In just a little over an hour on Thursday, an Anchorage jury reached a guilty verdict in the trial of Brian Smith, accused of killing two Alaska Native women. They convicted Smith on all counts in the deaths of Kathleen Jo Henry and Veronica Abouchuk.
During the three-week trial, police and prosecutors showed how Smith preyed upon the women’s vulnerability. Both came from small communities in Western Alaska and struggled with homelessness and addiction in Anchorage. Henry was 30 and Abouchuk, 52.
In the final moments of the trial, the prosecution recapped scenes from videos and photos stored on an SD card, which showed Henry being tortured and strangled. Police said someone found the card on the ground, labeled “Homicide at the midtown Marriot.” The voice of a man could be heard in the footage with a thick South African accent, which police connected to Smith, who had been under investigation in a different case.
Debate over the memory card was a source of contention throughout the trial, as well as the credibility of Valerie Casler, the woman who gave it to police.
During her testimony, Casler changed her story and said the footage actually came from a cell phone, she stole from Smith’s pick-up truck and copied to the SD card.
Smith’s attorney, Timothy Ayers, argued in closing statements that Casler’s testimony alone was enough to give the jury reasonable doubt.
“Whether she wanted the limelight, whether she wanted to hide something, whether she doesn’t have a good memory,” Ayers said, “she is a very comfortable and constant liar, and there is reasonable doubt there.”
Ayer also told the jury that the state cluttered their case with a lot of weak evidence and did not do enough DNA testing to support its case.
But the co-counsel for the prosecution, Heather Nobrega, asked the jury to consider the totality of the evidence, which included cell phone data, text messages, surveillance footage and video from another cellphone police seized from Smith, which showed him toying with Abouchuk’s dead body.
“The defendant violently and brutally murdered two women. That is why we are here today,” Nobrega told the jury. “That is why the state is asking you to convict Smith of the crimes charged, and that the state has proved its case beyond a reasonable doubt.”
While the trial yielded an exhaustive amount of testimony, there are still many dangling threads in the case – the possibility that at least two people knew about Smith’s murders, because he had bragged to them about the killings.
Earlier this week, prosecutors showed texts and Facebook messages between Smith and Ian Calhoon, a heavy metal drummer, who seemed to know about Smith’s murders. In one text exchange, it appears Smith is trying to arrange a time with Calhoon, to show off Kathleen Henry’s body before disposing of it.
Smith also apparently confided in a girlfriend, Alicia Youngblood, about the murders. It was Youngblood, who went to police to warn them about Smith and led them to investigate him. The prosecution says Youngblood has since died by suicide, but there was no explanation about why the case went dormant — only that detectives recognized Smith’s voice on the SD card that Casler gave them from their earlier investigation.
“And he’s proud of what he’s done. He has bragged about it. He has shown videos and photos. He told Alicia Youngblood about what he did to Miss Abouchuck,” Nobrega said in her rebuttal to the defense’s closing statement. “He showed her where he dumped the body. He showed pictures about what he had done to her, after he killed her.”
“And based on his text messages,” Nobrega said, “it’s likely that Mr. Smith showed Ian Calhoon what he had done to Kathleen Henry.”
Calhoon made an appearance at the trial this week but said he would only testify about Smith, if he was offered immunity from prosecution.
In closing, Nobrega said, “It is difficult to explain the callousness and the brutality that the defendant has perpetrated on both of these women.”
But in their unusually quick decision, the jury demonstrated that they learned enough to hand out a long list of guilty verdicts. As the judge read each of the 14 convictions against Smith out loud, he sat, stone-faced, while families and advocates for the victims, cried and embraced each other. Throughout the duration of the trial, they said they hoped their presence would send a message of strength and caring, but most important of all, bring justice.
