Steven Downs: Conviction, 75-Year Sentence, and DNA Appeal

Steven Downs is the former University of Alaska Fairbanks student convicted in 2022 of the 1993 rape and murder of Sophie Sergie, a 20-year-old Alaska Native woman found dead in a UAF dormitory bathroom. The case sat cold for nearly 26 years until investigators used investigative genetic genealogy to trace crime scene DNA to Downs through a relative’s profile in a public genealogy database. He was sentenced to 75 years in prison and is currently appealing, arguing that the warrantless database search violated his constitutional right to privacy.¹

What Happened to Sophie Sergie in 1993

Sophie Sergie was from Pitkas Point, a Native village in western Alaska. She was enrolled at UAF but had taken the spring 1993 semester off, and she returned to Fairbanks that April for an orthodontics appointment. She was staying with a friend on the second floor of Bartlett Hall, an eight-story dormitory on campus.¹

In the early hours of April 26, 1993, Sergie left the room to smoke a cigarette. Her friend suggested the shower room, near the exhaust vents, to stay out of the cold.² She never came back. Custodial staff found her body the next afternoon in a bathtub in the second-floor women’s bathroom. She had been sexually assaulted, stabbed multiple times in the face, and shot once in the back of the head at close range.¹

The scene was compromised before troopers arrived. Roughly 19 people, including students and possibly media, passed through the bathroom before the area was secured.³ Finals were underway and the 777 students in the three-dorm complex were about to scatter for the summer, so investigators reached only a small fraction before the campus emptied. DNA recovered from Sergie’s body was submitted to the FBI’s Combined DNA Index System, but it produced no match, and the case stalled.⁴

In 1996, Alaska State Trooper sergeant James McCann investigated Kenneth Moto after Moto matched a witness description of a man seen leaving the Bartlett Hall women’s bathroom around the time of the killing. Moto voluntarily gave a DNA sample. It did not match.⁵

How Genetic Genealogy Identified Downs

In June 2018, Alaska State Troopers sent the unidentified crime scene DNA profile to Parabon NanoLabs, a Virginia-based DNA analysis firm, for genetic genealogy work.⁶ Parabon’s chief genetic genealogist, CeCe Moore, uploaded the profile to GEDmatch, a free open-source database of roughly 1.4 million voluntarily submitted profiles. The search returned what Moore described as a second-degree match, sharing about 23% of DNA with the crime scene sample, consistent with an aunt or uncle. The match was one of Steven Downs’s aunts, who had uploaded her own DNA to the site.⁷

From that match and public records, Moore’s team built a family tree that led to Steven H. Downs. Parabon delivered results to Alaska State Troopers by October 2018.⁶ Investigators confirmed that Downs, then 18, had been a UAF freshman living in Bartlett Hall in April 1993, on the floor directly above where Sergie was killed.⁸ They obtained a search warrant for his DNA and compared it directly to the crime scene sample. It matched. A forensic expert later testified the probability was one in 330 billion.⁹

It was the first Alaska case in which genetic genealogy evidence was brought to court, and the method closely paralleled the one that identified the Golden State Killer in California in 2018.¹

Arrest in Maine

Downs was arrested in February 2019 at his home on Hillcrest Street in Auburn, Maine. He was 44, married, and working as a registered nurse. He had attended UAF from 1992 to 1996, then lived in Arizona before settling in Maine.¹⁰ He had no prior criminal record in the Lewiston-Auburn area, though his Maine nursing license carried a warning consent agreement from 2016 complaints about unprofessional conduct, which required him to complete a course on professional boundaries.¹¹

He initially fought extradition to arrange his defense, then waived it in May 2019.¹²

The Trial and What Convicted Him

The trial opened in January 2022 in Fairbanks before Superior Court Judge Thomas Temple. It ran several weeks and included testimony from investigators, forensic experts, and witnesses from the original 1993 investigation, along with autopsy testimony from a former state medical examiner.¹³

The core of the state’s case was the DNA match tying Downs to the sexual assault, combined with his documented residence in Bartlett Hall at the time of the killing. Prosecutors also introduced a .22-caliber revolver seized from Downs’s Maine home in 2019, the same caliber used to shoot Sergie, though the recovered bullet was too damaged for a definitive firearm comparison.¹⁴ Jurors heard a recording of Downs’s 2019 interview with investigators, in which he denied knowing Sergie, denied keeping a gun in his dorm room, and said he had been with his girlfriend that night.

The defense, led by attorney James Howaniec, pointed to other fingerprints and hairs at the scene and pressed alternative suspect theories. Kenneth Moto testified by video, denying that he had ever confessed to the murder. He acknowledged telling his sister, Karen Moto, while they watched a cold-case television program, that he had once been a suspect, but said it was not a confession.¹⁵ Karen Moto had told troopers in a 2009 interview that her brother confessed to her, but she died in 2018, and Judge Temple ruled the recorded statement inadmissible hearsay.¹⁶

Downs did not testify. After two days of deliberation, the jury found him guilty on February 10, 2022, of first-degree murder and first-degree sexual assault.¹⁴

The 75-Year Sentence

On September 26, 2022, Judge Temple sentenced Downs to 75 years, applying the sentencing laws in effect in 1993. The breakdown was 67 years for first-degree murder and 8 years for first-degree sexual assault, run consecutively. The 8 years were mandatory under 1993 law.¹⁷ Downs received credit for 1,320 days already served in Maine and Alaska, was ordered to register as a sex offender for life, and was ordered to pay restitution to Sergie’s family.⁸

Prosecutor Jenna Gruenstein of the Alaska Office of Special Prosecutions had asked for 87 years, citing the use of multiple weapons and the killing to conceal a sexual assault.¹ The defense sought 20 years, arguing that anything longer would amount to a life sentence given Downs’s health, which included a weight above 400 pounds and high blood pressure.² Howaniec described the 18-year-old Downs as “very immature” and said he had been drinking heavily and using marijuana at the time, while maintaining his innocence.

Judge Temple rejected the prosecution’s request for a “worst offender” finding and declined to apply sentencing aggravators. He said Downs had shown “zero regard” for Sergie’s autonomy or the “value of life,” that nearly three decades of crime-free living could not reduce the “magnitude of his conduct,” and that the dormitory women’s restroom was a place “where women are likely at their most vulnerable” and the location “Mr. Downs chose to invade and commit his crimes.”¹⁷ Downs declined to address the courtroom. Under Alaska law, he is eligible to request discretionary parole after serving one-third of his sentence, or 25 years.

The Appeal and the DNA Privacy Question

Downs appealed to the Alaska Court of Appeals, where the case is docketed as No. A-14068. Oral arguments were heard 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-2026, the court has not issued a decision.⁷

The central question is whether the warrantless search of GEDmatch violated Downs’s constitutional right to privacy. Assistant Public Defender Emily Jura argued that DNA carries deeply private information, including medical predispositions, ancestry, and familial relationships, and that the investigative technique was “a method of surveillance and a search of private information.” She argued that both Downs and his aunt had a significant privacy interest in their shared genetic profile, and that Downs never consented to police use of his genetic data.⁷

Assistant Attorney General Diane Wendlandt countered that there is “no reasonable expectation of privacy of DNA that is left at a crime scene,” that Downs lacks standing to assert his aunt’s privacy rights, and that his aunt voluntarily uploaded her data to a platform that permitted law enforcement access at the time. The state also argued that investigators complied with GEDmatch’s terms of service.⁷ The timing matters: GEDmatch changed its policy in May 2019 to require users to affirmatively opt in to law enforcement searches, but at the time of the 2018 search in this case, all users were opted in by default.¹⁸

The appeal also challenges the exclusion of Karen Moto’s 2009 recorded statement and the admission of the .22-caliber revolver seized in Maine, which the defense called speculative and prejudicial. The National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers filed an amicus brief in May 2024 arguing that the trial court misapplied Fourth Amendment law and that the framework from the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2018 decision in Carpenter v. United States, which generally requires a warrant to access certain sensitive digital data, should extend to genetic information held in third-party databases.¹⁹

No U.S. court has definitively resolved whether investigative genetic genealogy searches require a warrant, and the U.S. Supreme Court has not yet addressed how the third-party doctrine applies to this technique. The Alaska Court of Appeals decision, when it comes, will be among the first appellate rulings squarely on the question.

1
Alaska Department of Law. Downs Sentenced to 75 Years
2
CBS News. Steven Downs Sentenced to 75 Years in Prison
3
KTOO. Sophie Sergie Cold Case Murder Trial Ends and Goes to Jury
4
Business Insider. Steven Downs Arrested in 1993 Murder of Sophie Sergie
5
KUAC. Defense Gives Alternate Suspect Theories in Sophie Sergie Murder Trial
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Anchorage Daily News. How Genealogists Helped Track Down the Maine Man Accused of Killing Sophie Sergie
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Alaska Public Media. Appeals Court Hears DNA Privacy Arguments in UAF Cold Case Murder Conviction
8
WebCenter Fairbanks. Steven Downs Sentenced to 75 Years for Death of Sophie Sergie
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Anchorage Daily News. Maine Man Sentenced to 75 Years in Alaska Cold Case Murder and Rape of Student at UAF
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Anchorage Daily News. 25 Years After a Woman Was Found Dead in a UAF Bathtub, Alaska State Troopers Make an Arrest
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Central Maine. Cold Case Suspect in 1993 Alaska Slaying Arrested in Auburn
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WebCenter Fairbanks. Where Is Steven Downs
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KUAC. Sophie Sergie Murder Case
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Spectrum Local News. Man Found Guilty in 1993 Alaska University Rape, Murder
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Alaska Public Media. Alternative Suspect Says He Had Nothing to Do With Murder of Sophie Sergie
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Sun Journal. Auburn Man Charged in Alaska Murder Can Name Alternative Suspects, Judge Rules
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KTOO. Steven Downs Sentenced to 75 Years in 1993 Death of Sophie Sergie
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ABC News. Owner of Genealogy Website GEDmatch Vows to Protect Users
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NACDL. Downs v. State of Alaska