Sophie Sergie Murder: Genetic Genealogy, Trial, and Appeal

The Sophie Sergie murder, a 1993 sexual assault and killing in a University of Alaska Fairbanks dormitory, went unsolved for nearly 26 years until investigators used investigative genetic genealogy to identify Steven Downs, a former UAF freshman who had lived one floor above the room where Sergie was staying. A Fairbanks jury convicted Downs of first-degree murder and first-degree sexual assault in February 2022, and he was sentenced to 75 years in prison that September.¹

What Happened in Bartlett Hall

Sophie Sergie was a 20-year-old Yup’ik woman from Pitkas Point, a Native village in western Alaska. She had been a UAF student but took the spring 1993 semester off, and returned to Fairbanks that April for an orthodontics appointment. She was staying in a friend’s room on the second floor of Bartlett Hall, an eight-story campus dormitory.¹

Sergie was last seen in the early morning hours of April 26, 1993. That afternoon, janitors found her body in a bathtub in a second-floor women’s bathroom.² She had been sexually assaulted, stabbed multiple times in the face, and shot in the back of the head at close range with a .22-caliber bullet.¹

Why the Case Went Cold

Investigators recovered biological evidence from Sergie’s body, but DNA technology in Alaska was limited at the time. The suspect’s profile was eventually entered into CODIS, the FBI’s national DNA database, and never produced a match.³ No identifiable suspects emerged. Steven Downs, then an 18-year-old freshman living on the floor above Sergie’s friend’s room, was interviewed by troopers in 1993 but was never treated as a suspect.⁴

After the murder, Downs left Alaska. He returned to Maine, where he had graduated from Edward Little High School in 1992, and eventually became a registered nurse in Auburn.⁵ He lived there for more than two decades without a known criminal record. Sergie’s family held an annual event on the anniversary of her death to keep attention on unsolved killings.³

How Genetic Genealogy Broke the Case

In April 2018, California authorities used the public genealogy database GEDmatch to identify the Golden State Killer, showing that crime-scene DNA could be matched to a suspect through relatives who had voluntarily uploaded profiles to consumer genealogy sites.⁶ Two months later, Alaska State Troopers hired Parabon NanoLabs, a private forensic company, to try the same approach on the Sergie case. Parabon’s chief genetic genealogist, CeCe Moore, led the work.

The crime-scene DNA was uploaded to GEDmatch, where it shared roughly 23 percent of its profile with a sample submitted by one of Downs’ aunts, an overlap consistent with a second-degree aunt-nephew relationship.⁷ Parabon’s genealogists used obituaries, engagement announcements, and social media to build out the family tree. That work pointed to Steven Downs, and public records confirmed he had been a UAF student living in Bartlett Hall in the spring of 1993. The final testing results reached troopers in October 2018.⁸

Arrest and Confirmatory DNA

On February 13, 2019, Alaska State Troopers, Maine State Police, and Auburn police went to Downs’ home in Auburn, Maine. The next day, cold case investigator Trooper Randel McPherron questioned him. Downs told investigators he remembered the murder but said he had never met Sergie.⁹ He drove himself to the Auburn Police Department and voluntarily provided fingerprints and a DNA sample. The Maine State Laboratory tested that sample, and it matched the crime-scene evidence.¹⁰

Downs, then 44, was arrested on February 15, 2019, and charged with first-degree murder and first-degree sexual assault.¹¹ He initially contested extradition but waived the fight on May 16, 2019, and was transferred to Alaska.⁵

The Trial

The trial ran five weeks in Fairbanks Superior Court before Judge Thomas Temple. Special Prosecutor Jenna Gruenstein argued that the DNA profile from semen found inside Sergie matched Downs and that all other potential suspects had been ruled out through DNA testing. Downs’ former girlfriend, Kate Deschweinetz Lee, testified he was “in and out” of her dorm room during the early morning hours of April 26, 1993.¹² A former roommate, Nicholas Dazer, testified that Downs had owned an H&R .22-caliber revolver at UAF, the same caliber used to kill Sergie.¹³ Maine State Police had seized an H&R .22 from Downs’ Auburn home at his arrest.¹⁴

Defense attorney James Howaniec attacked the evidence on several fronts. He questioned the chain of custody for DNA collected in 1993 and pointed out that roughly 19 people, including students, staff, and media, had entered the bathroom before troopers arrived.¹² A defense forensic pathologist testified that semen in a deceased person could reflect consensual sex days before death. A ballistics expert testified she could not identify the seized H&R revolver as the murder weapon, and a 1993 report had deemed the recovered bullet “unsuitable for firearm comparison.” Fingerprint analysis of five sets of prints from the scene did not match Downs.¹⁴

The defense also tried to point to an alternative suspect, Kenneth Moto. In a 2009 interview with troopers, Moto’s sister said her brother had confessed to killing Sergie. The sister died before trial, and Judge Temple ruled her statement inadmissible hearsay.¹⁵ Moto took the stand and denied confessing, saying he had only told his sister he was once considered a suspect while the two watched a television show about cold cases.¹⁶

On February 10, 2022, after 20 hours of deliberation over four days, the jury found Downs guilty of first-degree murder and first-degree sexual assault.⁴

The Sentence

Judge Temple sentenced Downs on September 26, 2022, at the Rabinowitz Courthouse in Fairbanks. The sentence was 67 years for first-degree murder and 8 years for first-degree sexual assault, running consecutively, for a total of 75 years. The eight-year sexual assault term was mandatory, and the judge said he had no discretion to go lower on that count.¹⁷ Under Alaska law, Downs will be eligible for discretionary parole after serving one-third of the sentence, roughly 25 years. He must register as a sex offender for life.¹

Prosecutors had asked for 87 years, calling the crime “brazen” and noting Downs had shown no remorse.¹ The defense argued that any term over 20 years would effectively be a life sentence given Downs’ health; he weighed over 400 pounds and had high blood pressure.² Judge Temple said Downs had given “zero regard to her autonomy as a person, to her value of life,” and that Sergie was “forever gone because of Downs’ callous choice.” He rejected the argument that three decades without another known crime should reduce the sentence. Downs maintained his innocence and declined to address the courtroom. Sergie’s mother had died in 2021, after the arrest but before the trial.

The Pending Appeal

Downs filed a notice of appeal on October 24, 2022.¹⁸ His lawyers make two main arguments: that the warrantless search of GEDmatch violated his Fourth Amendment rights, and that the trial court wrongly excluded the 2009 report of Kenneth Moto’s alleged confession.¹⁹

Assistant Public Defender Emily Jura argues that Downs and his relative have a significant privacy interest in their shared genetic material, and that searches of consumer DNA databases without a warrant are the kind of surveillance the Fourth Amendment was written to check. She points to the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2018 decision in Carpenter v. United States, which held that new technology can demand heightened privacy protections.²⁰ The state, represented by Assistant Attorney General Diane Wendlandt, counters that there is no reasonable expectation of privacy in DNA left at a crime scene, that Downs cannot assert a relative’s privacy rights when she voluntarily uploaded her profile to a database built to find familial matches, and that investigators followed GEDmatch’s terms of service at the time.⁷ The National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers filed an amicus brief in support of Downs in May 2024.

The Alaska Court of Appeals heard oral arguments on April 21, 2025, at the Boney Courthouse in Anchorage, before Chief Judge Marjorie Allard and Judges Tracey Wollenberg and Timothy Terrell. As of mid-2025 the court had not ruled, and Downs remains incarcerated.⁷¹⁹ The case is being watched nationally because no appellate court has yet set a definitive rule on whether police need a warrant before searching consumer genealogy databases. A handful of states, including Maryland, Montana, and Utah, have enacted statutes on forensic genetic genealogy, but there is no federal standard.

Why the Case Resonated Beyond the Courtroom

Sergie’s killing became a touchstone in the movement to address violence against Indigenous women. The Alaska Native Women’s Resource Center, based in Fairbanks, has said the case “shaped the work of many advocates in the field across the state and fueled their passion for the work.”²¹ More than half of Native women experience sexual violence in their lifetimes, a rate 2.5 times higher than the national average, and murder is the third-leading cause of death among American Indian and Alaska Native women.²² In Alaska, 40 percent of Native communities lack law enforcement or 911 services, and as of early 2019 the state had the highest number of missing Indigenous persons in the federal NamUs database of any state.²³

1
State of Alaska Department of Law. Press Release: Downs Sentencing
2
CBS News. Steven Downs Sentenced to 75 Years in 1993 Rape, Murder of Sophie Sergie
3
ABC News. Man Arrested in Sophie Sergie’s 1993 Murder
4
KUAC. Jury Finds Sergie Murderer Guilty in Fairbanks Cold Case
5
Sun Journal. Auburn Man Allows Extradition to Alaska for Murder Trial
6
Slate. GEDmatch DNA Privacy Update
7
Alaska Public Media. Appeals Court Hears DNA Privacy Arguments in UAF Cold Case Murder Conviction
8
Anchorage Daily News. How Genealogists Helped Track Down the Maine Man Accused of Killing Sophie Sergie
9
Alaska Public Media. Jury Hears Recordings of Steven Downs Interrogation
10
WMTW. Maine Man on Trial for Murder in Alaska
11
Business Insider. Steven Downs Arrested in 1993 Murder of Sophie Sergie
12
KTOO. Sophie Sergie Cold Case Murder Trial Ends and Goes to Jury
13
Alaska Public Media. Defendant’s Former UAF Roommate Takes the Stand
14
Webcenter Fairbanks. Forensics, Firearms, Fingerprints, and More Witness Testimony
15
Sun Journal. Auburn Man Charged in Alaska Murder Can Name Alternative Suspects, Judge Rules
16
Alaska Public Media. Alternative Suspect Says He Had Nothing to Do With Murder of Sophie Sergie
17
KTOO. Stephen Downs Sentenced to 75 Years in 1993 Death of Sophie Sergie
18
Webcenter Fairbanks. Steven Downs Files Notice of Appeal
19
Alaska’s News Source. Man Found Guilty in 1993 Murder of UAF Appeals Conviction Over DNA Privacy
20
Fairbanks Daily News-Miner. Man Convicted of Sophie Sergie’s Murder Appeals Case
21
Alaska Native Women’s Resource Center. In Memory of Sophie Sergie
22
Office of Senator Lisa Murkowski. A Breakthrough in an Alaska Cold Case Murder Shines a Light on Violence Against Indigenous Women
23
National Indigenous Women’s Resource Center. A Tribal Perspective on the Crisis of Alaska Native Women and MMIW