This Is How We Rise

It was an early spring day as I stood in line at the Nesbit Courthouse. The snow was finally melting and the brain fog that had permeated to the point where all conversations led to the issues surrounding Brian Steven Smith trial, where he was found guilty of two murders of two Alaska Native women, was finally lifting.

Still, here I was standing in line with the other two that were left more questions rather than answers. 

We had an after protest meeting a few weeks before. It had been a freezing evening as a half dozen of us stood outside of APD headquarters, holding signs that had ARREST IAN CALHOUN NOW in red, chants orchestrated in unison.We demanded to be heard.

There were three of us that had started the organizing, and we met at a coffee shop to warm up after the second protest. We felt we were getting nowhere. We knew there was more information out there, but how could we get that information?

We had made the choice that evening over our coffees and soups that I would try to visit Brian Steven Smith, the man I refer to as BS.

I do this, partly to dehumanize him as he called the women he murdered “it”, but also to refer to what I would come to hear from him during visits, bullshit.

The letters and paperwork sent to me from BS gave me much more information than anything he had told me or what I had heard in trial. Still, that same paperwork had notes scribbled and underlined, giving voice to what he said was a “coerced confession,” although the details and information he willingly gave identified another woman the police weren’t even questioning him about; Veronica Abouchuk.

Weeks and many visits and letters later, I was standing in line for a copy of the grand jury transcripts from BS’s case and I hopped on one of the computers, typing in BS’s memorized case number, checking to see if anything new had been filed.

Strange.

There hadn’t been a small pdf graphic image next to the fillings when I had checked the records from my phone. 

One stood out.

Hybrid Witness. Filed 

01/03/2024

Notice ST – Notice of Hybrid Witnesses

And then another.

01/14/2024

Notice Amended Notice of Hybrid Witnesses

I had paperwork sent to me from BS only a week earlier, but it didn’t have specifics like this court filing did.

The Detailed Digital Forensics Analysis of Seized Devices Progress Report detailed of his two known victims, Veronica Abouchuk and Kathleen Jo Henry, and another picture shown at trial of him and another woman, with videos and images that do not depict anything “violent or unusual”. 

Then, the report details, “Images of woman on ground”.

I had asked BS about the report during the visit after I got this in the mail.  He told me what he had stated during his interrogation, when they had initially found the images, “She is just a friend I picked up, she was laughing and we were laughing, she had fallen over as she was trying to piss, we were just laughing.”

The report didn’t detail much else, and we didn’t know much, until the Hybrid Witness filing was found at the end of March, 2024.

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In the additional legal paperwork dating back to October 8, 2019, investigators have continually written they do not know if the woman is deceased or alive in the images.

The recent developments related to her case have raised serious concerns about the handling of evidence and the investigation into Brian Steven Smith’s case by the APD.

The images were never entered into evidence at Smith’s trial in February 2024, nor discussed. 

The images and forensic sketch were released in a Sentencing Memorandum for the sentencing of convicted murderer Brian Steven Smith, which took place on July 12, 2024. 

There is a longer story behind those photos.

These images, which depict a woman beaten and likely deceased, were finally used to create a composite forensic sketch, which was entered into the Sentencing Memorandum, dated July 3, 2024.

The forensic artist drawing has not been shared by Anchorage Police Department (APD) yet APD says photos do not prove Alaska Native woman was murdered by Brian Smith.

I had been in Juneau for the 4th of July to visit friends and family and felt…unsettled. I checked online in the Courtview and saw a new filing had been entered into BS’s case on July 3rd.

I flew home late that night, and headed to the courthouse the next morning. I printed the Sentencing Memorandum, 11 pages front and back. I rushed back out to my car because I had only put some lose change in the meter and didn’t want another parking ticket.

As I crossed the street I glanced through the paperwork, thinking it was another wordy filing.

The three pictures of a woman laying outside were the last things I glanced at as I got in my car.

I started shaking and crying. Calling Antonia and Michael on our messenger group. No one answered. I didn’t want to look at the pictures until one of them were with me. I had just stumbled upon something horrible and it angered me knowing it was right there, for anyone to go and find, readily available.

Michael called me back, and we talked on camera, I took pictures, and sent to our three person group.

Cassandra Lee Boskofsky was reported missing by her family members in August 2019.

It was Friday. I hoped that no one from the various media publications would stumble upon the pictures and share them out to the public. BS was due to be sentenced the following Friday. We had an idea of who it might have been, but decided to come together later than night on messager video call later.

On July 6, 2024, Michael Livingston contacted Anchorage Police Homicide Detective Brenden Lee to request that APD contact the Boskofsky family for identification because. We had matched physical descriptions of Cassandra Lee Boskofsky to the three graphic and disturbing crime scene images in the Sentencing Memorandum. 

The Boskofsky family were shown images on Facebook Messenger by Detective Lee on July 6 and this resulted in an immediate identification of their missing loved one from the crime scene photos.  

Wait. Let’s back up there.

The Boskofsky family were shown images on Facebook Messenger by a detective. 

Facebook Messenger?

This is the best APD could do for a woman that they knew about 5 years before. They let those pictures sit in evidence on the phone, vague sentences in Smith’s paperwork, while her family waited for any news of their loved one. Having no idea that she was even a possible victim of this convicted murderer.

The family members that identified Cassandra were called in to speak to District Attorney Dunlop and Detective Lee the morning of Smith’s Sentencing, July 12, 2024.

During Smith’s sentencing and discussion of the Sentencing Memorandum, Judge Saxby was told the images of the woman in the crime scene photos had not been identified – as Cassandra’s family sat in the front row. 

Cassandra’s case is one that speaks to the broader crisis of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women in Alaska, and who the police deem as unimportant, which includes sex workers.

Smith was known to frequent areas where he knew the most marginalized would be, something he was very clear about in his interrogation at the time of his arrest.

Brian Steven Smith was reported to APD in August 2018 by Alicia Youngblood, a full year before his arrest.

This came about due to a video he had shown her, which was later confirmed during the interrogation a year later as the murder of Veronica Abouchuk.

At that time when Alicia Youngblood contacted police, even bringing them to the Eklutna Power Plant, where Smith had said he had brought the body, APD did not question Smith. 

They also didn’t piece together the skull found in April 2019, 6 months after Alicia had brought APD to that location, a skull found my mushroom pickers on a small road across from the Eklutna Power Plant.

Cassandra’s family deserves answers, justice, and a full investigation into her disappearance and presumed murder. 

This case highlights systemic issues that need to be remedied to ensure no more families suffer the pain of being unheard by police and left in the dark.

To date, APD has not released the sketch to the public.  

But KNBA has.

Cassandra’s family filed in court for a presumptive death hearing.

It was a quiet Tuesday morning as a dozen of us gathered with signs before the hearing on the morning of September 3rd.

We stood with signs that read “I wish APD would see PEOPLE and not COLOR” and many had shirts or hoodies with an image of Cassandra beaming an infectious smile, young, beautiful, loved.

Where is Cassandra? emblazoned above, Justice for Cassandra below.

During the hearing the family was able to question Detective Lee, the lead detective in the Brian Steven Smith investigation.

Lee said a search of Smith’s house turned up shoes that matched the ones worn in the photos believed to be Cassandra, but would not say for certain who the woman in the images was, without remains and positive identification,”we have not been able to 100 percent identify the female in the photos as Cassandra. At this time, we haven’t been able to 100 percent identify her.”

That afternoon a six person jury unanimously ruled Cassandra deceased, ruling her death as Death by Homicide.

The family is planning a service for Cassandra Lee Boskofsky.

11 am, September 19th, 2024 at St. Innocence Russian Orthodox Cathedral, 401 Turpin St, Anchorage Alaska.