Going West: True Crime - Homicide at Midtown Marriott // 145

Episode Date: November 3, 2021

Justice for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women! In October of 2019, an SD Card was found on an Anchorage, Alaska street that contained videos and images of a man murdering an indigenous woman in a hotel room. As more evidence was quickly uncovered, a South African Youtuber was questioned in connection to the crimes… This is the story of Kathleen Jo Henry and Veronica Abouchuk. Also known as Homicide at Midtown Marriott. BONUS EPISODES patreon.com/goingwestpodcast CASE SOURCES https://people.com/crime/alaska-man-charged-with-murder-after-memory-card-found-in-street-allegedly-shows-him-killing-woman/ https://www.websleuths.com/forums/threads/ak-kathleen-henry-30-video-of-murder-victim-found-anchorage-9-oct-2019-arrest.479074/page-19 https://alaska-native-news.com/brian-smith-indicted-in-second-murder-of-alaska-native-woman/45251/ https://www.screengeek.net/2019/10/21/brian-smith-alaska-murders/ https://www.congress.gov/congressional-record/2019/10/31/senate-section/article/S6358-6 https://www.websleuths.com/forums/threads/ak-kathleen-henry-30-video-of-murder-victim-found-anchorage-9-oct-2019-arrest.479074/page-22 https://local.nixle.com/alert/7576428/ https://www.alaskasnewssource.com/content/news/Man-charged-with-murder-after-SD-card-found-in-street-showing-video-562639431.html https://www.smh.com.au/world/north-america/memory-card-found-on-street-depicting-woman-s-killing-man-arrested-20191010-p52zgn.html https://pix11.com/news/man-indicted-for-murder-after-a-memory-card-with-graphic-videos-of-him-allegedly-killing-a-woman-was-found/ https://www.adn.com/alaska-news/crime-courts/2019/10/09/apd-arrest-made-in-homicide-captured-in-videos-involving-woman-found-along-seward-highway/ https://pmnewsnigeria.com/2019/10/12/south-african-steven-smith-charged-with-murder-in-alaska/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What is going on True Crime fans, I'm your host Tee. And I'm your host Daphne. And you're listening to Going West. We have a very exciting announcement to make. As of this week, going west is going to be releasing two episodes every week. That's right folks, two full length episodes on going west each week for you guys.

So we're gonna be coming out with episodes on Tuesdays as we usually do and then we're gonna be coming out with episodes on Friday. So now you can expect an extra episode every single week. We've gotten messages for a really long time from you guys just asking if we can, you know, come out with more than one episode a week and we're finally able to do it. Yeah, we're really, really excited to be putting out more content for you guys. So thank you guys so much for listening to our show. Thank you for sharing it. Just helping spread the word about going west is what is, you know, letting us do two episodes

a week. So exactly. So yeah, it's because of you guys. So thank you so much. And if you guys are looking for even more going west content, we have over 50 ad free, full length bonus episodes over on our Patreon head over to patreon.com slash going west podcast, and subscribe. Yes, we love all you patrons and we do give shout out at the end of each episode, so make sure to tune in for your name. So today, we have a very, very frustrating case that involves multiple indigenous women from Alaska, and I am surprised that this

case has not seen more attention. So we collected every little piece of information that we could that's out there. It's just a mind-blowing story. So without further ado, guys, this is episode 145 of Going West, so let's get into it. In September of 2019, an SD card was found on an angry jalaska street that contained videos and images of a man murdering a woman in a hotel room. As more evidence was quickly uncovered, A South African YouTuber was questioned in connection to the crimes. This is the story of Kathleen Jo Henry and Veronica Abichak, also known as homicide at Midtown, Marriott.

At 4.06pm on Monday, September 30, 2019, a woman called police regarding an SD card that she found on the ground while walking near the corner of Fairbank Street and 13th Avenue in Fairview , English, Alaska. This area is close to downtown Anchorage and these crossroads are one block from the major intersection of Gamble Street. And for reference, within this block is a liquor store, an auto body shop, a grocery store, and pharmacy called Cars, and a FedEx. This woman called the police in complete terror, as she explained that she found an SD card

labeled Homicide at Midtown, Marriott. And it included photos and videos of a woman being beaten and strangled by a man. Now as we know, camera SD cards are very, very small. And there's nowhere really to label them or write on them so we can only assume that by labeled, what this really means is that when the woman connected the SD card to her computer, the SD card itself was digitally labeled as homicide at Midtown Marriott, or there was a file within it labeled that. And although the details of this part are, you know, a bit unclear, we also assume that she found this SD card, picked it up, and for whatever reason,

took it home and decided to look at its contents. And I did read in an online thread that someone said they saw in an article that the SD card was physically labeled, which would make more sense as to why this woman would pick it up and take it with her. But I couldn't find that specific information. And I know there are SD card labels out there that you can buy so you can label the case 2 or the actual card itself. Yeah, tiny, tiny little labels. Tiny little thing?

Yeah, anyway, it's not super important to this case, so let's just carry on. The SD card contained 39 images and 12 videos of this woman's murder, and in the videos, a woman is being beaten and strangled by a man with a British sounding accent. In the video, the man is eventually heard saying, just fucking die. My hands getting tired, while strangling her and at times laughing until he ultimately stomped on the woman's neck on a hotel room floor while she was attempting to fight back. There are some online articles that say that this woman was also raped, but as we'll get into later, it was actually non-consensual, hand-to-breast, and hand-to-vigina contact,

so this was labeled instead as sexual assault versus rape, and not to downplay this assault in any way. The woman in the video had long dark hair, but it wasn't immediately clear who this woman could be, and it's not like police could release this video to the public or these photos to see if they could identify her. So instead, they focused on finding this poor woman's killer. But on October 2, 2019, so just two days after this footage

was turned into police, police responded to a call at 9.15am, regarding human remains in the southern part of Anchorage found, quote, by a passerby, and they immediately wondered if these could be the side of the Seaward Highway, just south of Baluga Point and near the Rainbow Trailhead, if you know the area. And this spot was just about 18 miles or 30 kilometers from the Midtown Marriott. There are some details in this case that are not very clear, by the way, so apologies if we say we're unsure about something a few times because we just wanna be clear to you guys about what is and isn't available. Yeah, and a lot of times when we cover these more recent cases,

not every detail has been released to the public. So we're kinda just working with what we have. Yeah, so we'll go into that a little bit later about why there's not, or maybe why there's not so much information, so just bear with us. So in numerous reports, it states that her remains were, quote, scattered, yet nowhere does it say that this woman was dismembered. Though most sources say that the remains were found at mile post 108 on this highway.

Yet there is information stating, quote, misconduct involving a corpse, which we will get into later. The videos and images on the car dated to between September 3 and September 5, which was nearly a month before it was turned into police, and the time stamp for the graphic content was at 12.59 a.m., yet there was no obvious local missing persons cases that seemed to match this woman's description. Photos on the memory card also showed a partial license plate on a black pickup truck, and in these photos as well, it shows the woman's body wrapped in a sheet with her head exposed, being rolled on a cart into said pickup truck, which only makes you wonder how he was able to do this without being seen by people or by hotel surveillance footage, assuming that they had that.

I have so many questions about this hotel's surveillance footage, and I, again, I couldn't find anything about it, but that I feel like would be such a key role into this story and also the fact that he, this crime took place in a hotel room, like that is where it took place. So how the F did he get her body out of there on a cart with her head exposed? I don't understand it. Yeah, I have no idea because as we'll go into, he does work at a hotel, but it's not this specific hotel. So crazy enough when the police viewed this horrific footage on the SD card, they recognized the voice in it as someone that they had previously investigated for a different crime, which the details have not been made public.

They described his accent as English sounding, but quickly linked him to a 48-year-old South African man named Brian Smith, whose accent stood out since there was, you know, only a few South Africans living in Anchorage, Alaska. Also, the license plate seen in the footage was matched to a pickup truck that was owned by Brian Smith and his wife. So police decided to pay him a visit immediately. And by the way, it seems that in the videos, he was holding the camera and filming while the attacks occurred, so his face wasn't seen. So he was only using one hand during this attack?

Yeah, I mean, some people have speculated that he could have used a GoPro, which he did own, Brian owned. But it's possible that he was holding a video camera as well. But of course, I mean, we haven't seen the footage and we don't want to, but I initially when I had heard this, I had imagined that the camera was, you know, on a tripod or propped up somewhere. And you could actually see him committing the murder, but you just hear his voice. So when police looked into Brian Smith further,

they discovered that his cell phone records put him in the area of where the body was discovered on September 6th, a whole month earlier, and just two days after the murder would have taken place according to the video footage. And this would mean that if the cases were connected, this woman's body would have been there for nearly a month before it was found, which I think is interesting too, that it was found by a passerby apparently only two days after

the SD card, like that was just weird timing if it had been there for a month. Yeah, very strange timing, yeah. So it was also determined that Brian Smith had booked a hotel room at the town place Suites at Marriott in Anchorage from September 2nd to September 4th, which matches up with the video and the photo timelines. And the carpet in the footage also matches the hotel. And at the time that all this was unraveling, Brian Smith was actually on a trip to Virginia with his wife. So on Tuesday, October 8, 2019, detectives headed to the Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport and arrested Brian Smith for murder at 3.30 pm.

And by the way, this is when he returned from Virginia. Yeah, they got him like right when he returned from Virginia. Yeah, they got him right when he landed. And just one day later, the remains were positively identified as those of 30-year-old Kathleen Jo Henry. Kathleen Jo Henry was born on December 22, 1988, and Bethel Alaska, but was reportedly raised in the small village of Eqalaska, which is in the Bethelsensis area. Iqas located along the Iq River, and its historical population is remained very low and primarily native, with a population in 1988 of just around 250

people, with over 98% of those people being Alaskan natives. And actually before 2019, this village didn't have access to running water, and instead, water was distributed by trucks to the different homes in the area. But because this caused so many health concerns, the Alaskan native tribal health consortium stepped in and gave EcoGrant enabled to provide piped running water. And this appears to be a very isolated area, but there has been a small airport there since the 1950s. However, airfare is extremely expensive, even to get to the closest larger town in the same census area, which is Bethel, so it's incredibly hard for people who live in

Ica to access medical care and much more. And this is where Kathleen was from, but she did eventually move to Anchorage, Alaska, which is about 400 miles away or around 650 kilometers. So Kathleen was an Alaskan native, so she and her family were indigenous to this land, and sadly there isn't too much information available about her, or her tribe, and her background. But what we do know is that years before her murder, Kathleen had really fallen on some hard times. But after earning her GED in October of 2012 when she was almost 24, she was passionate

about turning things around in her life. Based on various Facebook statuses that she posted, she loved herself and she knew herself worth. She had been in a marriage that ended in divorce, but like I said, she was in the process of really coming into her own, and she had found a passion for writing poetry, so her friends and family were extremely devastated to hear of her passing. And her funeral was held in EG on October 20th, 2019. Now a bit about her alleged killer, Brian Steven Smith. Because sadly, there is much more information on him

than there is on Kathleen, which just makes absolutely no sense to me. But anyway, Brian Smith was born on March 23rd, 1971, in Cape Town, South Africa, and according to him, he quote, grew up poor in Queen's town. He attended Queen's College Boys High School there and was described as quiet and standoff-ish, but also a meek man who was loved by all.

Sure thing. His father died when he was young, so he was reportedly primarily raised by his mother, and after school he joined the military. In February of 2013, when Brian was 42 years old, he met a 63-year-old blues musician and US immigration admin officer, living in Anchorage, Alaska, named Stephanie Bizzeland, while playing an online game. They skyped for the first time after about a month, which would have been in March, and

that's when they started talking about things other than gaming and got to know more about each other. Brian proposed to Stephanie on Skype in July, and she said yes, but she wanted to meet him in person, so she planned a trip to South Africa a few weeks later in August, and that's when they met at the Durban International Airport in Durban South Africa, where Brian then took her to a guest house that he managed, and he proposed to her there in person. Before operating this guest house, he had apparently owned a hotel which he hoped to work towards doing again in the future.

That following year, in May of 2014, they got married in the United States. Brian got a visa and they began living in Stephanie's home together in Anchorage, a place that they both loved being. They're both outdoorsy people and traveled a lot together and Brian documented all of it. Because if it's not obvious already, he really liked to record videos

and take photos constantly. And actually, he even had a YouTube channel chronicling his outdoor Alaska adventures. He had previously worked for an engineering company called Dowell, which gave him the opportunity to travel to a lot of rural villages in Alaska, Montana, and beyond. Stephanie remembers him as a clever man who took care of her,

one who gave her generous gifts, made her laugh, and was just an open, pleasant, normal person. And I'm not saying any of this to try and paint him as a, you know, a good person or try and convince you that he's a good person, but it's kind of interesting to know his past and what others thought of him because of what he did years later. Brian became a US citizen on September 20, 2019, so just two weeks after Kathleen Joe Henry's murder. At this time, Brian was actually employed at the Marriott on University Lake in Southeast Anchorage, and for reference, the murder took place at the Midtown Marriott just about

10 minutes west of his work. And another small random detail, so Brian had a drone that he apparently liked to fly around as a neighborhood, and he used it to capture other footage when he traveled, you know, like people do who have drones. And in one video, he uses his drone to show his black pickup truck, and he called it a chick magnet. So I don't know if that means anything to take that as he will,

but I don't know. I means anything to take that as he will, but I don't know. Thought that was a, it's just something to mention. And also now that we've mentioned where he's employed, so he, he was working at a Marriott about 10 minutes from where the murder took place. So just like how we were mentioning a little bit ago, you know, how did he get out of that hotel unnoticed? I mean, maybe he knew it well because he worked at a Marriott, but still I just, that whole area of this case just, I really want answers to. Yeah, I mean, it's not like he's just gonna walk into this completely different Marriott and, you know, grab like a work uniform and a cart and then just, you know, wheel a body

out of there. Like, they're gonna be like, dude, we don't, we don't know you. Yeah, and he was just a hotel guest at this time. So, you know, we'll get into this later because I don't really wanna quote unquote spoil the end, but hopefully we're gonna do an update episode to this one, like whenever more information becomes available. So going back to when Brian was arrested. So once they arrested him at the Anchorage Airport,

they took him into custody for questioning and he stayed the night in the Anchorage jail due to his outstanding warrant. And when he was arrested at the airport, by the way, he was alone, because although he was on a trip to Virginia with his wife to visit her family, he had to head back to Alaska before her since he was actually set to start a new job the day after he returned. This new job would also be at a hotel, but at the residence in, located in Midtown, and it's also owned by Marriott. His wife Stephanie was contacted and questioned as well while she was in Virginia, and she was apparently completely blown away, because as he said, she thought he was this great guy.

completely blown away, because as he said, she thought he was this great guy. So great that she and, according to her, everyone who knew him didn't believe that any of it was true, and that there had to be some mistake. And since his face allegedly wasn't in any of the footage, Stephanie actually stood by him. When police found her in Virginia and questioned her, they didn't immediately say what it was for, but instead they asked questions like, are you procuring girls for your husband and has he traveled alone recently and more questions like that? And she denied ever providing women to her husband, and she actually never suspected that he was ever up to anything bad because she apparently

never saw a darkness in him and didn't know him to be violent. She said, quote, how could I have missed something like this? We all have tempers at times but I never saw one that would do with these people are describing. But she also described Brian as a night owl while she typically turned in early, he was a light drinker, and a guy who would occasionally go out late with his friends. So although she was originally defending him, she also stated that if this was all true and he was found guilty, she would not support or defend him at all. She added, it is a terrible thing what has happened to this girl.

Pray for the family of that poor woman. Stephanie also explained that she knew Brian had stayed a few nights in a Marriott hotel in early September, the time that Kathleen was killed, because they had decided to spend a few days apart. Brian would have gotten an employee discount for his room at the Marriott, making it affordable and easy for him to grab a hotel for a few days to give Stephanie some space. After Brian's arrest, police obtained a search warrant for he and Stephanie's home in a mid-town Anchorage neighborhood and spent 12 hours searching it and taking evidence. Various other SD cards which Stephanie said he had a lot of, thumb drives, his cameras,

firearms, computers, and a piece of carpet from the basement was taken as well. The basement in their home was used as kind of like a second living room area, and police found a small stain on that carpet that they thought could be blood, so they took it in for testing. But nothing has been confirmed on this as of yet though. Police also discovered that one day after the last timestamp on the image found on that dropped SD card, so on September 7th, Brian Smith posted a computer and drone for sale on Facebook Marketplace, which just feels a little more than suspicious.

Then within the next couple weeks, so right before he officially became a US citizen, Brian made a police report explaining that his car had been vandalized. While he was at work at the Marriott Suites near University Lake, his passenger side window to his black pickup truck had been broken, and stolen from inside were important documents, his wallet, and a briefcase containing photos and various electronics including his GoPro.

So it's actually believed that whoever broke into his car was potentially the one to accidentally drop the SD card of Kathleen's murderer. And talk about the universe just working drop the SD card of Kathleen's murder. And talk about the universe just working in the most mysterious ways. Totally. Like if that guy wouldn't have broken into Brian's truck, the SD card might have, you know, never been revealed or the lady would have never found it. Which is like that SD card is everything in this case.

Yeah, it's literally every single piece of evidence that they really have. And of course we don't know if that's what happened, if the person who broke in had taken a SD card along with everything else, and then they ended up dropping it by mistake, like that is unclear like many other things in this episode. Yeah, it's very possible that Brian was the one

to drop it himself or something like that. Right, but it's, I mean, it's just kind of impossible to know because whoever dropped it, it was more than likely an accident. But I think actually maybe Brian would know because if he knew that it was in his car and knew that it was missing, he, because he knew what was taken from the car,

so maybe, I don't know. But then would he have reported that to police that all this stuff was stolen out of his car if one of those things was a video of him murdering somebody? Yeah, probably not. I mean, unless he didn't realize that that was like in his briefcase or wherever,

or inside of his truck. But who's to know? And you also kind of have to ask yourself why these photos and videos existed in the first place? Because it was legit like a play-by-play. Like we said, he even took a photo of her body on a cart and being loaded into his truck and her body in the truck. Like it was a play-by-play. Why would he do that?

Well, one thing that we do know about killers is that they they kind of like to relive the crimes that they commit so maybe yeah you know maybe in some way this is you know his way of doing that uh god and and we know that police did take so many other SD cards from his house so you can only imagine you know what may or may not be on any of those. Exactly. That's just very, very scary stuff going on. So the bail memorandum states that during Brian's interview with police after his October 8th arrest, he admitted that he was in the images and videos recovered from the SD card,

and that he disposed of Kathleen Johanri's body along the Seaworth Highway. And on top of this, he also confessed to shooting another woman sometime between 2017 and 2018, and he provided the Anchorage Police with the location of where he disposed of this woman's body as well. That woman was 52-year-old Veronica Abacuch. Veronica Abacuch was born in 1966 and grew up in a very small community on Alaska's Western Bearing Sea coast called St. Michael. It's a village of just a few hundred people, many who are Alaska natives just like Veronica. She graduated from high school in the neighboring village of Stebans and then went on to have four wonderful children.

Veronica was described as a very sweet lady with genuine love for her family and just about everyone. She used to love going to lunch and shopping with her sisters or teaching her sisters how to cook and the holidays were her favorite time of year and she absolutely adored her grandchildren. But as she got a bit older, she became homeless, but she told her family that she really liked it this way. And she still saw them pretty often, especially one of her sisters, who took a job at a place called Bean's Cafe and Anchorage to help provide meals to the homeless, including her sister

Veronica. This gave them a chance to kind of see each other homeless, including her sister Veronica. This gave them a chance to kind of see each other weekly, and Veronica was reportedly very happy. Unfortunately, much like Kathleen Henry, the information on Veronica's lacking as well, but we do know that her family had faced an unthinkable tragedy before Veronica's disappearance. So Veronica's sister Martha Th's was murdered in 2005, so 13 years before Veronica went missing. On September 22, 2005, 35-year-old Martha was found under a picnic table

at the Mountain View Lions Community Park in Anchorage, and she had been severely beaten, but she was still alive. She was transported to a local hospital, but sadly she did die shortly after from her injuries. And her case is still unsolved, and I know police are still accepting any tips that could lead to her killer, because it doesn't really seem like they have anything, you know, just like Veronica and Kathleen as well, for some reason there is barely any information on the internet about these poor women who suffered horrid tragedies. So not only did Veronica's sister have to suffer a senseless crime, but then Veronica did

as well, and her family had to lose two incredible women. Since Veronica was homeless, her family didn't always see her consistently, and the last time they saw her was in July of 2018, but she always came around when she could. So as the months rolled on and no one saw her, that's really when the family began to worry. And in February of 2019, Veronica was reported missing. But weirdly enough, according to Veronica's sister Angela Sharp, law enforcement mistakenly identified a different found body as that of Veronica's back in August of 2018. So just weeks after she was last seen.

Because for whatever reason, that individual had Verona's identification. Would you take that as they had her ID card on them? Yeah, that's how I took it, yeah. Which you can only wonder why that was. Yeah, I'm not sure. I mean, maybe she had a group of people that she knew and maybe they were friends. I can't speculate too much on that, but- I know, it really could be anything, but it But it's interesting that because she had Veronica's ID,

they were like, oh, this is her. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, pretty strange. So later, a fingerprint comparison confirmed that it was not Veronica, so she was then properly reported missing. Because again, although she was without a home, a big red flag for her family

was that Veronica didn't pick up her permanent fund dividend one day. So they knew that something had to have happened to her. So once Brian Smith confessed to killing a woman back in 2018 in Alaska and then directed police on where her remains were at, it was concluded that these remains did belong to Veronica. Her school had a single remains did belong to Veronica. Her school had a single gunshot wound to it, so this is suspected to be her cause of death. And police even presented Brian with a photo of Veronica Abichuk, and he identified her as the woman that he shot and killed.

But no other explanations have been made public whatsoever, so we can't say at this time, why Brian did it and how he even came into contact with Veronica. The day before Kathleen Henry's funeral, 48-year-old Brian Smith was indicted by a grand jury for charges relating to Veronica Abichuk's death, including murder, tampering with evidence, and misconduct involving a corpse. So kind of, you know, graphic sentence coming up, but most articles, they just mentioned that the last charge that I said, the misconduct involving a corpse, but one stated it as sexual penetration of a corpse. So this monster is just absolutely an utterly disgusting and despicable if it wasn't obvious already. And before this, by the way, you know, of course, Brian was indicted for charges relating to Kathleen's death, including murder, sexual assault, and tampering with evidence. The evidence tampering charge was for September 6, so right after Kathleen was killed, and

it stated that Brian, quote, destroyed, mutilated, altered, suppressed, concealed, or removed physical evidence with intent to impair its verity or availability and an official proceeding or criminal investigation." And I wonder if this charge has to do with the SD card or if this is the charge for hiding and disposing of her body because September 6th is the charge for hiding and disposing of her body, because September 6th is the day that his phone panged near where, like on the seaword highway near where her remains were found, so that kind of leads me to believe that that charge is involving

disposing of her body, but I can't be sure. Brian was very active on Quora.com, which is a question and answer-based website. And in the history of having his account, he asked 15 questions and answered 1.4,000. But his first two questions gave us a lot of pause. His first question was from 2017 when he asked, what would happen if you inject one CC clean slash pure water into a human bloodstream? Most people responded to this post of his saying that nothing bad would happen, but maybe much more than that would cause harm. His second question was also in 2017 and said,

if I'm being threatened in blackmailed, do I go to the police or an attorney? And I just can't help but wonder what that's about. And if I'm being threatened in blackmailed, do I go to the police or an attorney? And I just can't help but wonder what that's about. Yeah, I mean, I have no guesses, honestly. The, I mean, you know, a lot of the answers, by the way, you guys can go look at his profile, but a lot of the answers for that were just asking more details, but I didn't see him respond to any of them, so not sure. Yeah, kind of curious about that as well.

So a lot of the answers that Brian responded to people's questions involved race, politics, and most of all South Africa, and many comments about not blaming everything on whites. So really quote, twice. Yeah, exactly, yeah, really weird. And he was actually banned from Kora for his repeated support of apartheid, which for those of you who don't know was a racial segregation system in South Africa that was you know around from the 1940s to the 1990s. But we tried to see if there were any kind of suspicious comments regarding indigenous people or anything, you know, that had to do with murder like the first question that he asked on Kora, but from the answers we did read,

we didn't see anything there. Just tons of lengthy, really opinionated comments. Very opinionated, just very lengthy responses, like smarty pants stuff. Like I saw this one person on Reddit who was like, he seems to think he's a professor. Yeah, that's the, that, that, that fits. So Brian Smith pleaded not guilty to all the charges against him, despite the fact that

he admitted to being the man behind the videos of Kathleen Henry and to killing Veronica Abba Chak. Since Brian poses a significant flight risk, you know, because he has family ties in South Africa like he would just probably go there, his bail was set to $2 million. Brian was, and we believe still is, being represented by a public defender. According to everything I can find, his trial has not yet occurred, and of course, I think that would give so much more information regarding this whole case and potentially others because police apparently believe that he's a serial killer,

which I would not be surprised. I mean, you killed two women already, so. Yeah, and this is like just so classic with so many killers that we talk about who seem to lead these double lives, and it makes sense. I mean, he was a night owl. His wife was not. Who knows what the hell he was doing every night. And I mean, a lot of people are speculating that he maybe murdered people in South Africa because most of his life was lived in South Africa. So, I also wonder if police or, you know, Anchorage police are working with anybody in South Africa to see if there could be anything there. I really hope so because, you know, to me, maybe this is just speculation, but it's like, if he moved to Alaska, there's a possibility that, you know, like you're saying, he killed

people, you know, prior to this, we already know he killed two people, two women. So, you know, who's to say that you didn't kill people back in South Africa? Absolutely. And again, I'm so sorry guys. I know that throughout this episode, we have said that we don't know or were kind of wondering or speculating about something. But I just thought this case was really interesting. And the fact that no one has really covered it and these poor women deserve justice. And I don't know what is happening with this man. Like I just wanted to tell the story So a little bit more that we do know is back in February of 2020

So right before the pandemic began Brian Smith's attorney requested 60 days to review case work and because of this Brian's hearing was put on hold and his trial was set for April of 2020 and and his trial was set for April of 2020. And somehow, I have not been able to find anything that states whether or not this trial actually took place, which I assume would have absolutely been reported on so I can only assume again that it didn't occur. But I mean, I haven't seen a single update on this story

since they pushed off the trial. So we know that Brian is still in police custody and that they're looking at him for these other crimes. And again, I can only assume that the pandemic pushed off his trial, but that was over a year and a half ago when the original trial was supposed to occur. So what the heck is going on? And I did see numerous more recent comments on some news videos on YouTube about this case of people being like, what is happening with this case? So I guess we all want to know. While Anchorage Police, as well as the FBI, continue to search into Brian's history in Alaska, as well as South Africa, for other potential murders or crimes, we can only hope that Kathleen Joe Henry and Veronica Abichuck and their families will

see justice as soon as possible. Thank you guys so much for listening to this episode of Going West. Yes, thank you guys so much for listening to this episode and please share this case because these indigenous women deserve justice and I just feel so terrible that, you know, there's a lack of coverage for cases like this and they're very important. I agree and that's why I wanted to cover it even though there seems to be so much information that's lacking because what this man did to these women is so degrading and terrible. The fact that he videotaped at least one of them

and was laughing and all this shit is just so upsetting. It's despicable, yeah. So this guy needs to pay. So again, we'll keep you updated if, you know, the trial happens soon, I'm going to keep looking for updates in this case and hopefully it does happen because he faces up to 99 years or more in prison and that's when it needs to occur in my opinion. So thank you guys so much again for listening like Heath said please share this episode and

remember we do have a Patreon and we're going to do those shout outs now. We have over 50 ad free full length bonus episodes on there and we appreciate everybody who joins it just really helps support the show and we love you guys so much. So we got a big thanks going out to Patty and her pug. I love a pug. Love a pug. Also, a Daphne, I think that's the first Daphne that we've had.

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