Steven Downs

Active: 1993–1993
Region: Fairbanks, Alaska, USA
States: AK, ME
Kind: Single
Status: Convicted
Victims: 1

Sophie Sergie, a 20-year-old woman from the village of Pitkas Point, was sexually assaulted and murdered in April 1993 while visiting a friend in Bartlett Hall, a dormitory at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. The case went cold for 26 years. In 2019 the Alaska State Troopers' cold case unit used genetic genealogy to trace crime-scene DNA to Steven Downs, a student who had lived in the same dorm, and he was arrested in Auburn, Maine. A Fairbanks jury convicted him of murder and sexual assault in February 2022, and he was sentenced to 75 years.

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Victims

We remember the people whose lives were taken.

Sophie Sergie, 20 · April 1993
From Pitkas Point, a village in western Alaska.

Timeline of locations

1993
Pitkas Point, Alaska (Other, approximate area)
Sophie Sergie's home village in western Alaska.
April 1993
Bartlett Hall, University of Alaska Fairbanks (Crime scene, approximate area)
Sergie was visiting a friend in Bartlett Hall when she was attacked; her body was found in a dormitory bathtub. Downs, then a UAF student, lived in the same hall. DNA was collected at the scene but could not be matched for decades.
February 15, 2019
Auburn, Maine (Arrest, approximate area)
After a genealogist matched the crime-scene DNA to a relative of Downs in a public database, and a DNA test confirmed it, Downs was arrested in Auburn, Maine, and brought to Alaska for trial.
January 2022
Fairbanks Superior Court (Court / trial, approximate area)
After a five-week trial before Judge Thomas Temple, the jury convicted Downs of first-degree murder and sexual assault on February 10, 2022. He was sentenced on September 26, 2022, to 75 years and will be eligible for parole after 25. He has appealed.

Sources

Each location also lists its own sources in the data file.