A Maine man was just arrested for the brutal 1993 murder of a 20-year-old on the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF) campus after a relatively new type of genetic testing was used to solve the cold case.
On Friday, Feb. 15, Alaska State Troopers (AST) arrested a 44-year-old man in Maine who had been working as a nurse across the country for the 1993 cold case murder of 20-year-old Sophie Sergie. Sergie had been sexually assaulted and found stabbed multiple times with a shot wound to the head, according to the charges, reported Anchorage Daily News.
The suspect, Steven Downs, was 18 years old at the time of Sergie’s murder. He has been charged with the sexual assault and murder of Sergie and is expected to be extradited to Alaska. No motive was given for the murder and it is unclear if the two knew each other prior to Sergie’s death.
UPDATE: Charging documents lay out troopers’ path to Maine suspect in Sophie Sergie’s 1993 Fairbanks murder https://t.co/T5OhWCSo4b pic.twitter.com/Xsf3qGRjQG
— KTVA 11 News (@ktva) February 16, 2019
The breakthrough in the case came when cold case unit detectives took another look at the case in early 2018, reported KTUU-TV.
Back in 1993, DNA technology was not yet being used in Alaska.
When Alaska Trooper investigators last year submitted the DNA profile from the crime scene to Parabon Nanolabs—a Virginia-based company that utilizes extracted DNA to perform genetic genealogy testing—the genetic profile developed a likely suspect.
It was then that that Troopers determined that Downs had also been a student at UAF and lived in the dormitory where Sergie’s body had been found.
“The arrest is the culmination of years of effort and tenacious attention by this department to solve a horrendous murder,” the Department of Public Safety Commissioner, Amanda Price, said.
“For more than 20 years, AST continued to receive info about Sophie’s murder,” Colonel Barry Wilson, Director of the AST, said. “Each tip generated a response by members of the cold case unit hoping to break the case.”
On April 26, 1993, a custodian discovered Sergie’s brutally murdered body in a bathtub at the Bartlett Hall dormitory, reported Anchorage Daily News. Sergie, from Pitkas Point, Alaska, had flown from her hometown to Bethal and then to Fairbanks for an orthodontist appointment before her murder, reported KTUU-TV.
Alaska State Troopers have arrested a Maine man for the murder and sexual assault of 20-year-old Sophie Sergie on the University of Alaska Fairbanks campus in 1993 https://t.co/y17Re37w5c pic.twitter.com/LDA8CybbRt
— KTUU.com (@Ch2KTUU) February 16, 2019
According to the charging document, Downs attended UAF from 1992 until 1996, living in Arizona, after which he returned to Maine where he “was most recently employed as a nurse.”
Downs told Maine State Police working with the AST that he recognized Sergie from posters put up after she died but he denied knowing her or going to the floor of the building where she was killed, according to the charging document.
Downs reportedly told investigators, “I remember the picture, it’s terrible, poor girl.”
According to the charging document, Downs also told investigators he had been in his girlfriend’s room on the night of Sergie’s murder and said he believed soldiers from nearby Fort Wainwright were responsible for her death since they were “often in the building.”
However, despite what he said, a DNA swab taken from Downs matched evidence taken from Sergie’s body, the charging document said.
“As the director of this agency, and as a member of the investigative team that originally worked on this case, I am both honored and humbled to help bring some closure to Sophie’s family,” Wilson said.
Breaking https://t.co/NsLMD0H1NA #ColdCase
— Must Read Alaska (@MustReadAlaska) February 16, 2019
“Through their dogged persistence, advances in tech and spirit of cooperation exhibited by other agencies that touched this case, justice for Sophie is finally within reach,” Wilson said, according to KTUU-TV.