The Anchorage Police Department is featured prominently in the national investigative documentary series “Lost Women of Alaska,” which examines the case of serial killer Brian Steven Smith, who was arrested in 2019 and convicted for torturing and killing two Alaska Native women.
In the three-part series now streaming on HBO Max, the victims’ families and advocates raise lingering questions and concerns around how Anchorage detectives handled the case, both before and after Smith’s arrest. They also raise broader questions about how law enforcement investigates missing and murdered Indigenous people (MMIP).
Anchorage Police Chief Sean Case referred specific questions about how the case was handled to the detectives involved, but spoke to broader concerns raised by the series in a 30 minute phone interview on Mar 4.
Case said he disagrees with a central premise of the series, which is that Alaska fosters a sense of freedom for perpetrators like Smith to victimize or prey on women.
“That we provide an environment to prey on, or our women are vulnerable — I don’t think that’s true,” Case said. “But I do think that as a state and as a community, we definitely like less government involvement than more. That’s kind of one of our things. We have that libertarian streak that kind of runs through all Alaskans, and particularly in Anchorage that’s one thing that we’ve really been addressing in the last two years.”
Case cited recent changes in Anchorage law prohibiting some public camping, public indecency, and threatening behavior as helping to “close criminal loopholes,” and upping police enforcement response. “Over the course of time we kind of forget that Anchorage is a big city with a lot of big city problems,” Case said. “So we’re kind of turning that corner a little bit where we are utilizing a lot more tools that are available to us.”
Case also cited the departments’ use of technology, like artificial intelligence, to assist in investigations. “I actually kind of think we’re even going above and beyond what we see in the lower 48, and we’re kind of starting to lead the pack when it comes to our use of technology here,” he said.
Case said despite some department short staffing, he sees the use of technology as helping to improve law enforcement’s response.
“So I think in some respect, we just need to start thinking about Anchorage a lot of times like it is a city, and we need to respond to city crime in a more of an urban city way, instead of that ‘Last Frontier’ kind of approach,” Case said.
"No Humans Involved"
In the series, a former Anchorage detective turned MMIP advocate, Michael Livingston, describes that during his career in the department from 1983 to 2003, there was a secret, unspoken policy of responding to certain deaths or missing persons reports as “NIH” — no humans involved.
“That means when a patrol officer rolls up to a scene and there’s a deceased person,” Livingston explains in the series. “And if they happen to be a person without a home, who had challenges with alcohol and lifestyles, the patrol officer would evaluate, we’re not going to devote any resources to determine how and why this person died.”
Livingston said he’s concerned that the policy and culture of “NIH” has continued in the department. He and other advocates and family members criticized detectives for failing to identify a third possible victim of Smith, Cassandra Boskofsky, after photos of her were discovered on Smith’s phone in 2019. She had been reported missing the month before Smith’s arrest. Advocates found the photos and a forensic sketch in court documents during Smith’s sentencing in 2024, and later identified her.
“When I look at the amount of work the Anchorage Police Department did or didn’t do with Cassandra Lee Boskofsky, I can’t help but wonder if, because of the challenges that Cassandra faced in her life, the Anchorage Police Department did not dedicate the amount of attention that they should have,” Livingston said, in the docuseries.
In the series, Anchorage Detective Brendan Lee denies the allegations, and Case also rejects the claim.
“First of all, that individual was from a different era. He’s been gone for quite a long time. And I have never in my 25 years here, ever, heard that term used by anyone in the department in a way that they aren’t going to investigate, they’re not going to take seriously any victim based on their race, based on their gender, based on their socioeconomic status,” Case said. “Never.”
Case pointed to the department’s focus on homeless outreach and mobile intervention teams for behavioral health needs. “Those two populations alone are some of our most vulnerable populations, and we’re investing the time and resources so we can make sure that we’re properly caring for those folks.”
When asked about why police failed to try to identify Boskofsky and share the forensic sketch with her family or the public, Case deferred specific questions to the detectives in the case, but defended the decision.
“The idea of a forensic sketch is something we very, very rarely do, and one of the reasons why we very rarely do that is because they’ve just proven to be pretty unreliable, and that’s not an exact science,” Case said.
Case said detectives must weigh the risk of disclosing violent photos. In this case, Boskofsky was pictured laying outside on grass, immobile and possibly dead.
“One of the things that the detectives really battled with is you’ve got to weigh the entire amount of evidence that we have in the case with taking some information and like a photo and presenting that to the family, for example, and the type of trauma that you may be creating that you’re not convinced you’re going in the right direction,” Case said. “Like there’s not that body of evidence that you’re like ‘this is worth the risk.’”
Boskofsky’s death was ruled a homicide by a jury in a presumptive death hearing brought by the family, and the Anchorage Police Department confirmed the case remains active.
The Boskofsky family and advocates have created an online petition with over 2,200 signatures with a list of demands of the police department, including mandatory standards for family notification when evidence potentially involving their loved one is discovered.
Insufficient evidence to arrest Smith in 2018
Another major question raised by the docuseries is why Anchorage detectives decided not to question or arrest Smith in 2018. A former romantic partner of his, Alicia Youngblood, reported to police that year that he had shown her a video of himself killing a woman. The series shows Youngblood’s distress in reporting this confession and interviews with police. But she could not obtain the video from Smith, and police were unable to identify a victim or a body. They told her there was not enough evidence to take further action.
Smith would go on to be convicted for torturing and killing two women, Kathleen Jo Henry and Veronica Abouchuk. He filmed and narrated the acts, which were found on his phone by another woman, Valerie Casler, who had stolen the phone and reported him to police in 2019. In the series, Anchorage Detective David Cordie grows emotional recounting how he watched the horrific videos and recognized the voice belonging to Smith, a South African national, speaking in the videos a year later.
“Absolutely I felt some responsibility about what took place. It’s easy to second guess. We didn’t have a crystal ball to know what was going to take place,” Cordie said in the series.
Case again deferred specific questions to the detectives, but defended their decisions saying there is a high expectation for evidence that must be met in order to interview suspects.
“We’re not going to jeopardize giving information out to a potential suspect,” Case said. “So, for instance, interviewing a suspect when we don’t feel like we have enough information where we can get a good interview, where we can potentially figure out if the suspect is lying in an interview or we haven’t collected enough evidence that we can use that evidence to our advantage in an interview with a suspect. And if we go in kind of half prepared, just like we know something doesn’t look right, something doesn’t feel right, and then we go into an interview, and we try to, you know, for lack of a better term, kind of throw something against the wall and hope for the best, we could actually damage the case,” he said.
Missing in Anchorage
Case explained the department’s protocol for when a missing person is reported in Anchorage. He said when the report is received, the police patrol division will respond according to department policy and begin an investigation where the individual was last seen, gather information, conduct interviews, and determine if the individual is at-risk. Cases will be referred to the detective division, or to the homicide division if foul play is suspected.
“Those cases are all being worked by the entire unit, so all of those detectives are familiar with everybody’s cases that they have. So you may have one detective that’s the lead, another detective that’s a second on it, and then there are different tasks on all these cases that will then be pushed out to the other detectives,” Case said.
Following the interview, a department spokesperson confirmed there are 45 detectives and seven sergeants across divisions, including seven detectives in the homicide division.
Those seven detectives, plus two supervisors, are working on MMIP cases, which totalled 39 active cases of missing adults as of Mar. 10, according to the department spokesperson.
Case said the department is working on establishing a new victim advocate position within the homicide unit this year, to provide more timely updates and communicate with family members on active cases. He said that has long been a concern within the department, particularly for domestic violence, sexual assault, homicide, and suicide cases. “Those areas where we tend to get our families of the victim that really needs and should get, you know, updated regular information,” he said. “Because we understand kind of the state that they’re in, you know, they’ve got a lot of unanswered questions, and that can weigh pretty heavily on you and be pretty damaging, just from a behavioral health standpoint.”
Public safety and justice for Alaska Native peoples
When asked to respond to public concern, particularly Alaska Native communities’ concern for safety amid the ongoing MMIP crisis in Alaska, Case responded that he recognizes the fear and sees the police department’s role as one part of a wider, complex system. He said that, in particular, the department is working with hospitals to make sure people who travel to Anchorage for medical care don’t go missing.
“Because we know some of them fall off the radar and there’s got to be a safety net that we create, not just with hospitals, so I’m not putting this blame on hospitals, but with our entire community response,” Case said. “We do get missing reports on on folks that come from rural Alaska for medical treatment, but as well as a whole host of other reasons why we get missing reports when, when people are visiting from rural Alaska, and so really trying to get down and talk about, like, the real kind of causes for some of this — some that we can address, some that are a little bit more challenging,” he said.
Case said that he sees some of the stereotypes around rural residents from Native villages coming to Anchorage for services such as medical care as unfair. “We kind of pass a judgment on some of the some of the things that happen when they get introduced to a completely different culture and completely different risk factors. And the judgments are unfair,” he said. “And one of the challenges I think that we have is we don’t want to talk about just kind of the broad range of challenges that we have so that we can actually address them and help them. So when I think about Alaska Natives first, I think about the rich culture, and I think about a proud culture,” he said. “But I also think about a culture that has been put through a lot of trauma throughout their history, that a lot of people aren’t really familiar with.”
Case said there can be culture shock for rural residents visiting Anchorage, and there are many factors that contribute to people being at-risk for going missing or being victimized.
“It is a challenge that we’ve been dealing with for a long time,” Case added. “And it’s certainly a challenge that I think collectively understand we can do a better job. I think we just have to have the right conversations.”
Case said he considers participating in the docuseries an important part of communication and engagement with the public.
“We’ve really been a lot more open than certainly [Anchorage Police Department] has in the past. And we’re certainly a lot more open than most police departments around the country, and there’s pros and cons for all of that,” he said, adding that the Anchorage Police Department has changed some policies after pushback from the public.
“I think the more information that we can provide just kind of across the spectrum of what we do and how we do it, the better relationship we’re going to have with the community, and the better police department we’re going to be in the long run,” Case said.
