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She was a first-generation college student from a small village in rural Alaska who set her eyes on building a better future for herself and her family. Hardworking, bright, with a big heart, she did everything right. But in the spring of 1993, someone chose to put out the light that was 20-year-old Sophie Sergi.
This case played out on the campus of the University of Alaska Fairbanks, over 4,000 miles from New England and nearly three decades in the past. But the long arm of justice knows no limits of distance or time. DNA evidence reached across the farthest corners of the United States to implicate the alleged killer of Sophie Sergi. He was working as a nurse in Auburn, Maine.
The 2019 arrest of Steven Downs seemed like the first sign of real closure for Sophie's family. But as the trial proceedings play out in Alaska Superior Court right now in January of 2022, what seemed like a clear answer on the surface gets more difficult to pin down each day. I'm Kylie Lowe and this is The Ongoing Case of Sophie Sergi Part 1 on Dark Down East.
One of my favorite things I've heard about Sophie Sergi is this, quote, She was only 4'9", but she really made up for it in spirit and light, end quote. Sophie Sergi was born in 1973 in the native village of Pitkiss Point, Alaska, a territory of Yupik peoples.
The rural community situated on the lower Yukon River had about 70 people living there when Sophie was born, and the population is just 120 today. Even from an early age, Sophie had a caring, motherly instinct that made her a rock for her family. Sophie helped run the household with her mother, Elena, and cared for her little brother, Steven, when he was born.
Her friends say she had a quirky sense of humor and no problem laughing at her own jokes. But most of all, Sophie was known for her big heart. She was smart, hardworking, and ambitious. Sophie's friend Shirley Wasooley, now Shirley Acklecock, later shared in trial testimony that Sophie's first dream was to join the United States Navy. But at 4 feet 9 inches tall, she was too short for the particular role she wanted.
Sophie instead focused on her other dream, to be the first in her family to attend college. She planned to study marine biology because she loved whales and wanted to work with them. In the early 90s, the first part of that dream came true. Sophie received a full scholarship to the University of Alaska Fairbanks. It was everything she'd worked for.
But it wouldn't be an easy journey. The University of Alaska Fairbanks, a five and a half hour flight away from her home in rural Pitkiss Point, presented an entirely new life for Sophie. Fairbanks was much more of an urban setting and just the university itself had a population over 100 times greater than her home village.
Sophie found comfort and community among Rural Student Services, an organization on campus that supported students attending UAF from rural communities like Pitkis Point. Shirley Wasuli also went on to attend UAF alongside Sophie, and she worked at Rural Student Services while a student. Shirley said that they felt a certain pressure at school. "We were so afraid of failing," Shirley said.
Sophie settled into school life, and that personal pressure to succeed kept her out of trouble. She wasn't a partier. Quite the opposite, Shirley said.
Sophie may have dabbled in parties once or twice a year, but she truly felt the weight on her shoulders of why she was at school and how important it was to her family. In 1992, though, Sophie had to take a leave of absence from school. She needed jaw surgery and orthodontic work to correct a severe overbite, and so she returned to work at the school in Pitkis Point. She needed the insurance that the employer provided.
Those procedures and follow-up care, however, they all happened back in Fairbanks, and so every few months, Sophie would board a flight from the nearest airport to her village and venture into the city for her appointments. To save money on these trips, Sophie would stay with Shirley at the UAF dormitories. Shirley had a single on the second floor in Bartlett Hall, a girls-only floor. Shirley would hand over the keys to Sophie and go stay with her boyfriend in the next building over.
That was their routine. And it would be the same the weekend of April 24th, 1993, when Sophie was again in Fairbanks for a scheduled appointment. That Saturday was unremarkable. Shirley met Sophie at the Rural Student Services office, they had lunch at the Student Commons, and then went to Shirley's dorm to hang out. Sophie may have run some errands in Fairbanks that day. It was typical for anyone from the villages to shop for essentials while they were in the city, Shirley explained.
But it was otherwise an uneventful day. On Sunday, April 25th, Shirley had to get some studying done. Finals were approaching and she was stressed about the amount of work to finish before the school year came to a close. Shirley said in her trial testimony that Sophie had her own plans and went to hang out with friends and go to a movie. Later that night, after the movie for Sophie and studying for Shirley, they met back up in the dorms.
Shirley and her boyfriend Noah ordered a pizza, and as soon as it was delivered, they were back in Shirley's room for a makeshift picnic on the dorm room floor with Sophie. It was like any other day. It was just us having pizza that night, Shirley reflected back in her testimony, her voice breaking. A photo of Sophie Sergi taken that same night was sitting on the witness stand next to Shirley as she answered the state's line of questioning.
In the photo, Sophie's arms are outstretched, and she's smiling straight into the camera. She's wearing blue U.S. Navy sweatpants, and the hood and the hem of a multicolored sweatshirt peeks out from beneath a dark-colored zip-up jacket. Minus the jacket, it's the same outfit Shirley remembered Sophie wearing in her dorm room that night of April 25, 1993.
It was nearing one in the morning when the trio finished up the pizza and decided to turn in for the night. As usual, when Sophie stayed over, Shirley would let Sophie have the dorm room to herself, and Shirley would go to sleep in Noah's room. Before Shirley left with Noah, Sophie asked where she could go smoke a cigarette. It was cold that night, below freezing, and Sophie didn't really want to stand outside.
Shirley mentioned that the bathroom down the hall had fans that would suck up the cigarette smoke and vent it outside. She'd smoked in there once or twice before. So with that, Sophie left the dorm room and headed towards the bathrooms. Shirley and Noah left before Sophie came back, so Shirley left a note letting her know that they were in Noah's room for the night.
Shirley stepped out of her dorm room, heading for the stairwell that would lead them to the lobby, walking past a few people still lingering in the halls, and off towards Noah's building. Shirley would later tell investigators that she locked eyes with one of those lingering people in the hallway, a man she didn't know at the time. It would be decades before she realized whose eyes she believed she was looking into.
On the morning of April 26th, 1993, Shirley returned to her dorm room to find the door unlocked, the TV and lights on, and the bed still made. Clearly, no one had slept in it that night. She assumed that Sophie must have gone to take a shower and went to get ready for the day herself. The washrooms on the second floor had multiple stalls with showers and one with a tub.
Shirley called into the closed stalls, Sophie, are you here? And a voice responded, yeah, I'm here. Satisfied with that, Shirley took a shower and returned to her room to finish getting ready. She left a note for Sophie to get in touch later that day and left. As the day rolled on though, Shirley started to get nervous. She hadn't heard from Sophie all day and it wasn't like her to not check in. Quote, the longer the day went, the more panicked I got.
"I was kind of bothered because I thought, 'How could she not get a hold of me?'" Shirley's voice broke. "I was asking people if they'd seen her." Shirley even called the orthodontist's office where Sophie had a scheduled appointment that Monday, but Sophie never showed up to the appointment. Meanwhile, the campus was beginning to buzz about police activity at Bartlett Hall.
The story got to Shirley like a game of telephone, repeated and repeated again, until finally the message, jumbled, reached her. They'd found a body on the second floor of Bartlett Hall, a girl in the bathroom. That was her dorm. That was her floor. As Shirley reached the dorms, there was already a reporter and a security guard at the building. A trooper stopped her and told Shirley she couldn't go upstairs.
When Shirley told the trooper she was looking for her friend, they started asking questions. Who was her friend? What did she look like? When did she last see her friend? Each question raised concern, and she had a question of her own: Where is Sophie? Reality crashed down around Shirley. The trooper allowed her and her boyfriend Noah into her dorm room, and investigators continued questioning the couple about their missing friend and her movements the day before.
One investigator searched Shirley's room and found an ID. It was Sophie's. Troopers recognized the girl in the photo. The girl they'd found in the bathroom was Sophie Sergi. At 2.42 p.m. on Monday, April 26, 1993, maintenance staff were tidying the woman's bathroom on the east side of the second floor of Bartlett Hall. That's when they found her lying in a bathtub.
According to court documents, University police responded to the scene to secure it while they awaited Alaska State Troopers. The initial investigation indicated that Sophie Sergi had been sexually assaulted, stabbed, and shot once in the back of the head, causing her death. The autopsy performed on April 28th brought to light additional wounds, marks and cuts on her face, back, abdomen, and knee.
The bullet, one single .22 caliber round, was recovered and placed into evidence. The multiple stab wounds were determined to be caused both while Sophie was alive and after her death with a thin blade knife. Some sources would later analyze the extent of her injuries as overkill, often seen in crimes of passion by someone who knew the victim.
Others believe that the violent attack, whatever its motivation and whoever did it, was met with all the force Sophie could muster with her four-foot, nine-inch frame. Sophie fought for her life. Investigators collected other evidence at the scene and from Sophie's body. Fibers, hairs, fingerprints, and more. Anything that could give them some direction.
During the autopsy, swabs of biological evidence were collected and sent to the Alaska State Crime Detection Laboratory. DNA technology in the early 90s was limited. They determined that the sample was spermatozoa, and therefore from a male. And they could compare the DNA and the biological evidence to other samples from possible suspects, but no matches were found at the time.
A number of witness statements were taken in the early investigation. One witness had taken a shower in the same bathroom that Sophie was found around 1:20 a.m. on April 26th. She said she remembered that the tub light was on and the door was closed. Another student said she heard muffled noises coming from the tub room, adjacent to the shower stall she was occupying at the time.
According to reporting by Alaska News Source, this student described the noise as something large being bumped against metal. The noise stood out to her as strange and concerning, but she did not check to see what was going on. Dozens of students lived on the second floor of Bartlett Hall, and a handful of them had been in and out of the bathroom between the early hours of April 26th and the afternoon when Sophie's body was discovered by maintenance staff.
Despite the apparently populated floor, the UAF student newspaper reported that "no one heard a gunshot or anything particularly alarming coming from the bathroom." Investigators would later say that it was a challenging scene to contain, and with students focused on finals and moving out of the dormitory, it's possible they missed interviewing some of the residents.
The investigation continued into finals week, and some students were gone and out of Alaska before police could even speak with them. The atmosphere on campus changed immediately. Students told the local newspaper reporters that they simply couldn't get themselves to focus on their schoolwork with the ongoing investigation.
Others feared for their safety, and the UAF responded with more security at the dorms, a student escort service for anyone who didn't want to walk alone, and they set up a hotline for concerned parents who wanted the latest information from a source that wasn't the national headline news. The associate director of residence life told the daily Sitka Sentinel, quote, the first thing you have is a lot of rumors. We want to make sure that they had the facts, end quote.
Sophie Sergi's memorial service was solemn. Her mother, Elena, placed flowers on her grave as Sophie was buried next to her grandmother in Pitcus Point. For me, she is just away somewhere, Elena said, and she'll be coming home soon. Shirley Wasuli traveled from Fairbanks to Pitcus Point to return Sophie's things to her family, among them the jacket she wore in the photo that's now most well-known of Sophie.
Shirley said in her testimony that the jacket had tremendous sentimental value for the Sergi family. She wanted to make sure that her mother had it. Meanwhile, the investigation continued in Fairbanks as Crimestoppers offered a $20,000 reward for any information leading to the arrest of Sophie's killer. But the promise of money did nothing to bring the case to a close in 1993.
However, it's not that investigating authorities didn't have any leads to follow or suspects to consider. Michael Kern, reporter for the UAF student newspaper, spoke to former Alaska State Trooper Steve Lance Dahlke in 2020. He told Kern, quote, I can tell you that there have been a multitude of people who were possible suspects that have been virtually eliminated as possible suspects through the investigation, end quote.
In 1994, Sophie's mother, Elena Serkey, brought a $4 million lawsuit against the University of Alaska for lack of security that she believed led to her daughter's murder. This civil suit meant a lot of the information about the case was made public. Information that former Alaska State Trooper Lt. Delke believed could have threatened the integrity of the investigation.
In 1996, the Daily Sitka Sentinel reported that an offer for settlement was made to Elena Sergi, but the details of that settlement are unknown. 1996 was the same year that Alaska State Troopers decided to take a novel action in the case of Sophie Sergi. They planned to, as the papers put it at the time, post a page on the World Wide Web.
For the first time in Alaska State Trooper history, they were turning to the internet in hopes of generating new information to aid the investigation. Then-Sergeant Jim McCann told the Daily Sitka Sentinel, quote, I need to hear from the public, because the likelihood that he'll go on to kill others is considerable, end quote.
The website, now defunct, featured a photo of Sophie and a one-paragraph summary of the circumstances surrounding her murder. AST also asked for information about similar cases across the country because, quote, we believe it is likely that our suspect is either dead, incarcerated, or has moved out of state to continue his crimes elsewhere, end quote.
This classification of the possible killer was one shared over and over. They had their suspicions that he would be a repeat offender. Investigators also speculated that whoever killed Sophie had a strong hatred towards women and used women to express his anger.
Retired Alaska State Trooper investigator Jim McCann told the UAF student newspaper that Sophie likely did not know her attacker. End quote. It could have been any one of those girls. End quote. If that website brought in any new or useful information, it wasn't reported. Sophie Sergi's case went cold.
Though her case file was periodically reviewed, investigators had little new information in the years following Sophie Sergi's murder. But in 2009, cold case investigators announced that extensive analysis of the crime scene evidence indicated the possibility that the tub room on the second floor of Bartlett Hall was not the only crime scene.
It was possible, based on the analysis, that Sophie was killed elsewhere and then moved to the bathtub.
This new theory in the case led investigators to re-interview original witnesses and locate new witnesses who they weren't able to speak to in 1993. Investigator Lindsay Minnick told Juno Empire that they were splitting up across the country to locate original friends, dorm residents, and anyone who spent time in or around Bartlett Hall. It was 16 years later, and memories would be far less reliable than the days immediately after the murder.
but it was the best shot they had. Quote, people could have heard things that they're not sure exactly what it was. A lot of times people have no idea. A piece of information might be important to us. End quote. One of the new witnesses investigators interviewed in 2009 was a female University of Alaska Fairbank student whose name is not published.
She stated that on the night of April 25th and into the early morning hours of April 26th, 1993, she, her boyfriend, and a few friends were watching movies in a dorm room on the fourth floor of Bartlett Hall. From her own admission, her recollection of this night is hazy. In one statement, they were watching movies. In another, it was more of a party.
She said, though, that her boyfriend wasn't with her the entire night. He popped in and out of the dorm room intermittently. Investigators pressed for more information about her boyfriend, and she revealed that she'd gone shooting with him previously, and they fired small-caliber ammunition, not unlike the .22-caliber bullet that ended Sophie's life.
A year later, investigators tracked down another UAF student named Nicholas Dazer. In 1993, Dazer lived in Bartlett Hall, room number 305, and he was a security guard on campus, but was later fired from that security guard position for possessing a firearm in the dorms.
Before that, though, he was on duty on April 26, 1993, and even helped police secure the crime scene. Dazer was of particular interest to investigators for his involvement in securing the scene and for the disciplinary action related to a firearm.
Follow me here. Dazer was also the roommate of the boyfriend of the previously unnamed female witness interviewed in 2009. According to court documents, Dazer told police that he himself did not own a .22 caliber gun, but his roommate did. Nicholas Dazer's roommate was a man named Stephen Harris Downs.
He and Nicholas were both interviewed briefly during the initial investigation in 1993, but they denied having any helpful or relevant information concerning the sexual assault and murder that occurred just a few floors below them in the middle of the night. The talk of .22 caliber firearms and the student who may or may not have kept one in the dorm at the time of Sophie's killing was a compelling direction to follow.
A forensic firearms expert reviewed the bullet recovered from Sophie's body and noted that it was possible it was fired from an H&R .22 caliber revolver. Possible, but not conclusive. Court documents say that the lands and grooves on the bullet could be consistent with any number of .22 caliber firearms. We feel like we're moving closer, investigator Lindsay Minnick said in 2009, but there's still a long ways to go.
Investigator James Stodsdale, who had been assigned to the case and conducted the interview with Nicholas Dazer in 2010, continued to work the case until his retirement, but was unable to determine a concrete suspect. Once again, Sophie Sergi's case went cold. And once again, Sophie's family had to wait nearly a decade for any sign that closure was possible.
In 2018, another new detective was assigned to the case of Sophie Sergi. Like the detectives who came before him, investigator Randy McFerrin was tasked with assembling the nebulous pieces of a decades-old puzzle. What Randy McFerrin had on his side, though, was advancements in DNA technology.
If you're familiar with landmark cases across the United States and stay current on true crime news, then you likely remember the groundbreaking yet controversial familial DNA analysis that led to the capture of the so-called Golden State Killer, Joseph James D'Angelo.
In that case, DNA samples from a consumer ancestry website like 23andMe or Ancestry.com were compared to biological evidence collected from a crime scene that led to a match of someone related to the possible culprit of the crimes attributed to the Golden State Killer.
A fellow podcaster, the host of Murderific True Crime Podcast, shared an article from DownEast Magazine with me about why this familial DNA analysis is considered controversial by critics. As I understand it, anyone who chooses to submit their DNA samples to these databases is also volunteering the DNA from their relatives.
I mean, sure, that's the whole point of using these websites, to find your long-lost relatives, but it also gives law enforcement the ability to compare biological evidence and crime scene DNA to identify potential suspects, even if the suspect didn't submit their own sample to these websites.
Critics of this practice say that it's an imperfect system. And while we're quick to assume that science doesn't lie, that DNA evidence is the end-all be-all for solving a crime, it really only proves that an individual may have been present, may have touched or previously been in contact with a victim or had sexual contact with a victim. DNA does not prove guilt, they say.
Supporters of this familial DNA method of generating new information in a case, though, say it's the key to ending long-standing cold cases. Cases like Sophie Sergi's.
According to court documents, investigator Randy McFerrin decided to try familial DNA testing in Sophie's case with the help of a for-profit DNA technology company called Parabon Nanolabs. From the summary in the court document, quote,
and compare it to the genealogical databases and look for potential suspects. The lab explained that the tool they use, genetic genealogy, employs a type of DNA profile called single nucleotide polymorphism, SNP. Whereas STR profile is like a genetic fingerprint of a specific individual, a SNP profile is a genetic blueprint of an individual.
The blueprint contains the genetic data that a person shares with their blood relatives." The blueprint is compared to a public database, in this case a database called GEDmatch, and then any names are given to a forensic genealogist for further analysis and research.
On December 18th, 2018, the lab completed their analysis and contacted investigator McFerrin with their results. The report contained the name of a likely relative of the suspect, a woman living in Vermont. The court document reads, quote,
Stephen H. Downs, a former University of Alaska Fairbanks student who lived in Bartlett Hall,
the same hall, at the same time, where Sophie Sergi's body was found on April 26, 1993. In February of 2019, Maine State Police, working alongside Alaska State Troopers, contacted Stephen Harris Downs at his home in Auburn, Maine.
A search warrant was executed, his home turned over by investigators, and a cheek swab was collected to compare his DNA to the biological evidence collected from Sophie Sergi's body in 1993. The DNA profile was a match. Stephen Harris Downs was arrested and charged with sexual assault and murder in the first degree.
With DNA evidence, does the prosecution have an airtight case against Stephen Downs? Trial proceedings play out in a Fairbanks Superior Court room as we speak, and I've been tuning in, but before opening statements even began, everything from errors, possible "alternative suspects," and evidence known as "fruit from a poisonous tree" presented challenges to the state's case.
It will be a long few weeks, added to an even longer 29-year wait to see if the jury believes the right man is on trial. Sophie Sergi's story continues next week on Dark Down East. Stephen Harris Downs is charged with the rape and murder of Sophie Sergi in 1993. He is innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.
As of the release of this episode in January 2022, a verdict has yet to be reached. Thank you for listening to Dark Down East. Sources for this case and others are listed at darkdowneast.com.
This week from Missing New England, I want to bring your attention to the case of Guy Carmel. According to the Maine State Police, 66-year-old Guy Carmel was living at 75 Towers Road in Greenbush when he was last seen in March of 2017. He was first reported missing in September of 2017 to the Penobscot County Sheriff's Office. Carmel is described as 5'9", 180 pounds. He has gray hair, brown eyes, and wears glasses.
His disappearance is considered suspicious. Anyone with information regarding Guy Carmel's disappearance is encouraged to contact the Maine State Police at 207-973-3750. Thank you for supporting this show and allowing me to do what I do. I'm honored to use this platform for the families and friends who have lost their loved ones and for those who are still searching for answers in cold missing persons and murder cases.
I'm not about to let those names or their stories get lost with time. I'm Kylie Lowe, and this is Dark Down East.
