A federal judge on Wednesday revoked the U.S. citizenship of Brian Steven Smith, a South African immigrant convicted in 2024 of murdering two women in Anchorage.
U.S. District Judge Aaron Peterson reversed Smith’s 2019 naturalization after a two-day bench trial this week on charges that Smith obtained citizenship unlawfully because he failed to disclose that he had murdered Kathleen Jo Henry in 2019 and Veronica Abouchuk in 2018. The citizenship application process included questions asking whether Smith had ever killed anyone. He answered “no.”
Smith, 55, was already serving a 226-year sentence on state charges for the women’s deaths when a federal grand jury indicted him on two felony counts related to his citizenship in April 2024.
The trial included evidence from the original criminal case and Smith’s rambling, disturbing and at times bizarre arguments in his own defense.
Prosecutors questioned Anchorage Police Department and federal investigators about the prior criminal investigation into Smith. They also detailed evidence connecting him to the killings, including phone location data, statements made during a police interview, and videos and photos of the killings and sexual assaults that Smith took himself. Much of that evidence had been previously disclosed in the state case against Smith.
Smith, who represented himself in the federal citizenship case, said police coerced him into falsely confessing to the killings. He also claimed that investigators incorrectly identified other women recorded consensually playing out sexual or violent fantasies as Henry and Abouchuk. He also claimed that a woman who stole Smith’s phone and turned in copies of videos and photos of one of the murders to police fabricated the recordings.
Peterson said prosecutors presented overwhelming evidence that Smith killed the two women and that Smith’s claims were “not persuasive.”
Had Smith disclosed that he had killed or harmed the women, his citizenship application “would’ve certainly been rejected,” the judge said.
U.S. citizenship is “an honor and privilege,” Michael Heyman, U.S. Attorney for the District of Alaska, said in an interview.
“We don’t accept liars and people who have committed heinous crimes, and so we’re protecting the process when we prosecute this kind of case,” he said.
The verdicts are the latest developments in a case that has garnered national attention and highlighted violence against Alaska Native women.
The prosecution, Heyman said, is an example of how his office is prioritizing addressing violence against Alaska Native people and will try creative solutions to hold perpetrators accountable.
“We are looking at every conceivable federal angle to address the (Missing and Murdered Indigenous Persons) issue,” he said. “And if that means addressing it in the context of a citizenship application, we’ll do it.”
Smith, originally from South Africa, was charged in October 2019 with first-degree murder, sexual abuse, misconduct with a corpse and tampering with evidence. Prosecutors said in a trial briefing memorandum that Smith was granted a visa after his fiancé at the time, a U.S. citizen, applied for the document in 2014.
After Smith killed Kathleen Jo Henry in a Midtown hotel room in 2019 and fatally shot Veronica Abouchuk in the head in his basement the previous year, federal prosecutors said Smith knowingly made false statements on his U.S. naturalization paperwork and in interviews with hearing officers in 2019.
Smith denied having ever killed, physically harmed or sexually assaulted anyone, among other omissions connected to his crimes, prosecutors said
Smith was sworn in as a naturalized citizen on Sept. 20 of that year, less than a month he filmed Henry’s torture and death by strangulation in a Midtown hotel room, prosecutors said.
Police began looking into Henry’s death after prosecutors said a woman stole Smith’s phone from his truck, copied recordings of her death, and turned them into police several days later, prosecutors said.
Investigators interrogated Smith in October 2019 after he returned to Anchorage by plane from a vacation in the Washington, D.C., area, prosecutors said Tuesday. Police arrested him the same day after an hourslong interview in which he admitted to killing Henry and Abouchuk — a murder prosecutors said police were unaware of until Smith freely admitted to it during the interrogation.
Smith, wearing an orange jail jumpsuit and sandals, said during his closing arguments Tuesday that he had been wrongfully accused of “very, very nasty things.” He said he falsely confessed to the killings after a coercive interview with investigators.
“I’m on the right track,” Smith said, of his belief that he was falsely accused of killing the women.
A psychologist, Brian Cutler, who analyzed the interrogation on behalf of Smith, said he was subjected to an unusually long and intense interview that included coercive tactics, such as minimizing his actions or intensely staring at him, that could increase the chances an innocent person falsely confessing to a crime.
But Cutler also said that he had not concluded that Smith was, or possibly was, coerced into falsely confessing.
When Peterson asked Smith if he had any remarks after the guilty verdicts, Smith said no.
“There’s nothing I can say,” he said shortly before being led out of the courtroom by U.S. Marshals.
Peterson set Smith’s sentencing on the new convictions for February 2027. Smith was jailed at the Cook Inlet Pretrial facility as of Wednesday afternoon, according to online jail records.
Heyman said that it’s too early to say whether Smith would be deported, though he would likely serve his prison time first regardless.