Alaska ‘Memory Card’ Murderer ‘Didn’t Seem Weird,’ Say Brian Smith’s Unsuspecting Colleagues

Brian Smith seemed like a nice guy to friends and colleagues.

Whether going to lunch with a friend or sharing a home-cooked meal with a colleague, the South African was always quick with a joke or a smile.

“He was a very positive guy, he had a good mood,” says former colleague Adam Manor. “He had a few good dad jokes. He was just a normal guy.”

But authorities believe Smith, 53, was a predator who met unsuspecting women on the streets of Anchorage before killing them and dumping their bodies in remote areas.

He was found guilty last month of 14 felonies, including first-degree murder, sexual assault, tampering with evidence and misconduct involving a corpse in the deaths of Alaska Native Kathleen Jo Henry, 30, and 52-year-old Veronica Abouchuk.

“It’s really hard to believe,” says Smith’s former colleague and friend Adrian Pillay. “I never would have guessed. He was one of the nicer people I knew. I don’t think I ever saw him get angry, or raise his voice or anything.”

Veronica Abouchuk and Kathleen Jo Henry.

Anchorage Police Department/Facebook; facebook

Serial killer from Alaska secretly filmed murders: ‘Everyone dies in my movies’

Pillay says he met Smith at a software company in Johannesburg in 2008. Smith worked in telephone support.

At the time, he says, Smith tried to create his own online adult dating site. “It never took off,” he says.

Smith worked at a software company for about a year before managing guesthouses across South Africa. Smith lived a nomadic lifestyle, says Pillay. “He didn’t stay anywhere for a long time.”

The former innkeeper met his future wife online while living in South Africa and joined her in Alaska around 2014. He had aspirations of opening an inn in Alaska, but focused on his citizenship first, according to Manor, who worked with Smith in tire company in 2018. “I’ll follow those dreams later,” Smith told him.

Smith was working as a hotel maintenance worker in Anchorage when he met Abouchuk, who had experienced homelessness and addiction. He offered her a hot meal and a place to sleep while his wife was out of town in August 2018.

FBI agent Eric Perry testified that phone records and GPS data were used to place Smith at the scene of Kathleen Jo Henry’s death and near the highway where her remains were found.

Michelle Theriault Boots/ANCORAGE DAILY NEWS

At his home, Smith told police, he asked Abouchuk to take a shower. When she refused, Smith admitted he grabbed a .22 pistol from his garage and shot her in the head.

Her decomposed head was found by a pair of mushroom pickers on April 10, 2019.

Months later, Henry, a poet who grew up in Eek, Alaska, expected a brief respite from homelessness when she joined Smith at a hotel in downtown Anchorage on Sept. 4, 2019. Henry’s remains were found near the Seward Freeway a month later.

Smith, who recently became a US citizen, became a suspect in the murders after a homeless woman stole a phone from his truck that contained graphic photos and videos of Henry’s murder.

The woman gave the police a memory card containing 39 pictures and 12 videos on September 30, 2019.

Rena Sapp holds a photo of her sister Veronica Abouchuk.

AP Photo/Mark Thiessen

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At Smith’s trial, jurors were shown harrowing footage of Smith torturing Henry.

“Just take it. You live. You die… you live. You’re dying,’ he said in the video as he alternately squeezed Henry’s throat and then released it. The coroner later determined that she died of asphyxiation by strangulation.

“In my movies,” he said in one chilling sequence, “everyone dies. What will my followers think of you? People need to know when they have been serially murdered.”

Manor, who twice invited Smith to his home for dinner with his wife and daughters, says that learning the truth about Smith “definitely made me a little bit more cautious.”

“He was normal enough that I felt safe enough to invite him to my house. I literally had it around my family,” he says. “There didn’t seem to be any flaws or any weird things that would raise a red flag. That’s pretty crazy. A little scary.”

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