QUOTE OF THE DAY: " Genetic genealogy, pioneered by Parabon NanoLabs, in Virginia, had identified Downs as a potential suspect. “What we do is just a hint – a tip,” said CeCe Moore, Parabon’s chief genetic genealogist."
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QUOTE TWO OF THE DAY: "Moore said, “They cannot arrest someone based on a genetic genealogy lead alone. They have to build a case, do the traditional investigation, and collect that DNA that they can compare to a traditional forensic profile.”
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QUOTE THREE OF THE DAY: "Howaniec said, “We can certainly understand why they’re excited to have a suspect after 28 years, but we are just adamant that Mr. Downs did not have anything to do with this crime."
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PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "As a result of such a scientific lead, on Feb. 15, 2019, Downs was charged with sexual assault and murder, arrested in Auburn, and in August, transferred to a jail in Alaska, where he remains incarcerated. “This arrest is the culmination of years of effort and tenacious attention by this department to solve a horrendous murder,” Alaska Commissioner of Public Safety Amanda Price said at the time Downs’ defense attorney James Howaniec says, “He’s been screaming his innocence from day one. He’s absolutely certain there’s got to be some sort of mistake. We, as his defense lawyers, are convinced there’s been some very, very serious error here.”
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STORY: "Maine man to stand trial for 1993 Alaska murder after genetic genealogy tied him to crime scene DNA," by Political Reporter Phil Hirschkorn, published by WMTW on April 29, 2021.
GIST: "Living a quiet life and working as a nurse, 44-year-old Steven Downs was surprised to receive a knock on his door from police in February 2019.
He was a suspect in a murder that occurred during the spring semester of his freshman year in college, in 1993, at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, which today enrolls about 7,500 students from 48 states and 50 countries.
At 18, Downs was one of the hundreds of students living in Bartlett Hall, an eight-floor dormitory, where on April 26, 1993, the body of 20-year-old Sophie Sergie was discovered in a bathtub inside the second-floor woman’s bathroom.
On leave that semester, Sergie, from a small Alaskan village, had been visiting friends.
Alaska State Police determined she had been raped, stabbed several times in the face, and then shot in the head with a .22 caliber gun.
DNA swabs of Sergie’s body found sperm, but its DNA profile was not in the FBI’s national database, known as CODIS.
“Suspect DNA was discovered during the investigation, and a unique suspect profile was identified from the DNA,” Col. Barry Wilson, then-director of the Alaska State Police, later said. “Months turned into years, and active leads became sparse.”
The break in the cold case came through a technique known as genetic genealogy, which can involve identifying unknown person DNA by exploiting available DNA profiles uploaded by people trying to find their roots.
As a result of such a scientific lead, on Feb. 15, 2019, Downs was charged with sexual assault and murder, arrested in Auburn, and in August, transferred to a jail in Alaska, where he remains incarcerated.
“This arrest is the culmination of years of effort and tenacious attention by this department to solve a horrendous murder,” Alaska Commissioner of Public Safety Amanda Price said at the time.
Downs’ defense attorney James Howaniec says, “He’s been screaming his innocence from day one. He’s absolutely certain there’s got to be some sort of mistake. We, as his defense lawyers, are convinced there’s been some very, very serious error here.”
An Auburn native and son of teachers, Downs graduated Edward Little High School in 1992 and decided to go to college more than 4,000 miles away.
After graduating from the University of Alaska in 1996, Downs earned a master’s degree in business administration, in Arizona, and then a nursing degree before moving back to Maine, where he lived alone in an Auburn house and supported himself as a nurse.
Other than a single drunk driving infraction, Downs had no prior arrest record.
“The Maine State Police knocked on his door,” Howaniec said. “It came totally out of the blue. He’s lived a quiet life here in Auburn. He had a nice home on a dead-end street.”
Genetic genealogy, pioneered by Parabon NanoLabs, in Virginia, had identified Downs as a potential suspect.
“What we do is just a hint – a tip,” said CeCe Moore, Parabon’s chief genetic genealogist.
While declining to discuss the pending Downs case specifically, Moore explained how the process generally works to generate leads that have helped law enforcement agencies solve 155 violent crimes.
A key step is comparing crime scene DNA with DNA profiles accessible from two popular consumer DNA testing sites, GEDmatch and FamilyTreeDNA, which currently store a combined 1.6 million profiles.
“We reverse engineering people’s family tree,” Moore said. “But we’re not actually accessing anyone’s DNA file or DNA code. All we’re getting is a list of matches, which is generated through comparing the unknown crime-scene DNA to all those DNA files of the people that are participating in those two databases.”
Downs’ aunt, his mother’s sister, who lives in Vermont, had uploaded her profile to GEDmatch.
Moore discovered a 23% match between it and the Alaska crime scene DNA, considered very high.
“If you share about 1% of your DNA, you’re most likely a third cousin, so you share great-great-grandparents,” Moore said. “A really close match sharing more than about 3% is very rare.”
Moore continued, “If you have a 25% match, it’s a second-degree relative, so it’s a limited number of possible relationships with that. That’s going to be a half-sibling, an aunt-uncle, niece-nephew, grandparent-grandchild.”
When Alaska detectives questioned Downs in February 2019, he gave them a DNA sample--a cheek swab of his cheek--pursuant to a search warrant.
The Maine State Police Crime Lab confirmed his profile matched the crime scene DNA, prompting Downs’ arrest.
“Justice for Sophie is finally within reach,” then-Director of Alaska State Police Wilson said at the time.
But defense attorney Howaniec argues the DNA probe violated Downs’ 4th Amendment constitutional right against unlawful searches.
“The question of whether law enforcement can go into these public DNA profiles and access them without a warrant to look for your DNA,” Howaniec said, “It’s a privacy right. You have a privacy right to your own DNA profile.
“I don’t think people should in the public realm have access to my DNA unless I authorize it.”
Moore said, “They cannot arrest someone based on a genetic genealogy lead alone. They have to build a case, do the traditional investigation, and collect that DNA that they can compare to a traditional forensic profile.”
Parabon may generate a composite image to predict what a suspect looks like based on DNA characteristics, such as the color of skin, hair and eyes, though that step was not taken in the Alaska case.
The admissibility of genetic genealogy evidence derived from third parties has yet to be examined by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Howaniec said there is no gun, no knife, no fingerprints from the bathtub where Sergie’s body was found, and no witnesses who saw Downs in or near the bathroom.
Howaniec said, “There’s a DNA profile that’s been connected to the crime scene. Whether the biological material was the result of a sexual assault, whether it was the result of consensual sexual contact, whether it was the result of a contact that was transferred from person to person, that’s the big mystery here. But the bottom line is that’s about all they have.”
He has urged Alaska police and prosecutors to refocus on alternative suspects, naming some in pretrial motions and hearings, including one man currently incarcerated in Alaska for a violent crime.
But prosecutors said in court documents, that man "voluntarily gave his DNA and was excluded as a source of the DNA found at the scene."
No one in Alaska law enforcement — prosecutors, state police, or retired detectives--would discuss the case.
A seven-week trial is scheduled to begin next January when Downs will have been incarcerated for nearly three years.
Howaniec said, “We can certainly understand why they’re excited to have a suspect after 28 years, but we are just adamant that Mr. Downs did not have anything to do with this crime.""
The entire story can be read at:
PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at: http://www.thestar.com/topic/charlessmith. Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at: http://smithforensic.blogspot.com/2011/05/charles-smith-blog-award-nominations.html Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com. Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog;
