Episode 31 Sophie Sergie Parts 1 & 2
In 1993, Sophie Sergie was found slain in a college dorm bathroom at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks. Despite several witnesses who had heard the crime go down, and possibly even seen the suspect, the brutal murder of the visiting former student remained unsolved. The investigation was hampered by the overwhelming number of people with access to the scene, and the transience of the student body. When forensic genealogy was used decades later, it pointed to a man who was a student at the college at the time of the murder – and lived just one floor away in the very same dorm. And, he was alive and living in Maine. The trial of Steven A. Downs relied heavily on the DNA evidence left behind at the crime scene to connect him to the homicide 29 years earlier.