Sophie Sergie

Case background and investigation

Sophie Sergie was a 20-year-old Alaska Native woman from Pitkas Point, a village in western Alaska. According to the Alaska Department of Law, she had been a University of Alaska Fairbanks student and was taking a semester off in the spring of 1993. Alaska's News Source reported that she had travelled to Fairbanks for orthodontic work and was staying with a former roommate in Bartlett Hall, a campus dormitory.

According to the Department of Law, Sergie was killed in the early hours of April 26, 1993, and her body was found that afternoon in a bathtub in the women's bathroom on the second floor of Bartlett Hall. The department's account states that she had been sexually assaulted, stabbed in the face and shot in the back of the head at close range. The killing happened shortly before finals week, in a building full of students, but investigators did not identify a suspect, and the case stayed open for about 25 years.

In 2018, investigators turned to genetic genealogy. According to the Department of Law, analysis of DNA from the scene pointed to Steven Harris Downs through a profile that an aunt of his had placed on an open genealogy website. Downs had attended the university from 1992 to 1996 and lived in Bartlett Hall at the time of the killing, Alaska Public Media reported. He was arrested in Auburn, Maine, in mid-February 2019 and charged with murder and sexual assault, according to WABI, and was extradited to Alaska in August 2019, according to Alaska's News Source.

The trial began in Fairbanks on January 12, 2022. Alaska's News Source reported that the defense pointed to other hairs and fingerprints found at the scene and disputed that a firearm seized from Downs's home in Maine was the murder weapon. After two days of deliberation, the jury found Downs guilty of first-degree murder and first-degree sexual assault on February 10, 2022.

On September 26, 2022, Superior Court Judge Thomas Temple sentenced Downs to 67 years for the murder and eight years for the sexual assault, to be served consecutively, for a total of 75 years. According to the Department of Law, he becomes eligible for discretionary parole after 25 years.

Downs has appealed. Alaska Public Media reported that the Alaska Court of Appeals heard oral argument in April 2025 on three issues: whether the warrantless search of a genealogy database violated privacy rights, whether the trial court wrongly excluded testimony about a statement attributed to another person, and whether evidence about a revolver should have been admitted. The court said it would rule at a later date. No decision had been located when this record was checked in September 2026, and the conviction stands.