In late September 2019, a woman found an SD card on the streets of the largest city in Alaska. The woman soon discovered the card’s content: footage of an assault and murder. Whether it was sheer luck or divine justice, the culprit was eventually recognized and imprisoned.
When the Anchorage resident came across a memory card labeled “homicide at Midtown Marriott,” she immediately handed it to the police. The card contained 39 pictures and 12 videos preserving incriminating evidence of a woman being strangled.
The authorities recognized the voice of a South African man from an unrelated and unspecified investigation, partly because of his accent.
Two days after the SD card was found, a woman’s remains were unearthed along a highway south of the city, and the investigators soon linked it to the murder in the images.
Soon, 48-year-old Brian Steven Smith was traced back to the site where the remains were found by using his cellphone records. Moreover, according to Anchorage Police Department documents, his location was pinpointed within minutes after the last photo on the memory card was taken.
A medical examiner was brought in to confirm the connection between both incidents, but the police knew all along that the remains and the pictures belonged to the same person.
Although the police did not reveal why the card was left on the street, they believed Smith had recorded the images himself, and the murder was thought to have occurred in early September.
Furthermore, the police confirmed that Smith registered into a hotel room, and the room’s carpet matched the scenery in the footage.
The South African was charged with first-degree murder, and the woman’s identity remains undisclosed.
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