Police have used DNA as a valuable investigative tool for the last few decades, but until recently, law enforcement agencies could only match DNA from a crime scene to a known criminal who had been convicted of a felony and forced to surrender a sample of his DNA to the national DNA criminal database. In the last few years, commercial databases have exploded in size as citizens willingly send samples of their DNA to companies such as Ancestry.com, 23andMe, and others promising to use your DNA to trace your ancestry or track genetic predispositions to diseases and conditions. Lately, when police fail to find a match in the national criminal database, they have begun submitting crime-scene DNA to commercial databases, hoping not necessarily for a direct match to an individual but for a match to a relative of their unknown suspect.
The best-known case for an arrest based on matching crime scene DNA to an individual’s familial DNA held in a commercial database is the April 2018 capture of Joseph James DeAngelo in Sacramento, California. De Angelo, dubbed the “Golden State Killer,” is believed to have committed at least 13 murders, more than 50 rapes, and over 100 burglaries in California from 1974 to 1986. When DNA held in evidence from one of the crime scenes matched the DNA in a commercial database of a distant relative of De Angelo, police had their first solid lead in the case in years.
When the news about the capture of the Golden State Killer broke, I imagine detectives around the country began considering their cold cases and wondering if they could use a similar technique with DNA they held in evidence. Troopers in Alaska wasted no time submitting DNA from one of the state’s best-known cold cases, and the results were no less dramatic than those for the capture of DeAngelo in California.
As many of you know, I write a monthly newsletter about true murder and mystery in Alaska. Several months ago, I wrote a newsletter titled, “Murder in a College Dorm,” about the 1993 brutal rape and murder of 20-year-old Sophie Sergie at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. A janitor found Sophie’s partially-clothed body stuffed in the bathtub in a second-floor bathroom at Bartlett Hall, a dormitory on the campus of the university. Sophie had been sexually assaulted, stabbed in the face, and shot in the back of the head with a .22 caliber firearm. The murder occurred in April, just as students were taking final exams and preparing to leave campus at the end of the semester. Police interviewed as many students as possible, but the task overwhelmed them.
Police recovered DNA from Sophie’s body, but DNA processing technology had not yet been introduced to Alaska in 1993. In 2000, investigators uploaded the DNA collected at Sophie’s crime scene to the FBI database but learned little other than the DNA belonged to a male. The sample did not match anyone in the FBI’s database.
In 2010, a cold-case investigator attempted to re-interview everyone who lived in Bartlett Hall when Sophie was murdered, including an ex-resident named Nicholas Dazer. The investigator asked Dazer if when he lived at the dorm, he had a gun that fired .22-caliber ammunition. Dazer said he did not own a gun, but he recalled his roommate, Steven Downs, had an H&R .22-caliber revolver. With little else to go on, the case again went cold, and few people believed it would ever be solved.
After authorities in California arrested suspect Joseph James DeAngelo in April 2018 by obtaining a familial match from comparing DNA collected at a crime scene to a commercially available DNA database, Alaska State Troopers decided to try the same thing with DNA collected from Sophie’s body in 1993. They sent the DNA from Sophie’s case to Parabon NanoLabs, the same facility used to analyze the DNA in the Golden State Killer case. On December 18th, 2018, a forensic genealogist submitted a report comparing the DNA from the suspect in Sophie’s case to a likely female relative. The woman whose DNA was considered a familial match to the DNA collected from sperm left at Sophie’s crime scene is the aunt of Steven Downs. Downs was an 18-year-old college student living at Bartlett Hall when Sophie was murdered. Downs was also Nicholas Dazer’s roommate, the one who owned the H&R .22-caliber revolver.
Downs was arrested at his home in the small town of Lewiston, Maine and charged with the sexual assault and murder of Sophie Sergie. He denied any involvement in Sophie’s rape and murder, despite the fact a specimen of his DNA taken after his arrest matched a sample collected from sperm cells at the crime scene. His attorney said Downs would not waive his rights and did not agree to be extradited to Alaska. Downs is currently being held without bail in an Auburn, Maine prison until his next court hearing when Alaskan authorities expect to escort him back to Fairbanks to stand trial.
Will Sophie finally receive justice?
If you would like to receive updates on Sophie’s case as well as learn about other murders and mysteries in Alaska, please sign up below for my monthly Mystery Newsletter.
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Robin Barefield is the author of three Alaska wilderness mystery novels, Big Game, Murder Over Kodiak, and The Fisherman’s Daughter. To download a free copy of one of her novels, watch her webinar about how she became an author and why she writes Alaska wilderness mysteries. Also, sign up below to subscribe to her free, monthly newsletter on true murder and mystery in Alaska.
