If you or someone you know needs resources or support related to sexual violence, contact the Maine Coalition Against Sexual Assault’s 24/7 hotline at 800-871-7741.
An Auburn man has been sentenced to 75 years in prison for the rape and murder of a woman in Alaska in 1993.
Steven Downs, 48, was sentenced in a Monday superior court appearance in Alaska to 67 years for murdering Sophie Sergie nearly 30 years ago at the University of Alaska at Fairbanks. Eight years were added to Downs’ sentence for sexual assault, WABI News reported.
Downs was convicted by a jury in February of sexually assaulting and killing the 20-year-old Sergie, of Pitkas Point, Alaska, in April 1993 before leaving her body in a dormitory bathtub, where Downs was a student from 1993 to 1996.
When Sergie’s body was discovered in the bathtub, she had been shot in the head with a .22-caliber gun, stabbed in the cheek and eye, struck with a blunt instrument, choked with a ligature and shocked with a stun gun, court records showed.
DNA evidence was recovered from the crime scene, but DNA processing technology wouldn’t be introduced in Alaska until seven years later. However, semen recovered from the scene was later found to match Downs’ DNA.
Police did not reportedly match the DNA to Downs until February 2019, after a forensic genealogist discovered similarities to Downs’ aunt’s, which had been collected in a public database used to research family heritage, according to the Washington Post. He was arrested in Auburn on Feb. 15, 2019.
Downs will serve the time in prison consecutively, minus three and a half years already served after his arrest in 2019, and will be eligible for parole after 25 years. Downs plans to appeal his conviction, WABI reported.
Downs, formerly a registered nurse, had been issued a warning for unprofessional behavior from the Maine nursing board after the Livermore Falls care facility where he had been working fired him, according to public records.
In a consent agreement with Downs signed in March 2017, the Maine State Board of Nursing noted that the Harris House in Livermore Falls dismissed him the previous year for “a totality of substandard performance,” including unspecific comments that made female co-workers “uncomfortable.”
