Modern DNA genealogy technology, which matches crime scene DNA against public ancestry databases to find distant relatives, can solve cold cases that traditional forensic methods cannot. In the 1993 murder of Sophie Sergie in Fairbanks, Alaska, investigators were unable to identify the killer despite interviewing over 500 people and collecting DNA evidence. The case went cold for 15 years until 2018, when forensic genealogists matched the DNA from the crime scene to a woman in Maine who was a distant relative of Steven Harris Downs, a former college student who had been interviewed as a suspect in 1993 but was not charged. This breakthrough led to his arrest and conviction for first-degree murder and sexual assault, demonstrating how DNA technology has revolutionized criminal investigations by enabling the identification of perpetrators who have no prior criminal record and whose DNA was never previously in national databases.
The Hidden Murderer - Fairbanks, AlaskaAñadido:
[music] [music] >> Hello everybody and welcome back to Small Town Murder Express. Yay and choo choo. Yay indeed Jimmy. Yay indeed. My name is James Petro Gallo. I'm here with my co-host. I'm Jimmy Whisman. Thank you folks so much for joining us today on another insane crazy edition of Small Town Murder Express and it's a little bit special today because today is our 700th episode everybody. Holy [ __ ] >> 700 we've made it to which is incredible. Thank you. We couldn't be at 700 if no one was listening we wouldn't have done 200 never mind 700. So thank you so much for being here and listening to these and for people who've heard all 700 man thank you. You're incredible. So we're going to have a wild one today. Uh before we get to all that though shut up and give me murder.com is where you get your tickets for live shows also merchandise all the merchandise you can want.
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>> Unbelievable. And uh September 19th in Minneapolis at the State Theater which is also a really nice place. Minneapolis get in there.
Uh Milwaukee you're doing really well.
That is uh Back to back huge venues though. Uh you guys sell those out you'll make my year. Thank you so much.
>> Thank you. Then on October 3rd in Dallas October 16th and 17th in San Jose and Sacramento and the uh November 13th and 14th in Tarrytown New York and Boston.
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>> Yeah. This week is no different. For Crime in Sports this week, we are going to talk about that weird the power team. They were They were on all the Christian channels, and they were these giant jacked-up, roided-up lunatics that would like rip a phone book in half and then go, "Thank you, Jesus!" And like they were They were nuts, and then of course there was scandal, obviously, because that's not going to That's not going to be no scandal involved in that. It's a lot of fun.
Then for Small Town Murder, it's Internet Salad Time.
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>> Because we spoil you. That's right. And then also, you'll get a shout-out at the end of the regular show, where Jimmy will mispronounce your name, even though he'd love to get it correct. So, that said, think it's time, everybody. It's time to sit back. Here we go. Let's uh clear the lungs here.
Arms to the sky. Let's all shout.
Shout >> Shout up and give me murder.
Let's do this, everybody.
>> All right.
>> on a trip, shall we?
>> Now, let's go.
>> Let's go. We're going far this week.
We're going to Alaska. God damn.
>> It's been a while, so I'm like, you know what? For 700, let's go to Alaska.
They're always crazy episodes up there.
Cuz there just to be a just to have the thought that I'm going to go to Alaska Yeah. That's a screwy thought right there. That's a wild place, man. It's beautiful and everything, but it's wild up there. I mean, it's not easy to live up in Alaska. So, and right there you get the crazy stuff.
>> removed from >> from everything.
>> everything. Yeah.
This is in Fairbanks, Alaska, which I've actually heard of.
Some of these I haven't heard of. This is in eastern Alaska. It is really in the middle of nowhere. This place is by itself. I mean, Is this near like Denali? You hear like Well, you can see it from here, yeah. Oh. Yeah, you hear like you know, Fairbanks, Anchorage, Juneau, and you think, "Ah, they're probably in the same general region."
And Alaska's enormous and it's it's huge. So, this is about 6 hours and 15 minutes to Anchorage. Mhm. It's 20 minutes to North Pole, Alaska.
Wow. That's what we're talking about.
And then it's about 12 hours to our last last Alaska episode, Klawock, Alaska.
But the 12 hours is like planes and boats and you can't just drive there.
It's >> the craziest. You got to take so many forms of transportation.
>> That was episode 644, the social media mob murder. Remember that where they killed that old man over They [ __ ] those people.
>> They thought maybe he did something and spread rumors about him that were unsubstantiated. That was rough.
And that's that's why whenever we see like I whenever people post like the post in all our groups and stuff, somebody kills like, you know, this guy who like did this. And I'm like, "Calm down, everybody. You don't Let's Let's prove it first. And then we'll kill him. How about that?" But don't just kill him ahead of time cuz we don't know. Yeah. It's out the window. That was 100 years ago. That's what I mean. So, this is the borough.
It's not a county, it's a borough. Yeah.
Is Fairbanks North Star. That's the borough. Okay. Okay, area code 907. A lot of people here, 33,018 people have found their way to this place.
>> know about it. Um median household income $66,572.
So, >> [ __ ] do they do for money? Pretty close to the national average. Median home cost $275,600.
Wow. I would think houses would be more expensive cuz they'd be really expensive to build there. Just to get the materials in and yeah, all of that. It has nicknames this place. One is the golden heart city. Sure. And then the another one is pretty similar, golden heart of Alaska. Yeah, I mean there's a lot of gold up there. A lot of gold and that's how the place started as we'll talk about with a little bit of history right there. Thank you. That was a perfect segue.
>> Oh, yes. Perfect segue.
>> August 1901, E.T. Barnette founded a trading post on the south bank of the Chena River. And a gold discovery near the trading post sparked the big Fairbanks gold rush. Yeah.
>> And that's when miners started coming here. Yeah.
>> Um they had a big boom in construction.
In November 1903, they area's residents voted to incorporate Fairbanks, so make it a an actual place here. Barnette became the first mayor. Oh. And things went great while the gold rush was going on. Thank god for E.T.
>> That became Then World War I happened.
Uh-oh. And the population plunged cuz all those able-bodied young miners got drafted and uh >> That's it. And then it grow rose again the population during the Great Depression because the price of gold increased so people were looking for gold. Then in the '40s and '50s, it became kind of a staging area for military depots during World War II. Oh.
And then for the Cold War, too, because Alaska's close to Russia, so that was a another big deal there.
Um and then there was the discovery of the Prudhoe Bay oil field in 1968.
Um then that became a big part of the oil boom at that point, too. And so, you know, uh that's that goes.
>> largest state? I believe it's bigger than Texas, yeah.
>> I think that's true, right?
>> that's true, yeah. Uh until 1940, none of the streets in Fairbanks were paved.
None of them.
>> Till when? 1940.
Holy [ __ ] They didn't begin a large-scale paving operation until 1953, when the city paved 30 blocks of streets. For 13 years, they were just willy-nilly uh paving here and there.
Yeah, just if people wanted to Yeah, exactly, here and there. It wasn't a project or anything like that. By the way, Fairbanks, mathematically, is the coldest city in the United States. Is that right?
>> Freezing there. I mean, -50 is normal.
It's [ __ ] crazy.
Reviews of this town, here we go here.
Now, this will exactly of what it's what we just talked about. The title of this review was "Plug in your vehicle."
Exclamation point. Your oil will freeze.
Your block heaters, you need, yeah. You need to plug in your vehicle for almost half the year here. You also need an a remote auto start if you don't have what it takes to handle a hard seat at -40°.
>> [gasps] >> Hard seat?
>> Yeah, your seat's frozen, so you sit on it.
Be sure to use zero weight oil and multi multiple viscosity oil for the drivetrain, also. Go to Alaskan Tent & Tarp to get a grill cover for your car, as driving 50 mph has the wind chill factor of -88, hitting your radiator when the ambient temperature is at -40.
Your antifreeze will still freeze.
>> Will freeze, yeah. It's not made for this.
>> the anti. Get a grill cover for it. Keep the heat in. Summers are like heaven on Earth. The four days of summer, I feel like.
The irises are fleeting. The tourists abound, and there's actually thunder here, along with a once or twice a year heavy rainfall. I miss the summers there, especially the solstice street party when it's in the plus 90° range.
When I rode a Harley to work, the Northern Schools Federal Credit Union time and temperature said 95° when my ex-girlfriend from Kentucky was here for Christmas, it was easily below zero and at times -10 to -20.
It can go from -20 to 95?
>> Yeah, yeah, that's not normal though.
That's a Woah. Um then I'll do another one very quickly, two stars. Fairbanks is a dumpster fire just waiting to happen.
And by that I mean it's just not like it used to be. It used to be safe. I'd even walk around downtown by myself as a kid or with a friend who was about the same age. I used to always say Fairbanks is a town that seems to be stuck in time and not just the town, but the people as well. How about it? Um then they talk about black mold and asbestos and crime rates and >> all wet. People are complaining. Uh things to do here though, this is very exciting. Uh the redneck space needle is here.
What is that?
>> Well, that's a a local nickname for a guy Jim Curley Rowland. Uh-huh. And his house is Curley's Rotating House, which is a structure he built in 1997. The guy's a gold miner. Uh-huh. And it consists of a blue 16-sided clubhouse perched atop a 75-ft construction crane.
7 Oh, crane. What? It's just sitting in the air, this like clubhouse observation site. I don't know what he's doing here. It's crazy.
>> to stay there forever. No, it's been there for 30 years, so That's coming down soon. Crazy. The house was built using a salvaged crane tower from Anchorage and was designed to both elevate guests 75 ft into the air and rotate.
Um Are you out of your [ __ ] mind? It was originally conceived as a private clubhouse for Rowland and his friends, born from a mix of what he called, quote, "Boredom and Budweiser."
They got shit-faced in the middle of nowhere and were like, "What if we just put like something real high up in the air we could all sit and drink beer?"
>> my [ __ ] house up there.
>> Wouldn't that be better?
Uh it's still standing and visible from the road, but not a public tourist attraction. It's on private property.
And it's unsafe.
Well, in 2004, a friend of the owner fell off the platform and died cuz it's 75 ft. And that led to the house being used less frequently for parties, you know, not as fun anymore. Um they also have the World Eskimo Indian Olympics up here as well. All right. And um yeah, which sounds like something >> Native Native Olympics?
>> Yeah, sounds like something your grandfather would say. What do they got?
Some Indian Eskimo Olympics up there or something?
They all They all go around with dog sleds and [ __ ] I don't know what happens up there. That's what it seems like. So, they have >> Shout out to the Beavord.
Ancient games like the high kick, the blanket toss.
I don't want that. It's got smallpox.
You take it. Is that the blanket toss?
What the [ __ ] is that?
And four-man carry along >> [laughter] >> Native hot potato. I don't know what that is, but okay.
Murder here is what we're here to talk about. Let's talk about some murder.
Okay, Monday, April 26th, 1993.
Yeah.
>> Let's go to then. Uh 2:00 p.m.
Here we go. Um now, 2:00 p.m., things are going fine. The University of Alaska Fairbanks. Oh, yeah. Uh Bartlett Hall is the dorm that we're at here.
>> Oh, boy. It's eight stories of dorms, basically, built into a hillside uh here where um you know, there's a >> Dorms? Yeah, there's three different dorms that all share a lobby of these buildings. They all come to one lobby.
Um the spring semester is 1 week away from finals, so people are already packing up, getting ready to go home.
Um on the second floor of Bartlett Hall, which is all female floor, by the way.
>> Mhm. Um there's a janitor named uh Akcha Annette uh Anschedda. Akcha Anschedda.
Yeah. And she's working her way doing the women's bathroom, which has to be a horrible task.
To clean a any college kids >> College anything. multiple person bathroom, a shared bathroom. That sounds horrible.
Um so, she's doing the toilets and uh her partner she's got a partner there doing the toilets and she's doing the showers and the bathtub >> Yeah. Okay. There's a little private room with a single tub in it that has a curtain, and the curtain is closed, but the light is on.
Um now, what she says is, later on, she'll say this, quote, "Some shower room curtain is just open, and some shower room is usually open, but that time was closed. And then when I open the curtain, and then I saw, I was screaming. When I open, and then there's a bathtub, then I saw a young lady laying down." Mhm. That's in broken English, by the way. She's not like, you know, not like she can't form a sentence. It's just not her first language. Um so, she runs >> they're usually open. This one was closed. She opens it, finds a >> a young >> laying down. Not normal. So, she runs out of the bathroom screaming, grabs somebody else, and grab and drags them in the bathroom to look at it. I don't want to see it. Make sure I'm not crazy.
I think that's all it is. Make sure I'm It's one of these like if you're like in an old cartoon when like a drunk sees >> when a drunk drunk sees like Heathcliff talking to his pals or something, they're all like, "What the fuck?" And they throw the bottle away. It's one of those.
Um but no, so within minutes the building is cops are there. It's a big deal. Um in the bathtub is a woman, uh young woman, 20-year-old named Sophie Sergie is her name. S E R G I E is her last name. Um she is and I looked up the pronunciation and I wow, it is a tough one.
Uh she is a a native up here.
The tribe is the Y U P {apostrophe} I K.
But I looked it up and it says like Cup- Cupic? Cupkick? But the Y is a See, I don't know.
>> be a K. Yeah.
>> It's Yeah, so it might be Cup- Cupkick or Cupkick Cupic? Cupic? I'm not sure how exactly you pronounce it cuz I tried I looked and I tried and then the people pronounce it differently too. So it's >> I'm fascinated with the language too because it is the most indecipherable thing. To us, yeah. I don't know.
[clears throat] For a for a white man to try to figure out. It's impressive as [ __ ] that they that they can rattle it out so fast.
>> old language, you know what I mean? So it's it's got a lot in there. Um now, it's a 20-year-old woman. She's 20 years old years old, like I said, her name's Sophie.
Um she's been brutalized in here. I mean, absolutely brutalized. First of all, she was raped, number one.
Which is horrible. Then it gets worse somehow. Um she was stabbed in the face twice.
>> Oh. Uh in the corner of her left eye when she was still alive. Ah, Jesus.
>> She's also been beaten with a with a blunt instrument Uh-huh. and gagged with a ligature as well.
All right. So this is horrible. She's also been shocked with a stun gun.
Oh. This is a How many weapons does this person have on them? He's a Batman.
Yeah. This is Yeah, he's got a utility belt whipping [ __ ] out.
And then finally killed with a single.22 caliber round to the back of the head. got a gun now, too.
>> too? A gun, a knife, a blunt instrument, a ligature, and a stun gun.
>> He brought a whole supply bag. Yeah, that's what I mean.
Which is crazy. The.22 caliber round was finally the cause of death after all that horror she was put through. Um she's been in the bathtub, they think, for about 12 hours.
It's hard to tell.
>> Somebody's real mad, too. That's not just a normal >> That's five kinds of of horrible. I mean, it's six if you add rape, too. I mean, that's an act, not a weapon, but still it's horrifying.
>> you're going to die when it's happening.
It's [ __ ] up. That's [ __ ] horrible.
So, in 12 hours, they can't really tell exactly because time of death is hard to nail down anyway. Even now it's hard to nail down, but when they've been in in water, that doesn't help at all as well.
Now, let's find out about this young lady and what happened here. Sophie Sergie is born June 4th, 1972 in Pitkas Point, Alaska.
Um Pitkas Point is a God, I'm going to say it wrong again. Cup Cupik Cupkik?
Yeah. Uh village on the lower Yukon River here.
They're the largest largest Alaska native group, by the way. Oh, is that right? Absolutely. And so like, you know, they've been doing Basically, they've been in the region for 10,000 years. Wow.
>> Long time. Um when Sophie was born, the population of her town was about 70 people.
And uh it grew to like 250 over the years, but small little tiny place. So, like University of Alaska must have seemed like a giant city to her compared to where she's from with 50 people there. Now, she helped her mother Elena run the household, and she helped raise her younger brother. She's real small.
She's 4'9".
Really? Yeah. She's That small, you know, very small 4'9" as for a young lady here. Um and uh everybody said that she's small, but was very Personality wise. Yeah. Big personality and had a lot of spirit to her and [ __ ] like that. She wanted to join the Navy. That was her dream.
Really?
>> She wanted to be in the Navy, but they told her she was too short to do what she wanted to do in the Navy. Not allowed to do that. You can't load the missiles. You can't reach them.
>> No, you can't reach. For whatever role she wanted, who knows. So, she decided instead to study marine biology. Hell yeah. Which is pretty cool. She liked whales and then liked, you know, ocean type things. So, >> And up [clears throat] they've got so much wildlife. So much wildlife. If you're interested in that, uh she ends up getting a scholarship from BP, British Petroleum, gives scholarships to natives to study [ __ ] like that.
Um in the at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. So, she enrolled in 1990 and um she had been out of high school for 2 years. I think she dropped out in her sophomore year and then finished or something. Uh this is she's the first person in her family going to college.
Yeah. And really everybody in her 70-person village is like rooting for her as she goes cuz she's going to college. This is you know, when you have a village of 70 people and you're all from the same the same tribe and you're whatever, you're all from the same group and all that, you're going to root for people as they go. It's going to be >> And as the yeah, as the first of the family to go, too. That's pretty impressive.
>> Yeah. It'll be like that in one of those old-time movies when the kids go to like play basketball at some college and all the people are at the train station waving to them and [ __ ] at the end.
That's what it's like. Um now, her best friend, um uh Shirley here, uh Shirley Wasile was also from this area and worked there.
And she said this. She said, "We were so afraid of failing. We had to make sure we got through school because otherwise our future was home."
Our future was in a 70-person [ __ ] town in the middle of nowhere. Yeah.
>> Mhm. She said, "Not that home was a bad place, but we had hopes and dreams and we wanted to do things." Right.
Understandable. Um Sophie did very well academically. Um her natives a native studies professor at UAF uh said she always had questions, she always wanted to learn more after class. Yeah. Um December of 1992, she's a sophomore in college and she got braces.
Yeah. Needed braces and wanted them for a long time and finally got them. 20 years old, ready to do it. But yeah, and she's they're not they're expensive, too. Um so, she ended up taking the spring '93 semester off to work to pay for her braces. Mhm. Um she went home. Uh she had two jobs working as a teacher's aide at the Pitkas Point School and worked at a clerk uh in nearby St. Mary worked as a clerk in nearby St. Mary's as well, so she could pay for the orthodontics.
Um Now, braces need adjusting all the time, so she periodically she had to fly back to Fairbanks cuz that's the only way to get there. God. She had to fly to Fairbanks to get her for braces adjusted. Yeah, it's uh over 500 mi from her town to Fairbanks. Yeah, it's in a small tiny one of those little weird planes. 500 mi for an orthodontist appointment?
>> And then back. That's crazy. Um so, it's but that's how you do it if you live in rural Alaska, you have to fly to get places. That's just all there is to it.
>> All there is to it. So, she would fly to Fairbanks, take a cab to the college, stay with her friend Shirley at Bartlett Hall, and uh Shirley had a single room on the second floor, and Shirley would hand Sophie her keys, and Shirley would go to her boyfriend's there, and um you know, Sophie would walk to the orthodontist the next morning and then get her flight home. That was the routine. So, that's what's going on in '93. Yeah. In April of '93, she flew in on April 23rd. Uh she flew from Pitkas Point to Alaska.
Uh before leaving Pitkas Point, she stopped at a local store and bought her 3-year-old brother a a crappy kite.
>> [sighs and gasps] >> Yeah. Yeah, I mean >> thinking it was a crappy kite, and he she said though, "If you behave while I'm gone, I'll get you a better one when I'm back when I get back." Oh, nice.
Which you can you can really put that on a kid, too, and that'll hang over them.
All weekend you could go Would you want that kite? They'll go, "God, I'm sorry."
Like it they're really >> Yeah. You can torture a kid with a new prospect of a new kite.
>> Oh, you got to get the kid a kite if he was good. Yeah, yeah. I'm good. You better follow up. Cuz if I'm what's the point? Yeah, so they all laughed about it and had a good time there. She stayed Friday night with a family friend in Anchorage and then on April 24th, she flew to Fairbanks. All right. That's how it worked. Her scheduled appointment was Monday morning, April 26th at 10:00 a.m. Sure.
Now Sunday, April 25th in the afternoon, um Elena, her mom was at was on in Anchorage here. Sophie was in Fairbanks and they were on the phone and they talked about 4:00 on that April 25th on Sunday and her mom Elena said, "We were laughing about it. That was the last time I talked to her late Sunday and we were talking about that kite." So I guess the kid would kept talking about the kite.
>> Yeah. So he was like, "You better You better be getting that kid a kite when you get back here. He's uh He wants some material and this plastic one sucks.
Yeah, this thing doesn't work for [ __ ] They had terrible paper paper grommet that you had to put on the plastic.
>> They always tore. Cuz it had to be It had to be a little breezy but not too windy or it would explode >> that [ __ ] in half.
>> Fold it, rip it apart. Yeah, so it was like a very small window of wind.
>> two blocks away.
Well, then it just falls to the ground after it rips and you go, "Aw, man." and What the [ __ ] There it is.
So now also on this Sunday, final exams are a week away. Uh-huh. Like we said now she's found on Monday afternoon. Um so you know, things are people are doing [ __ ] getting ready for finals, studying.
Sophie spends the day with her friends.
Uh her former roommate Jolene and her friend Eric said that they all drove out to a movie and then they went up to Murphy Dome to watch the sunset. Sick.
It's a spot outside Fairbanks and from that spot from the top, you can see Denali. Amazing. Pretty goddamn beautiful. Yeah.
Um so while they're there at Murphy Dome, Eric takes a picture of Sophie.
She's wearing a blue She's wearing blue US Navy sweatpants and um and a multi-colored sweatshirt with a hood and she's got a dark jacket that zips up there. She just looks real happy, arms flung open, you know, whatever. Um she's having fun, laughing, they're taking pictures.
Then they head back to the dorm. Sam uh Sophie runs into another friend, Joanne Sundown, who um knows her and Joanne said Sophie came to her room that day on Saturday and they sat together and looked through a the college catalog picking out classes for fall cuz Sophie was planning on being back in school in the fall. Um so she was just, you know, getting her [ __ ] together here. So Sunday night around 11:00, Sophie was We know she was outside of Hess Commons.
Um there's a photo from her, so we know she was there alive and well that night.
She's wearing a brightly swi- striped sweater, smoking a cigarette, talking to a bunch of kids. Sure.
>> Um one friend said she was dancing with joy. She was just having a good time.
Around midnight, Sophie and Shirley went back inside Shirley's second floor room.
Shirley's boyfriend Noah came over. They ordered a pizza and they sat on the dorm room floor and ate pizza, which is such a 20-year-old thing to do. Yeah. You put the pizza on the floor, you sit there, legs crossed.
>> Cross-legged. Just cross-applesauce eating slices of pizza. It's fantastic.
>> long enough to eat a slice of pizza like that anymore. We'd have to help Jimmy up off the carpet. That'd be the problem.
You could do it but then >> the feet. I can't feel the feet.
You wouldn't just pop up though. You'd like do the thing where you go to your knees first and then you're like, "Ah, Jesus Christ." Stretch your back out of it.
>> Get some circulation. I can't feel them.
No [ __ ] Um that's funny. So they Then they watched a movie after the pizza. Um after the movie, Shirley said goodnight and went to Noah's and sh- left Sophie in her room.
>> Got it. Yeah. And as she was leaving as Shirley's leaving Sophie said she wanted a cigarette. She was going to go out and get a cigarette and smoke a cigarette real quick. Shirley told her, "Oh, it's freezing outside. Don't go out there and smoke. That sucks. The second floor women's shower has exhaust fans."
Oh. You know, for the humidity there.
So, she she said that's people smoking there all the time. Just hold the cigarette up by the exhaust fans. No one will ever know the difference. Okay.
>> So, yeah, do one of those. So, Shirley said she walked out of Bartlett Hall to go meet Noah and on the way she passed a young man on the second floor. Mhm. She made eye contact with him. She didn't know him.
Yeah, some random young man. Now, at approximately 1:30 a.m.
in the bathroom on the west side of the building, a senior named Jennifer Roy was was taking a shower. She had an exam the next morning and she wanted a she was studying. She wanted to wake herself up basically. She was getting tired.
So, the two second floor bathrooms share a common wall. So, we know where we are.
She's on the west side. The other bathroom, the one with the tub, is on the east east side. Yeah. So, that's how it works.
She said she heard something through the wall.
She said because it was the middle of the night it was quiet. Then all of a sudden I heard someone enter into the bathroom on the other side and then enter enter into the bathtub room.
She said she doesn't hear and didn't hear voices, didn't hear shouting, didn't hear struggling, didn't hear a gunshot. Just heard >> Someone come in there. which was probably Sophie coming in to smoke. Um So, that's how that goes. Now, students also back at the scene of where this happened in this bathroom, students have been walking into the bathroom all morning brushing their teeth. They're all 15 ft away from her and a dead in the tub. Nobody notices.
They take they took showers in the open room next door. Nobody opened the tub curtain ever all morning. You know how many [ __ ] kids were in there? Dozens of kids were in there. None of them opened the tub curtain to find this poor girl.
That's That's I mean, is that thoughtful to like oh, somebody's in there, leave them be? I think you If you see a closed curtain, you just think someone must be in there and you don't think about it.
Cuz you'd go in there, brush your teeth, and leave. It's not like you'd stay in there for 2 hours and go, "How come that person hasn't come out?"
In the 10 minutes you're there, they were in the tub. I don't know. So, it makes sense, I guess.
So, Battalion Chief Mitch Flynn from the fire department arrives and he says this, "When I came in, I first saw my medic and one of the other medics in there. And when I went into the bathroom, looked into the looked to the right, then there was a body sat in a position with the knees up in the bathtub. Her pants had been pulled down, was a female, and her shirt was gone.
Her head was leaning forward, there were wounds, but I couldn't tell at the time if they're gunshot wounds or stab wounds.
Once we determined that she was deceased, I had my crew exit the room in order to preserve the crime scene."
Right. Cuz I'm sure somebody opened the curtain, saw her, and then called the fire department, 911. You don't know if she's alive You don't know anything. You just see blood and You need help. You're not going to sit there and examine the wounds and go, "Oh, no, that's a gunshot wound in the back of the head."
Um so, police come, they go over the scene, they do everything here, and um this is what they put together of what must have happened to her. And I think we can kind of get a general idea, too. On the 26th, which would be Monday morning, technically, from 1:30 a.m. to 4:00 a.m., sometime in this window of time here, that's when she was attacked, raped, struck with an instrument, choked, stabbed twice in the eye while she's alive, shot with a shot with a stun gun, and then finally with a.22 caliber bullet.
Um they said her sweatpants are pulled down to her knees, no shirt, her body wets the tile around the tub. They said the killer at this point turned off the bathtub water, draw drew the curtain, left the light on, and walked out.
Wow.
>> So, it filled it up. Now, another witness, um named Vanessa Allen, who was a freshman, was in the bathroom on the east side, the one we talked about here, and she said she remembered feeling uneasy. She said it was a bathtub area, and it had a door, and I remembered the door was closed, and the light was on, and that light is never on. Mhm. Not a lot of people are taking luxurious baths at college. You know what I mean?
It's It would just be weird. You're going in, and you're [ __ ] taking a shower quick, and going back to your room.
>> shared bathroom, lighting candles, and putting rose petals in there. That's not >> I'm having a night. Yeah, having Hold on. Where's my vibrator? Anybody? It's It's not happening.
>> What? [laughter] Most girls get in there to clean everything off of them from their puke night. Yeah.
>> Not going to soak in that. No, [ __ ] no.
She also remembers while she was showering hearing a rustling sound through the wall, but she didn't know what the hell people were doing. People could have been [ __ ] in there or something. It's college. Who knows? You mind your business, I would think. Now, another witness, a woman who was in the second floor east bathroom in the early hours that day, also said she saw a man leaving the bathtub area of the bathroom. Oh.
>> That's what we're looking for here, cuz it's an all girls floor, so.
>> Right. Um she described him as a white man with a darker complexion, about 5 ft 8 with black hair, wearing a gray T-shirt. Okay.
Okay. We'll find out this fits a a student around here pretty to the T. A guy named Kenneth Moto, m o t o. So, remember that name. Fits him The description fits him perfectly. All right. Um So, the morning, again, comes at 9:00 a.m. This is before Sophie is found. Shirley walked back to her dorm room from Noah's. The door's unlocked, the lights are on, the TV is on, the bed's still made. Sophie's stuff is still in the room, but she's not. She hadn't come back. Okay. And they know she's got like a an orthodontist appointment at 10:00, so they assume she's in the shower. Okay.
And she's going to come back and you know, she probably woke up, put all the lights on and stuff and then went and took a shower and she's going to come back.
So, Shirley said she was a little annoyed that Sophie left the door unlocked. Yeah.
>> She's a little like, "Dude, don't leave my door unlocked." So, she walked to the second-floor bathroom and heard voices from inside one of the showers.
She heard a voice coming, so she called out asking, "Is Sophie in here?" Uh-huh.
And someone yelled out, "Yeah, I'm here."
Oh. So, she assumed, "Okay, that's Sophie."
Now, Sophie's already dead.
But, I don't know if it's >> Someone else named Sophie. Yeah. Or just with this shower water, you just hear in here and you go, "Yeah, I'm in here."
Like, "Is anyone in here?" "Yeah, I'm in here."
>> Ah, but that's what it was. Yeah, I'm in here. Who Nobody You got water in your ears and all that. You just hear, "Yeah, I'm in I'm here. Yeah, I'm in here."
Nobody would Nobody would hear their name and say, "Yeah, I'm in here."
Right? You would You would say, "What?"
Or Yeah, what? Yeah.
>> interesting reply. So, Shirley leaves the dorm and goes about her day considering Sophie's in the shower.
She's going to go to her orthodontist appointment. Now, Sophie misses her orthodontist appointment, obviously. At 2:00 p.m., the janitor finds her and screams.
Does all that. Now, that evening, Dan Fo- Don Foley, who is the UAF director of residence life, gets a call from the director of Bartlett Hall telling him there's a major emergency in the dorm. Right. So, they convene a big meeting of all the residents and tell them what happened of all you know, all the kids and kids freaked the [ __ ] out.
I mean, as you can imagine. It's horrifying. So, they the state crime lab in Anchorage flies a team of criminologists to Fairbanks that evening. Cuz they don't have all this [ __ ] It's a small town. I mean, 30,000 people, decent size, but you don't have all the No. you know, all the major city forensics type of things going on here.
>> young girl murdered in a shower, we send the [ __ ] college. Yeah, and been raped, and this is horrible. Um So, I guess his first the the main investigator here, lead criminalist, is James Russell Wolf, which is a cool name for a Yeah. criminalist.
>> Dick Wolf is the executive producer of That's so rad. Well, you're in Alaska, your name's Wolf, that's pretty cool.
Yeah, there's a lot of wolves up there.
>> too.
Possibly. Um so, he said, "My first impression was was that it just seemed very clean for a crime scene where blood was shed." Yeah. the area. He said the bathtub itself was dry. The tile around it was dry. Sophie's body was wet to the touch.
And a trooper assigned to the case the same day said that her body felt damp even though the tub was bone dry. So, they're saying either she had been wet and the tub had been drained, or she had been been uh put back into the tub after being washed somewhere else. Oh.
>> know why you'd wash her somewhere else if you're in a bathtub. That wouldn't make sense.
So, they collect physical evidence.
There was a decent amount of physical evidence, and this is '93. Yeah. So, this is pre, you know, DNA being known by everyone and everyone's an expert. So, they collect hairs from her body and the bathtub area, including pubic hairs. Oh. Um now, this is a college bathroom as well. So, you're going to find hairs and pubic hairs and >> The amount of pubes in there has got to be outrageous.
>> That That's I think that's what kept me from college. I mean, besides the grades and the money that you had to take is I'm not showering somewhere where other people's pubes are. I think that's really what kept me. I knew ahead of time not to do my homework because I wasn't going to deal with that later.
The public bathrooms, the amount of dick hairs on a urinal.
>> It's disgusting. It's all dick hairs.
>> [ __ ] mind. It's crazy.
>> hairs. I don't much dick hair we're shedding constantly?
>> No one's trimming their dick hairs, too?
Is everybody just like massively like They're long.
>> long, these [ __ ] things. I see them curled up. You're like, "Oh my god. What the fuck?" Have you ever taken a trimmer to that thing?
>> Never.
Um now the DNA testing on the pubic hair identifies it as having come from a Caucasian person and not coming from Sophie. Okay. So we know that. There's also swabs of stains from the bathroom floor and bathtub, fingerprints from many surfaces in the bathtub, a red disposable like Bic cigarette lighter found in the drain of the bathtub. So that might have been in her pocket and went down when the water went away.
And bodily fluids from inside Sophie's body. They get things.
1993, they knew where to look for that stuff. They just couldn't really do that much with it. Right. We got it. They got it. Um they have some stuff here and they have some some items as we'll talk about some sperm and some things of that nature.
So police obviously need to investigate.
They go talk to the neighbors.
Yeah. They got to talk to everybody in the building at this point. See who's a suspect cuz they figure it's probably somebody who lives here that would be comfortable enough to go into bathrooms and walk around dorms.
So three floors above the bathroom in a third floor dorm is an 18-year-old freshman from Auburn, Maine named Steven Harris Downs. That's a long [ __ ] long trip. Yeah. Um he's from Maine. He went to Edward Little High School in Auburn and he's just some kid from Maine and he went to decide he wanted to go to Alaska. Which is just very weird. He moved into Bartlett Hall.
He had a roommate named Nicholas Dazer with a D, D A Z E R. Um now Dazer's also a campus security guard.
He was one of the people who was told to help keep [ __ ] together and keep people away from the bathroom and all that kind of thing after the body was found here.
Um, he guarded a stairwell while people were doing that [ __ ] upstairs.
Um, now they met while they were both moving boxes in and met each other and got along and they play both play music and they study together and party and hang out and all that kind of [ __ ] Um, Dayser would say, "I've always considered him a good friend," meaning Steven, "probably in in Fairbanks at that time my best friend." Wow. Now, Steven Downs has a girlfriend, her name's Catherine.
Um, she's an upperclassman, older than him even. How about that?
>> He's doing very well. Um, he spends some nights in her room, some nights, you know, in his room. Uh, they're going to date for about three years of college.
18, 19-year-old boy getting a 22-year-old girl, that's impressive.
>> [ __ ] awesome. Yeah. So, they asked, "Where were you guys on Sunday night?"
Um, Steven said, "Well, I was with my girlfriend Catherine on the fourth floor." Yeah. And, you know, people saw me there besides they said, you know, who can say that? Who can verify? And he said, "Well, she can and then there's other people coming in and out of the room all night and they'll tell you."
Um, he said, "We were watching movies uh, on the VCR, watching tapes."
>> Oh boy, yeah. They were drinking a little bit, you know, that kind of thing.
Uh, now he said, "I came and went cuz my room's only a floor down, so I kind of came and went. So did my roommate, hang out for a while, whatever."
Um, so Catherine would say that she couldn't say for certain exactly when Steven was in her room and when he wasn't in her room.
But, he was there. Yeah. But, sometimes he would leave for a bit and then he'd come back, you know, it's it's a dorm, so they're all kind of moving around.
>> Oh, she's trying to watch Men at Work.
She doesn't Yeah, come on, guys. Jesus, what are we doing? So, Steve brought guns with him to college. Oh. This is not unusual in Alaska at all. Everybody has guns.
>> yeah.
>> Or Maine, that's what I mean, both of those places, but Alaska especially. It is >> boy. It's so rural, so a lot of kids bring as cuz they hunt. Tons of these kids hunt up here. Some of the kids come to college up here cuz they want to hunt around the area. So, that's why they go.
So, now Steven has two pistols in his room. Later on, a Derringer they'll figure out, too, but they won't figure that out till later. Um So, on his nightstand, he's got a switchblade as well, a knife.
Again, not uncommon for an 18-year-old kid.
One of the guns is an H&R.22-caliber revolver.
So, there's that. Now >> H&R? H&R revolver.
Now, they said that they talked to the roommate and he said, "Yeah, my roommate has guns." The days are gone. He said, "Yeah, my roommate has guns. He's got the.22-caliber pistol. He's got a Derringer. He's got a switchblade."
All this [ __ ] He said, "I never" They said, "Have you ever seen him do anything inappropriate with these guns?"
And he said, "I never saw Steve act inappropriately with guns. These are There are some people who play with guns inappropriately and don't handle them safely. I never saw Steve do that, nor did I ever see him carry a gun except when we were going to hunt." Oh, he just kept them in the room. Yeah. Just keeps them there. Um Also, Steven Downs is not 5'8" and dark-complected. He's 6' tall and really pale. You You'd notice that guy. So, it doesn't fit that description at all, which is >> And that guy would stand the [ __ ] out.
He would, exactly. So, Steven Downs says, "I don't know anything." Basically, he said, "I just spent the night with my girlfriend." He said, "But, one thing I've heard, if you know, can help out at all." He said, "There are GIs from Fort Wainwright, so army guys, who hassle the girls in the dorm sometimes.
They go out looking for college chicks, and they'll they'll break balls, and you know, they are a little bit." And so, that's what he said. He said, "I don't know. I'd look at Fort Wainwright." He said, "Sometimes the soldiers will come and come to the dorms, and like go around, try to go to parties and look for girls. Yeah.
So they said the lead investigator said there's a footnote in my notes that said something about GIs hassling girls. I noted in my notes that they were some there was some comment that maybe there were GIs here that weekend.
Oh.
>> Um okay. Now there's another guy that we're going to call Williamson for now.
Williamson knew Sophie had hung out with her the night before her death that Saturday Sunday night.
And everybody said he was kind of infatuated with Sophie really liked her.
Williamson talking about yeah.
Investigators at this time describe a quote small shrine to her in his dorm room. What the [ __ ] She doesn't even go there anymore.
That's weird.
He also has zero alibi for the night of this murder.
Uh-huh.
And when invest investigators question him his very first words are first of all I didn't do it.
Which is not great.
At one point they consider him the prime suspect. They interview him like five six times. He told them he had dropped a gift off for Sophie that night in Shirley's dorm room. And Shirley said I don't remember that happening at all. So he's lying.
>> himself there. Put himself there has no alibi has a small shrine and lied about where he was around that >> shrine is real important now. That's [ __ ] weird. Yeah. So over the next couple days the kids freaked out.
By the next morning basically half the female students moved out.
Yeah. Not safe. Yeah. Um not safe at all that the way they're thinking about it.
Um Shirley her roommate by the way at the memorial said it's important to know how much Sophie enjoyed life. Don't be bitter. We should continue to pray for the person who took Sophie away from us.
Yeah. Which is pretty goddamn nice.
Thank goodness. Yeah, if you want to be all Christiany, that's the way you do it, by the way. That's how it's supposed to be done. So, the next fall they beefed up security, had to have a card to get in, like a, you know, card to buzz you in. They added cameras.
They changed all the security the next year.
>> Yeah.
So, the investigation goes on here and they interview some over 500 people in this investigation. Who.
They tried to talk to every resident of Bartlett Hall, every guest. They focused on the second floor. They focused also on the male residents of the building.
Um, the lieutenant here said later on, "It's been one of the larger mysteries. This is a true whodunit." Hate that. That's rough. Now, the leads, who do they have?
Well, they have Kenneth Moto. Remember him? The guy who fits the description.
Um, a female student saw guy who fits her his description perfectly leaving the second floor east bathroom in the early morning hours of April 26th.
Leaving the bathroom early >> That bathroom. That's not good. She described him as 5 ft 8, white but dark complexioned with black hair wearing a gray shirt, which is exactly the description of the other of the other person got.
So, they interview him.
Um, the day he was interviewed, he was still wearing a gray shirt and he matched all the description, but he said he didn't do it. So, they really didn't have any evidence. Now, they never find a murder weapon. They never find a knife that matches up. They never find the.22 that matches up to this. Or the stun gun?
Or the stun gun.
Uh, they the uh forensics here, they made dozens of slides from the autopsy and they found sperm on three of the slides. Uh-huh. From the swabs.
The case goes cold. Despite having all these leads, a guy the same description leaving all this cold case, okay?
Nothing happens. They put up a reward for $20,000. Nobody claims it. Nothing happens. Mhm. So, Sophie's mother Elena files a $4 million wrongful death lawsuit against the University of Alaska in 1995. It alleges that the university's lax dorm security allowed her daughter to be killed. The state would settle that lawsuit. Oh. Um but they say that the civil suit forced the Alaska State Troopers to release all the information about the ongoing case, which basically said, "Now the whoever did it can find out exactly what the police know." Sure. At that point. Um so that's not a good deal. Now 1996, the lead investigator flies uh to another place, Kotzebue, Kotzebue, and interviewed Kenneth Moto again.
Moto agrees to provide a DNA sample.
This is '96. Yeah. He gave them the swab and he said, quote, "I volunteered because I want to help in any way I can cuz if she's native, we can't have that happening to native people." Oh, yeah.
>> said. Cuz he's in the same the same guy, same deal.
So 1999 comes around. God dang.
The person who did the forensics on it, did the slides and the samples and all that, at a colleague's suggestion, said, "Why don't you go back and look through it again? You have fresh eyes. You know what I mean?"
>> Yeah. So she looked and she found sperm on more slides.
God dang.
>> closer. Um yeah, she said, "Sometimes when you look harder, you find things you missed the first time." Yeah. Which is true. Um they also test Moto's DNA and he is found uh the semen does not match her. So it doesn't match anything?
Doesn't match Kenneth Moto at all. The guy who fits the description. Plus you'd think that if you're just leaving the bathroom after that [ __ ] you're going to have some blood on you. It'll be obvious. Something you would imagine.
They test 15 other men's DNA.
Oh. 15 of them. None of the matches.
Huh. Nothing. 2000, year 2000, the Alaska Crime Lab now has a full DNA profile from the semen recovered from the body.
>> Wow.
They run it through CODIS though, it doesn't match anybody.
>> Nothing. It's nobody they have on file yet.
>> The guy that did this [ __ ] isn't even in CODIS. Isn't that crazy? It's no other crimes, nothing. Horrifying.
>> So, 2003 um here is a quote from the Alaska assistant attorney general. He says, "As the years went by, additional suspects were explored and DNA samples were collected, but all the potential suspects were eliminated as the source of the unidentified DNA."
By the end of 2003, the investigation had gone dormant. Damn it. 2007, Alaska State Troopers reopen the cold case.
And an outside >> So, almost 15 years later. Yeah, it's So, yeah. Now, the Alaska's from this outside forensic examiners that they hired to bring in, conclude that the second floor bathtub was probably not the murder scene.
Probably, right.
>> Probably brought her there, put her in, turn the water on to wash his what he thought was wash his whatever he had away.
Didn't know about >> sperm and DNA that gets up inside you and all that kind of thing. So, but they theorize she was killed somewhere else and moved to the tub. Okay. They go through all the files. They re-interview every witness that's still alive. They track people down in, you know, 3,000, 5,000 miles away and interview them.
>> Sure.
2009 Unbelievable.
still out there. Wow. In an interview about the case, the lead investigator Jim McCann, who's been on it since the beginning said he believed the killer had hated women and that Sophie had just been a target of opportunity. Okay. And they get a forensic psychologist also who says that um whoever did this had done it before and probably did it again afterwards.
>> Have to. Have to. This is not something you do once and walk away. Right. 2010, two cold case investigators go to Oregon to interview Nicholas Dazer again.
Remember him? Right. Steven Downs was his roommate, the guy with the guns.
Dazer was a security guard at the time.
>> At this time, when they interview him in 2010, he's an attorney.
Oh. They ask him about Steven Downs again. They ask him about his guns, and he said, "Yes, he had a.22 in the dorm in the dorm, a derringer and a switchblade on the nightstand." Okay.
They asked him if Dazer had ever open owned a gun himself, and he said, "No, not at the dorm." Right. They asked him about a separate incident in his security guard career. He'd been fired from the job Oh. at UAF for keeping a firearm in his dorm room.
What about that?
>> the He said, "Well, the gun in question wasn't a.22." He said the gun the the.22 in the dorm room was Steve's gun, not mine. Okay.
>> But he had another gun, and he just lied about it, which is not great.
>> Um I guess they asked him if he had a.22.
Uh-huh.
>> So, they said, "Based on that, they can't identify either Dazer or Downs as a concrete suspect or subject or anything else."
2015, and this is infuriating.
>> [ __ ] believable.
>> Not only has it been over 20 years, >> 20 years, yeah. the Alaska state legislature, facing budget cuts, Now, when there's budget cuts, you have to prioritize. They decide to shut down the Alaska state troopers cold case unit.
>> Yeah, you got to start with the crime labs.
>> That's where the expensive shits at. Let people get away with murder. That's really what you should do.
>> [laughter] >> Sell the microscopes. We got budget cuts. Yeah, the unit had been working on more than 100 unsolved cases at the time.
>> [laughter] >> One of which is Sophie's.
>> Uh, which is crazy. Sophie's, at this point, her file is 14 volumes of notebooks and three or four boxes of reference material. That's so much.
>> It's so much. So, and they said now, whoever comes in if someone ever reinvestigates this, they're going to have to start from the bottom of that box and work their way out of it to to figure this out. Yeah.
So, this is this is [ __ ] terrible. Um he told that one of the cops told the press at the time that the that Sophie's case was in one of the biggest mysteries the unit had ever encountered.
>> Yeah.
2008 or 18, I'm sorry. 18.
>> unbelievable. An investigative genealogist named CeCe Moore in California and a Virginia-based DNA company named Parabon NanoLabs that they're the ones who cracked the the uh Golden State Killer case. That's when that happened. This is when DNA and finding DNA through of like uh you know, DNA databases and ancestry and all that became a thing. Um this wasn't just running through CODIS and see if it matches. All these people that did that [ __ ] had no idea that they were going to >> [laughter] >> They identified him based on the uh taking that profile to a public consumer genealogy database named GEDmatch, which I any science thing, I don't want the words GED in there. I have a GED. I don't know anything about science. Don't don't do that. Yeah, don't do it at that level. Yeah. [laughter] This is a site where you basically upload your own DNA in hope of finding lost relatives. That's what the point is. And um what they end up finding is distant cousins of whoever this murderer was.
Distant cousins of this murderer tried to find their family. Absolutely. So, in 2018, there's a new investigator named Randy McFerrin of the state troopers.
He's been working cold cases a long time.
He had a sealed sample of semen from Sophie's body. Say that five times fast.
Never mind she sells seashells, how about he has sealed samples of semen of So from So Sophie's body.
That's much harder. Yeah. Sealed samples of semen from Sophie's body. Sealed samples of semen from Sophie's body.
Kids try that and it'll help you out like that.
>> Sealed and delivered. It's very nice.
And he had a full DNA profile with no match. Now, he sent this sample to the Parabon Nano Labs in Virginia and asked him to run it against GEDmatch and he waited. That's how they found the Golden State Killer was through the cousins.
On April or December 18th, 2018, the forensic genealogist filed a report. The DNA from that body from Sophie's body shared 23% of its profile with a woman who had voluntarily uploaded her own DNA to GEDmatch as a hobby, just to find people.
>> That is real close. That's >> That's 23% is a good chunk, yeah.
>> Oh boy, that's a She shares a fourth of her DNA with a murderer. So, yeah, they said the match was strong enough uh and is roughly the genetic distance of an aunt or a grandparent. So, in a Maine Right now.
>> a fourth cousin or anything.
>> Yeah, she's had a piece of attorney duty with this person. Yeah, so they said the genealogist then could could build out a family tree from this.
Um the woman lived in Maine.
>> [sighs and gasps] >> The family she tree shows she's the aunt of Steven Harris Downs. Uh-oh.
>> Remember him? Yeah. Um he'd been a freshman. We know who he is. They interviewed him. Um so, they were like, "Who?" They went back through the files and they're like, "Oh, yeah, we interviewed him. He was interviewed >> the night with his girlfriend in an inn.
He was only interviewed once that night in his dorm room and he's the guy who said maybe the GIs from Fort Wainwright.
>> Uh-huh.
So, they're like, "Fuck, what do we do now?" Um they said through the process of elimination, the lab determined that the known relative to the DNA profile only had one possible second-degree relationship, her nephew Steven H.
Downs.
Downs has no previous arrests at all, none.
>> What?
His DNA has never been uploaded to the national database, they said, so the sample had never been compared to his.
So, what has he been doing? Where's he been?
>> Well, he finished his freshman year, that like went home a week after the murder, went to Maine, came back in the fall, moved in with his girlfriend in a cabin off campus. Oh my gosh. Stayed close with Nicholas Dazer, would target shoot and hunt, and then he graduated um in 1998, he was uh he was uh groomsman at Nicholas Dazer's wedding in Portland, Oregon, his roommate.
So, there's that. Um he went on to graduate for he went on for a graduate degree in nursing, returned to Maine in 2003 to live there permanently, started working as a registered nurse, first licensed in July 2011, according to the nursing board records.
>> Uh-huh. He took it a job he took a job he took it a job Took it a job?
>> Hey, he took it a job. He took a job at a place called Harris House in Livermore Falls, Maine, which is a 12-bed intermediate care facility for adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities, which is normally people who work there you go, "Jesus, you got to be an angel to work there." Uh you know.
>> Has anybody there died questionably?
He took care of vulnerable people, that was his job.
>> Wow. He was fired in 2011 Yeah. for a totality or 2016 for a totality of substandard performance, including multiple medication errors. He he documented the doses he hadn't actually given, which means he was probably selling them.
>> Taking it, yeah. Uh he poured medications into unlabeled cups, he gave a pill to a patient too early.
Two female co-workers, two months apart, filed formal complaints saying that Steven Downs had made comments to them on the job that made them uncomfortable.
Yeah. After the first complaint, he apologized. After the second, he denied it.
Huh.
>> A certified nursing assistant who worked under him at Harris House named Kelly Ellingwood also said that she that Downs would sometimes hit on the younger CNAs.
Yeah.
>> She said she remembered a quote, "I always felt uncomfortable having to go with him go to him for things and being around him."
In 2017 he can sign he signed a consent agreement with the Maine Board of Nursing.
He took a course called professional boundaries in nursing and kept his license.
He took a new job at the Marshwood Center worked there from 2017 to 18 where the complaints continued to mount. This is a man in his 40s who needs a professional boundaries class.
>> A class. Oh, I shouldn't So, I shouldn't do that to 20-year-olds who just started working under me.
Um they also said that somebody in 2009 filed an incident report against him also. The report described an incident in which Downs had hurt a female resident while treating her wound and made condescending comments to her. The resident said that afterwards she was afraid to report him because she didn't think anyone would believe her. Right. She said, "I believe it's also important to mention I've never seen or heard him treat males this way, only females he has power over."
Another resident there said that basically they asked for another nurse to be in the room when Steven was around treating.
>> Oh.
They said that she was scared of him and that this resident said that that basically Downs said no one will believe you over me. Uh-huh. I don't think.
Okay. And another resident said, "I didn't like even being in the same room as him cuz I felt weird being around him." I'm mad at it. By the way, in 2015 he bought an H&R.22 caliber revolver from a private seller in Maine.
>> Uh-huh.
Same gun as the one he had before.
Um okay.
February 2019 the investigators fly to Maine. They meet with the Maine State Police Unsolved Homicide Unit. And they lead detective there's a guy named Jay Pelletier, which I believe we've talked about him before on a Maine case.
Pelletier, it's I I know that name.
>> familiar, yeah.
>> I know that name. Um they coordinated with the Auburn City Police. They get a warrant to surveil Steven Downs's house.
Okay.
They go through his garbage. They're trying to pick out anything that has DNA on it. They get >> enough that he that he the murderer shares a quarter of that lady's DNA? Can you >> They need a full sample. No, it's not enough because it could be, you know what I mean? So, it's not in court. You can't go in and go, "We're 23% sure, Tim."
>> [laughter] >> That doesn't work for a murder case, you know what I mean? But I mean, can can you Can you go to court and be like, "We're 23% sure.
Can Can we go search?"
Well, that's that's what they did. They got a warrant. They said, "We have 23% sure."
>> though, not to search yet. No, to to to surveil him to get some [ __ ] out of his garbage can. That's what they're trying They're searching through his garbage can trying to get anything. So, that's why how they got that warrant. So, the garbage gets has no usable sample.
Wow. They can't find anything. They sit there for like weeks trying to get something. They got nothing. So, February 13th, 2019, they just go knock on his door. "Hi."
Yeah. So, they said, quote, "He just kind of let us into the dining room."
They sat down at the dining room. He sat with them. He talked. They recorded the interview. They said they asked him what he remembered about the night that Sophie was killed.
And he told them the same thing that he said in 1993. He said he didn't know her, never spoke to her, he was with his girlfriend.
That's that. He said, quote, "If we would have known anything from the jump, you know, we would have we would have spoken up, me and Nick." Meaning him and his roommate.
So, then the other investigator says, "We took the DNA sample that was found inside her body, in her vagina. They were able to develop a full profile from the sample. It came down to you. You're the source of the DNA. It's you, Steve, and that's why we're here."
>> [sighs] >> And he said, quote, "There's no way that could be possible."
Okay.
So, they asked him, "Okay, drive yourself down to the police department.
You're going to give us a DNA sample and a fingerprint." And he said, "Sure." He drove down there, gave them samples, maintained his innocence. He said it has to be a mistake. It has to be a lab error. There has to be something cuz it's not me. I don't know that girl.
So, they run it through. Within 24 hours, they say, "It's his DNA." Yeah. And he's arrested without incident outside the Fireside Inn on Washington Street in Auburn, Maine.
He fights extradition, but that's not going to go very well for him.
Now, they say, "Did Was that psychologist right? Does he have a trail of bodies behind him?"
No, they say as investigating him as far as anybody's ever been able to prove or even suspect, he never raped or murdered another person. He's just a kind of a random [ __ ] Once You know how odd it is for someone to do this once? And that well >> person.
Yeah. And I mean, had he known that DNA [clears throat] existed as well as it did, he he would have done something to to not have that left behind. You would think. Well, I think he tried to wash it away. I mean, my point is he would would have worn a condom or something.
Something, yeah. Yeah, well, yeah. I mean, that would be even sicker if he had it planned out that much to where he Right. You know, that's even crazier.
So, he's charged with first-degree murder and first-degree sexual assault.
Yeah. And that's how it goes. He's His lawyer says in his initial appearance, "There must be some kind of mistake."
What?
>> Mhm. Yeah. Now, the defense attorney here, they want to present alternate suspects. Okay. So, there's a few that they're going to They're going to have here. They said this is not a case of the defense coming forward with a witness years later saying they had evidence that Steven Downs didn't commit the crime. Just about every piece of information that I intend to convey to you comes from the 8,000 plus pages and over 100 audio files that have been presented by the state. They're saying this is the state's people.
So they want to do Kenneth Moto. He fits the description, Gregory Thornton, and also Williamson, and also Nicholas Dazer, the roommate as well. He had access to a gun, why not?
>> the deal with the shrine?
Yeah, well the security guard is the guy you look at also first cuz I never trust those guys. Yeah.
So the Williamson guy, by the way, had an alibi.
Really? And also they said later on that the shrine that he had and the strange behavior were more of a rumor than fact.
He was just kind of a weird guy.
Um they said Williamson had been cleared and so the defense you know, whatever. So uh Gregory Thornton, um he owned a.22 caliber pistol. Yeah. Um Now uh Thornton was suicidal at the time and was living inappropriately with another student in the dorm. I don't know what he was [ __ ] somebody.
>> Um they later got a warrant for his DNA, it doesn't match. Uh he was scientifically excluded. Kenneth Moto, same deal.
Now the problem with Kenneth Moto is his sister said that Kenneth told her that he killed So- Sophie. Why would he say that? He said he told her he'd killed her because in his words she wouldn't shut her mouth. Oh. Um but the semen's not his.
That's a problem. Now his sister, by the way, dies before trial. So she's not able to testify to what she saw.
It's a 5-week trial, 45 witnesses, a lot of [ __ ] Um they go through the DNA, which is the main thing. Uh they do a cross on the DNA lady pushing the idea that maybe it was mishandled or contaminated or changed in the lab. Um you know, she said that's it's DNA, it's what it is. I don't know.
Um, other witnesses here, um, they they said that they talked about the the two young ladies who were in the bathroom.
Uh, her roommate talks about passing the guy in the hallway. She identified that man as Steven Downs that she passed in the hallway, even though she gave a description of a completely different guy.
>> yeah. Yeah. Um, also a multiple other witnesses here, uh, Nicholas Daizer is brought in and uh, they say that uh, they weren't allowed to bring up his firing in front of the jury cuz there's no direct link to the crime, even though there's a gun involved in the firing.
Um, now, so the cross on Daizer they said, "Do you remember Mr. Downs' behavior at the time of the murder as being unusual?"
And he says, "Absolutely not." Hm. He said he was fine, nothing at all. That's right.
He said that he could never in a million years fathom that Steve could have done something like this. That's what he said. Sure. They bring his old girlfriend in and she says, "In my fuzzy 30-year-old memories, he had this little.22 pistol that he wanted to go out in the woods and target shoot, so I went with him. It looked old. It was a handgun, I believe a revolver. It was kind of old and beat up."
She said but nothing that she could remember would link him to the murder at all. She said he was honestly, even though we broke up, he was a nice kid.
He was nice to me, he was nice to my friends, no red flags, he was a good guy. So, I don't get it. Um, so there's that. Uh, the troopers they bring in all the cops that investigated and um, they said, uh, "Did you ever Did that They said, "Was it a trick to see how Moto reacted to say that someone saw him coming out of the bathroom?"
And the investigator said, "I would say, um, well, it's something I would also use as a way to see what effect would be, how he's going to react to that."
But he said it was also true. Yeah. They in ca- they bring in Moto.
Yeah.
And they say, "Do you remember telling your sister at any point you killed Sophie?" And he said, "I remember we were watching TV, something on cold cases in Alaska, so it was some kind of show on TV. I told her I was a suspect in Sophie's I was a suspect in that one at UAF."
Big difference between I killed her and I was a suspect. Yeah. And the state's closing says, "He likes.22 caliber revolvers."
>> Yeah.
His [ __ ] DNA matches. It's one in one in 330 billion match to the DNA. I mean, he definitely is inside her. Yeah, they're like, "Unless somebody else he raped her and then someone else killed her, but he at least raped her."
>> Right. We're thinking here. So, in the closing arguments they said the defense says, "DNA does not equal murder. Even if he had sexual contact with her at some point that night, which he denies, it doesn't prove he killed her."
They said the male pubic hairs from a Caucasian person other than Steven Down were collected at the scene. They were never tested for DNA. Uh-huh. But it's a saliva could have been anybody's. It's so exactly right. There's a saliva sample at the scene. The murder weapon's never been found. All right. He said, "He's a normal kid, this Stevie. He wasn't this kind of guy. He's a nurse.
He takes care of people."
So, the verdict comes in here. This is 20 hours of deliberation over 4 days.
Quite a bit. That is a lot. They find him What do you think is going to happen here? Uh that's guilty. It's DNA, man.
Guilty of first degree murder. Yeah.
First degree sexual assault as well.
Yeah. Um the He denies that he ever was in contact with her. That's it. If he said, "Yeah, I had a little affair with that girl. I don't want my girlfriend to know about that." That would have been different.
Sophie's brother Alex said, "With the DNA, I'm pretty sure it's the right guy.
Nowadays, DNA won't lie to you." Right.
So, in sentencing, the prosecution asks for 99 years with 20 suspended, so a hard 79 years, they said.
Then they asked for an 8-year mandatory sentence on the sexual assault to run consecutively for a total of 87 years in Alaska. The defense asked for 50 years suspended to 30 with the sexual assault count running concurrently.
He said that the lower number would allow Mr. Downs to hug his parents again in his lifetime.
Steven declines to make a statement at sentencing.
The judge says, "Mr. Downs' life goal, according to his legal counsel, is to hope to one day hug his parents again.
Since April of '93, Miss Sergi hasn't been able to hug anyone. No one's been able to hug her. No one will ever hug her again. That's a tremendous impact.
There's really no higher impact than raping and murdering someone." Yeah.
That's plain English, I would say. You, sir, may [ __ ] off.
Sentences him to 67 years in prison for the murder, and 8 years for the sexual assault to run consecutively for 75 years in total.
He would be eligible for discretionary parole after 25 years around the age of 73.
Eesh.
So, yeah, he appeals for a warrantless search of Steven Downs' family DNA on a on a match and all that kind of [ __ ] It's all ticky-tack [ __ ] and uh >> on DNA. Yeah, so that is actually going through the courts yet. It's been 2 years, but they have not rendered a decision yet. Okay. So, we're waiting on that. I think it's going to be affirmed.
Let's just say here.
>> trouble, man. And that is Fairbanks, Alaska, and a crazy god damn story, I would say. That is [ __ ] ridiculous.
>> what that [ __ ] has done to change the course of investigations. Without it, without DNA, you're in so much trouble.
There was nothing that you can't solve anything without DNA. Unless somebody saw them there, or their fingerprints are on something, you're [ __ ] So, Now with touch DNA, can you investigate and just hand them something and take it back and Some things, yeah, they can get that off of. But to get a really good sample, they still want like >> Get them after like a pickleball match or something.
>> Rex Ueremen pizza crust bite or some [ __ ] you know what I mean? So, anyway, if you enjoy the show and enjoy it all the time, get on whatever app you're listening on, give us five stars, give a thumbs up on Netflix, do whatever you got to do. It helps the show, so thank you for doing that. Definitely follow on social media @smalltownmurder on Instagram, @smalltownpod on Facebook. But shut up up and give me murder.com is where you get everything related to the show and the other two shows we do, Crime in Sports and Your Stupid Opinions. Get your tickets for Small Town Murder Live Shows. Royal Oak is sold out, everybody, for May 30th. Thank you for that.
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Anybody $5 a month or above, you get everything as soon as you subscribe. You get hundreds of back bonus episodes you've never heard before. New ones every other week, including this week, which you're going to get for Crime in Sports. We're going to which you get, we're going to talk about the Christian power team. Yeah. These are people that were on the religious channel that would like bend a rebar and then scream to that Jesus did that for them and thank you, Jesus. Unmatched.
>> There was some bad stuff that went on and you'll get to understand that. Then for Small Town Murder, Internet Salad.
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>> [music] [music] [music]
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