On Monday, September 30, 2019, a woman in Anchorage, Alaska called the police about a digital camera memory card she had found on a busy street in the Fairbanks neighborhood. The caller said the memory card was labeled "Homicide at Midtown Marriott."
Following a cursory police review of the memory card's 39 photographs and 12 videos of a man beating, raping, and murdering a women in a hotel room, a police administrator turned the case over to Anchorage Police homicide investigators. The images had been shot over a three-day period from September 4 though September 6, 2019.
The video and photographic diary of the torture, rape, and murder of what appeared to be an Alaskan Native woman with long, dark hair, took place in one of the Marriott Hotel's TownePlace Suites.
A man with an accent that sounded British, over the three-day span, punched, stomped and strangled the naked woman. He can be heard laughing and telling her to die. In one of the final photographs taken in the early morning hours of September 6, the rape and murder victim's body can be seen beneath a blanket on a hotel luggage cart near the bed of a pickup truck.
The last photograph, taken on September 6, showed the dead woman lying face down in the bed of a 1999 Ford Ranger pickup. The photograph also captured a partial view of the vehicle's rear license plate.
Homicide detectives determined that the pickup in the photographs was registered to 48-year-old Brian Steven Smith, an immigrant from South Africa. Smith resided with his wife on a quiet cul-de-sac in Anchorage.
On Wednesday, October 2, 2019, police officers were called to a spot off the Seward Highway just south of Anchorage. A passerby had discovered, just off the road, the remains of a woman with long, dark hair. Homicide detectives believed this woman was the murder victim seen on Brian Smith's photographs and videos.
Detectives, on Monday, October 7, 2019, acquired a warrant to arrest Brian Steven Smith along with a warrant to search his cellphone records, his house, and his pickup truck. That morning, officers with the Anchorage Police Department showed up at Smith's house armed with the warrants. When no one answered the door, officers gained entry by using a battering ram to knock the door off its hinges.
When the searchers left Brian Smith's house, they left with computers and other evidence from the dwelling as well as his 1999 Ford Ranger pickup, the vehicle believed to have been used to transport the murder victim to the Seward Highway dump site.
A search of Brian Smith's cellphone activity placed him, on September 6, 2019, in the area where the murder victim's body had been found.
On October 8, 2019, at three-thirty in the afternoon, Anchorage police officers took Brian Smith into custody soon after he stepped off a plane at the Ted Stevens International Airport. Officers booked the suspect into the Anchorage Jail on the charge of first-degree murder.
At Brian Steven Smith's arraignment, the district court judge set his bail at $750,000 and appointed him an attorney from the public defender's office. Smith, at this time, did not enter a plea.
On the possibility that Smith was a serial killer, homicide investigators searched their files for unsolved murder cases involving women whose bodies had been dumped in remote places. Detectives were also trying to identify the body found along the Seward Highway, and tie it to the woman who had been murdered at the Marriott Hotel.
Detectives on the case would have to wait awhile for the medical examiner's report regarding the victim's cause of death. The fact she had been dead for about 25 days complicated the forensic pathologist's inquiry.
Following a cursory police review of the memory card's 39 photographs and 12 videos of a man beating, raping, and murdering a women in a hotel room, a police administrator turned the case over to Anchorage Police homicide investigators. The images had been shot over a three-day period from September 4 though September 6, 2019.
The video and photographic diary of the torture, rape, and murder of what appeared to be an Alaskan Native woman with long, dark hair, took place in one of the Marriott Hotel's TownePlace Suites.
A man with an accent that sounded British, over the three-day span, punched, stomped and strangled the naked woman. He can be heard laughing and telling her to die. In one of the final photographs taken in the early morning hours of September 6, the rape and murder victim's body can be seen beneath a blanket on a hotel luggage cart near the bed of a pickup truck.
The last photograph, taken on September 6, showed the dead woman lying face down in the bed of a 1999 Ford Ranger pickup. The photograph also captured a partial view of the vehicle's rear license plate.
Homicide detectives determined that the pickup in the photographs was registered to 48-year-old Brian Steven Smith, an immigrant from South Africa. Smith resided with his wife on a quiet cul-de-sac in Anchorage.
On Wednesday, October 2, 2019, police officers were called to a spot off the Seward Highway just south of Anchorage. A passerby had discovered, just off the road, the remains of a woman with long, dark hair. Homicide detectives believed this woman was the murder victim seen on Brian Smith's photographs and videos.
Detectives, on Monday, October 7, 2019, acquired a warrant to arrest Brian Steven Smith along with a warrant to search his cellphone records, his house, and his pickup truck. That morning, officers with the Anchorage Police Department showed up at Smith's house armed with the warrants. When no one answered the door, officers gained entry by using a battering ram to knock the door off its hinges.
When the searchers left Brian Smith's house, they left with computers and other evidence from the dwelling as well as his 1999 Ford Ranger pickup, the vehicle believed to have been used to transport the murder victim to the Seward Highway dump site.
A search of Brian Smith's cellphone activity placed him, on September 6, 2019, in the area where the murder victim's body had been found.
On October 8, 2019, at three-thirty in the afternoon, Anchorage police officers took Brian Smith into custody soon after he stepped off a plane at the Ted Stevens International Airport. Officers booked the suspect into the Anchorage Jail on the charge of first-degree murder.
At Brian Steven Smith's arraignment, the district court judge set his bail at $750,000 and appointed him an attorney from the public defender's office. Smith, at this time, did not enter a plea.
On the possibility that Smith was a serial killer, homicide investigators searched their files for unsolved murder cases involving women whose bodies had been dumped in remote places. Detectives were also trying to identify the body found along the Seward Highway, and tie it to the woman who had been murdered at the Marriott Hotel.
Detectives on the case would have to wait awhile for the medical examiner's report regarding the victim's cause of death. The fact she had been dead for about 25 days complicated the forensic pathologist's inquiry.
What a crazy story, you couldn't make up something like this! I think we'll be hearing a lot more about Brian Smith in the future.
ReplyDeleteI agree. There is a lot more to this story.
ReplyDelete