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, and more broadly about how law enforcement investigates missing and murdered Indigenous people, a phenomenon known as 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…