US truck driver picks up prostitute for ‘date’, she steals memory card which is now key to Alaska murder trial

A woman with a lengthy criminal history including theft, assault and prostitution got into a truck with a man who had picked her up for a ‘date’ near downtown Anchorage.

When he left her alone in the vehicle, she stole a digital memory card from the centre console. Now, more than four years later, what she found on that card is key to a double murder trial set to begin this week: gruesome photos and videos of a woman being beaten and strangled at a Marriott hotel, her attacker speaking in a strong accent as he urged her to die, her blanket-covered body being snuck outside on a luggage cart.

‘In my movies, everybody always dies,’ the voice says in one video. ‘What are my followers going to think of me? People need to know when they are being serial-killed.’

Accused woman gives memory card to police

About a week after she took the SD card, the woman turned it over to police, who said they recognized the voice as that of Brian Steven Smith, now 52, a South Africa native they knew from a prior investigation, court documents say.

Smith has pleaded not guilty to 14 charges, including first- and second-degree murder, sexual assault and tampering with evidence, in the deaths of Kathleen Henry, 30, and Veronica Abouchuk, who was 52 when her family reported her missing in February 2019, seven months after they last saw her.