Episode 320

Stagecoach California's Country Music Festival returns to Indio, California this April 24th through 26th.

Enjoy three full throttle days and nights with today's biggest country music stars, featuring Cody Johnson,

Lainey Wilson,

and Post Malone,

Bailey Zimmerman, Riley Green, Brooks and Dunn, Ella Langley, Little Big Town, Warren Ziders, Nate Smith, and more.

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Passes are on sale now at Stagecoachfestival.com.

This is Larry Flick, owner of the Floor Store.

Leaves are falling, and so are our prices.

Welcome to the Floor Stores Fall Sale.

Now through October 14th, get up to 50% off store-wide on carpet, hardwood, laminate, waterproof flooring, and much more.

Plus two years' interest-free financing.

And we pay your sales tax.

The floor stores fall sale.

Cooler days, hotter deals, and better floors.

Go to floorstores.com to find the nearest of our 10 showrooms from Santa Rosa to San Jose.

The Floor Store, your Bay Area flooring authority.

Sword and scale contains adult themes and violence and is not intended for all audiences.

Listener discretion is advised.

For fuck's sake, are you still alive?

Yes.

It's been like what 20 minutes, so

I think it's time we finish this fucking drop, bitch.

All right, bitch,

Get your popcorn ready because we've got some old school sword scale bullshit coming your way.

This one's gonna

give you a little nostalgia.

Episode 320, here we go.

This is Larry Flick, owner of the Floor Store.

Leaves are falling, and so are our prices.

Welcome to the Floor Store's fall sale.

Now through October 14th, get up to 50% off store-wide on carpet, hardwood, laminate, waterproof flooring, and much more.

Plus, two years interest-free financing.

And we pay your sales tax.

The Floor Stores Fall Sale.

Cooler days, hotter deals, and better floors.

Go to floorstores.com to find the nearest of our 10 showrooms from Santa Rosa to San Jose.

The Floor Store, your Bay Area Flooring Authority.

We sure do love to talk about Florida here.

It's kind of my thing.

Probably because that's where all the nutbags go to do their nutbaggery.

But there's another state in this great union that's a haven for psychos, weirdos, and straight-up degenerates that are looking for a place to hide in plain sight.

And no, I'm not talking about California.

Anchorage is Alaska's largest city, but it isn't the sprawling metropolis the lower 48 might expect.

It's a place of contradictions, a city of modern industry and glass towers, yet still haunted by the lawlessness of the frontier.

Here, The wilderness isn't just beyond the city limits.

It lurks in the streets, in the shadows, in the hearts of those who hunt.

Tourists pass through, snapping photos of moose and suburban neighborhoods, never seeing the harsher reality beneath the postcard-perfect cityscape.

Anchorage has a problem.

A problem that thrives on Spinard's sidewalks, in the shadows of the Midtown Mall, and in the encampments that spread beneath the Glen Highway overpass.

A problem that makes victims of the vulnerable, where survival isn't just about enduring the cold,

but also the violence that comes with being unseen.

A problem we've talked about here many times.

Homelessness.

Alaska native women

disappearing.

Gone, dead.

And then next thing you know,

you hear him on the news.

The crisis is impossible to ignore.

In the winter, the cold kills.

In the summer, the streets swell with the unhoused.

People searching for shelter, safety, or simply the next moment of peace.

This population is preyed upon by people who want to

harm them in some way, take any resources they may have.

They're a very, very vulnerable population.

Among them, Alaskan native people are disproportionately represented.

Is that what they say?

Represented?

It's a nice, Karen-like way to say it when you aren't close to it.

It severs them from the land their ancestors thrived on and leaves them to navigate a city that too often turns its back on them.

The reasons are many.

Generational trauma, displacement, addiction is a big one, and poverty.

But the result is the same.

A population visible and invisible at the same time.

Ignored until something terrible happens.

And in September 2019,

something terrible did indeed happen.

It started with an SD card.

It said some really bad pictures.

Okay, so it's got pictures of a homicide?

Yeah.

Okay, how do you know that?

Because I looked at it.

And where did you find it?

I found it on the ground.

I thought there was music on it, so I put it in my phone to see if it had some music in it.

Okay.

There was no music on it.

And then it was titled.

There's a title on it.

It says homicide.

And it has all these pictures of this lady.

And it shows the Marriott Hotel.

The responding officer arrived at the medical clinic on Lake Otis Parkway, where he met Valerie Cassler.

The call came in as a suspicious circumstances report, prompting a quick response from law enforcement.

But the officer remained objective, neither discounting her claim nor fully believing it.

You see, the idea that someone would find a random SD card with photographic evidence of a homicide was

far-fetched.

To say the least.

More far-fetched than thinking it was real was the idea that whoever took these photos would be careless enough to lose them.

The officer had seen plenty of hoaxes before.

He braced himself for another.

But then the first image loaded.

He scrolled through the pictures on the SD card.

Each photo was more gruesome than the last.

Very quickly, he started to believe every word Valerie said.

This is very disturbing.

Yeah, it is.

The officer didn't let it show, but the videos and images on the SD card were some of the most disturbing he'd ever seen.

He knew this warranted an investigation and that detectives would want to speak with Valerie.

A short time later, she sat down in a small gray room at the Anchorage Police Department, where Detective Lee sat across from her.

The tiny woman, wrapped in layers of worn clothing, hinted at long nights in the cold.

Her face was lined with exhaustion.

She had spent years navigating a system designed to forget women like her.

But today, she was holding something no one could ignore.

On the night of September 28, 2019, Valerie Castler was walking through Anchorage near the Cars grocery store on 13th Avenue.

She often searched the area for discarded items, such as broken cell phones, and picked up items she thought had a little bit of value.

That night, she found a small SD card on the ground.

Yeah, I thought cool.

I found another SD card.

Maybe there's more music on it because I found one a couple months ago.

It had like 325 songs on it.

The SD card was not like the last one.

There ain't no music on that card.

It shows some really sick shit on there.

And it's been freaking me out

because I can't seem to get the pictures out of my head.

The images haunted Valerie.

Ever since she saw them, she'd been having nightmares.

Still, Detective Lee needed her to describe what she saw.

Okay, it showed her in the hotel room on the floor, and he's beating her up, he's slapping her, Stephanie, he's talking to her the whole time.

And then on the videos,

you don't see no face, he doesn't have any face, but it is

um, his accent is like Polish, it's it's foreign.

Okay,

what's he saying?

Some of them would be like, Oh, this is is chapter one,

like

chapter one, take one.

And then there was one where he says something, no, you must want to get murdered tonight because you're not leaving this hotel because I'm going to murder you.

Okay.

He's like slapping her and fondling her,

but she's not really

seeing anything.

She's not making no noises or anything.

Instead of music, Valerie was met with something wholly unexpected.

As she scrolled through the contents of the card, she saw a series of images and videos depicting what can only be described as torture and murder.

And then the one that

I presume that where he killed her is he had this thing around her neck.

It looked like a wire or something.

And then next thing you know, he he goes like he crosses them and then you hear this

and then it's like she wasn't moving or anymore or anything

she said she had the card for two days but a couple of reasons kept her from coming to the police first she was distrustful of them because of her troubled past She didn't want to get into trouble just trying to do the right thing.

Second, she wasn't even sure if the contents of the SD card were even real.

People have been known to act out some crazy sexual fantasies.

Because it looks like the tail gates down and he's got her body in the back of the truck.

How come you didn't call us right away when you saw it?

I don't know.

I'm not judging you or anything.

I'm not

just a question that's going to come up.

I didn't know if it was real or

if Sony was

staging something because I've been listening to the news and watching the news and

I didn't hear anything on the news about a woman missing or, you know, or them finding a body or anything.

So I wasn't sure.

But the more I thought about it, and I couldn't go to sleep at night, I was having nightmares.

And then I started thinking, well, it could be real.

You know, just because if they haven't found a body, doesn't mean that it didn't really happen.

Because they were too gruesome.

Sure.

She watched the news and read the papers every chance she got, waiting to see the headline, body found.

She hoped she never would.

Then she could believe it was all fake.

But the longer she sat with those images in her mind, the more she thought they had to be real.

And you said you could hear the male's voice.

Could you ever see any part of his body in his anything?

No, no, no face at all just his feet

what does he look like there's one on there where he's got his foot on her throat and then there there's another one where it just it looks like they he's going in the hotel

and the hotel floor is like hardwood floor and he's got like a pair of new shoes or slippers or something on okay

but that's all you hear is his voice okay and he's talking to her.

Okay.

Just rambling on, you know, and then there's parts in there where, oh, bitch, you get your ass beat because you drank all my alcohol, bitch, I gotta go find another bitch because you're gonna be a non-cooperative.

But she never moved.

In the videos, a man with an unfamiliar accent is seen beating, berating, and torturing a woman.

in a hotel room.

The woman is completely naked and seemingly unconscious.

Her face is swollen.

Her lips are bruised and purple.

Her left eye is swollen shut, with blood trickling from under the lid.

The man calls her names and stands on her neck, all while filming it, seemingly for an audience.

Can you describe the female, like her race, what she looks like?

She looks native.

Okay, how old do you think she was?

I don't know, looks like she has kids.

Why is that?

Because she's got the pooch.

Valerie didn't know the woman.

Not that she could have recognized her with all the swelling anyway.

The only leads were a strange accent, an accidental photo of the man's shoes, and a photo of his truck.

All I want to know is when you do guys find out, can you let me know?

Yeah, oh yeah, no, I can, yeah, I can let you know.

Kind of,

I'd like to know her name and can find out who she is, because, you know, she's probably related to somebody out there that I know, you know.

The SD card showed everything.

The torture, the suffering, the final moments of a woman's life.

But it didn't show her name.

She wasn't in any of the missing persons reports.

No one was looking for her.

The investigation had hit a dead end.

Until a U.S.

Marshal recognized her face.

Battered, swollen, but familiar.

He reached out to a corrections officer at Highland Mountain Correctional Facility for confirmation.

She had been processed there before.

Her name was Kathleen Henry.

She was 30 years old, 5'3, with long black hair.

Like Valerie, She had spent years trapped in a rotation of homeless shelters, streets, and survival.

Her family last saw her in August at a shelter.

After that, she was seen in Fairview, a rough part of town where Anchorage's homeless gathered.

She was struggling, but she was alive.

Then

she wasn't.

On October 2nd, nearly a month after her murder, railroad workers made a grisly discovery.

Kathleen's remains were found near mile 108 of the Seward Highway.

Her body was already decomposed, partially taken by the wilderness.

Animals had scattered her remains.

Her fingers and toes were missing.

Her left foot was gone.

A red bag sat nearby, tangled with strands of her long black hair and scalp.

Kathleen Henry's life didn't end the day she was murdered.

It ended Long before that, when the world stopped seeing her.

Her death was the inevitable result of a broken system.

One that cycles vulnerable women through jails and shelters, but never offers them a way out.

A system where the unhoused commit crimes of survival.

Shoplifting for food, sleeping in abandoned buildings, resorting to prostitution.

Yeah, not sex work.

Prostitution.

Well, predators hunt them in the shadows.

She was one of the many lost, forgotten, and disposable in the eyes of society.

And the terrifying truth is there are countless others like her.

Look around.

How many more Kathleen Henrys are out there right now,

waiting to be found?

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This is Larry Flick, owner of the Floor Store.

Leaves are falling, and so are our prices.

Welcome to the Floor Stores Fall Sale.

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And we pay your sales tax.

The Floor Stores Fall Sale.

Cooler days, hotter deals, and better floors.

Go to floorstores.com to find the nearest of our 10 showrooms from Santa Rosa to San Jose.

The Floor Store, your Bay Area flooring authority.

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The Anchorage police found themselves in possession of an SD card with evidence of murder.

The videos showed the final moments of Kathleen Henry's life, but they didn't show the man behind the camera.

And without a suspect, all the evidence in the world meant nothing.

Police knew Kathleen hadn't just disappeared.

She had been erased.

There is no missing persons report.

No family is searching for her.

Only the system recognized her because it had seen too many women like her before.

Processed, incarcerated, released, and forgotten.

And that wasn't unusual.

Indigenous women in Alaska are murdered at rates 10 times higher than the national average.

When homelessness is added to the equation, the risks multiply.

Kathleen's body confirmed what they already knew.

Now they needed to find the man who put her there, and the SD card was about to give them their first clue.

When homicide detective David Cordy was assigned to the case, he didn't immediately know why the case seemed so familiar.

But after reviewing the videos, he started to recognize the man's method of violence.

The control, the torture, the strangling.

Kathleen Henry's murder wasn't random.

It wasn't a heat-of-the-moment crime.

It was planned, controlled, performed.

The footage suggested that the man behind the camera had done this before.

A year earlier, Detective Cordy worked on another case where a woman reported that her boyfriend had dark and disturbing sexual fantasies.

At first, she was into it.

I like rough sets.

If you put your hand on my neck, I like that.

If you can press down a little bit, that's good.

If you try to kill me, I'm going to break your nose.

You know what I'm saying?

he took a little too far a couple days ago.

Alicia Youngblood, an Alaskan native, met this married man at work and before long started seeing him.

It was a sexually charged relationship from the start.

They shared taboo fantasies and rough sex scenarios.

Alicia thought it was innocent roleplay until he shared a video clip.

He told me he killed her two or three days ago.

He didn't show me the video until last night.

And then the pictures, the pictures

are

her breasts.

And he's grabbing them so hard.

I mean, like really hard.

They're coming up and they're, what is that called?

Fatiguing and veined.

And he's got them so hard that the blood is pulling.

This wasn't the SD card.

This was a year before Valerie Cassler would make her discovery.

He said he was standing over her like this and he felt like

a hunter standing over his kill like a lion

over a zebra.

And he said he just sat there and puffed his chest out and he just felt so

empowered.

I keep seeing him over and over doing that to that girl.

And I could hear her bodily fluids as he's jamming, you know, and he's slapping down on her legs and, you know,

she's just so lifeless.

That could have been any of our little girls

That he thought it was okay to fist while she's dead.

Him showing you this video, is that kind of his...

Does he get his rocks off that where then he wants to have sex with you?

Yeah, he was funny with me.

Okay.

And I had to pretend like I liked it.

Did he say why he did it?

To release anger, to vent, to get it out of him.

He showed her pictures and videos of a woman who looked dead.

He wasn't just into rough sex.

He claimed he killed her.

And he just looked at me and he's like, you know,

I kicked her real hard in her pussy, trying to break her bone so I could get that whole fist in there, but that bone is tough.

He's like, you would not believe how tough a pubic bone is.

He said, I put my foot way up in there, and I was like, oh, yeah?

He's like, yeah.

He said that when she died,

everything released.

she pooped or whatever and her vagina opened up he said it and he

he's

he made his mouth like this and he grabbed my finger and he said

that's what it felt like

okay

So wouldn't y'all believe him if you were on the other side of this?

Would that lead you to believe that he's inside of her after she passed That is that what you're saying?

Is that

yeah, he was with our hands.

He said he didn't put his penis in her, okay, but a water bottle in his hands.

He said he got butter out of the fridge and put them that helps mudge the fingerprints and helps him get his hand in there because he wants to put a fist in there.

So, he got butter out of the fridge,

the water bottle I didn't see, but I did ask him why, why are your hands so shiny?

You know, he's like, That's butter.

I got butter.

As soon as she saw the images, she tensed up.

You have to understand just a week ago I was in love with this man.

Suddenly, all her love for this man was replaced with fear.

But she couldn't let him know that.

So she kept playing along.

I let him do things to me that prove my loyalty and trust.

Does that make sense?

Sexually?

Like, put myself in a position that, you know, made me vulnerable.

And he thinks that because I've done that, that I trust him and now he trusts me.

And okay, you are about to send his text messages.

I want you to remember that I am playing into this.

I am not a sick person.

I am not enjoying any of what I told him.

She thought they were indulging in taboo fantasies, but as soon as he showed her how far he was willing to go, Alicia got scared.

But she was on his good side.

bonded through the kinky sex.

So she kept playing along for her safety.

She faked jealousy.

She scolded him for being with another woman, even if he did kill her.

He now had to make it up to her.

Alicia told him he wasn't allowed to do this again unless she was there too.

So you are role-playing into the park, and you would like to be part of this next event.

Yeah, I'm his ultimate fantasy at this point.

Okay.

Men, I'm telling you.

When it comes to sexual drives, I tell you what, This man has, I've never seen anyone,

maybe

a 14-year-old boy, but who cannot quit playing with his self.

I mean, he's every his every waking moment is about sex.

And,

you know, I knew he had fetishes.

Is he sadistic?

Does he like pain and torture on people, or does he just...

Yes.

Alicia believed.

What he showed her was real, and it scared the shit out of her.

She played along, but not just for her safety.

She wanted proof, so she could go straight to the cops.

Unfortunately, she didn't have copies of the images or the video.

All she had were some filthy text conversations that didn't prove anything.

I know what I saw was real.

It'd be better if I saw his face, you know, but I know what I saw is real.

And I know that him telling me about it is real.

Apparently, there's other clips.

I believe you almost 100%.

I never believe everybody 100%.

Never.

I haven't met a person on the planet that's 100% truthful all the time.

But right now, as far as concrete facts and evidence, we have very little.

We have your text messages.

That's it.

We need more.

Yeah.

So if he is lying to me, and this is all bullshit, he's good.

But

I don't think he's lying.

What next sound is he?

He's South African.

Okay.

Yeah, but he'll have a British accent,

heavy British accent.

Remember, I told you he he had a really

time together.

I mean, other than the fact that he's a serial killer, he's a funny guy.

We crack each other up all day.

Her story was disturbing, but there was no proof of a crime being committed.

The images he showed her could have come from anywhere.

The internet is, after all, a...

big scary place.

To Detective Cordy's surprise, she called him the very next day, claiming her boyfriend showed her where he dumped the body.

The site was far from town, hidden in a small clearing in the woods off the main road.

When they arrived, there wasn't a body there.

Alicia said her boyfriend thought maybe a bear had taken it, since it had been there for a long time.

Detective Cordy found this unlikely but followed Alicia as she tried to find the landmarks from the pictures.

They searched for a while, but didn't see anything or smell any decomposition.

If there was a body, it was gone.

Or maybe the guy was just making the whole thing up for some disturbing story fun time.

Alicia hoped the murder was just a fantasy, but she feared it was real.

Detective Cordy needed more evidence, though.

He returned to the site with cadaver dogs and checked her boyfriend's phone data.

The cadaver dogs found nothing, and the phone records showed her boyfriend was not near the site on that day, the day she said he dumped the body.

The conversations between Alicia and her boyfriend seemed to be role-play fantasies.

Dark ones, but still just fantasies.

No body, no crime.

A year later, Detective Cordy doubted that assumption.

Now he had an SD card with photos and videos matching Alicia's account.

Her boyfriend, Brian Stephen Smith, a South African immigrant, had a thick accent like Valerie described and drove a black Ford Ranger, just like the one in one of the videos.

Detective Cordy looked up Brian Smith's DMV records.

The video showed the partial plate number

87,

which matched Brian's plate number, FSL878.

But one thing was bugging him.

If it's any other way you found it, I don't really care.

I just, we need to know the truth because this is a, obviously you saw what was on that SDG.

I found it on the ground.

Honest to God, I found it on the ground.

We're not worried about anything other than where that card came from.

Okay?

That guy picked me up that night.

Okay.

The guy in the videos?

Yeah, he picked me up.

Okay, can you tell me about that?

Um, he picked me up.

I was on my way home.

It was raining.

He picked me up.

He wanted to do a date.

He went to the chevron, I mean, to the shell station,

and it was in his car on his dash.

And I just picked it up.

That's how I got it.

Valerie hadn't told the truth at first.

Not just because of the prostitution and theft, but because women like her, homeless and struggling with addiction, knew how easily they could be ignored or punished instead of helped.

Kathleen had disappeared without notice, and Valerie was afraid that this might be her fate as well.

But with a murderer on the loose, the cops didn't care about her past.

They just needed to stop him.

He's white.

Okay, okay.

What kind of vehicle was he in?

It was a truck.

It was a black truck.

It was a black truck, and like the camper, like how I described the camper.

It was a white camper.

Valerie's full truth confirmed the detective's suspicions.

Brian Smith was their guy.

Quickly, the police coordinated with the FBI and Homeland Security to track him down.

They found him on vacation in Washington, D.C., of all places, with his wife in tow.

His scheduled return to Anchorage was on October 8th.

A multi-agency operation was set up and plans were made to simultaneously serve search warrants on Brian's person, house, truck, and workplace.

He was arrested as soon as he stepped up to the baggage claim.

At the same time, detectives were in D.C.

confronting his wife.

As soon as poor Stephanie Bislin stepped out of a local restaurant, she was greeted by local detectives and detectives from Anchorage.

She asked for their credentials, as everyone should, by the way,

and then agreed to talk.

So, the things that we

would like to talk to you about involve your husband, perhaps.

He did just become a citizen.

And

I think it was, oh, there's Stephanie, I should know.

It was,

I think, the Friday before we came down here.

Okay.

It was.

So, yeah.

So

his truck was broken into.

And it took his brace fist that had all his

South African documents.

So that's where he's from.

Yes.

South Africa.

Did you guys meet in South Africa?

No!

Playing a game.

He met playing a game?

Yes.

Stephanie met Brian Smith online.

He was 23 years younger than her.

They played a game called Realm of Empires together and hit it off.

He managed a small hotel in his home country, and his accent gave him somewhat of a die-antwood mystique.

Flash forward to the present, they had been married for five years, and Brian had just gotten his U.S.

citizenship.

Are we talking, Aboria?

Is that who you're wanting to talk about?

Yes.

So, did you guys ever, do you guys ever have your moments?

I think every relationship, right, every marriage has your moments, right?

How are those?

How would you describe that?

Excuse me.

He tends to

slam up.

He'll get time and he might leave.

And then he'll come back in a way.

Calmed out.

Has he ever threatened you or been or made made you feel unsafe

in any way?

I have a figured a couple of times the reason that he left was he was getting so bad that he might so he left.

And then you're talking about

that he might hit me.

She revealed that Brian had a bit of a temper, but was never violent with her.

He would leave rather than argue.

The only thing is, sometimes he would leave for several days without a word.

Do you know if he happened to go up to

or go out of town or do something around the first part of September?

Can you tell me more?

So there are some concerns that we have that he may or may not be involved with.

And so I'm just trying to

find out.

We had a fight.

I don't remember exactly what it was.

So he was saying

he was done for four days.

She answered their questions, slowly realizing the situation was way more serious than they were letting on.

The questions became more personal, and Stephanie felt a sense of fear as she wondered what this was all about.

Can I ask you something really personal?

Yes.

How's the sex?

None for a long time.

Okay.

My cat looks a long time.

Maybe two years.

Okay.

And there wasn't a lot anyway.

Okay.

Is and why is that?

I think

he thinks he was hurting me because he's heavy.

I don't think anybody told him how to be with a girl.

That's for damn sure.

Was somebody saying that

he did something sexual?

There are reports that he may have hurt some women.

Really?

In Anchorage.

In Anchorage?

Did you ever feel like he may have been cheating on you?

No, actually.

Okay.

So your husband right now is being interviewed in Anchorage by police detectives

and he is being arrested for a homicide?

No.

Of a woman?

I'm sorry.

I had to be the one to tell you this.

Was it in my house when I was out?

Was it on the bar?

Was it on a work website?

Was it on the side of the road?

What

I want to know.

Stephanie seemed to be entirely in the dark about Brian's extramarital activities.

She sat there stunned at the news.

The man she had fallen in love with, helped immigrate to the U.S., married, and had been on vacation with, had been accused of murdering a woman.

She couldn't reconcile what they were saying against the man she knew.

She was utterly dumbfounded.

While the seriousness of the matter sank in for Stephanie, Brian was just then sitting down with detectives.

Brian was an unassuming man of average height, maybe a little shorter, and he had short graying hair.

He had a large nose and a mouth that seemed to be in a perpetual frown.

His eyes were trusting except when he furled his brow.

Then there was a sense of the untamed behind his eyes.

So like I said, we have some matters we need to clear up with you.

And I just wanted to ask you, do you have any idea, any thought in your head about what we might want to talk to you today about?

No, my truck was broken into.

The thing we need to talk about is recently some property was brought to APD.

And

I was given that property.

It's a little SD card.

I viewed the images and the videos on that SD card.

Yeah.

And that's obviously it led.

That's how I got to you.

That's how I figured out who you are.

Okay.

And that's what I'm, that's what we need to, we need to clear up that matter of what's on that SD card.

Okay, what's on the card?

The card showed a picture of his truck outside the Midtown Marriott.

He admitted that it was his truck on the card.

He might have used it for something, but he didn't know what they were getting at.

So, detectives asked how often he stayed at the Marriott.

A few weeks ago,

probably a month or two, I

had a fight with my wife and I went and stayed at

a Marriott.

So, about what date do you think that was?

I can't remember.

Okay.

And

how many nights did you rent it?

Do you have to, as an employee, do you have to rent the room or how does that work?

Oh, yeah, I just rent the room, yeah.

Okay, how many nights did you rent the room for?

Probably about two nights.

Yeah.

What was your evening like?

Well I

after a fight with your wife you usually drink a hell of a lot so

it did involve quite a bit of alcohol.

Okay.

Did you go anywhere?

I probably would have driven around a bit, gone and put some food and stuff.

Okay.

Did you meet up with anybody, talk to anybody?

I probably would have.

Between us, I have been known to sometimes go out and find

a companion, you know.

Okay.

Did you do that, you think, that particular night?

I probably did.

And like I told you, I viewed everything on the SD card, and I did see your truck on there.

Is there anything else on that SD card that we need to talk about?

No, no, no.

You can show me the card and see.

You can show me what's on there if you want to.

Okay.

He slid a photo across the table.

It was a picture of Kathleen.

I just wanted to show you this picture to see if they would help you kind of refresh the girl from that night.

No, that's not it.

Not her.

Just short, short, short, short, behave right here.

Okay.

Then he slid a photo of his truck in front of the hotel across the table.

I mentioned, I told you on there that how I found you is like, we saw you trucked.

Is that

my truck?

That's your truck.

Okay.

Okay.

I recognize the rooms and my

gray

canopy.

Then he slid a photo of a man's shoes across the table.

Okay.

Is it safe to say those are your feet in that picture?

I don't.

Okay.

I'm not the only person that's got shoes like this.

Detectives had seen all kinds of reactions before: anger, denial, fear, but Brian was different.

When they showed him the picture, he only shrugged.

The detective didn't dwell on his shoes, even though they were obviously the exact same pair he was wearing.

Next, he slid more photos of Kathleen over, but these were from the SD card.

So what can you tell me about these photos?

This looks like someone that's really been beaten up, but okay.

and these are these are images.

These are these are images, but there's also videos of this person

and another person in the room as well.

And

that's why we're here to talk to you about.

You think I hit this girl?

Well, like I said, there's video, there's videos of it.

There's video of it, there's audio of it, there's a voice that's I've been talking to you now for almost 30, 40 minutes, and I know it was your voice I could hear in the video.

Then he played the video.

Face the fucking camera bitch

dying

my hands in tired you fucker

fucking hole

just

I'm being too nice

Just fking

this

What's happening when that's

what's happening is on this video on these images

The person that's recording it is holding the recorder and is standing basically above this girl and and strangling her

I don't I'm not I'm not denying I'm not I'm not I'm not saying you're lying, but I

I don't remember anything like this

So what you're saying is that definitely you talking on the recording on the audio there so that you don't recall that?

That sounds well voice.

I've got a unique voice.

Absolutely.

it's english mixed with the the the dutch

check

mate

brian was polite and presentable it was hard to believe he could do what he did but they had video evidence he seemed to have no recollection of doing anything like that to anyone

then he paused swallowed hard and acknowledged how serious this was.

Look, this sounds very serious.

No matter what, I'm gonna be in deep shit.

So

okay I'll tell you what I remember.

The next day at work

I saw something dripping out the back of my truck and I was like what the hell?

And I opened up and there was somebody there underneath stuff there was a blue like a top at the back of my truck.

I was thinking for a long time, what the hell, what must I do?

And

then the one night I thought, well,

I've got to get rid of this.

I can't.

And I drove out and I did.

I went and dumped it.

Detective Lee thanked him for his honesty and chose not to press the whole, I don't remember, excuse.

Instead, he asked about Alicia Youngblood.

I want to ask you to kind of shift gears a little bit.

Alicia Youngblood, can we talk about her for a little bit?

Okay.

So why can't you tell me about Alicia?

Shit.

Don't tell my wife about it, please.

Last year,

we had a small little affair.

So

I've seen the stuff you've chatted about,

the stuff you and Alicia talked about, and that's what I want to talk to you about.

Okay, Alicia,

and I did do some fantasy stuff.

I'm usually quite conservative about sex.

And

then she'd asked me to to slap her you know

and

we'd make up we actually made up fantasies almost like this you know

you know kill somebody yeah you know and rape and all that stuff we've we

you guys would talk about that on the

yeah yeah we fantasize you know but that's fantasy stuff that

why are freaks like this never freaky with their own spouses That's what they're for.

I mean, why even get married if you're not going to be open and honest about your kinks with the person you allegedly love?

Listen to me, trying to rationalize a psychopath's actions.

It's no wonder if some of you think I'm a dumbass.

He assured Detective Lee that all the talk with Alicia was pure fantasy, which was hard to say considering the images and videos on the SD card.

Detectives couldn't look past the striking similarities between Brian's fantasies and what he actually did in those videos.

Is it possible that, like, on this evening,

some of those fantasies were coming out?

Because, I mean, that's exactly what you did on those videos.

That's what you did to this girl, except that she wasn't enjoying it.

And you were talking to her.

I mean,

that's my voice.

You were talking to her clearly as we're talking right now.

And pointing out things and

laughing and saying things.

And

in my movies, sadly, everybody dies.

Bitch, what are my followers gonna think of you?

People need to know when they're being serial killed.

These are things you're saying to her while you're doing that.

Well, I would have said that.

That's why we're going to say things like it.

You don't remember this particular one because you've killed so many, you've tell her that she's being serial killed.

No.

Do we need to be investigating you for killing people here, killing people in South Africa?

Do we need to, I mean.

No.

that's the thing with Alicia about killing people.

That's just me and her trying to outdo each other on it.

But you tell her the same thing.

That's what you tell her.

Yeah, in the video, you're telling her that as you're strangling her.

As you're stepping your foot onto her throat.

As you're punching her in the vagina as hard as you can.

And kicking her in the vagina as hard as you can.

Poking her in the eye and laughing about it.

Talking about killing her and die, bitch, and telling her to die and getting mad when she starts gasping.

You're interfering with my drinking time.

That sounds like something I would say.

You did say it.

Yeah.

Sounds like something I would say.

What the fuck?

I shouldn't have spoken to Alicia about stupid things like it, you know?

But you didn't just speak to her about it.

You showed her videos of you punching women in the vagina, buttering up your fist and shoving it into the vagina, kicking them in the vagina.

She saw these things and she was frankly

terrified.

That wasn't.

Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, man.

And it's exactly the same thing that we're seeing in these videos.

If I was going to have a fantasy going further on, I could have carried on with Alicia, you know?

But this is, except a year later.

Except Alicia,

you have a history with Alicia.

You know how easy it would be to find out who killed Alicia?

You would have a several months relationship if Alicia was killed.

It wouldn't be difficult to pinpoint you for it.

But if you pick up somebody in the dark of the night who's an injured person, homeless person, down by the homeless shelter, these are the type of people that are perfect for

this.

Throughout the conversation with Brian, detectives learned that he often cruised the streets near homeless shelters looking for companions.

And by often, I mean a lot.

For Brian Smith, Anchorage's homeless shelters were hunting grounds.

The same women society ignored, he targeted.

Alaskan natives, making up a fraction of the city's population, were excessively among the unhoused, living in shelters, deserted buildings, or braving the brutal winters outside.

And Brian knew that no one would come looking for them.

So earlier, you said maybe three times in a couple years, and now we've already

have three

in about a month.

So are we sure that you...

Well, before

this girl from this knot,

there was probably about three three times that I've picked up a girl.

So maybe six.

Sorry, when you, when I said three, it was three before.

So

three,

four, five, yeah,

six.

Yeah.

Motherfucker can count,

but not do basic math, apparently.

Anything about these particular type of people?

Does it have something against native women?

I've asked myself that question.

Is it a racial thing?

And it's no.

It's a coincidence.

The indigenous people happen to be easy

and they make up 90% of the 99% of the homeless people.

What an asshole.

Anybody with a hair collector you know is an asshole.

According to the Anchorage Coalition to End Homelessness, in 2024, there were 9,524 homeless people registered in their programs.

Of those 9,500, 47.3%

were Alaskan natives.

That's a very high number when you consider that Alaskan natives only make up 15.6% of the state's population.

That means 5% of all Alaskan natives are homeless, probably due to the white man's delicious alcoholic beverages.

The longer they talked to Brian, the more he revealed.

He wasn't panicked.

He wasn't even defensive.

He admitted it was his truck in the pictures and his voice in the videos.

But he still claimed he couldn't remember anything about that night.

So did she want to leave that night and you didn't want her to go?

I'm serious.

I don't remember this girl.

I believe everything you're saying.

I honestly don't remember anything up until the morning I woke up.

I mean, I opened the back of my truck and there was this this person lying there.

No one else could have put it there.

I must have.

You've got photograph

of me putting there.

But I do not remember it.

You think everybody's going to understand that?

No one's going to believe it.

I don't believe it.

Nobody's going to believe that happened because we're going to go, we have more than we have evidence to show that it happened.

And the evidence was a lot.

They had Valerie's statement that she got the SD card from him.

They had the time stamps on the images and videos that matched his stay at the hotel.

They had the GPS data putting him at the dump site.

They had the image of his truck with part of his license plate showing.

And, of course, they had his voice on video.

You've convinced me I've done that.

You're putting stories in my head that

maybe it's a fantasy gone off or it's something I didn't remember.

Well, I actually don't think it's any of those things.

I think you remember so knowing that this this person is this person and this person's dead and that the other one dumped her body out in the on the highway do you have remorse you're not seeing yeah i i i don't like to to know that i've done that to someone it's i don't i don't like that

science and by science i mean chat gpt

tells us that amnesia is a real phenomenon I have my doubts.

It's especially doubtful when the amnesia is selective.

Like remembering Kathleen, but not remembering what you did to her.

It's pretty convenient that nobody can actually verify this.

Like, we can't put on a headset like Christopher Walken and brainstorm and step inside someone's mind to see what they actually remember or don't.

Sorry for the 80s movie reference millennials.

But Brian never admitted to killing Kathleen.

He only admitted that it must have been him.

To the detectives, it was way too convenient to have no memory of the murder.

But they had plenty of evidence, even if he didn't actually confess.

The video told more than who did what.

It showed a man with experience.

Have you been involved in any missing persons or any other murders in the state of Alaska?

No, I have not.

No, it's just this one.

This is the only person you've ever killed.

Yes.

Are you going to take me off to prison?

Yes, that's the step at the end of this night.

Okay.

After speaking with Brian for over five hours, they were convinced he had more to tell, but they were satisfied they already had him dead to rights.

So they left the room and let him stew for a while.

When they returned, they had paperwork for him to sign, but he blurted something out.

Are you guys in a rush to go?

Are we in a rush?

Yeah.

Do you want to talk some more?

Some time ago, I can't remember when

I

picked up a very drunk girl.

My wife was gone.

She was away for the weekend to go home.

And

I shot her.

For all his denial, all his I can't remember, he openly admitted that Kathleen wasn't the first.

She wasn't the only one.

Ain't that weird?

Ain't that something?

Boy, guess Mike was right again.

Give me a second while I pat myself on the back.

Ow!

Forgot how old I am.

I shouldn't be stretching like that.

I'm gonna pull something.

Anyway, despite Brian's sudden re-emergence of memory and his humble brag, y'all haven't seen anything yet.

When the truth of what this South African scumbag did played out in court, even the most hardened jurors weren't prepared for what they were about to see.

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After detectives confirmed Brian Smith was the owner of the SD card and confronted him with the pictures and videos on it, he claimed to have no memory of it.

He admitted to dumping Kathleen Henry's body after finding her in the back of his truck the next morning, but the conversation with Brian revealed that he often sought the companion of Anchorage's homeless, begging the question: Are there more murdered Indigenous women out there waiting to be found?

When they asked Brian, he said no, but moments later, he suddenly remembered things, and he confessed to a different murder he committed years earlier.

She was smelling.

I knew she was homeless thing.

She was thinking.

And I I was getting upset, and I said to her, go

take a shower,

because now there's smell in the house.

She wouldn't do it.

She kept saying, no, no.

And I was worried that she's going to vomit now.

Because then I realized that she really had been drinking a lot.

No excuse, but I'd also been drinking.

I clearly remember this.

And again, I'm not lying to you.

I don't remember.

I can't visualize

this girl.

But

I I went through to the garage and I got my little pistol there and

I said to her,

go shower.

And she wouldn't, she wouldn't, she wouldn't.

And

I just did it.

And I.

Well, she was on the couch?

Yeah.

I just did it.

I just shot her.

The either messed up thing, I can tell you honestly, there was no emotion there.

I just...

You're not listening to me, go shower, you're not listening to me.

He shot her in his own home because she was smelly and wouldn't take a shower.

This chilling confession came out of Brian almost nonchalantly.

So do you remember if she was white, black, native?

She was a native.

She was a native.

All those people, they are natives.

Remember her name?

No, no.

And I actually did look.

Okay, yeah.

So

actually, I did laugh to you guys.

Those pictures I showed, Alicia, they were the real ones.

Of what?

Of her.

I did have a photo of me trying to stick my fingers into her vagina.

Yeah.

So that was a real photo of you doing that to the person you shot.

Was that before or after you shot her?

Often.

The photos and videos he shared with Alicia were real.

She had been right.

all along.

Detective Lee laid out some photos of missing women, and Brian immediately picked out his first victim.

Her name was Veronica Abauchuk.

She was fifty-two, and like Valerie and Kathleen, battled addiction and homelessness.

She was last seen in July of 2018 by her family at a local shelter.

Shortly after that, she stopped communicating with them.

But unlike Kathleen, Veronica's family reported her missing in early 2019.

Her remains were discovered in April, but never identified.

Brian later led police to the site where he dumped her, the same site where he took Alicia to.

Brian Smith was arrested for the murder of Kathleen Henry, charged with multiple counts of first-degree murder, second-degree murder, second-degree sexual assault, tampering with evidence, and misconduct involving a corpse.

But after he confessed to the murder of another homeless Alaskan native, Veronica Abauchuk, a grand jury indicted him for her murder as well.

They added more counts for first-degree murder, second-degree murder, tampering with evidence, and misconduct involving a corpse.

It all added up to 14 individual charges against Brian.

During his arraignment, he pleaded not guilty to all charges, wasting the court's time and the taxpayers' money.

In the trial, the defense would argue that the most substantial evidence came from an unreliable source.

They cited that Valerie stole the card and that she had more than enough time for the images and videos to be doctored.

Now, I don't know about you, but I'm not willing to believe that a homeless Indigenous person in Alaska is an expert at Photoshop.

It was a pretty weak argument, to say the least, when the prosecution played the videos for the jury.

Warning, and I would take this one seriously.

What you're about to hear is Kathleen Henry taking her last breaths at the hands of Brian Smith.

She's already very beaten and seemingly unconscious, but the following audio is rough, to say the least.

And you're alive, and you die.

And you're alive, and you die.

Not just generally by life, I don't know.

You live, you die,

you live,

you die,

you live, you die.

Sadly,

in my movies,

everyone dies.

I get the Oscar bitch.

Only me.

I get the Oscar bitch.

So that's what it takes.

He toys with her, laughing hysterically.

He taught her with a brief release only to strangle her harder.

All the while he talks to the camera as if someone is watching him.

As if this shit is going up on YouTube or something.

Take 7,

part 5, subsection C.

The bitch.

He was not

fucking

fucking away.

It's called...

Like, we don't like you anymore.

So just fuck off.

You're resisting me.

Okay, fuck it.

So he has the throat, he has the hair, he has the string I've got.

I've got a string now.

Okay, I'm gonna pull the string quick here, John.

Yeah, it's pulled tight and raised.

Just look your face fucking forward.

You fucking stupid cocksucking bitch.

Jesus fuck.

Do people have to be taught how to die these days?

After fucking

120,000 fucking years of evolution, you haven't learned to die yet, huh?

Fuck, bitch.

Jesus, fuck.

I don't have fucking time for your shit.

You're fucking up my drinking time.

I'm fucking...

I've got like fucking half bottle of whiskey still to go through.

And it's already like fucking 11 o'clock at night.

Fuck, bitch.

Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.

It's important to notice that there is no evidence that Brian uploaded any pictures or videos to the internet.

Yet, he still addresses the camera as the audience.

He feels that he is performing, but he is getting tired.

We're going on for no fucking lies.

This is like fucking half an hour at least now.

We're going on half an hour now.

Fuck, bitch.

You are taking so long.

You're the longest ever.

You fucking real arsenal to carry your fucking sorry ass down to my fucking car

and go dump dump you fucking somewhere, huh?

You just fucked up my entire fucking evening, bitch.

Huh?

If you survive this, I'm gonna fuck you up so badly.

You're gonna need to change the religion.

Oh, Jesus, no, you wanna fucking...

People need to cooperate.

People need to know when they're fucking being serial killed.

Fuck this shit.

Bitch.

And you're like about a bleed on my fucking hand?

What the fuck?

Huh?

Huh?

You

He was the producer, director, and star of the film.

He called her names, knelt on her chest, and slapped her.

He strangled her over and over.

He showcased her injuries to the camera, but when he got tired, he stood on her neck until she died.

And when it was over...

I don't like the death penalty.

I don't like the idea of giving the state the power to kill its own citizens.

But after watching this performance, it's hard to argue against it.

Really hard.

Inside the courtroom, the jury watched the 12 videos without blinking.

The families of Kathleen Henry and Veronica Abauchuk couldn't see the videos, but they could hear them.

They sat there, silently, watching the jury's horrified reactions.

For somebody who couldn't stop narrating a murder, Brian was silent throughout the entire trial.

Outside the courthouse, a group of people seemed to reflect the inner turmoil of the jury's ghastly expressions.

A protest had gathered.

Justin Farm Cassandra!

We want answers!

We want answers!

A deleted photo was recovered from Brian's phone.

It showed a third native woman.

She appeared passed out on the grass.

Either that or she was already dead.

He asked me if I could look at another photograph that was actually in Brian Stephen Smith's phone and his deleted files.

And I said sure

so I looked through FaceTime and I could see through FaceTime that yes it was Cassandra I took a double look but yeah and I instantly just started crying the family of Cassandra Boskovsky was convinced it was her and the fact that her picture was found on Brian's phone made them fear the worst unfortunately Brian was done confessing and once again there was no body.

Even if it was Cassandra on Brian's phone, they couldn't prove a crime had been committed.

Cassandra was just another missing, homeless, Alaskan native.

Later, her family would have her declared legally dead without ever knowing what happened to her.

Back inside the courtroom, the family of Kathleen Henry had to learn that although Brian didn't upload his heinous crime to the internet, he did share what he had done to someone.

This is from Smith's phone.

I have something to show you, period.

Something I can't keep for too long.

Need to find a secluded spot to meet.

And he responds, I was not up, comma.

Sounds like you were having a lot of fun.

I did have fun, wanted to share.

The man Brian was texting met him after the murder of Kathleen so he could see the body, too.

What a couple of sick fucks.

He pleaded the fifth, didn't have to testify, and get this, was never charged.

What horseshit?

I get canceled for a meme, but this asshole's walk around society doing just fine?

Okay.

Ms.

Henry was slowly beaten to death and strangled to death and tortured to death.

Ms.

Bouchuk didn't actually suffer as much, but she was treated like a thing to be used and cast aside.

Both were treated about as horribly as a person can be treated.

Killings

like this that are publicized affect all of society, and especially women in our society.

It's the stuff of nightmares.

They strip women of any feelings of safety in their own neighborhoods.

That damage continues long after the crimes are solved.

As no surprise, Brian was unanimously found guilty of all 14 charges.

He was sentenced to 99 years for each and two counts of first-degree premeditated murder.

All the other charges, including the aggravating factor that he tortured Kathleen, which eliminated any chance of parole, added up to another 28 years.

All in all, Brian Stephen Smith was sentenced to 226 years

in prison to run consecutively.

It left the families of Kathleen and Veronica feeling just a little bit better.

They're at peace now.

That's the most important end for me, her sister Veronica, Veronica's sister, and Kathleen's family.

It's been too long and today is

life celebration and spiritual celebration.

But Brian's wife, Stephanie, was left completely dumbfounded and questioning her own intelligence.

Can you blame her?

I've never seen anything that dark in him.

When I think about that, I think,

how could I have missed it?

How can you missed something like that?

You know?

To add insult to injury, two months after his conviction, a federal grand jury charged him with one count of unlawful procurement.

of naturalization and one count of unlawful procurement of naturalization naturalization by an ineligible person.

You see, one of the questions they ask you when applying for naturalization is, have you ever been involved in a killing, sexual assault, or have you ever committed or assisted in committing or attempted to commit a crime you were not arrested for?

Brian answered, no.

If convicted, which is likely, His citizenship will be revoked and he will be deported.

And then, some dumb bitch with a septum ring and clown hair will protest about it on the streets of Portland and upload it to TikTok.

Because that's the fucked-up country of morons we live in.

America.

Land of the woke, home of the dumb.

Brian Smith is behind bars, but the crisis is far from over.

Justice First Victims doesn't fix the real problem.

Kathleen Henry and Veronica Abauchuk weren't just murdered, they were

failed.

Failed by a system that allows Indigenous women to disappear without a trace.

Failed by a society that barely notices when the most vulnerable go missing.

And if Valerie Cassler had never stolen that SD card,

would Brian Smith have ever been caught?

Probably not.

What I can tell you is that

there's something wrong with me.

I mean,

obviously, it's a second second time, so

there's something wrong with me, and that's that's why I did it.

There's no way to come back from that.

There's no way

personally, even.

I'm not temporarily insane.

I'm not anything like it.

I am sane.

I know exactly what I'm doing.

But

yeah,

I've gone too far.

And I don't want to go on.

Are you glad that

I'm not glad I've

You're glad you're not going to be able to hurt anybody else?

Yeah.

Somewhere in Anchorage, on the streets, in the shelters, in the shadows, another woman is disappearing.

Right now.

And no one is paying attention.

Brian Smith knew what kind of women wouldn't be missed.

He counted on it.

He

thrived on it.

And the system proved him right again

and again.

Kathleen Henry and Veronica Abouchuk weren't the first to be forgotten.

And unless things change,

they won't be

the last.

Right, now is a great time to go check out Sword and Scale Television if you've been curious about it.

For just 20 bucks, you can binge through all 20 episodes.

That's a steal.

You can find it at swordscale.com.

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The colors are off, and did Legal clear that image?

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Brand kits and lock templates make following design guidelines a no-brainer for HR sales and marketing teams.

And commercially safe AI powered by Firefly lets them create confidently so your brand always shows up polished, protected, and consistent everywhere.

Learn more at adobe.com slash go slash express.