The Hidden Murderer - Fairbanks, Alaska

Summary

Small Town Murder – "The Hidden Murderer - Fairbanks, Alaska"

Hosts: James Pietragallo & Jimmie Whisman
Date: May 15, 2026
Episode Number: 700

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Overview

In this milestone 700th episode, James and Jimmie delve into the shocking 1993 murder of 20-year-old Sophie Sergie in Fairbanks, Alaska. The case, which remained unsolved for decades, showcases the evolution of forensic investigation and the long shadows cast by violence in a tight-knit small-town environment. The hosts blend their trademark research and dark humor with a thoughtful exploration of Fairbanks, its unique character, and the slow-burning pursuit of justice for Sophie.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Introduction to Fairbanks, Alaska (05:03–13:40)

• Setting the Scene: Fairbanks is described as remote, challenging to live in, and possessing a wild, isolated spirit.
  • James: “Just to have the thought that I’m going to go to Alaska, that’s a screwy thought right there.” (05:08)
• Town Facts: Median income, home costs, coldest city in the U.S. (regularly hitting -50°F), and quirky local attractions like the “Redneck Space Needle.”
• History: Established after a gold rush in 1901. Population fluctuations followed WWII, the gold boom, and Cold War military buildup.

2. Local Color and Community Character (13:41–14:21)

• Host-read resident reviews offer insight into local resilience and the tough physical environment.
  • Favorite moment: Tales of bizarre local monuments and events, including the World Eskimo-Indian Olympics and a dangerous homemade high-rise clubhouse.

3. The Crime: Discovery of Sophie Sergie (14:22–18:48)

• Discovery: Sophie, a Yupik native student, is found dead by a janitor in the University of Alaska Fairbanks’ Bartlett Hall—after being raped, brutally assaulted, electroshocked, stabbed, and shot.
• Details of the Crime:
  • James (on brutality): “This is six kinds of horrible. I mean, it’s five if you add rape, too… He’s got a utility belt, whipping shit off.” (17:47)

4. Sophie Sergie’s Life & Ambitions (18:49–26:05)

• Sophie is portrayed as a bright, determined young woman from a 70-person village, first in her family to attend college, majoring in marine biology thanks to a BP scholarship.
• She journeys over 500 miles for orthodontic care, planning to return to school full-time.

5. The Timeline: Sophie’s Final Days (26:06–34:58)

• April 25–26, 1993: Sophie arrives for an orthodontist appointment, spends time with friends, returns to the dorm, and is last seen late Sunday night.
• Incident Details: She goes for a cigarette break around 1 a.m. (on her friend’s advice, in the bathroom to escape the cold) and is murdered sometime between 1:30 and 4:00 a.m.
• Missed Discovery: Students use the bathroom all morning with her body hidden behind a drawn curtain just feet away, unknowingly moving around the crime scene.

6. The Investigation (37:31–57:58)

• Immediate Response:
  • Massive police operation. Dorm lockdown.
  • Early witnesses: A student sees a man matching Kenneth Moto’s description leaving the scene.
• Physical Evidence:
  • Sperm and hair found in the bathroom and on the victim, a lighter in the tub’s drain, but in the early ’90s, DNA tech is limited.
  • Quote on dorm bathrooms:
    • James: “The amount of pubes in there’s gotta be outrageous.” (42:17)
• Suspects:
  • Several students, especially those familiar with Sophie, including:
    • Steven Downs (third-floor resident from Maine, owns a .22 revolver, matches no physical description)
    • Williamson (obsessed with Sophie, “shrine” in room, no alibi)
    • Kenneth Moto (matches witness description, volunteers DNA)
  • Military personnel considered; DNA from swabs is non-matching for all tested.

7. The Cold Case Years & Forensic Breakthrough (57:59–67:36)

• Case Goes Cold: Hundreds interviewed, dozens of suspects, but no matches and no weapon found. Sophie's family sues the university for lax security; the case file grows to over 14 volumes.
• Genealogy Technology Breaks the Case (2018):
  • With a new investigator and forensic genealogist CC Moore, DNA is run through GEDmatch, matching to a relative in Maine—tracing back to Steven Downs.
    • Jimmie: “She shares a fourth of her DNA with a murderer.” (67:36)

8. Arrest and Trial of Steven Downs (68:08–83:49)

• Downs’ Movements: Finished college, became a nurse in Maine, with a professional record of boundary issues especially around vulnerable women.
• Police Tactic: Surveillance fails to yield DNA, so they confront him directly; he gives a sample, which directly matches the semen from the crime scene.
• Defense Strategies:
  • Alternate suspects reintroduced, including Moto (whose own sister alleges he confessed, but her testimony is barred after her death), but none match DNA.
• Trial Outcome: After a five-week trial and 20 hours of deliberation, Downs is convicted on all counts.
  • James: “The state’s closing says... his f***ing DNA matches. It’s 1 in 330 billion match to the DNA.” (80:54)
• Sentence: 75 years in prison, eligible for parole at 73. He is currently appealing over search and genealogy warrant issues.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the extremity of Alaska’s living conditions:
  • James: “Just to have the thought that I’m going to go to Alaska, that’s a screwy thought right there.” (05:08)
• On the baffling amount of evidence in dorm showers:
  • James: “The amount of pubes in there’s gotta be outrageous.” (42:17)
• On the cold-case unit shut down:
  • James: “Let people get away with murder, that’s what you should do.” (57:36)
• On the DNA breakthrough:
  • Jimmie: “She shares a fourth of her DNA with a murderer.” (67:36)
• On Downs’ defense at trial:
  • James: “The state’s closing says… his f***ing DNA matches. It’s 1 in 330 billion match to the DNA.” (80:54)
• On sentencing:
  • Judge (paraphrased by James): “Mr. Downs’ life goal… is to hope to one day hug his parents again. Since April of 93, Ms. Sergie hasn’t been able to hug anyone. That’s a tremendous impact. There’s really no higher impact than raping and murdering someone.” (83:12)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Town Overview & Fairbanks History: 05:03–13:40
• Murder Discovery: 14:22–18:48
• Sophie’s Background: 18:49–26:05
• Timeline of Events: 26:06–34:58
• Investigation and Suspects: 37:31–57:58
• Genealogical DNA Breakthrough: 65:25–67:36
• Arrest and Trial: 68:08–83:49
• Verdict & Sentencing: 81:41–83:49

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Tone & Style

• Comic banter throughout (e.g., “It’s all dick hairs”), but always returning to respectful, sober acknowledgment of Sophie’s loss.
• Hosts balance detailed research with irreverent asides on dorm life, Alaskan oddities, and crime scene realities.
• Final reflections underline the power of DNA technology in justice and the tragic consequences of violence in small communities.

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Summary

This episode presents a thorough, witty, and ultimately somber examination of a notorious Alaska cold case, tracking the advances in forensic science and the persistence required to achieve justice. Both a tribute to Sophie Sergie’s brief, bright life and a critique of systemic failures, the narrative reminds listeners that small towns, no matter how remote, are not insulated from darkness—or from the slow but relentless reach of the truth.

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Transcript

[A]

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[A]

Hello, everybody, and welcome back to Small Town Murder Express.

[C]

Yay and choo choo.

[A]

Yay indeed, Jimmy. Yay indeed. My name is James Petragalo. I'm here with my co host.

[C]

I'm Jimmy Whisman.

[A]

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.

[C]

Holy shit.

[A]

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. Nevermind. 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. You're amazing. So we're going to have a wild one today. Before we get to all that, though, shutupandgivemerder.com is where you get your tickets for live shows. Also merchandise. All the merchandise you can buy, but tickets for live shows. Looks like May 30th and Royal Oak has sold out. So thank you, Michigan, for doing that. We appreciate that. The next available shows are September 18th in Milwaukee at the Pabst. Beautiful venue. Great place. And September 19th in Minneapolis at The State Theater, which is also a really nice place. Get in there, Milwaukee. You're doing really well. That is back to back.

[C]

Huge venues, though. You guys sell those out, you'll make my year. Thank you.

[A]

That would be amazing. Thank you. Then October 3rd in Dallas, October 16th and 17th in San Jose in Sacramento, and November 13th and 14th in Tarrytown, New York and Boston. So come see a show. Shut up and give me murder.com. definitely do that. Listen to our other two shows, crime and sports, and your stupid opinions. Get yourself Patreon. That's the real thing here. It's a value. Anybody $5 a month or AB. You're gonna get everything we put out, every damn thing we put out, including, as soon as you subscribe, you're gonna get hundreds, almost 400 back bonus episodes you've never heard before. And you get those immediately. And then you get new ones every other week. One crime in sports and one small town murder. And you get them all. Everybody. This week is no different for crime and sports. This week we are gonna talk about that weird, the power team. They were on all the Christian channels and. 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 they were nuts. And then of course, there was scandal, obviously, because that's not gonna. There's not gonna be no scandal involved in that. It's a lot of fun. Then for small town murder, it's Internet salad time. Hey, hey, it's back. A lot of people were disappointed we were not doing that this week, but we'll do it the next one. And anything that's happening in the world that has nothing to do with politics, because maybe you probably hear enough about that. We'll get into patreon.com CrimeInSports is where you get all of that. Plus, on top of all that, you get everything we put out all our shows, Crime and Sports, you stupid opinions, Small Town Murder, all ad free with your Patreon.

[C]

We spoil you.

[A]

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, I think it's time, everybody, let's go sit back. Here we go. Let's clear the lungs here. Arms to the sky. Let's all shout.

[C]

Shut up and give me murder.

[A]

Let's do this, everybody.

[C]

All right.

[A]

Let's go on a trip, shall we?

[C]

Now let's go.

[A]

Let's go. We're going far this week. We're going to Alaska.

[C]

God damn.

[A]

It's been a while. So I'm like, you know what? For 700, let's go to Alaska. There are always crazy episodes up there. Because just to be. Just to have the thought that I'm going to go to Alaska, 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 right there you go get the

[C]

crazy stuff so removed.

[A]

It's so remote from 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. It's by itself.

[C]

I mean, is this near like Denali?

[A]

You hear like, well, you can see it from here. Yeah. Oh, yeah. You hear like, you know, Fairbanks, Anchorage, Juneau. And you think they're probably in the same general region. Alaska's enormous and it's so big. So this is about 6 hours and 15 minutes to Anchorage. It's 20 minutes to North Pole Alaska.

[C]

Wow.

[A]

That's what we're talking about. And then it's about 12 hours to our last Alaska episode. Clawack Alaska. But the 12 hours is like planes and boats. And you can't just drive there.

[C]

It's the craziest. You gotta take so many forms of transportation.

[A]

It's crazy. That was episode 644, the social media Mob murder. Remember that? Where they killed that old man over. They fucked those people. They thought maybe he did something and spread rumors about him were unsubstantiated. That was rough. And that's why whenever we see. Whenever people post, like, they'll 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 prove it first and then we'll kill him. How about that? But don't just kill him ahead of time. We don't know. Yeah, it's out the window.

[C]

That was 100 years ago.

[A]

That's what I mean. So this is the borough. It's not a county, it's a borough. Is Fairbanks North Star. That's the borough.

[C]

Okay. Okay.

[A]

Area code 907. A lot of people here. 33,018 people have found their way to this place.

[C]

That's why we know about it.

[A]

Median household income, $66,572.

[C]

So the fuck does that for money?

[A]

Pretty close to the national average. Median home costs $275,600.

[C]

Wow.

[A]

I would think houses would be more expensive because 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 another one is pretty similar. Golden Heart of Alaska. Yeah.

[C]

I mean there was a lot of gold up there.

[A]

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.

[C]

Oh yeah. Segue.

[A]

August 1901, E.T. barnett 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. And that's when miners started coming here. They had a big boom in construct. In November 1903, the area's residents voted to incorporate Fairbanks. So make it an actual place here. Barnett became the first mayor. Oh, and things went great while the gold rush was going on.

[C]

Thank God for E.T.

[A]

yeah. Then World War I happened and the population plunged because all those able bodied young miners got drafted. That's it. And then it rose again the population during the Great Depression because the price of gold increased. So people were looking for. Then in the 40s and 50s, it became kind of a staging area for military depots during World War II. And then for the Cold War too because Alaska's close to Russia. So that was another big deal there. And then there was the discovery of the Prudhoe Bay oil field in 1968. Then that became a big part of the oil boom at that point too. And so you know that's.

[C]

Is Alaska the largest state?

[A]

I believe it's bigger than Texas.

[C]

Yeah, I think that's true. Right?

[A]

I think that's true. Yeah. Until 1940, none of the streets in Fairbanks were paved. None of them till when? 1940.

[C]

Holy shit.

[A]

They didn't begin a large scale paving operation until 1953 when the city paved 30 blocks of streets for 13 years.

[C]

They were just willy nilly paving here and there.

[A]

Yep. Just if people wanted. 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.

[C]

Is that right?

[A]

Freezing there. I mean negative 50 is normal. It's fucking crazy. Reviews of this town. Here we go here. Now this will exactly of what we just talked about. The title of the review is Plug in your vehicle Exclamation point.

[C]

Your oil will freeze.

[A]

Your block heaters. You need. Yeah, you need to plug in your vehicle for almost half the year here. You also need a remote auto start. If you don't have what it takes to handle a hard seat at negative 40 degrees.

[C]

Hard seat?

[A]

Yeah. Your seat's frozen so you sit on it. Be sure to use zero weight oil and multiple viscosity oil for the drivetrain. Also go to Alaskan tent and tarp to get a grill cover for your car. As driving 50 miles an hour has the wind chill factor of negative 88 hitting your radiator when the ambient temperature is at negative 40, your antifreeze will still freeze. Will freeze? Yeah. It's not made for freeze.

[C]

It deletes the anti.

[A]

Get a grill cover for it. Keep the heat. 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 degree range. When I rode a Harley to work the northern schools federal credit union time and temperature said 95 degrees. When my ex girlfriend from Kentucky was here for Christmas it was easily below zero and at times negative 10 to minus 20.

[C]

It can go from negative 20 to 95.

[A]

Yeah, that's not normal though. That's a. Whoa. 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 then they talk about black mold and asbestos and crime rates.

[C]

It's all wet.

[A]

People are complaining. Things to do here though. This is very exciting. The redneck space needle is here.

[C]

What is that?

[A]

That's a local nickname for a guy. Jim Curly Roland. And his house is Curly's rotating house which is a structure he built in 1997. The guy's a gold miner. And it consists of a blue 16 sided clubhouse perched atop a 75 foot construction crane.

[C]

Crane. What?

[A]

It's just sitting in the air. This like clubhouse observation site. I don't know what he's doing here.

[C]

That's not meant to stay there forever.

[A]

No, it's been there for 30 years.

[C]

That's coming down soon.

[A]

Crazy. The house was built using a salvaged crane tower from Anchorage and was designed to both elevate guests 75ft into the air and rotate.

[C]

Are you out of your fucking mind?

[A]

It was originally conceived as a private clubhouse for Roland 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 next to my

[C]

fucking house up there.

[A]

Wouldn't that be better? It's still standing, invisible 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 because it's 75ft. And that led to the house being used less frequently for parties. You know, not as fun anymore. They also have the World Eskimo Indian Olympics up here as well.

[C]

All right.

[A]

And. Yeah, which sounds like something.

[C]

Native Olympics.

[A]

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 shit. I don't know what happens up there. That's what it seems like. So they have beaver pelts, 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 fuck is that? And four man carry along kind of hot potato. I don't know what that is, but okay. Murder. We're here to talk about. Let's talk about some murder. Okay. Monday, April 26th, 1990. Yeah, let's go to then. 2:00pm Here we go now. 2:00pm things are going fine. The University of Alaska Fairbanks.

[C]

Oh yeah.

[A]

Bartlett hall is the dorm that we're at here. Oh, boy. It's eight stories of dorms basically built into a hillside here where. Yeah, there's three different dorms that all share a lobby of these buildings. They all come to one lobby. The spring semester is one week away from finals. So people are already packing up, getting ready to go home. On the second floor of Bartlett hall, which is all female floor, by the way, there's a janitor named Akca Ancheta. Akcha. Ancheta. And she's working her way doing the woman's bathroom, which has to be a horrible task to clean. Any college kids, anything. Multiple person bathroom. A shared bathroom. That sounds horrible. So she's doing the toilets and her partner. She's got a partner there doing the toilets and she's doing the showers and the bathtub room. 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. 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. And then I saw. I was screaming when I open and then there's a bathtub. Then I saw a young lady laying down. 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.

[C]

They're usually open. This one was closed. She opens it, finds a young woman.

[A]

Yeah, a woman laying down. Not normal. So she runs out of the bathroom screaming, grabs somebody else and drags them in the bathroom to look at it. I don't want to see it.

[C]

Make sure I'm not crazy.

[A]

I think that's all it is. Make sure it's one of these. Like if you're like in an old cartoon when, like a drunk see, when a 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. But no. So within minutes the building is. Cops are there. It's a big deal. In the bathtub is a woman, a young woman, 20 year old, named Sophie Sergey as her name. S E R G I E is her last name. She is. And I looked up the pronunciation and I wow, it is a tough one. She is a native up here. The tribe is the Yup, I K. But I looked it up and it says like cupkick, but the Y is a C. I don't know, it might be a K. Yeah. So it might be cupcakes. Cupkick or Cupik. I'm not sure how exactly you pronounce it because I tried, I looked and I tried. And people pronounce it differently too.

[C]

I'm fascinated with the language too, because it is the most indecipherable thing to us.

[A]

Yeah, I don't know.

[C]

For a white man to try to figure out, it's impressive as fuck that they can rattle it out so fast.

[A]

It's such an old language, you know what I mean? So it's got a lot in there. Now it's a 20 year old woman. She's 20 years old, like I said her name's Sophie. 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 she was stabbed in the face twice in the corner of her left eye when she was still alive.

[C]

Ah, Jesus.

[A]

She's also been beaten with a blunt instrument and gagged with a ligature as well. So this is horrible. She's also been shocked with a stun gun. This is. How many weapons does this person have on them? Honestly? This is. Yeah, he's got a utility belt whipping shit off. And then finally killed with a single.22 caliber round to the back of the head. So we got a gun now, too.

[C]

A gun too.

[A]

A gun, a knife, a blood instrument, a ligature and a stun gun. He brought a whole supply bag. 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. She's been in the bathtub, they think, for about 12 hours. It's hard to tell.

[C]

Someone's real mad, too.

[A]

That's not just a normal five kinds 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 horrible. Yeah.

[C]

You think you're gonna die when it's happening. It's fucked up.

[A]

That's fucking horrible. So. And 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 water, that doesn't help at all as well. Now let's find out about this young lady and what happened here. Sophie, Sergey's born June 4, 1972, in Pitkiss Point, Alaska. Pitkiss Point is a. Oh, God, I'm going to say it wrong again. Cupcake Village on the lower Yukon river here. They're the largest Alaska native group, by the way.

[C]

Oh, is that right?

[A]

Absolutely. Into like, you know, they've been doing. Basically, they've been in the region for 10,000 years.

[C]

Wow.

[A]

Long time. When Sophie was born, the population of her town was about 70 people. And 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 four foot nine.

[C]

Really?

[A]

Yeah. That's small. You Know, very small. Four nine was for a young lady here. And everybody said that she's small but was very. Personality precarious. Yeah, big personality and had a lot of spirit to her and shit 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.

[C]

You can't loaf the map, missiles. You can't reach.

[A]

Can't reach for whatever role she wanted, who knows. So she decided instead to study marine biology.

[C]

Hell yeah.

[A]

Which is pretty cool. She liked whales and liked, you know, ocean type things.

[C]

And up there they've got so much wildlife.

[A]

So much wildlife. If you're interested in that. She ends up getting a scholarship from bp. British Petroleum gives scholarships to natives to study shit like that at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. So she enrolled in 1990 and she had been out of high school for two years. I think she dropped out in her sophomore year and then finished or something. She's the first person in her family going to college and really Everybody in her 70 person village is rooting for her as she goes because she's going to college. When you have a village of 70 people and you're all from the same tribe or 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.

[C]

And as the. Yeah, as the first of the family to go too. That's pretty impressive.

[A]

It'll be like that one of those old time movies when the kid's going to play basketball at some college and all the people are at the train station waving to them and shit at the end. That's what it's like. Now her best friend Shirley here, Shirley Wasuli, 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 fucking town in the middle of nowhere. Yeah, she said, not that home was a bad place, but we had hopes and dreams and we wanted to do things. Understandable. Sophie did very well academically. A native studies professor at UAF said she always had questions. She always wanted to learn more. After class. December of 1992, she's a sophomore in college and she got braces, needed braces, wanted them for a long time and finally got them.

[C]

20 years old. Ready to do it?

[A]

Yeah, and they're expensive too. So she ended up taking the spring 93 semester off to work to pay for her braces, she went home. She had two jobs, working as a teacher's aide at the Pitkus Point School and worked at a clerk in nearby Saint, worked as a clerk in nearby Saint Mary's as well, so she could pay for the orthodontics. Now, braces need adjusting all the time. So periodically she had to fly back to Fairbanks because that's the only way to get there. She had to fly to Fairbanks to get her braces adjusted. Yeah, it's over 500 miles from her town to cross.

[C]

That's crazy.

[A]

Yeah, it's in a small tiny one of those little weird planes.

[C]

500 miles for an orthodontist appointment and then back.

[A]

That's crazy. But that's how you, if you live in rural Alaska, you have to fly to get places you want straight teeth. 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 Shirley had a single room on the second floor. And Shirley would hand Sophie her keys and. And Shirley would go to her boyfriend's there and 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. In April of 93, she flew in. On April 23, she flew from Pitkiss Point to Alaska. Before leaving Pitkiss Point, she stopped at a local store and bought her 3 year old brother a crappy kite. Yeah, that he was thinking it was a crappy kite. And 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.

[C]

Oh, nice.

[A]

Which you can really put that on a kid too. And that'll hang over them all weekend. You could go, you want that kite? They'll go, oh God, I'm sorry. Like they're really. You can torture a kid with a new prospect of a new kite. Follow up, you gotta get the kid a kite. If you better follow up.

[C]

If I'm good, you better follow up. Because if I'm a, what's the point?

[A]

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. That's how it worked. Her scheduled appointment was Monday morning, April 26th at 10am sure. Now Sunday, April 25th, in the afternoon, Elena, her mom, was in Anchorage. Here, Sophie was in Fairbanks. And they were on the phone and they talked about 4 o' clock 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 kept talking about the kite. So he was like, you better be getting that kid a kite when you get back here.

[C]

He wants a material one. This plastic one sucks.

[A]

Yeah, this thing doesn't work as shit.

[C]

They had that terrible paper grommet that you had to put on glass.

[A]

That's fucking awful.

[C]

They always tore.

[A]

Cause it had to be. It had to be a little breezy, but not too windy or it would explode in the wind.

[C]

No, fold that motherfucker in half.

[A]

Fold it. Rip it apart. Yeah. So it was like a very small window of wind.

[C]

Crossbar, two blocks away.

[A]

Well, then it just falls to the ground after it ripped. And you go, aw, man, what the fuck? There it is. So now, also on this Sunday, final exams are a week away, like we said. Now she's found on Monday afternoon. So, you know, things are. People are doing shit, getting ready for finals, studying. Sophie spends the day with her friends. 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.

[C]

Sick.

[A]

It's a spot outside Fairbanks, and from that spot, from the top, you can see Denali. Amazing. Pretty goddamn beautiful. Yeah. 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 a multicolored sweatshirt with a hood. And she's got a dark jacket that zips up there. She looks real happy, arms flung open, you know, whatever. She's having fun, laughing. They're taking pictures. Then they head back to the dorm. Sophie runs into another friend, Joanne Sundown, who knows her. And Joanne said Sophie came to her room that day on Saturday, and they sat together and looked through the college catalog, picking out classes for fall. Because Sophie was planning on being back in school in the fall. So she was just, you know, getting her shit together here. Hey, everybody. Just gonna take a quick break from the show to tell you a better way to get your meats delivered right to your door. Wonderful, Wonderful meats. Good chop.

[C]

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[A]

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[C]

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[A]

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[C]

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[A]

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[C]

Now back to the show.

[A]

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[C]

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[A]

Absolutely. And. And you're listening to Small Town Murder right now. You're listening to this show. Kind of makes you think maybe I should get some more privacy, huh? Sure. Maybe I should keep the world outside a little bit more. And that's what you need here with three day blinds. They are the ones to get I mean it's 20, 26. Are your blinds still from 2006? I bet they are. There's a better way to buy blinds, shades, shutters and drapery. And it's called three day Blinds. They're the leading manufacturer of high quality custom window treatments in the U.S. and right now, if you use our URL, which is three day blinds.com STM they're running a buy one, get one 50% off deal. Can't beat it. I mean, we shop for almost anything else at home, everything. Why not shop for blinds at home too? You want to go to a blind store? Not particularly. Not really. No. Three Day blinds has local, professionally trained design consultants who have an average of of 10 plus years of experience that provide expert guidance on the right blinds for you in the comfort of your home. Just set up an appointment. You'll get a free no obligation quote same day, right then. And not very handy. That's me and Jimmy here. These are great. DIY projects are great and they can be fun and all that, but measuring and installing blinds, that's a challenge. It has to be perfect. You don't want your blinds to be crooked for two years sitting up there. That's no good. The Expert team at 3 Day Blinds handles all the heavy lifting. They design, measure and install so you can sit back, relax and leave it to the pros. And that's what we have done with blinds. We got blinds for our studios and everything else and they make a huge difference. Number one, terrific. They're great blinds. And it was so. The process was so easy. That's the thing. It was not a hassle. It was so easy. And I'm kind of mad I didn't do this earlier, to be honest with you. Here. And you can choose from thousands of options that fit any budget or style. Three Day blinds is the way to go. And they've been in business for over 45 years. There's no fly by night organization. These people know blinds right now. Get quality window treatments that fit your budget with 3 Day Blinds. Head to 3dayblinds.comstm for their buy one, get one 50% off deal on custom blinds, shades, shutters and drapery for a free, no charge, no obligation consultation. Just head to 3dayblinds.com one last time. That's buy one, get one 50% off when you head to the number 3D a Y blinds.com STM now back to the show. So Sunday night around 11, Sophie was. We know she was outside of Hess Commons. There's a photo from her. So we know she was there, alive and well that night. She's wearing a brightly striped sweater, smoking a cigarette, talking to a bunch of kids. 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. You put the pizza on the floor, you sit there, legs crossed, cross legged, crisscross applesauce, eating slices of pizza. It's fantastic.

[C]

I just sit there long enough to eat a slice of pizza like that anymore.

[A]

We'd have to help Jimmy up off the carpet. That would be the problem. You could do it, but then I

[C]

can't feel the feet. I can't feel the feet.

[A]

You wouldn't just pop up though. You'd like do a thing where you go to your knees first and then you're like, oh, Jesus Christ.

[C]

Stretch your back, wiggle my toes, get some circulation. I can't feel them.

[A]

No shit. That's funny. So then they watched a movie after the pizza. After the movie, Shirley said goodnight and went to Noah's and left Sophie in her room. And as she was leaving, as Shirley's leaving, Sophie said she wanted a cigarette. She was gonna go out and get a, 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 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. She made eye contact with him. She didn't know him. Some random young man. Now, at approximately 1:30am in the bathroom on the west side of the building, a senior named Jennifer Roy was taking a shower. She had an exam the next morning and 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 side. 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. And then enter into the bathtub room. She said she 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. 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 15ft away from her in a. Dead in the tub. Nobody notices. They take. They took showers in the open room next door. Nobody opened the tub curtain ever.

[C]

Oh, my God.

[A]

You know how many fucking kids were in there? Dozens of kids were in there. None of them opened the tub curtain to find this poor girl.

[C]

I mean, is that thoughtful to like, oh, somebody's in there, leave them be.

[A]

I think you just. If you see a closed curtain, you just think, someone must be in there. And you don't think about it because you'd go in there, brush your teeth, and leave. It's not like you. You'd stay in there for two 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 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, because 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 blood. You need help. You're not gonna sit there and examine the wounds and go, oh, no, that's a gunshot wound in the back of the head. So police come, they go over the scene, they do everything here, and 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 1:30am to 4am 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 stun gun. And then finally with a.22 caliber bullet. 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, drew the curtain, left the light on and walked out. So it filled it up. Now, another witness 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. Not a lot of people are taking luxurious baths at college. You know what I mean? It would just be weird. You're going in and you're fucking taking a shower quick and going back to

[C]

your room in a shared bathroom. Candles and putting rose petals in there.

[A]

Oh, no, I'm. Yeah. Hold on. Where's my vibrator? Anybody?

[C]

Right.

[A]

It's not happening.

[C]

Most girls get in there to clean everything off of them from their puke night. Not going to soak in that.

[A]

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. So it's college who know. 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. That's what we're looking for here because it's an all girls floor. She described him as a white man with a darker complexion, about 5 foot 8 with black hair, wearing a gray T shirt.

[C]

Okay.

[A]

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. So the morning again comes at 9am 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.

[C]

She hasn't come again.

[A]

And they know she's got an orthodontist appointment at 10. So they assume she's in the shower and she's gonna come back. And she probably woke up Put all the lights on and stuff, and then went and took a shower and she's gonna come back. So Shirley said she was a little annoyed that Sophie left the door unlocked. 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? 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 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.

[C]

You know what I mean? I bet that's what it was. Yes, I'm in here. Nobody.

[A]

You got water in your ears and all that. You just hear, yeah, I mean, I'm here. Yeah, I'm in here.

[C]

Nobody would hear their name and say, yeah, I'm in here. Right? You would say, what?

[A]

Yeah, what?

[C]

Yeah, just an interesting reply.

[A]

So Shirley leaves the dorm and goes about her day, considering Sophie's in the shower. Shirley's gonna go to her orthodontist appointment now. Sophie misses her orthodontist appointment, obviously, at 2pm the janitor finds her and screams. Does all that Now. That evening, 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. 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 fuck 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 because they don't have all this shit. It's a small town. I mean, 30,000 people, decent size, but you don't have all the, you know, all the major city forensics type of things going on here.

[C]

This small young girl murdered in a shower. We send the fucking.

[A]

Yeah. And been raped. And this is horrible. So I guess his first. The main investigator here, lead criminologist is James Russell Wolf, which is a cool name for a criminologist.

[C]

Dick Wolf is the executive producer of. That's so rad.

[A]

Well, you're in Alaska, your name's Wolf. That's pretty cool. You know, there's a lot of wolves. Possibly, so he said. My first impression was that it just seemed Very clean for a crime scene where blood was shed. 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 were saying either she had been wet and the tub had been drained or she had been put back into the tub after being washed somewhere else, which I don't 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's a decent amount of physical evidence. And this is 93. So this is pre DNA being known by everyone, and everyone's an expert. So they collect hairs from her body and the bathtub area, including pubic hairs. Now, this is a college bathroom as well. So you're gonna find hairs and pubic hairs.

[C]

The amount of pubes in there's gotta be outrageous.

[A]

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 gonna deal with that later.

[C]

Public bathrooms. The amount of dick hairs on a urinal, it's disgusting. Blow your fucking mind. It's crazy.

[A]

It's all dick hairs.

[C]

How much dick hair we're shedding constantly.

[A]

No one trimming their dick hairs too, is everybody Just massively.

[C]

These things are long.

[A]

Three feet long, these fucking things. I see them curled up. You're like, oh, my God. What the fuck?

[C]

Have you ever taken the trimmer to that thing?

[A]

Never. 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. They got it. They have some stuff here, and they have 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, they gotta talk to everybody in the building at this point, see who's a suspect because 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 Stephen Harris Downs. That's a fucking long trip. Yeah, 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, decided 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. Now Dazer's also a campus security guard. He was one of the people who was told to help keep shit together and keep people away from the bathroom and all that kind of thing. After the body was found here, he guarded a stairwell while people were doing that shit upstairs. Now they met while they were both moving boxes in and met each other and got along and they both play music and they study together and party and hang out and all that kind of shit. Dazer would say, I've always considered him a good friend, meaning Steven, probably in Fairbanks at that time. My best friend.

[C]

Wow.

[A]

Now Stephen Downs has a girlfriend, her name's Catherine, she's an upperclassman, older than him even.

[C]

How about that?

[A]

Is doing very well. He spends some nights in her room, some nights in his room. They're gonna date for about three years of college.

[C]

18, 19 year old boy getting a 22 year old girl, that's impressive.

[A]

Fucking awesome. So they ask where were you guys on Sunday night? Steven said, well, I was with my girlfriend Catherine on the fourth floor. And people saw me there besides said, who can say that? Who can verify? And he said, well, she can. And then there was other people coming in and out of the room all night. And they'll tell you, he said we were watching movies on the vcr, watching tapes, they were drinking a little bit, you know, that kind of thing. Now he said, I came and went because my room's only a floor down. So I kind of came and went. So did my roommate hang out for a while, whatever. 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. But sometimes he'd leave for a bit and then he'd come back. You know, it's a dorm so they're all kind of moving around.

[C]

She's Trying to watch men at work.

[A]

Yeah. Come on, guys. Jesus, what are we doing? So Steve brought guns with him to college. Now this is not unusual in Alaska at all. Everybody has guns.

[C]

Or Maine.

[A]

Yeah, or Maine. That's what I mean, both of those places. But Alaska especially, it is, it's so rural. So a lot of kids bring them because they hunt. Tons of these kids hunt up here. Some of the kids come to college up here because 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. 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 and R, H and R revolver. Now they said that they talked to the roommate and he said, yeah, my roommate has guns. The Dazer kid 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 shit. 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. 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 keeps it in the room. Just keeps him there. Also, Stephen downs is not 5 foot 8 in dark complected. He's 6 foot tall and really pale.

[C]

You'd notice that guy.

[A]

So it doesn't fit that description at all.

[C]

And that guy would stand the fuck out.

[A]

He would, exactly. So Stephen Downs says, I don't know anything. Basically he said, I just spent the night with my girlfriend. He said, but, but one thing I've heard, if 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 break balls and they are a little bit. And so that's what he said. He said, I don't know, I'd look at Fort Wayne Wright. He said, sometimes the soldiers will come and come to the dorms and go around, try to go to parties. Cat calling shit, 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 there was some comment that Maybe there were GIs here that weekend. Oh, okay. Now, there's another guy that we're gonna call Williamson for. Now, Williamson knew Sophie had hung out with her the night before her death that Sunday night. And everybody said he was kind of infatuated with Sophie, really liked her.

[C]

Williamson to tug up.

[A]

Yeah. Investigators at this time describe a, quote, small shrine to her in his dorm room.

[C]

What the fuck?

[A]

She doesn't even go there anymore. That's weird. He also has zero alibi for the night of this murder. And when 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.

[C]

He put himself there.

[A]

Put himself there, has no alibi, has a small shrine, and lied about where he was around there.

[C]

The shrine is real important, though.

[A]

That's real weird. So over the next couple days, the kids freaked out. By the next morning, basically half the female students moved out. Yeah. Not safe. Not safe at all, the way they're thinking about it. 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.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Which is pretty goddamn nice. Magnanimous. Yeah. If you want to be all Christian y. 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. You had to have a card to get in, like a card to buzz you in. They added cameras. They changed all the security the next year. So the investigation goes on here. And they interview some over 500 people in this investigation. They tried to talk to every resident of Bartlett hall, every guest. They focus on the second floor. They focus also on the male residents of the building. The lieutenant here said later on, it's been one of the larger mysteries. This is a true whodunit.

[C]

Hate that.

[A]

That's rough. Now, the leads. Who do they have? Well, they have Kenneth Moto. Remember him? The guy who fits the description. A female student saw him. Guy who fits his description perfectly, leaving the second floor east bathroom in the early morning hours of April 26th.

[C]

Leaving the bathroom early.

[A]

That Bathroom.

[C]

That's not good.

[A]

She described him as 5 foot 8, white but dark, complected with black hair, wearing a gray shirt, which is exactly the description that the other person got. So they interview him. 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.

[C]

Or the stun gun.

[A]

Or the stun gun. The forensics here, they made dozens of slides from the autopsy. And they found sperm on three of the slides 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. 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, 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 whoever did it can find out exactly what the police know at that point. So that's not a Good deal. Now, 1996, the lead investigator flies to another place. Kotzbue Kotzebue, and interviewed Kenneth Moto again. Moto agrees to provide a DNA sample. This is 96. He gave them the swab, and he said, I volunteered because I want to help in any way I can. Because if she's Native, we. We can't have that happening to Native people, is what Kenneth said. Because he's the same guy, same deal. So 1999 comes around.

[C]

God dang.

[A]

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 don't have fresh eyes.

[C]

You know what I mean?

[A]

So she looked, and she found sperm on more slides. And she looked closer. Yeah. Said sometimes when you look harder, you find things you missed the first time.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Which is true. They also test Moto's DNA, and he has found the semen. Does not match her.

[C]

Doesn't match anything.

[A]

Doesn't match Kenneth Moto at all, the guy who fits the description.

[C]

Plus, you'd think that if you just leave in the bathroom after that shit, you're gonna have some blood on you, it'll be obvious.

[A]

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. They run it through codis, though. It doesn't match anybody.

[C]

Nothing.

[A]

Nobody they have on file yet.

[C]

The guy that did this shit isn't even in codis.

[A]

Isn't that crazy? It's no other crimes, Nothing horrifying. So, 2003, 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.

[C]

Damn it.

[A]

2007, Alaska State Troopers reopened the cold case. And an outside.

[C]

Almost 15 years later.

[A]

Yeah. So, yeah, now the Alaska. From this outside, forensic examiners that they hire to bring in conclude that the second floor bathtub was probably not the murder scene.

[C]

Probably right.

[A]

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. It gets up inside you and all that kind of thing, so. But they theorize she was killed somewhere else and moved to the tub. 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. 2009, unbelievable. Still out there. 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. And they get a forensic psychologist also who says that 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.

[C]

Right.

[A]

2010, two cold case investigators go to Oregon to interview Nicholas Daser again. Remember him?

[C]

Right.

[A]

Stephen Downs was his roommate, the guy with the guns. Dazer was a security guard at the time. Yeah. At this time, when they interview him in 2010, he's an attorney. Oh, they ask him about Stephen Downs again. They ask him about his guns, and he said yes, he had a.22 in the dorm, a derringer and a switchblade on the nightstand. They asked him if Dazer had ever opened, owned a gun himself, and he said no, not at the dorm. They asked him about a separate incident in his security guard career. He'd been fired from the job at UAF for keeping a firearm in his dorm room. He said, well, the gun in question wasn't a.22. He said the.22 in their dorm room was Steve's gun, not mine. But he had another gun and he just lied about it, which is not great, I guess. They asked him if he had a.22. So they said based on that, they can't identify either Dezer or Downs as a concrete suspect or subject or anything else. 2015. And this is infuriating fucking believable. Not only has it been over 20 years.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

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. That's the case? Yeah.

[C]

You gotta start a crime lab, James. That's where the expensive shit's at.

[A]

Let people get away with murder. That's really what you should do.

[C]

Sell the microscopes. We got budget cuts. Yeah.

[A]

The unit had been working on more than 100 unsolved cases at the time. One of which is Sophie's, which is crazy Sophie's at this point, her file is 14 volumes of notebooks and three or four boxes of reference material.

[C]

That's so much.

[A]

It's so much. And they said now whoever comes in, if someone ever reinvestigates this, they're gonna have to start. Start from the bottom of that box and work their way out of it to figure this out. Hey everybody. Just going to take a quick break from the show to tell you about our safest sponsor, SimpliSafe.

[C]

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[A]

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[C]

Now back to the show.

[A]

This show, Small Town Murder, is sponsored by BetterHelp.

[C]

BetterHelp.com.

[A]

you know it, Jimmy. You know, we're big proponents of therapy. Everybody could use some therapy. It's saved Jimmy's life and it saved a lot of lives out there. And May is Mental Health Awareness Month. A reminder that whatever you're going through, you don't have to go through it alone. Life is long and it's hard. Some days are great and some days aren't. And some days are just even worse and overwhelming. Everything. You'll get kept up at night by something and it's easy to feel like you have to figure it out on your own. But the truth is you don't have all the answers. Nobody does. And no journey should be taken like that alone. Having someone with you to listen and to understand, understand and support you, that is the big deal. That's the difference maker. It's everything. And you know, we've had hard things go on and therapy is some way that you can really solve it. And it really, really is. And Mental Health Awareness Month Everyone should be aware all the time of their mental health. It's huge. It's a big deal. It can even impact on your physical health. It's a lot. So telling you betterhelp is the way to do this. They have quality therapists. BetterHelp therapists work according to a strict code of conduct, but are fully licensed in the US now. The way they match you with their therapist, that's the difference too. BetterHelp does the initial matching work for you so you can just focus on your therapy goals. There's a short questionnaire that helps identify your needs and preferences. And they use their 12 plus years of experience and industry leading match fulfillment rate, which means they usually get it right the first time. But if you're not happy with your match for any reason, you switch to a different therapist at any time from their tailored recommendations. No charge. They just want you to get help. It's great. And with over 30,000 therapists, BetterHelp is the world's largest online therapy platform, having served over 6 million people globally. And it works. It really does. With an average rating of 4.9 out of 5 for a live session based on over 1 point million client reviews. What are you waiting for? There's no reason to suffer anymore. Get in there. Help yourself out. You don't have to be on this journey alone. Find support and have someone with you in therapy. Sign up and get 10% [e-mail] SmallTownMurder that's betterhelp.com SmallTown Murder now back to the show. Hey everybody. Just going to take a quick break from the show to tell you how to get all of your clothes at a much better price with Quinn Quince.

[C]

Quince.comqU I N C E.com I'm telling

[A]

you, Quince is the best place to buy clothes. I just bought a shirt because we're going out to dinner and I just bought a shirt to go out to dinner. It's awesome. I love Quince. It's always my first and ends up being my last stop for clothes because I find what I'm looking for. So it's the best. And lately, you know, I've been a little more intentional about what I'm trying to wear every day. Trying to find things that are comfortable, that look cool still, you know what I mean? It's just, it's hard, so. But with quints, it just makes getting dressed a lot simpler. Quint is my go to Jimmy's too. I know the fabrics feel elevated, the fits are clean and everything Just works without needing to overthink it. Quince has all the wardrobe staples for spring. Think 100% European linen shorts and shirts from $34. Lightweight, breathable and comfortable. But still look put together and clean. 100% Pima cotton tees with a softness that has to be felt. Their pants are also something that hits that same balance. Relaxed and comfortable but still polished enough to wear pretty much everywhere. Like Jimmy's linen pants that he purchased from Quince. Everything is priced 50 to 80% less than what you'd find at similar brands. Quince works directly with ethical factories. What they do is cut out the middleman. All they do is take your money. The middle man. They're not doing anything. They do cut that out and they give you the premium stuff, the premium materials without the markup. That's what I've always found at Quint's. And I do all my shopping at Quint's first and last stop. And it should be your first and last stop too. You can't believe how good a quality clothes you get for the prices there. It's unbelievable. Refresh with everyday luxury you'll actually use. Head to quince.comsmalltown murder for free shipping on your order and $365 returns. Now available in Canada too. That's Q-U-I-N C-E.com Smalltown murder for free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com Smalltown murder now back to the show. So this is. This is fucking terrible. He told the. One of the cops told the press at the time that Sophie's case was in one of the biggest mysteries the unit had ever encountered. 2008 or 18. I'm sorry. 18.

[C]

Unbelievable.

[A]

An investigative genealogist named C.C. moore in California and a Virginia based DNA company named Parabon Nanolabs. They're the ones who cracked the Golden State Killer case. That's when that happened. This is when DNA and finding DNA through DNA databases and ancestry and all that became a thing. This wasn't. Just run it through CODIS and see if it matches.

[C]

All these people that did that shit. Had no idea that they were.

[A]

They identified him based on the taking that profile to a public consumer genealogy database named GEDmatch, which 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 do that.

[C]

Yeah. Don't do it at that level.

[A]

Yeah. This is a site where you basically upload your own DNA in hope of finding Lost relatives. That's what the point is. And what they end up finding is distant cousins of whoever this murderer was.

[C]

Distant cousins of this murderer tried to find their family.

[A]

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 from Sophie's body? That's much harder.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Sealed samples of semen from Sophie's body. Sealed samples of semen from Sophie's body. Kids, try that. It'll help you out.

[C]

It's sealed and delivered.

[A]

It's very nice. And he had a full DNA profile with no match. Now, he sent this sample to the Parabon Nanolabs in Virginia and asked him to run it again against GED match. And he waited. That's how they found the Golden State Killer, was through the cousins. On December 18, 2018, the forensic genealogist filed a report. The DNA 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.

[C]

That is real close.

[A]

23% is a good chunk.

[C]

Oh, boy. That's a. She shares a fourth of her DNA with a murderer.

[A]

So, yeah, they said the match was strong enough and is roughly the genetic distance of an aunt or a grandparent. So in a main right now, this isn't a fourth cousin or anything.

[C]

Yeah, she's had a piece of a turkey with this person.

[A]

Yeah. So they said the genealogist then could. Could build out a family tree from this. The woman lived in Maine. The family tree shows she's the aunt of Stephen Harris Downs.

[C]

Uh.

[A]

Oh, remember him? Yeah, he'd been a freshman. We know who he is. They interviewed him. So they were like, who? They went back through the files and they're like, oh, yeah, we interviewed him.

[C]

He spent the night with his girlfriend, in and out.

[A]

He was only interviewed once that night in his dorm room. And he's the guy who said, maybe the GIs from Fort Wayne. Right? So they're like, fuck, what do we do now? 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, Stephen H. Downs. Downs has no previous arrests at all. None. His DNA has never been uploaded to the national database, they said. So the sample had never been compared to him. So what has he been doing? Where's he been since? He's the murderer. Well, he finished his freshman year, 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. Stayed close with Nicholas Daser, would target shoot and hunt. And then he graduated in 1998. He was groomsman at Nicholas Dazer's wedding in Portland, Oregon. His roommate. So there's that. 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. He took it a job. He took a job. He took it a job.

[C]

Took it a job.

[A]

Hey, took it a job. He took a job at a place called Harris House in Livermore for Falls, Maine, which is a 12 bed intermediate care facility for adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities, which is normally people that work. There you go. Jesus, you gotta be an angel to work there.

[C]

Has anybody there died? Questionably.

[A]

He took care of vulnerable people. That was his job. He's fired in 2011 for a totality or 2016 for a totality of substandard performance, including multiple medication errors. He documented doses he hadn't actually given, which means he was probably selling them.

[C]

Taking it. Yeah.

[A]

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 Stephen Downs had made comments to them on the job that made them uncomfortable. After the first complaint, he apologized. After the second, he denied it. A certified nursing assistant who worked under him at Harris House named Kelly Ellingwood also said that Downs would sometimes hit on the younger CNAs. 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 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 2017-18, where the complaints continued to mount.

[C]

This is a man in his 40s who needs a professional boundaries class.

[A]

A class. Oh, I shouldn't. So I shouldn't do that to 20 year olds who just started working under me. 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.

[C]

Right.

[A]

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. They said that she was scared of him and that this resident said that basically down said, no one will believe you over me.

[C]

Uh huh. That old thing.

[A]

Okay. And another resident said, I didn't like even being in the same room as him because I felt weird being around him. By the way, in 2015, he bought an H&R.22 caliber revolver from a private cellar in Maine. Same gun as the one he had before. Okay. February 2019, the investigators fly to Maine. They meet with the Maine State Police Unsolved Homicide Unit. And the lead detective there is a guy named J. Pelletier, which I believe we've talked about him before on a Maine case. Pelletier, I know that name sounds familiar. Yeah, I know that name. They coordinated with the Auburn City Police. They get a warrant to surveil Stephen Downs. House. House.

[C]

Okay.

[A]

They go through his garbage. They're trying to pick out anything that has DNA on it.

[C]

Is it not enough that the murderer shares a quarter of that lady's DNA?

[A]

They need a full sand. 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 it's him. That doesn't work for a murder case. You know what I mean?

[C]

But I mean, can you go to court and be like, we're 23% sure. Can we go search?

[A]

Well, that's what they did. They got a warrant. They said, we have 23% to surveil,

[C]

though not to search yet.

[A]

No, to surveil him to get some shit 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 how they got that one. So the garbage has no usable sample.

[C]

Wow.

[A]

They can't find anything. They sit there for weeks trying to get something. They get nothing. So February 13, 2019, they just go knock on his door. Hi.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

So they said, he just kind of led us into the dining room. They sat down in 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, so 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. And he said, quote, there's no way that could be possible.

[C]

Okay?

[A]

So they asked him, okay, drive yourself down to the police department. You're gonna give us a DNA sample and a fingerprint. And he said, sure. He drove down there, gave him 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. And he's arrested without incident outside the Fireside Inn on Washington street in Auburn Main. He fights extradition, but that's not gonna go very well for him now, they say. Was that psychologist right? Does he have a trail of bodies behind him? No, they say investigating him, as far as anybody's ever been able to prove or even suspect, he never raped or murdered another person.

[C]

He's just a kind of a random dickhead.

[A]

You know how odd it is for someone to do this once and that random person. Yeah.

[C]

I mean, had he known that DNA existed as well as it did, he would have done something to not have

[A]

that left behind, you would think. Well, I think he tried to wash it away.

[C]

I mean, my point is he would have worn a condom or something.

[A]

Something. Yeah. Well, yeah. I mean, that would be even sicker if he had it planned that much

[C]

to where he could.

[A]

That's even crazier. So he's charged with first degree murder and first degree sexual assault. And that's how it goes. His lawyer says in his initial appearance there must be some kind of mistake.

[C]

What?

[A]

Yeah. Now, the defense attorney here, they want to present alternate suspects. Okay, so there's a few that 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 Stephen 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 Daser, the roommate as well. He had access to a gun. Why not? Yeah, well, the security guard's the guy you look at also first, because I never trust those guys. So the Williamson guy, by the way, had an alibi.

[C]

Really?

[A]

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. They said Williamson had been cleared. And so the defense, you know, whatever. So Gregory Thornton, he owned a.22 caliber pistol. Now, Thornton was suicidal at the time and was living inappropriately with another student in the dorm. I don't know what, he was fucking some Brutus. Not allowed. They later got a warrant for his DNA. It doesn't match. 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 Sophie.

[C]

Why would he say that?

[A]

He said he told her he'd killed her because, in his words, she wouldn't shut her mouth. 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 five week trial, 45 witnesses, a lot of shit. They go through the DNA, which is the main thing. They do a cross on the DNA lady pushing the idea that maybe it was mishandled or contaminated or changed in the lab, you know, she said it's DNA. It's what it is. I don't know. Other witnesses here, they said that they talk about the two young ladies who were in the bathroom. Her roommate talks about passing the guy in the hallway. She identified that man as Stephen Downs that she passed in the hallway, even though she gave a description of a completely different guy. Yeah. Also multiple other witnesses here. Nicholas Dazer is brought in and they say that they weren't allowed to bring up his firing in front of the jury because there's no direct link to the crime, even though there's a gun involved in the firing now. So the cross on Dazer, they said, do you remember Mr. Downs behavior at the time of the murder as being unusual? And he says, absolutely not. He said he was fine. Nothing at all. 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, with 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. So there's that. The troopers, they bring in all the cops that investigated and they said, did you ever. 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, 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. They bring in Moto 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 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.

[C]

Big difference between I killed her and I was a suspect.

[A]

Yeah. Now the state's closing says he likes 22 caliber revolvers. His fucking DNA matches. It's 1 in 330 billion match to the DNA.

[C]

I mean, he definitely is inside her.

[A]

Yeah. They're like, unless somebody else. He raped her and then someone else killed her, but he at least raped her. 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, but it's a saliva.

[C]

Could have been anybody's.

[A]

It's exactly right. There's a saliva sample at the scene. The murder weapon's never been found. He said he's a normal kid, this Steve. 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 four days.

[C]

Quite a bit.

[A]

That is a lot. They find him. What do you think's gonna happen here?

[C]

That's guilty. That's DNA.

[A]

Man guilty of first degree murder. Yeah. First degree sexual assault as well.

[C]

He denies that he ever was in contact with her.

[A]

That's it. If he said, yeah, I had a little affair with that I don't want my girlfriend to know about, 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. So in sentencing, the prosecution asks for 99 years with 20 suspended. So a hard 79 years they said. Then they asked for an eight 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, Ms. Sergey 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 fuck off. Sentences him to 67 years in prison for the murder and eight 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.

[C]

Eesh.

[A]

So yeah, he appeals for a warrantless search of Stephen Downs family DNA on a match and all that kind of shit. It's all ticky tack shit.

[C]

Forget me on DNA.

[A]

Yeah. So that is actually going through the courts yet? It's been two years, but they have not rendered a decision yet. Okay, so we're waiting on that. I think it's gonna be affirmed.

[C]

Let's just say I think he's in trouble, man.

[A]

And that is Fairbanks, Alaska and a crazy goddamn story. I would say it's unbelievable what that

[C]

shit has done to change the course of investigations. Now without DNA, you're in so much trouble.

[A]

There was nothing. You can't solve anything without DNA, you can't do anything. Unless somebody saw them there or their fingerprints are on something, you're fucked. So now with touch DNA, can you

[C]

investigate and just hand them something and

[A]

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

[C]

like a pickleball match or Something Rex

[A]

Uerman pizza crust bite or some shit, 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 gotta do. It helps the show. So thank you for doing that. Definitely. Follow on social mediamalltownmurder on Instagram, altown pod on Facebook, shut up. And givememurder.com is where you get everything related to the show. And the other two shows we do crime and sports and you'd stupid opinions. Get your tickets for small town murder live shows. Royal Oak is sold out everybody for May 30th. Thank you for that. September 18th, Milwaukee, September 19th, Minneapolis. Both beautiful venues. Milwaukee, those tickets are getting pretty close. So get those tickets now. And Minneapolis, get your shit together. Get those tickets now. Dallas, San Jose, Sacramento in September and then in November, Tarrytown in Boston. Shut upandgivemerder.com patreon.com CrimeInSports is where you get all the bonus material. 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 and sports, which you get. We're going to talk about the Christian power team. These are people that were on the religious channel that would like bend a rebar and then scream that Jesus did that for him and thanking Jesus there was some bad stuff that went on and you'll understand that. Then for small town murder, Internet salad.

[C]

Let's go.

[A]

We go around the Internet and find all the crazy shit that's going on. Not political though, because we feel like you've probably heard enough of that on your social media feed and everything else. So we'll keep it light. Patreon.com crimeinsports and you get a shout out at the end of the regular show. Jimmy will fuck your name all up and you get all the shows we put out. Crime and sports, your stupid opinion. Small town Murder all ad free.

[C]

They're so Good to you.

[A]

Patreon.com CrimeInSports that said, thank you so much for joining us. And until next week, everybody, it's been our pleasure.

[C]

Bye.

[A]

Foreign. This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever find yourself playing the budgeting game? Well, with the name your price tool from Progressive, you can find options that fit your budget and potentially lower your bills. Try [e-mail] Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates Price and coverage match. Limited by state law. Not available in all states.

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