A memory card found on the ground in Alaska led to a man being arrested for a gruesome murder committed days before the lost storage device was discovered.
Police said a woman in Anchorage discovered the SD card lying on the ground somewhere in Anchorage and turned it over to authorities. When the contents of the card were pulled up on a computer, police found it contained 39 images and 12 videos of 48-year-old Brian Steven Smith brutally strangling and killing a woman, according to the New York Times.
Smith, who is South African, was identified because police said they recognized him from an unspecified prior investigation. The charging document said that the man in the video “had some sort of an English-sounding accent when he spoke.”
The videos allegedly show Smith strangling the woman with his hands and stomping on her neck, at one point he began laughing. While strangling her, police say he can be heard saying, “Just … die.”
On Oct. 2, two days after the memory card was recovered, the body of the woman in the videos was found along a highway. Police said the location of the remains was about 18 miles from the hotel where they think the murder took place.
Smith had checked out a room at the hotel from Sept. 2 to Sept. 4. Police said the carpet in the video matches the carpet seen in the hotel room where the woman was murdered. Furthermore, authorities said that on around 1 a.m. on Sept. 6, Smith’s phone pinged near to where the body was dumped.
Smith made a brief court appearance Wednesday where he pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder. He is being held on $500,000 bail.
Police spokesman MJ Thim credited discovery of the memory card as key to nabbing Smith.
“We believe that we have our suspect in custody,” Thim said, “and we are moving forward with determining the rest of the answers to this investigation.”
