The DNA of an Auburn, Maine, man accused of murdering and sexually assaulting an Alaska woman nearly three decades ago was found inside her body, prosecutors told the jury Wednesday on the first day of Steven H. Downs’ trial in Fairbanks.
File - In this Aug. 6, 2019, file photo, Steven Downs is led into a courtroom for arraignment in Anchorage, Alaska.Downs has pleaded not guilty after being charged in the sexual assault and murder of a woman in Alaska in a case that remained unsolved for years. Downs entered his plea Wednesday, Aug. 14, 2019, in a courtroom in Fairbanks, Alaska. He is charged in the death of Sophie Sergie, who was found stabbed and shot in a bathtub at a University of Alaska Fairbanks dormitory.
“You will have reasonable doubt as to whether Steven Downs committed this crime,” Howaniec said. “You will be convinced that he’s innocent of this crime. And by the end of this trial, you will know who committed this crime.” Investigators said Sergie had been shot in the back of the head with a .22-caliber gun, stabbed in the cheek and eye, struck with a blunt instrument, gagged with a ligature and shocked with a stun gun.Police arrested Downs after his DNA was matched in late 2018 to evidence found at the crime scene through a random hit after Downs’ aunt had submitted her DNA to a genealogy website.
Akelkok left minutes later with her boyfriend to go to his room at a different dorm for the night. She said she never again saw Sergie, who was supposed to sleep that night at Akelkok’s dorm room. Downs had lived on the third floor of Bartlett Hall during his freshman year. At the time of Sergie’s slaying, he had been staying on the fourth floor of the dormitory with his girlfriend, who was having a party that night, Akelkok told investigators.
While Darnall pointed to semen found in Sergie that matched Downs’ DNA, Howaniec countered that male pubic hairs and saliva found on her body did not match samples from Downs. And his fingerprints were not found at the crime scene, Howaniec said.
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