The Alaska State Troopers think they have arrested the murderer of Sophie Sergie, who was found dead in a dorm bathroom at University of Alaska Fairbanks in 1993.
Law enforcement executed an arrest warrant today in Auburn, Maine for a man, Steven H. Downs, believed to be the murderer. He is a 44-year-old nurse. The news was announced during a 3 pm press conference at the State?s crime laboratory in Anchorage. The man will be brought to Alaska to face charges.
The perpetrator?s DNA was found at the scene, Troopers said today. But until recent technology, no link had been made to any person, although the hunt for the killer went on for decades.
Last year, the investigators began working with a lab in Virginia that had more sophisticated systems for linking DNA and genetic histories of families.
Must Read Alaska has learned that the man?s aunt took a DNA test, and the link was made to someone who may have once been interviewed about the death.
Sergie was 20 years old when she was murdered early on April 26, 1993. She was from Pitkas Point, a Native village of about 125 people in Western Alaska. At about 2 pm on the second floor of the Bartlett Hall dormitory, a janitor found Sergie?s body stuffed in a bathtub.
Sergie had been brutally raped, her pants pulled down around her ankles. The cause of death was a gunshot and investigators determined she?d been dead about 13 hours. Her body had gone undiscovered because it was in a private tub room.
Sergie was not a student at the time. She had taken the semester off, but had returned to Fairbanks to have her braces adjusted by an orthodontist, so she was staying in the dorm with a friend.
In those days, people came and went freely from the dorms and it was not uncommon for friends to come from out of town to stay a night or two with a student. It was the end of the term and people were coming and going from campus. Anyone could have accessed the women?s floor via the elevator or the stairs, and the student population was in a state of transition.
Investigators concluded that it was a random killing, and that Sergie didn?t know her murderer. One of the mysteries in the case was why no one in the dorm heard the gunshot, and later theories developed that the woman was killed elsewhere and then her body placed in the bathtub.
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