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Man who filmed deadly torture gets 226 years in prison for killings of 2 Alaska women: “In my movies, everybody always dies”
A man who killed two Alaska Native women and was heard in a video of the torture death of one of them saying that in his movies “everybody always dies” was sentenced Friday to 226 years in prison.
Brian Steven Smith received 99-year sentences each for the deaths of Kathleen Henry, 30, and Veronica Abouchuk, who was 52 when her family reported her missing in February 2019, seven months after they last saw her.
“Both were treated about as horribly as a person can be treated,” Alaska Superior Court Judge Kevin Saxby said when imposing the sentence.
“It’s the stuff of nightmares,” Saxby said.
The remaining 28 years were for other charges, like sexual assault and tampering with evidence. Alaska does not have the death penalty.
Two of the jurors attended the sentencing, the Anchorage Daily News reported, and one of them said the sentence was justified.
“It was the law being executed to the letter,” juror Michael Stewart said.
Smith, a native of South Africa who became a naturalized U.S. citizen shortly before torturing and killing Henry at an Anchorage hotel in September 2019, showed no emotion during sentencing.
Mark Thiessen / AP
He also displayed no emotion when a jury deliberated for fewer than two hours and found him guilty after a three-week trial in February.
During the trial, the victims were not identified by name, only initials. Saxby said during sentencing that their names would be used in order to restore their personhood.
“The essence of what happened to the two women — they were treated as something other than human,” Saxby said, according to the Anchorage Daily News. “They were dehumanized. It seems to me that the more respectful thing to do is refer to them by name, rather than by something less.”
Smith was arrested in 2019 when a sex worker stole his cell phone from his truck and found the gruesome footage of Henry’s torture and murder. The images were eventually copied onto a memory card, and she turned it over to the police.
Smith eventually confessed to killing Henry and Abouchuk, whose body had been found earlier but was misidentified.
Both Alaska Native women were from small villages in western Alaska and experienced homelessness when living in Anchorage.
Authorities identified Henry as the victim whose death was recorded at TownePlace Suites by Marriott in midtown Anchorage. Smith, who worked at the hotel, was registered to stay there from Sept. 2-4, 2019. The first images from the card showed Henry’s body and were time-stamped at about 1 a.m. Sept. 4, police said.
The last image, dated early Sept. 6, showed Henry’s body in the back of a black pickup. Charging documents said location data showed Smith’s phone in the same rural area south of Anchorage where Henry’s body was found a few weeks later.
Videos from the memory card were shown during the trial to the jury but hidden from the gallery. Smith’s face was never seen in the videos, but his distinctive South African accent – which police eventually recognized from previous encounters – was heard narrating as if there were an audience. 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.”
During the eight-hour videotaped police interrogation, Smith confessed to killing Abouchuk after picking her up in Anchorage when his wife was out of town. He took her to his home, and she refused when he asked her to shower because of an odor.
Smith said he became upset, retrieved a pistol from the garage and shot her in the head, dumping her body north of Anchorage. He told police the location, where authorities later found a skull with a bullet wound in it.
Abouchuk’s daughter, Kristy Grimaldi, gave the only victim impact statement during the sentencing, the Anchorage Daily News reported, saying that Smith would “rot in prison.”
Smith’s lengthy sentence comes just a few months after two other long prison terms were handed down in Alaska. In February, Denali Dakota Skye Brehmer, one of two young people charged in the 2019 killing of Alaska teenager Cynthia Hoffman in a murder-for-hire scheme, was sentenced to 99 years in prison. The month before that, Darin Schilmiller was sentenced to 99 years in prison for his role in the murder.
In Alaska, the sentencing range for first-degree murder is 30 to 99 years in prison.
Despite losing his boxing match to Jake Paul, Mike Tyson in a social media post Saturday said he had “no regrets” to getting “in ring one last time.”
The boxing legend was defeated by social media star Jake Paul in a highly anticipated fight on Friday night with an age difference of over three decades between the two contenders.
Netflix said Saturday that 60 million households worldwide tuned in to watch the match. The two fighters went eight full rounds, with each round two minutes long. Paul defeated Tyson by unanimous decision and the 27-year-old upset boxer and 58-year-old former heavyweight champion hugged afterward.
Paul was expected to earn about $40 million from the fight, and Tyson was expected to take around $20 million for the fight, according to DraftKings and other online reports.
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Tyson said on his social media that “this is one of those situations when you lost but still won. I’m grateful for last night.”
The fight almost didn’t happen after Tyson experienced an ulcer flare-up while on a plane in March. He addressed his illness Saturday, writing that he “almost died in June.” He said he had eight blood transfusions and “lost half my blood and 25lbs in hospital and had to fight to get healthy to fight so I won.”
Tyson retired from boxing in 2005 after a 20-year career. He last fought in a 2020 exhibition match against former four-division world champ Roy Jones Jr.
“To have my children see me stand toe to toe and finish 8 rounds with a talented fighter half my age in front of a packed Dallas Cowboy stadium is an experience that no man has the right to ask for. Thank you,” he said.
Alex Sundby and
contributed to this report.
In their final meeting, China’s leader Xi Jinping told U.S. President Biden that his nation was “ready to work with a new administration,” as President-elect Donald Trump prepares to take over.
The two leaders gathered Saturday on the sidelines of the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit. Mr. Biden was expected to urge Xi to dissuade North Korea from further deepening its support for Russia’s war on Ukraine. It marked their first in-person meeting since they met in Northern California last November.
Without mentioning Trump’s name, Xi appeared to signal his concern that the incoming president’s protectionist rhetoric on the campaign trail could send the U.S.-China relationship into another valley.
“China is ready to work with a new U.S. administration to maintain communication, expand cooperation and manage differences so as to strive for a steady transition of the China-U.S. relationship for the benefit of the two peoples,” Xi said through an interpreter.
LEAH MILLIS/POOL/AFP via Getty Images
Mr. Biden, meanwhile, spoke in broader brushstrokes about where the relationship has gone and reflected not just on the past four years, but on their long relationship.
“Over the past four years, China-U.S. relations have experienced ups and downs, but with the two of us at the helm, we have also engaged in fruitful dialogues and cooperation, and generally achieved stability,” he said.
Mr. Biden and Xi, with top aides surrounding them, gathered around a long rectangle of tables in an expansive conference room at Lima’s Defines Hotel and Conference Center.
There’s much uncertainty about what lies ahead in the U.S.-China relationship under Trump, who campaigned promising to levy 60% tariffs on Chinese imports.
Bobby Djavaheri, president of Los Angeles-based Yedi Houseware Appliances — which manufactures its products in China — told CBS News in an interview this week that such tariffs “would decimate our business, but not only our business. It would decimate all small businesses that rely on importing.”
Trump has also proposed revoking China’s Most Favored Nation trade status, phasing out all imports of essential goods from China and banning China from buying U.S. farmland.
Already, many American companies, including Nike and eyewear retailer Warby Parker, have been diversifying their sourcing away from China. Shoe brand Steve Madden says it plans to cut imports from China by as much as 45% next year.
White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said Biden administration officials will advise the Trump team that managing the intense competition with Beijing will likely be the most significant foreign policy challenge they will face.
It’s a big moment for Mr. Biden as he wraps up more than 50 years in politics. He saw his relationship with Xi as among the most consequential on the international stage and put much effort into cultivating that relationship.
Mr. Biden and Xi first got to know each other on travels across the U.S. and China when both were vice presidents, interactions that both have said left a lasting impression.
“For over a decade, you and I have spent many hours together, both here and in China and in between. And I think we’ve spent a long time dealing with these issues,” Mr. Biden said Saturday.
But the last four years have presented a steady stream of difficult moments.
The FBI this week offered new details of a federal investigation into Chinese government efforts to hack into U.S. telecommunications networks. The initial findings have revealed a “broad and significant” cyberespionage campaign aimed at stealing information from Americans who work in government and politics.
U.S. intelligence officials also have assessed China has surged sales to Russia of machine tools, microelectronics and other technology that Moscow is using to produce missiles, tanks, aircraft and other weaponry for use in its war against Ukraine.
And tensions flared last year after Mr. Biden ordered the shooting down of a Chinese spy balloon that traversed the United States.
President-elect Donald Trump has selected Chris Wright, a campaign donor and fossil fuel executive, to serve as energy secretary in his upcoming, second administration.
CEO of Denver-based Liberty Energy, Wright is a vocal advocate of oil and gas development, including fracking, a key pillar of Trump’s quest to achieve U.S. “energy dominance” in the global market.
Trump also said in a statement Saturday that Wright will serve on the newly-created National Energy Council, which will be chaired by North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, Trump’s selection for secretary of the Interior.
Burgum will oversee a panel that crosses all executive branch agencies involved in energy permitting, production, generation, distribution, regulation and transportation, Trump said in a previous statement.
Wright has been one of the industry’s loudest voices against efforts to fight climate change and could give fossil fuels a boost, including quick action to end a year-long pause on natural gas export approvals by the Biden administration.
Wright also has criticized what he calls a “top-down” approach to climate by liberal and left-wing groups and said the climate movement around the world is “collapsing under its own weight.”
Consideration of Wright to head the administration’s energy department won support from influential conservatives, including oil and gas tycoon Harold Hamm.
Hamm, executive chairman of Oklahoma-based Continental Resources, a major shale oil company, is a longtime Trump supporter and adviser who played a key role on energy issues in Trump’s first term.
Hamm helped organize an event at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in April where Trump reportedly asked industry leaders and lobbyists to donate $1 billion to Trump’s campaign, with the expectation that Trump would curtail environmental regulations if re-elected.
The Energy Department is responsible for advancing energy, environmental and nuclear security of the United States. The agency is in charge of maintaining the country’s nuclear weapons, oversees 17 national research laboratories and approves natural gas exports, as well as ensuring environmental cleanup of the nation’s nuclear weapons complex. It also promotes scientific and technological research.
Republican Sen. John Barrasso, who is expected to become chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said Trump promised bold choices for his Cabinet, and Wright’s nomination delivers.
“He’s s an energy innovator who laid the foundation for America’s fracking boom. After four years of America last energy policy, our country is desperate for a secretary (of energy) who understands how important American energy is to our economy and our national security,″ Barrasso said of Wright, adding: “Wright will help ensure America remains committed to an all-of-the-above energy policy that puts American families first.”
Thomas Pyle, president of the American Energy Alliance, a conservative group that supports fossil fuels, said Wright would be “an excellent choice” for Energy secretary. Pyle led Trump’s Energy Department’s transition team in 2016.
Liberty is a major energy industry service provider, with a focus on technology. Wright, who grew up in Colorado, earned undergraduate degree at MIT and did graduate work in electrical engineering at the University of California-Berkeley and MIT. In 1992, he founded Pinnacle Technologies, which helped launch commercial shale gas production through hydraulic fracturing, or fracking.
He later served as chairman of Stroud Energy, an early shale gas producer, before founding Liberty Resources in 2010.
