Prosecutors have released photographs of a possible third victim in the case of Brian Smith, who was convicted in February of killing two Alaska Native women.
The images came from one of Smith’s many cell phones and were included in a sentencing memorandum filed last week, just ahead of Smith’s sentencing, which is set to begin this Friday morning.
Prosecutors have asked for a 226-year sentence and included the photos in the sentencing memo to help make their case.
The photographs show a woman, possibly Alaska Native, on the ground, spattered with blood and dirt, either dead or unconscious. Key evidence in Smith’s murder trial included cellphone videos and images Smith created while killing one of his known victims.
These images come from a cell phone Anchorage police detectives seized at the Anchorage Airport in 2019. Smith was on his way home from a vacation and police met him to interrogate him about growing evidence against him in the murder of Smith’s first known murder victim, Kathleen Jo Henry. Although it’s been almost five years, police have yet to identify the woman in the newly released photographs.
The court filing also includes a sketch from a forensic artist to give a better idea of what the woman might have looked like, based on a facial reconstruction of the cellphone images.
In an email, Assistant Attorney General Brittany Dunlop said police have been trying to identify the woman since they discovered the photos, and they typically don’t release similar crime scene photos during an ongoing investigation. But in this case, Dunlop said, they were attached to the sentencing memo “to give the court a better picture of the full pattern of behavior.”
“While the images are disturbing given the blood and her positioning, she is clothed in the images,” Dunlop said in the email, “and I felt it was important for the court to see them when rendering a sentence, as these images were discussed by Smith in his interview with the police that was played in court. My hope remains that she can be positively identified.”
Michael Livingston, a former Anchorage police officer, says it’s too little, too late.
“I know it’s easy to criticize police, and I recognize it’s not easy to be a police officer or a homicide detective,” Livingston said, “but I wish more efforts had been made in 2019 to identify this woman.”
Livingston, who is Unangan, has been active in Alaska’s Missing and Murdered Indigenous People (MMIP) movement.
Livingston says the woman might have been identified by now, had an artist’s sketch been released sooner. But he says the criminal justice system has gone too far in releasing the actual photos of the woman. He says they show a lack of respect for the victim and questions whether they would had been released if she were white.
“She’s somebody’s daughter,” Livingston said. “She's maybe somebody’s sister or somebody’s mother.”
He says the graphic images rob the woman of her dignity.
The defense has also objected to the use of the images in the sentencing.
In a memorandum filed on July 8, it argued that the prosecution knows nothing about the person in the photographs and that there’s no way to tell whether they are real or staged.
The defense also objected to the prosecution’s recommendation for a 226-year sentence. It says a more appropriate sentence would be 132 years.
The defense sentencing memo said there is no functional difference between the two sentences – that both would keep Smith in jail for the rest of his life.
Smith, who is from South Africa, lived in Anchorage and worked at a midtown hotel.
In February, a jury convicted him on all 14 counts for which he was indicted, including first-degree murder, in the deaths of Veronica Abouchuk and Kathleen Jo Henry.
In police interviews, Smith admitted he targeted Native women who struggle with homelessness and other vulnerabilities.
During Smith’s trial, prosecutors showed the jury a graphic video of Henry gasping for air. Smith’s voice could be heard in the background, as he taunted her and complained she was taking too long to die.
The footage came from a different cellphone, stolen by a sex worker, who said she took it from Smith’s pickup truck while they were on a “date,” The woman later copied the video to a memory card and gave it to police. Had she not done so, detectives would not have connected Smith to the deaths of Henry and Abouchuk, whose remains were found outside Anchorage.
Smith will go before Anchorage Superior Court Judge Kevin Saxby. His sentencing is scheduled over two days: Friday, July 12 and, a week later, Friday, July 19.
