an escorted trip with Smith to the washroom. On his way to the washroom he told investigators, I’m about to make you famous.
QUINN: What the heck does that mean!?
JOLI: Well, what Smith was alluding to was that Kathleen Jo Henry wasn’t his only victim, there was another a couple years prior.
Apparently, sometime between 2017 and 2018, as Smith described, when his wife was out of town, he brought another woman to his home. She was 53 year old Veronica Abouchuk, who was also indigenous, from the Stebbins area, and she was also unhoused at the time. He claims to have shot Veronica after he asked her to shower, which she refused, and that angered him. So as she lay on his living room couch, he shot her in the head. He disposed of Veronica’s body along the side of the Old Glenn Highway. Her skeletal remains her found in April of 2019, almost 2 years later, but they misidentified her.
This information was shocking to police because without Smith’s confession, they would have never been able to link the two together.
And this is the end of Brian Steven Smiths confession. But for investigators, they started to wonder, based on his video, where he claims he has fans and mentions his “movies” and for the victims to know when they’re being serial killed, it seems like this isn’t his first recorded murder. And they people may have seen his videos. But they were unable to find any other video evidence to back this up.
Something else to note is that Smith owned a hotel back in South Africa, and had plans to eventually open one with his wife in Alaska. Many online are speculating… was his dream of owning a hotel again because he wanted a secure location to kill his victims, similar to H.H. Holmes? And did he commit similar crimes at his hotel in South Africa?
I found in one article, that apparently Smith confessed to a woman in 2018 about numerous murders he committed in South Africa and Alaska. Sadly this woman died by suicide in 2021 so we’ll never know how many truly died by the hands of Brian Steven Smith unless police are able to uncover more evidence linking him to his crimes in both countries.
Smith was sentenced to 99 years for the murder, assault, tampering of evidence, and misconduct of a corpse for the case of Kathleen Jo Henry. Smith is also facing a sentence of up to 99 years for the death of Veronica Abouchuk, which is scheduled for July 12th and 19th of 2024.
Although the first trial is a start to bring justice for the victims, it’s also a reminder to Alaskans of the vulnerabilities and inequity faced by indigenous women at a disproportional rate. This isn’t a problem faced only in Alaska, it’s everywhere. According to the Urban Indian Health Institute, murder is the 3rd leading cause of death for native women. We need to raise more awareness for missing and murdered indigenous women in the media. We can do better.
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QUINN: Thank you for joining us for another episode of "Beyond the Unknown." If you have a story you’d like to share, please email us at moody.mediaprod@gmail.com. You can reach out on our website, and who knows, your story might be featured in our next episode.
JOLI: All of our sources for this episode can be found on our website: beyondtheunknownpod.com.
And don’t forget, if you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and leave us a review.
QUINN: Until next time, listeners. Stay curious and remember that the unknown is always just beyond the shadows.
Both: BYEEEE
