Photo: Alaska State Troopers
Steven Downs hadn’t forgotten the murder of the young woman found dead in a bathtub in his dorm at the University of Alaska-Fairbanks nearly 26 years ago.
“I remember the pictures, it’s terrible, poor girl,” he said, according to acriminal charging documentnaming him Friday as the suspected killer in the 1993 cold-case sexual assault and killing of 20-year-old Sophie Sergie, a former student visiting a friend on the campus
She never returned.
The next afternoon janitors cleaning a women’s bathroom on the second floor of the dorm found her body in a bathtub in a small room separate from the shower stalls. She had been sexually assaulted, and police discovered three stab wounds to her face and a fatal gunshot to the back of the head, according to the charging document. Her cigarette lighter was under her body.
Steven Downs.Androscoggin County Jail
With no concrete leads, investigators worked to identify everyone who was living in the dorm at the time of the killing. In 2010 they interviewed Nicholas Dazer, who told them Downs, his third-floor roommate, kept an H&R model .22-caliber handgun in their room.
Such a weapon would be consistent with markings on the fatal bullet, but was too common to suggest an immediate match, a forensics experts advised, according to the charging document. The case went cold again.
In 2018 the arrest of California’sGolden State Killer— authorities tracked down the suspect, Joseph DeAngelo,through the DNA of his relatives— initiated another push to find Sergie’s killer through further-advanced genetic profiling methods.
This time the search led authorities to an aunt of Downs.
On Wednesday, Maine State Police working with authorities in Alaska found Downs at his home in Auburn, Maine. Downs, who had no prior arrests and recently worked as a nurse, told them he was living on Bartlett Hall’s third floor as an 18-year-old university student at the time, but mostly stayed with his then-girlfriend on the fourth floor, where he alleged he’d been on the night Sergie was killed.
Questioned back then, “I never knew or saw anything to begin with,” he told Maine police.
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Maine officers returned on Thursday with a search warrant for Downs’ home, and collected DNA samples that they say matched the profile of the DNA sample developed from Sergie’s crime scene.
On Friday they arrested Downs, 44, on a charge of sexual assault and murder. He is being held in Androscoggin County jail with no bond pending extradition to Alaska, PEOPLE confirms.
It could not be determined if he has obtained an attorney to speak on his behalf.
“This case has haunted and frustrated Sophie’s family and friends, the investigators and beyond. However, we did it,” he said. “Investigators never gave up on Sophie.”
source: people.com
