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The SD Card Murders: Brian Steven Smith’s Alaskan Horror · Murder Files Unsealed

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Imagine you are freezing in a fragile nylon tent out
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: in the Alaskan wilderness.
• 0:05
  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah. That is an intense image right off the bat. Right.
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: I mean, it is a pitch black, rainy night in Anchorage.
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: You're a woman experiencing homelessness. And earlier that night, you
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: made a really risky split second decision.
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: Because you're just trying to survive the week.
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: Exactly. You stole a cell phone from a man who
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: had picked you up in his truck, just hoping maybe
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: you could sell it for a few bucks.
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: Just for basic survival.
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah. So now you're shivering in the dark and you
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: power that stolen device on. You're just looking for something,
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: you know, anything of value. Right. But instead, you turn
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: on the screen and realize you are holding the only
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: piece of evidence that can bring down a serial killer.
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: It's the kind of discovery that just fundamentally shatters your reality.
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: Totally.
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: I mean, you're sitting there in the cold, already so
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: isolated from the rest of society, and suddenly the glow
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: of that tiny screen is showing you something that Well,
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: it isn't just a crime.
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: No, it's much worse.
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: It is an organized, documented, and terrifying manifestation of absolute evil,
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: and you're just literally holding it in your hands.
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: It's chilling. And that is exactly our mission for today's
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: Deep Dive. We are looking at a case that has
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: come to be known as the Memory Card Murder.
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and we have a massive stack of sources to
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: go through today.
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: We really do. We've got raw interrogation transcripts, actual trial footage,
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: and an exclusive jailhouse interview with the killer himself.
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: Which is pretty rare to have all that access.
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: It is. And we're going to unpack the terrifying double
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: life of a man who hid in plain sight, the
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: intricate psychology behind his need to document his atrocities, and
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: the incredibly vulnerable women who were caught in his web.
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: And right from the start, we need to establish why you,
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: the listener, should care about this.
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, let's set the stakes.
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: Because this isn't just a recounting of a true crime story.
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: It is a profound look into the mechanics of how
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: secret lives are constructed, And eventually dismantled in the digital age.
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: Right. The digital aspect is huge.
• 2:01
  Speaker 2: It is an exploration of the absolute permanence of the
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: data we carry in our pockets. And it's also a
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: really stark reminder of the extreme vulnerabilities of marginalized communities. Yeah.
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: It shows us exactly how predators exploit those societal blind spots. Absolutely. So, OK,
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: let's unpack this, because what starts as a petty theft
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: turns into one of the most chilling criminal discoveries of
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: the decade. Before we can even understand the killer, we
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: have to look at the exact moment his carefully constructed
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: secret world was breached.
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: By complete, utter chance, basically.
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: That's what is so wild to me. It's just total chance.
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: So let's set the scene. It's the fall of 2019
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: in Anchorage, Alaska.
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: Right. And the woman in the tent is named Valerie Kassler. Right.
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: She's living on the streets, surviving day to day in
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: this encampment. And on this particular rainy night, A man
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: in a black pickup truck pulls up to where she is.
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: And he's super upfront. He tells her he's looking for a, quote,
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: certain young working girl.
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: Right. He's explicitly looking for someone vulnerable.
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah. But he doesn't find who he's looking for. So instead,
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: he just invites Valerie to ride around with him out
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: of the rain. And Valerie, who knows how the streets work,
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: she agrees.
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: It's warm in the truck.
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: Exactly. And she later says that at first, He actually
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: seemed nice.
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: Interesting.
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they don't do anything nefarious right away. They actually
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: just drive out to the airport and sit there in
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: his truck watching planes take off and land until like
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: five or six in the morning. Wow. Which honestly strikes
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: me as such a bizarre, mundane stretching of time. Why
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: would a predator just sit and watch planes for hours
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: with a potential victim?
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: Well, what's fascinating here is that it speaks to the
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: liminal space these predators often occupy.
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: Liminal space, like transitional areas.
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. Airports are transient places, people coming, people going.
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: For a man who feels disconnected from society, sitting at
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: the edge of an airport in the dead of night
• 3:56
  Speaker 2: is a way of observing the world without actually having
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: to participate in it.
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: That makes a lot of sense.
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: But it's also a psychological grooming tactic.
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: Oh, wow. Yeah.
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: By doing something incredibly boring and mundane, he disarms her.
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: He signals, you know, look, I'm safe. We're just killing time.
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: It lowers her defenses.
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: But then that mundane facade eventually cracks.
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: He stops at a gas station to use the ATM,
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: leaving Valerie alone in the passenger seat of his truck.
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: And in that brief window of isolation, Valerie gets what
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: she describes as a vibe.
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: Just a vibe.
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah, just a chill. An instinctual feeling that something is deeply,
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: fundamentally wrong with this man.
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: And we really shouldn't dismiss that vibe as just a
• 4:41
  Speaker 2: lucky guess.
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: Right. It's usually more than that.
• 4:43
  Speaker 2: Oh, absolutely. From a psychological standpoint, a gut feeling is
• 4:46
  Speaker 2: actually your subconscious processing microexpressions, behavioral anomalies, and environmental cues
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: way faster than your conscious brain can even articulate them.
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: So her brain was basically screaming at her that she
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: was in danger.
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: Her subconscious registered serious danger, yeah.
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: So she acts on it. She drops her own phone
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: on the floorboard of his truck. And when she reaches
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: down to get it, she grabs two cell phones from
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: the center console and pockets them.
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: Just swipes them.
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: She steals his phone. And that split-second decision is the
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: hinge on which this entire terrifying case swings.
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: So she flees back to her tent. She powers on
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: the phone, looking through its contents, and she finds an
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: SD card. Yeah. And the files on it are labeled,
• 5:26
  Speaker 2: or at least related to, a homicide at the Midtown Marriott.
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: And what she sees... I mean, I really have to
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: warn you listening. It is horrific.
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: It is incredibly grim.
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: She presses play and watches 39 photos and 12 videos
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: of a dark haired woman who we later learn is
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: a 30 year old Alaskan native woman named Kathleen Henry. Right.
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: And Kathleen is being brutally tortured and strangled to death
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: on the floor of a hotel room.
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: And it's not just the visual horror that Valerie experiences.
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: She hears the audio, too.
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: Which is just as bad.
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: Oh, it's terrible. She hears the killer mocking his victim
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: in this very distinctive foreign accent. At one point, with
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: blood coming from her mouth, he steps on her throat
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: and says, you're not leaving here alive. I'm killing you.
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: Oh, my God.
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: And later, in this tone of bizarre, almost administrative frustration,
• 6:15
  Speaker 2: he literally says, oh, for sake, are you still alive?
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: It's so cold. Valerie is completely paralyzed by this, understandably.
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: She hides in the woods for days. She says she was, quote,
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: paranoid as hell. terrified that this monster realized she had
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: his phone and was coming to hunt her down.
• 6:33
  Speaker 2: Which is a totally rational fear.
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: Completely. But eventually, she finds the incredible bravery to emerge
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: from the woods and hand this evidence over to the police.
• 6:43
  Speaker 2: Thank God she did.
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: And I want to pause here because I need to
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: wrap my head around this. I keep thinking about this
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: like someone building an impenetrable fortress, but then they just
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: leave the front door wide open with a neon sign
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: pointing inside.
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: That's a great way to put it.
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: I mean, how does a killer... meticulously document something so
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: monstrous and then just leave the device sitting casually in
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: the passenger seat of his unlocked car with a total stranger.
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: Well, what's fascinating here is you have to look at
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: the underlying mechanics of the digital trophy to understand his carelessness.
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: The digital trophy.
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: Right. For a killer like this, the act of murder
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: is only a fraction of the psychological payoff. The real thrill,
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: the enduring high, comes from the documentations.
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: Taking the photos and videos.
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: Exactly. It allows him to relive the power, the control,
• 7:28
  Speaker 2: and the dominance indefinitely. He wants to possess the moment forever.
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: But by possessing it digitally, he anchors his ultimate fantasy
• 7:38
  Speaker 2: to a physical, vulnerable object.
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: The SD card. The actual phone.
• 7:43
  Speaker 2: Yes. So he literally couldn't throw it away without throwing
• 7:46
  Speaker 2: away the thrill.
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: But to just leave it in the car.
• 7:48
  Speaker 2: Well, the reason he left it in the car isn't
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: because he wanted to get caught. It's because of pure arrogance.
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: Oh, interesting.
• 7:53
  Speaker 2: He viewed Valerie as subhuman. In his mind, she was
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: just a homeless woman, a prop in his world. He
• 7:59
  Speaker 2: didn't perceive her as a threat capable of outsmarting him
• 8:03
  Speaker 2: at all.
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 8:04
  Speaker 2: There is a profound, almost poetic irony here. This is
• 8:07
  Speaker 2: a predator who specifically targeted vulnerable unhoused women because he
• 8:11
  Speaker 2: thought society wouldn't care or notice. Yet his entire downfall
• 8:16
  Speaker 2: was orchestrated by one of those very women. A woman
• 8:18
  Speaker 2: experiencing homelessness, trusting her instincts and risking her own life
• 8:23
  Speaker 2: to expose him.
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: It is incredible. She is truly the hero here. So
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: Valerie hands this phone to the Anchorage police. Detective Brendan
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: Lee is the one who watches this footage. He later
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: calls it the worst thing he has ever seen happen
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: to a human being.
• 8:37
  Speaker 2: And detectives see a lot of bad things.
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: Exactly. So they have a smoking gun. Yeah. They have
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: a literal murder on tape. But they don't have a name.
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: They just have a voice behind a camera. How do
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: they even begin to connect a voice on an SD
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: card to a suspect in a city of nearly 300,000 people?
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: This is where the digital breadcrumbs start to align with
• 8:57
  Speaker 2: pure investigative luck.
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: Luck is definitely the word.
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: A colleague of Detective Lee overhears the audio of the
• 9:03
  Speaker 2: video playing in the precinct. And that distinctive accent, it
• 9:07
  Speaker 2: sparks a memory.
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: Oh, wow. Yeah.
• 9:09
  Speaker 2: The colleague remembers a previous, entirely unrelated case involving a
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: South African man named Brian Stephen Smith.
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: Okay, so they have a potential name, Brian Stephen Smith.
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: Next step, they check the guest list for the Midtown
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: Marriott for the dates in question. And there it is.
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: Brian Stephen Smith was checked in.
• 9:24
  Speaker 2: Right there on the ledger.
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: But wait, at this point, they only have the video.
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: They don't have the victim's body, right?
• 9:29
  Speaker 2: Well, they didn't know they had the body, but they
• 9:31
  Speaker 2: actually did.
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: Oh, right.
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: Tragically, just a week prior to Valerie turning in the phone,
• 9:35
  Speaker 2: human remains had been discovered by someone walking near mile
• 9:39
  Speaker 2: 108 of the Seward Highway south of Anchorage.
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: And that was Kathleen Henry.
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: Yes. The remains belong to a woman with long, dark
• 9:46
  Speaker 2: hair who was later identified as Kathleen Henry.
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: And this is where I am just blown away by
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: the sheer speed of modern law enforcement technology. The FBI
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: gets involved immediately. They pull cell tower doors. data and
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: they find that Brian Stephen Smith's phone pinged off a
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: tower near mile 108 of the Seward Highway at a
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: very specific time.
• 10:10
  Speaker 2: It perfectly placed him there.
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: But let's break that down because I think people hear
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: cell tower data on television and think it's magic. How
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: does that actually work in a place as vast as Alaska?
• 10:20
  Speaker 2: Think about how your phone actually works. A cell phone
• 10:23
  Speaker 2: is essentially a very sophisticated two-way radio. To ensure you
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: can receive a call at any second, your phone is
• 10:30
  Speaker 2: constantly shouting, I'm here, I'm here, to the nearest cell
• 10:33
  Speaker 2: tower to maintain a strong signal connection.
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: Right, it's always looking for a signal.
• 10:37
  Speaker 2: Exactly. The cellular network records a log of which specific
• 10:41
  Speaker 2: tower your phone is talking to at any given minute.
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: In a dense city, you are pinging dozens of towers.
• 10:48
  Speaker 2: allowing police to triangulate your location down to a city block.
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: But in Alaska?
• 10:52
  Speaker 2: In Alaska, towers are much sparser along the highway.
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: So if you're driving down the Seward Highway, your phone
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: is basically hopping from one isolated tower to the next.
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: Precisely. And because the coverage is linear along that highway,
• 11:05
  Speaker 2: if your phone pings the tower at mile 108, you
• 11:08
  Speaker 2: have to physically be within a very specifically isolated radius
• 11:11
  Speaker 2: of that exact tower.
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 11:14
  Speaker 2: But the real nail in the coffin wasn't just the
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: cell ping. It was the metadata on the stolen phone.
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: Right, the XIF data. So they look at the stolen
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: phone and find a photo of Kathleen Henry's body lying
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: in the back of Smith's pickup truck. And the timestamp
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: on that photo perfectly matches the time and location of
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: the cell tower ping at the exact spot where the
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: remains were dumped.
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: It's undeniably him.
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: But for anyone who isn't a tech expert, explain how
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: a photo is silently records a location. I think a
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: lot of people take pictures every day and have no
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: idea their phone is tracking them like this.
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: It's called XIF data, which stands for exchangeable image file format.
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: Every modern smartphone has a built-in GPS receiver that is
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: constantly talking to satellites in orbit. When you tap the
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: button to take a photo, the camera software doesn't just
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: capture the visual image of light hitting the lens.
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: It captures the data too.
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: It silently pulls the exact latitude, longitude, altitude, and atomic
• 12:08
  Speaker 2: clock time from the GPS chip, and it writes all
• 12:11
  Speaker 2: of that data into the hidden header file of the
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: JPEG image.
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: That is wild.
• 12:16
  Speaker 2: It airs a digital receipt woven into the code of
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: the photo itself. Unless you actively dive into your phone's
• 12:24
  Speaker 2: deep privacy settings and turn off location tagging for your camera,
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: you are embedding your precise global coordinates into every single
• 12:32
  Speaker 2: selfie and landscape shot you take.
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: Which is terrifying for privacy. But in this case, exactly
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: what brings him down.
• 12:39
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: So what does this all mean? It means the exact
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: technology he used to memorialize his crime. His camera, his smartphone,
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: became the exact digital grid the police used to trap him.
• 12:51
  Speaker 2: You are looking at this incredible clash between isolated geography
• 12:54
  Speaker 2: and modern technology.
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, totally.
• 12:56
  Speaker 2: Alaska is vast. It is known as the last frontier.
• 12:59
  Speaker 2: It offers this illusion of total, unmonitored, untraceability. You can
• 13:04
  Speaker 2: drive a few miles out of Anchorage and be surrounded
• 13:06
  Speaker 2: by nothing but millions of acres of wilderness.
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: Right, it feels like you're invisible.
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: It gives a predator a false sense of absolute dominance
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: and secrecy, but a digital footprint. That is absolute.
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: It doesn't matter how many trees are around you.
• 13:18
  Speaker 2: No, the wilderness cannot hide a GPS ping. It cannot
• 13:22
  Speaker 2: erase an EXIF timestamp. He thought the geography protected him,
• 13:27
  Speaker 2: but the technology betrayed him.
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: Okay, so armed with this Irresutable digital map of his crimes.
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: The police make their move. They don't wait. They intercept
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: Brian Stephen Smith at the Anchorage airport.
• 13:42
  Speaker 2: Right as he's landing.
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he is just returning from a trip to Washington, D.C.
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: with his wife. He is completely caught off guard.
• 13:48
  Speaker 2: Which initiates one of the most intense psychological chess matches
• 13:52
  Speaker 2: you will ever see in an interrogation room.
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: I read the transcript and it is wild.
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: And right from the jump, Smith starts laying the groundwork
• 13:59
  Speaker 2: for an excuse. He starts complaining to the detectives that
• 14:02
  Speaker 2: he is in a, quote, weakened state of mind because
• 14:05
  Speaker 2: he just flew 10 hours across four time zones.
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: He's trying to play the exhausted traveler card like, oh,
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: I'm too jet lagged to remember if I murdered someone. Exactly.
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: And for the first hour and a half of the interrogation,
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: it is just a solid brick wall of denial. Detectives
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: ask him about the Marriott. They ask him about his truck.
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: And he just repeats on a loop. I didn't do that.
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: I don't remember.
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: But the detectives are incredibly methodical. They don't walk in
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: and slam the murder video on the table. Right.
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: That's just a TV thing.
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: It's a total TV trope. If you show all your
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: cards at once, the suspect's era's brain just shuts down
• 14:37
  Speaker 2: and demands a lawyer. Instead, they start small.
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: Just tiny pieces of evidence.
• 14:42
  Speaker 2: They slide a single innocuous photo across the table. It's
• 14:46
  Speaker 2: a close-up picture of a pair of feet. And they
• 14:48
  Speaker 2: ask casually, does this look like your shoe? Wow. Smith
• 14:51
  Speaker 2: looks at it and agrees, yes, it does. Then they
• 14:54
  Speaker 2: slide another photo. EA a shot of his stomach captured
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: in a frame of the video. Then a picture of
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: his black truck. Then his license plate.
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: They are slowly boxing him in.
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: Piece by piece.
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: And they don't stop there. They tell him, we have
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: cameras out on the highway at the weigh station. There
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: is no doubt you are out there. They are tightening
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: the walls of the room with undeniable digital and physical proof.
• 15:17
  Speaker 2: And right around the two-hour mark, you can literally see
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: the pressure fracture his resolve.
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he starts to crack.
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: But instead of confessing to the murder, his brain does
• 15:26
  Speaker 2: something extraordinary. He pivots to one of the most absurd
• 15:30
  Speaker 2: fabrications imaginable.
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: Okay, I need to stop you here because this part
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: is just mind-boggling. I read the transcript and I had
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: to read it twice.
• 15:39
  Speaker 2: It's hard to believe.
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: Cornered by mountains of evidence, Smith tells the detectives this story.
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: He claims he was at work the next day and
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: saw something, quote, dripping out the back of his truck.
• 15:50
  Speaker 2: Dripping. Right.
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: So he says he opens the back flap and he
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: makes sure to tell the cops that the flap didn't
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: have a padlock on it at the time. But he
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: added one later, which is a very convenient detail.
• 16:01
  Speaker 2: Very convenient.
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: And he says he looks inside and sees a blue top.
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: And he claims he thought it was a mannequin or
• 16:06
  Speaker 2: a sex doll. Or, most bizarrely, he suggests it might
• 16:10
  Speaker 2: have been a skinned bear cub that he had supposedly
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: seen in a YouTube video once.
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: A skinned bear cub.
• 16:16
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 16:16
  Speaker 2: He explicitly denies knowing it was a human body, but
• 16:19
  Speaker 2: he admits that he panicked, drove out to the Seward Highway,
• 16:22
  Speaker 2: and dumped it.
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: Okay, let me play devil's advocate for a second. If
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: his core identity is about being this clever, untouchable mastermind
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: who has built this perfect double life, wouldn't a clever
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: mastermind just say, I want my lawyer?
• 16:37
  Speaker 2: You would think so.
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: Why invent a skinned bear cub, a mannequin? Why do criminals...
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: When they are utterly cornered by insurmountable evidence, invent lies
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: that a five-year-old could see right through. It seems like
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: the opposite of clever.
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: It's a fantastic question, and it speaks directly to the
• 16:53
  Speaker 2: clinical psychology of the cornered mind and cognitive overload.
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: Cognitive overload.
• 16:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah. When a person is sitting in an interrogation room,
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: their body is flooded with adrenaline and cortisol. The brain
• 17:04
  Speaker 2: urines prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for logic, planning, and
• 17:08
  Speaker 2: complex lie construction. essentially gets short-circuited.
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: It just shuts off.
• 17:12
  Speaker 2: The amygdala, the fight-or-flight center, takes over completely.
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: Though he literally can't think straight enough to build a
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: good lie.
• 17:18
  Speaker 2: Exactly. When the detectives show him the photo of the
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: body in his truck, his core self-image is threatened with
• 17:25
  Speaker 2: total annihilation. His brain scrambles for any narrative, no matter
• 17:29
  Speaker 2: how ridiculous, that preserves a fraction of his innocence.
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: Even if it makes zero sense.
• 17:34
  Speaker 2: He can't deny the body was in his truck because
• 17:36
  Speaker 2: they have the photo. So he has to explain what
• 17:39
  Speaker 2: it is without admitting it's a murder victim. His panicked
• 17:42
  Speaker 2: brain grabs fragments of random memories, a mannequin he saw
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: at work, a bizarre YouTube video of a bear cub
• 17:49
  Speaker 2: and blurts them out. Wow. He is admitting to a
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: lesser crime illegal dumping of animal remains to avoid admitting
• 17:56
  Speaker 2: to the ultimate ego shattering crime of murder. It is
• 17:59
  Speaker 2: a desperate psychological triage.
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: That makes so much sense. Like his brain is just
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: throwing furniture in front of the door to slow the
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: cops down, even if the furniture is made of cardboard.
• 18:08
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: But the police have another ace up their sleeve, again
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: courtesy of his massive digital footprint. Before he was arrested,
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: they did a deep dive into his online presence and
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: found a secondary Facebook account.
• 18:19
  Speaker 2: The Alter Ego.
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: Right. It is under the name Bradley Phillips. And when
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: they ask Smith about it in the room, he readily
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: admits it's his account. He describes Bradley as his Alter Ego.
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: a guy who makes racist jokes online.
• 18:33
  Speaker 2: And this is where the detectives execute a masterclass in
• 18:36
  Speaker 2: interrogation technique.
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: It's brilliant.
• 18:38
  Speaker 2: They employ a classic good cop, bad cop strategy, but
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: they map it directly onto Smith's own fractured digital identity.
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: Oh, that's smart.
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: They suggest to him that good Brian, the loving husband,
• 18:50
  Speaker 2: the hard worker, the guy sitting in the chair right now,
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: actually wanted bad Brian. Bradley Phillips, the racist, the monster
• 18:57
  Speaker 2: who made the video. To get caught.
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: They separate the two in his mind.
• 19:00
  Speaker 2: They urge the good Brian to take responsibility for what
• 19:03
  Speaker 2: the bad Brian did.
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: They basically give him permission to blame himself without feeling
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: like it's really him.
• 19:09
  Speaker 2: Precisely. It's called compartmentalization. By giving him that psychological off-ramp,
• 19:13
  Speaker 2: by letting him temporarily detach his core conscious identity from
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: the monstrous acts he committed, he finally cracks.
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: He just lowers the defense of Wallenau.
• 19:22
  Speaker 2: He lowers it just enough.
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: And it works. He says to them, I didn't plan
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: to do this. I admit I've done that. I'll sign
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: a piece of paper.
• 19:30
  Speaker 2: He takes the out. He compartmentalizes the guilt just enough
• 19:34
  Speaker 2: to let the confession slip through. And for the detectives,
• 19:38
  Speaker 2: it is a massive victory.
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: They got him.
• 19:40
  Speaker 2: They have the signed confession. They have the video. The
• 19:43
  Speaker 2: case of Kathleen Henry is officially solved. Right.
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: It's been about five hours in the interrogation room. The
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: tension is broken. The detectives are literally wrapping up their paperwork.
• 19:53
  Speaker 2: Kinking they're done for the day.
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: They even ask Smith casually, are you guys in a
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: rush to go? They think this entire ordeal is over.
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: And then Brian Stephen Smith completely flips the script. Right.
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: Out of absolutely nowhere, he drops a nuclear bomb on
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: the room.
• 20:09
  Speaker 2: He looks at the detectives, unprompted, and volunteers this chilling statement.
• 20:14
  Speaker 2: He says, if I'm going to burn on the electric
• 20:16
  Speaker 2: chair for one, I might as well do it for two.
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: I am still reeling from this part of the transcript.
• 20:20
  Speaker 2: It's unbelievable.
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: He just hands them a second murder on a silver platter.
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: They didn't even know to ask. They had no idea
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: he was connected to any other missing persons or crimes.
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: Why on earth would someone do that?
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: I mean, he just secured his own doom.
• 20:34
  Speaker 2: It is the ultimate defining paradox of the serial killer's ego.
• 20:38
  Speaker 2: You are watching a collision between two very powerful psychological forces,
• 20:43
  Speaker 2: fatalism and narcissism.
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: Fatalism and narcissism.
• 20:46
  Speaker 2: Okay. On one hand, you have fatalism. He knows the
• 20:49
  Speaker 2: digital evidence regarding Kathleen Henry is insurmountable. He just signed
• 20:52
  Speaker 2: a confession. He knows fundamentally that his life as a
• 20:56
  Speaker 2: free man is over.
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: Right, the gig is up.
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: But colliding with that fatalism is a monstrous deep-seated narcissism.
• 21:02
  Speaker 2: He considers himself a predator, and he is proud of
• 21:05
  Speaker 2: his work.
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: Oh, gross.
• 21:06
  Speaker 2: If he's going down permanently, his ego demands that the
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: world knows the full extent of his terrifying capability. He
• 21:13
  Speaker 2: doesn't want his other crime to go uncredited in the
• 21:15
  Speaker 2: history books. It is twisted desire for legacy.
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: So he starts detailing this earlier murder. He tells the
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: detectives a story from about a year prior. He says
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: his wife was away for the weekend. He was drinking,
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: driving around Anchorage in his black truck, and he picked
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: up a woman experiencing homelessness.
• 21:34
  Speaker 2: Again, targeting the vulnerable. Yeah.
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: He notes that she was highly intoxicated. She had half
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: a bottle of R & R liquor on her. He
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: offered her a warm place to sleep and some warm food.
• 21:45
  Speaker 2: He lures her into his home with the promise of
• 21:47
  Speaker 2: basic human comfort, a warm house on a cold Alaskan night. Right.
• 21:51
  Speaker 2: But once he gets her inside, a conflict arises over
• 21:54
  Speaker 2: something unimaginably mundane. Smith tells the police that the woman
• 21:59
  Speaker 2: smelled bad. He says he was terrified that his wife
• 22:01
  Speaker 2: would return from her trip and detect the odor in
• 22:03
  Speaker 2: the house, which would expose his secret life.
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: So he demands that the woman take a shower.
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: And she refuses.
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: She repeatedly says no to him. And his response to
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: this refusal, to this incredibly minor inconvenience in his living room,
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: is to turn around, walk out to his garage, retrieve
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: a pistol, walk back into his living room and shoot
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: her in the head while she's sitting on his couch.
• 22:22
  Speaker 2: I want you to really think about the psychology of
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: that moment.
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: It's just I can't even process it.
• 22:27
  Speaker 2: The absolute devaluation of human life is staggering. The trigger
• 22:32
  Speaker 2: for murder wasn't a grand confrontation, a fight or a
• 22:34
  Speaker 2: threat to his life. It was a refusal to take
• 22:37
  Speaker 2: a shower.
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: Which is nothing.
• 22:39
  Speaker 2: It highlights how utterly disposable he viewed her. To him,
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: she wasn't a human being with a life, a family,
• 22:45
  Speaker 2: and rights. She was a nuisance object in his living
• 22:49
  Speaker 2: room that wasn't replying with his script. So he disposed
• 22:52
  Speaker 2: of the object.
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: He tells police he wrapped her up and dumped her
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: body off a side road.
• 22:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: And sure enough, the police investigate and the evidence lines
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: up perfectly.
• 23:00
  Speaker 2: It matches everything.
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: They match his description and location to a human skull
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: with a bullet hole that had actually been discovered six
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: months prior. Furthermore, they search his home and find yet
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: another SD card, this one showing a video of a
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: naked woman on his floor. Forensics identifies this second victim
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: as Veronica Abuchak.
• 23:19
  Speaker 2: And Veronica Abuchak was an Alaskan native woman who was
• 23:23
  Speaker 2: well-known on the streets of Anchorage. In fact, in a heartbreaking,
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: almost cinematic twist of fate, Veronica was Valerie Kastler's best friend.
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: Wait, really? The woman who found the phone?
• 23:34
  Speaker 2: Yes. The very woman who found the phone in the
• 23:37
  Speaker 2: truck and turned it in was best friends with his
• 23:39
  Speaker 2: previous victim.
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: Wow. That is a devastating connection.
• 23:43
  Speaker 2: It really is.
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: Valerie essentially brought justice for her own best friend without
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: even knowing it at the time she walked into the
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: police station.
• 23:50
  Speaker 2: Which is just incredible.
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: So now we have a double confession. We know exactly
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: what he did. But to understand how Brian Stephen Smith
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: reached this point of callous, casual brutality, we have to
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: rewind the timeline. We have to look at his origins
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: and his migration to the last frontier. Yeah.
• 24:07
  Speaker 2: The sources show that Smith originally hails from South Africa.
• 24:10
  Speaker 2: About 10 years before the murders, his life there hit
• 24:13
  Speaker 2: rock bottom.
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: What happened?
• 24:14
  Speaker 2: Well, in his interviews, he explains that he had a
• 24:17
  Speaker 2: business deal go completely sour. He lost a massive amount
• 24:20
  Speaker 2: of money and he felt he had absolutely nothing left
• 24:23
  Speaker 2: to lose. So he packed up his life and moved
• 24:26
  Speaker 2: across the globe to Alaska.
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: He actually met his future wife, an older woman named Stephanie.
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: playing a game on the internet. He flew to Alaska,
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: they fell in love, and they got married.
• 24:36
  Speaker 2: And Stephanie seems like a very normal, community-oriented person.
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, she was a folk singer in Anchorage. She had
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: this vibrant social life filled with theater friends, musicians, and artists.
• 24:47
  Speaker 2: But Smith immediately felt alienated by that environment. He admits
• 24:51
  Speaker 2: in his jailhouse interview that he couldn't fit into her world.
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: It just wasn't him.
• 24:55
  Speaker 2: No, the social demands of interacting with artists and musicians
• 24:59
  Speaker 2: were too much for him. He felt like an outsider
• 25:01
  Speaker 2: in his own marriage. This underlying incompatibility festered for years,
• 25:05
  Speaker 2: and they actually signed divorce papers just a couple of
• 25:08
  Speaker 2: months before his eventual arrest.
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: But what I found really revealing is how Smith viewed
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: Alaska itself. When asked about his first impressions of the state,
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: he talks about going out into the woods and filming
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: beaver dams with a GoPro.
• 25:22
  Speaker 2: Which, side note, shows he always had this ingrained habit
• 25:25
  Speaker 2: of documenting things.
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: Putting a lens between himself and reality. Exactly. But then
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: he draws this incredibly dark sociological parallel. He says Alaska
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: is very similar to South Africa because of the divide
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: between the, quote, civilized areas and the ethnic, rural, indigenous
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: side of things.
• 25:42
  Speaker 2: We really need to unpack that phrasing because it is
• 25:44
  Speaker 2: the key to his predatory mindset.
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: It's so loaded.
• 25:47
  Speaker 2: It reveals his deeply ingrained prejudice and exactly how he
• 25:50
  Speaker 2: categorizes humanity. When he arrived in Alaska, he immediately identified
• 25:55
  Speaker 2: a marginalized indigenous population living alongside a more affluent, what
• 25:59
  Speaker 2: he calls civilized, society. And in his twisted worldview, he
• 26:03
  Speaker 2: didn't see a social tragedy. He saw an opportunity to
• 26:06
  Speaker 2: prey on people. He saw a population that the civilized
• 26:09
  Speaker 2: world might ignore.
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: He explicitly admits in the interview that Alaska is the
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: perfect place for a secret life. He marvels at the vast,
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: empty spaces. He literally says you could just go dump
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: a body just five minutes out of town and that
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: it is a place where you could completely withdraw from humanity.
• 26:26
  Speaker 2: It's own chilling.
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: It's like for most people listening to this, the idea
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: of the Alaskan wilderness amplifies a sense of peace or
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: adventure or a spiritual connection to nature. But for Smith,
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: the physical environment amplified his isolation and provided a massive
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: unmonitored playground for his darkest urges.
• 26:46
  Speaker 2: It is a textbook extreme example of what psychologists call
• 26:50
  Speaker 2: the geographic cure.
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: Okay, let's pause on that. Explain the geographic cure, because
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: I think people do this all the time on a
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: smaller scale, like moving to a new city after a
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: bad breakup.
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: Exactly. You've probably done it or know someone who has.
• 27:01
  Speaker 2: You go through a tough time, a bad relationship, a
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: career failure, and you think, if I just move to
• 27:05
  Speaker 2: Denver or Austin or New York, everything will be better.
• 27:09
  Speaker 2: I will be a new person. Right.
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: Fresh start.
• 27:11
  Speaker 2: The geographic cure is the false belief that simply changing
• 27:15
  Speaker 2: your physical location will will somehow magically fix your internal
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: psychological problems. And it works for about three weeks.
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: Because of the novelty. Right.
• 27:24
  Speaker 2: The dopamine of a new environment masks the pain. But
• 27:27
  Speaker 2: eventually the dopamine wears off and you realize that wherever
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: you go, there you are. You brought yourself with you.
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: You unpack your bags and your problems are sitting right
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: there at the bottom of the suitcase. Yes.
• 27:38
  Speaker 2: Smith fled his financial and personal failures in South Africa,
• 27:41
  Speaker 2: but he brought his internal darkness, his prejudices, and his
• 27:44
  Speaker 2: violent potential with him. And unfortunately, the sheer physical geography
• 27:49
  Speaker 2: of Alaska, the isolation, the harsh weather, the vastness, didn't
• 27:53
  Speaker 2: cure him. It perfectly enabled that darkness to flourish in
• 27:56
  Speaker 2: a way it might not have in a densely populated area.
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: So he constructs this ultimate double life. By day, he
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: is the loving husband to Stephanie. He is a good, reliable,
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: friendly employee at the local hotel.
• 28:08
  Speaker 2: The perfect facade.
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: But by night, the mask slips completely. He tells the
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: interviewer that he would drink a glass of whiskey before
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: bed and right around midnight he would get a second breath,
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: a physiological surge of energy. And he would take his
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: black pickup truck and troll the dark streets of Anchorage,
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: actively looking for vulnerable victims.
• 28:27
  Speaker 2: But we need to understand that this secret life wasn't
• 28:30
  Speaker 2: just physical. It was heavily psychological and it was actively
• 28:33
  Speaker 2: fueled by another toxic relationship.
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: The mistress.
• 28:37
  Speaker 2: Right. The isolation within his marriage to Stephanie drove him
• 28:40
  Speaker 2: to seek an outlet, a place where he could be
• 28:43
  Speaker 2: his true dark self. And he found one in a
• 28:45
  Speaker 2: younger woman he met at work named Alicia Youngblood.
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: They started out as just drinking buddies, complaining about work,
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: but it quickly escalated into an affair. And I want
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: to make it clear, this wasn't just a typical romantic
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: workplace affair.
• 28:58
  Speaker 2: No, not at all.
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: They shared this intense lust for dark sexual adventure and
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: violent role play. Smith admits in the documents that she
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: liked rough stuff. She liked being slapped, choked, and suffocated
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: during intimacy.
• 29:10
  Speaker 2: What's crucial to understand here is the dynamic of escalation
• 29:13
  Speaker 2: they built together. Alicia would tell Smith these elaborate, highly
• 29:18
  Speaker 2: fabricated stories about her past to make herself seem dangerous.
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: Like what kind of stories?
• 29:23
  Speaker 2: She claimed she was part of a gang that robbed
• 29:26
  Speaker 2: banks across the country. She claimed she was actively being
• 29:29
  Speaker 2: chased by the FBI. Pure Hollywood-style fantasy.
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: And Smith knew they were fake. He wasn't stupid. But
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: to outdo her, to turn her on and keep this
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: dark fantasy escalating, he responded by bringing real-world violence into
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: the conversation.
• 29:44
  Speaker 2: Which is so dangerous.
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: He claimed, well, I've actually killed someone. He brought murder
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: into their roleplay. And he says it worked. It turned
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: her on massively.
• 29:53
  Speaker 2: What we are looking at here is a severe manifestation
• 29:55
  Speaker 2: of paraphilia combined with a psychological feedback loop.
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: Break down paraphilia for me, because that's a heavy clinical term.
• 30:02
  Speaker 2: Paraphilia is defined by abnormal sexual desires that typically involve
• 30:05
  Speaker 2: extreme or dangerous activities. In Smith's case, it was an
• 30:09
  Speaker 2: intense paraphilic interest in inflicting sexual violence, terror, or torture
• 30:13
  Speaker 2: on a living person and a fascination with corpses.
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: That is just so dark.
• 30:19
  Speaker 2: It is. Now, normally a person might have a dark fantasy,
• 30:22
  Speaker 2: but societal norms and morality keep it locked in their head.
• 30:25
  Speaker 2: But look at the feedback loop he enters with Alicia.
• 30:28
  Speaker 2: He shares a piece of this violent fantasy, and instead
• 30:31
  Speaker 2: of being horrified, she rewards him with arousal and validation.
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: So her validation acts like a dangerous accelerant.
• 30:38
  Speaker 2: Exactly. The human brain builds tolerance to fantasy, just like
• 30:42
  Speaker 2: it builds tolerance to a drug. The neurological feedback loop
• 30:45
  Speaker 2: of dopamine requires more and more intense stimuli to achieve
• 30:49
  Speaker 2: the same reward.
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: So they just keep pushing the envelope.
• 30:51
  Speaker 2: Yes. Her willingness to engage in these violent fantasies validated
• 30:55
  Speaker 2: his deepest, darkest, paraphilic urges. She essentially told his subconscious
• 31:00
  Speaker 2: that his monstrous thoughts were acceptable, even desirable.
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: It's terrifying. It makes you wonder. What happens when two
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: people build a bridge entirely out of violent lies and
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: one of them decides to cross over into reality?
• 31:12
  Speaker 2: Because eventually the fantasy isn't enough.
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: Right. Because Smith actually did cross over. And here is
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: a detail that is just utterly tragic. A full year
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: before Valerie Kastler stole that phone from the truck, Alicia
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: Youngblood actually called a police tip line.
• 31:29
  Speaker 2: She realized to her absolute horror that the fantasy wasn't
• 31:33
  Speaker 2: a fantasy anymore.
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: She knew it was real.
• 31:35
  Speaker 2: She told the police that Smith had shown her a
• 31:37
  Speaker 2: video on his phone of a dead woman. She described
• 31:41
  Speaker 2: it to the cops in horrific detail. She described how
• 31:44
  Speaker 2: the man in the video was biting his own hands.
• 31:46
  Speaker 2: how he was grabbing the victim's breast so hard that
• 31:49
  Speaker 2: blood pooled under the skin.
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: Oh, God.
• 31:51
  Speaker 2: She was adamant that the video she saw was real,
• 31:53
  Speaker 2: not a movie.
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: And she even tried to play the role of an
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: amateur spy. She told police she was performing, quote, crazy
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: sexual acts with him, pretending to enjoy it, just trying
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: to goad him into sharing the actual physical files with
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: her so she could take them to the cops.
• 32:08
  Speaker 2: But Smith was too careful with his digital trophies. He
• 32:11
  Speaker 2: would show them to her to feed his ego. But
• 32:13
  Speaker 2: he never actually transferred the physical files to her devices.
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: Without the files, they have nothing.
• 32:18
  Speaker 2: Exactly. And because Alicia had a well-documented history of telling
• 32:22
  Speaker 2: fabricated stories about bank robberies and the FBI, and because
• 32:26
  Speaker 2: there was absolutely no physical proof or a body identified
• 32:29
  Speaker 2: at that time, the police didn't have enough to get
• 32:32
  Speaker 2: a warrant. They had to drop the investigation.
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: The psychological burden of that must have been unbearable for Alicia.
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: She realized the monster she was playing with was real.
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: She tried to stop him. And she failed because she
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: was trapped by her own history of lying.
• 32:46
  Speaker 2: It's a boy who cried wolf scenario.
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: She eventually fled Alaska and moved to Oklahoma. And tragically,
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: the sources confirmed she took her own life. She never
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: got the chance to testify against him in court.
• 32:57
  Speaker 2: Her story is a very grim reminder of how echo
• 33:00
  Speaker 2: chambers of violence operate. When fantasy is constantly rewarded and
• 33:04
  Speaker 2: escalated without any tether to morality or reality, it inevitably
• 33:08
  Speaker 2: bleeds into action. She thought she was playing a game.
• 33:11
  Speaker 2: He was using the game to build the courage to kill.
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: So let's fast forward. It is February 2024. The trial
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: finally begins. And this is where things get truly surreal.
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: Because despite the mountain of digital evidence, the cell pings,
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: the AKS data, and despite his hours of detailed signed
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: confessions in the interrogation room, Smith adopts a staggering new defense.
• 33:36
  Speaker 2: It's really hard to believe.
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: It gives us our final look into his deeply delusional mindset.
• 33:41
  Speaker 2: The courtroom environment is incredibly tense. The prosecution has to
• 33:45
  Speaker 2: show the video of Kathleen Henry's murder to the jury,
• 33:47
  Speaker 2: but it is so graphic that they physically turn the
• 33:50
  Speaker 2: screen away from the public gallery.
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: Just to protect the public from seeing it. Right.
• 33:54
  Speaker 2: And then Smith takes the stand and completely recants everything.
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: He tells the jury that his detailed confession about shooting
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: Veronica Abuchuk on the couch was just a fabricated role-play
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: scenario that he and Elisa Youngblood invented for fun.
• 34:05
  Speaker 2: He says he just repeated their fake story to the cops.
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: And regarding his original confessions in the interrogation room, he
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: claims he was just engaging in, quote, non-confrontational de-escalation and
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: that he was under extreme duress from the long flight.
• 34:18
  Speaker 2: But the most shocking, revealing part of his defense is
• 34:21
  Speaker 2: his reaction to the video itself. He completely denies being
• 34:25
  Speaker 2: the man behind the camera.
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: Which is insane. They matched his voice. I know.
• 34:30
  Speaker 2: And when the prosecution forces him to watch the footage
• 34:32
  Speaker 2: of the murder in open court, He does something truly bizarre.
• 34:36
  Speaker 2: He analyzes the killer in the third person.
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: I cannot get over this detail. He sits there in
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: a courtroom on trial for his life, watching a video
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: of a brutal murder that he filmed, and he critiques
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: the killer.
• 34:49
  Speaker 2: Like he's watching someone else entirely.
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: He says to the jury that the killer doesn't seem
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: to be enjoying it. He says the killer sounds frustrated
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: and tired and like he lost control of the situation.
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: I have to stop here. He is literally reviewing his
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: own murder video like he is a film critic at
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: the Sundance Film Festival.
• 35:07
  Speaker 2: It's profoundly disturbing.
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: How can a human mind fracture reality so severely? How
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: can he sit there and talk about himself as if
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: he's watching a stranger?
• 35:16
  Speaker 2: Well, if we connect this to the bigger picture, you
• 35:19
  Speaker 2: are witnessing the ultimate culmination of narcissistic delusion and profound
• 35:23
  Speaker 2: psychological dissociation. By analyzing the video in the third person,
• 35:28
  Speaker 2: Smith is building an impenetrable mental wall. He is shielding
• 35:32
  Speaker 2: his fragile ego from the monstrous reality of his own actions.
• 35:36
  Speaker 2: If he admits that is me doing those things, his
• 35:39
  Speaker 2: internal narrative of being a clever, respectable guy completely shattered.
• 35:44
  Speaker 2: By critiquing the killer as a separate entity, he regains
• 35:48
  Speaker 2: a sense of control and superiority in the courtroom.
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: And the audio from the video actually confirms this deeply
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: delusional detachment. When they play the tape, the court hears
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: the killer saying things like, I'm trying to make a
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: movie here, you stupid B.H., and let's do a nipple shot,
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: an action shot.
• 36:04
  Speaker 2: Treat it like a film production.
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: He even brags to the victim. In my movies, everyone dies,
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: and I get the Oscar B.H.
• 36:11
  Speaker 2: Exactly. Look at the framework he uses. By framing the
• 36:14
  Speaker 2: brutal murder as making a movie, Smith completely dehumanized Kathleen
• 36:18
  Speaker 2: Henry in real time. She was no longer a living,
• 36:20
  Speaker 2: breathing human being experiencing pain. She was just a prop
• 36:24
  Speaker 2: in his twisted production.
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: Just an object on a set.
• 36:27
  Speaker 2: He even tells the interviewer later that the killer in
• 36:29
  Speaker 2: the video wasn't sexually molesting the victim. He was just
• 36:32
  Speaker 2: poking his fingers on her boob and suggests the killer
• 36:35
  Speaker 2: was documenting it to make money. It is a complete
• 36:38
  Speaker 2: pathological detachment from human empathy. He turned reality into fiction
• 36:43
  Speaker 2: so he could survive what he was doing.
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: Thankfully, the jury sees right through this staggering delusion. They
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: don't buy the movie critic defense for a second. They
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: deliberate very quickly. They find Brian Stephen Smith guilty of
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: first-degree murder, sexual assault, and misconduct involving a corpse for
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: both Kathleen Henry and Veronica Abuchak.
• 37:03
  Speaker 2: He gets what he deserves.
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: He is sentenced to 226 years in an Alaskan prison.
• 37:08
  Speaker 2: And in his final jailhouse interview... When confronted with the
• 37:11
  Speaker 2: absolute unchangeable reality of his 226-year sentence, there is finally
• 37:16
  Speaker 2: a tiny fleeting glimmer of self-awareness.
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: Really?
• 37:20
  Speaker 2: He stops fighting the narrative for just a second. He
• 37:22
  Speaker 2: looks at the interviewer and says, I've dug my own graveyard.
• 37:25
  Speaker 2: I did this to myself. I've got no one to
• 37:27
  Speaker 2: talk to now. The isolation he originally sought in Alaska,
• 37:31
  Speaker 2: the desire to withdraw from humanity, is now his permanent
• 37:35
  Speaker 2: reality in an 8x10 prison cell.
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: It's a fitting end for him. But the tragedy of
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: the victims has to remain at the forefront here. We
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: have to acknowledge the broader context of what happened. Statistics
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: show that murder is the third leading cause of death
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: among Native American women.
• 37:51
  Speaker 2: It's an epidemic.
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: Smith didn't just pick people at random out of a crowd.
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: He specifically targeted a vulnerable, marginalized demographic that he cynically
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: believed society would overlook.
• 38:02
  Speaker 2: And that is the true horror of the story. It
• 38:05
  Speaker 2: isn't just one man's heinous individual actions. It is the
• 38:08
  Speaker 2: systemic societal blind spots that allow people living on the fringes,
• 38:12
  Speaker 2: people experiencing homelessness, indigenous women, to disappear without setting off
• 38:17
  Speaker 2: immediate massive alarms in the media or law enforcement.
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: Right, because society isn't looking out for them.
• 38:22
  Speaker 2: Serial killers are predatory by nature. They don't hunt where
• 38:25
  Speaker 2: the light is brightest. They exploit the cracks in our
• 38:27
  Speaker 2: societal foundation.
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: Which is exactly what makes Valerie Kastler's role in this
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: entire saga even more incredible. It took a woman from
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: the exact same marginalized, overlooked community as the victims to
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: finally stop this monster.
• 38:41
  Speaker 2: She did what the system couldn't.
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: When she was asked about the verdict, which incredibly actually
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: landed on her birthday, she didn't boast. She didn't ask
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: for fame. She just said her only wish was for
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: the victims to finally go home so their families wouldn't
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: have to bury an empty box.
• 38:55
  Speaker 2: Her bravery is the singular light in a very dark story.
• 39:00
  Speaker 2: She faces a system that often ignores people in her situation,
• 39:03
  Speaker 2: and she forced them to look.
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: At the truth. But there's a looming thread left unresolved
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: in the sources, isn't there? Yes.
• 39:09
  Speaker 2: South African police are now actively investigating Smith based on
• 39:13
  Speaker 2: those stories he told Alicia about his past. During their
• 39:15
  Speaker 2: role plays, he had mentioned his sister back home in
• 39:17
  Speaker 2: South Africa who was as young as 15. The terrifying
• 39:20
  Speaker 2: reality we have to sit with is that we may
• 39:22
  Speaker 2: not know the full extent of his crimes.
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: So to bring this all together, today we followed a
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: path that started with a stolen cell phone in a freezing,
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: rainy homeless encampment.
• 39:33
  Speaker 2: We really went through it.
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: We navigated through a maze of invisible digital evidence cell
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: tower pings and EXF data timestamps. We sat through the
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: intense psychological tension of an interrogation room where a man
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: tried to blame a bear cub for a murder. And
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: we ended with the conviction of a man who genuinely
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: thought he could direct his own twisted, violent reality without
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: any consequences.
• 39:58
  Speaker 2: And for you listening to this, I think this deep
• 40:01
  Speaker 2: dive serves as a stark, unforgettable reminder of the power
• 40:05
  Speaker 2: of digital permanence. Every action leaves a trace.
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: It really does.
• 40:08
  Speaker 2: The technology we carry in our pockets, the devices we
• 40:11
  Speaker 2: use to take selfies and check the weather every single day.
• 40:14
  Speaker 2: They are both our greatest vulnerability and sometimes the ultimate
• 40:18
  Speaker 2: unbiased witness to the truth.
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: And that leaves me with a final thought. I want
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: you to mull over it long after you finish listening
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: to this. We often think of the Internet and our
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: smartphones as tools that connect us to the larger world.
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: They are supposed to bring us together. But when someone
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: like Brian Stephen Smith uses those exact same tools to
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: build a private, unmonitored echo chamber of violence, does our
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: digital footprint actually make us more isolated than ever before?
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: are the darkest, most terrifying frontiers of human nature, no
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: longer hidden out in remote geographic wildernesses, but sitting right there, silently,
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: on a memory card in the passenger seat next to us.
• 40:55
  Speaker 2: It's a haunting reality to consider. Thank you for joining
• 40:59
  Speaker 2: us today as we navigated this incredibly heavy source material.
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: Take care of yourselves out there. Until next time.