(SitNews) Fairbanks, Alaska –
Twenty-nine years after he was a freshman living in the dorms at the University of Alaska Fairbanks,Steven H. Downs was sentenced to 75 years in prison for sexually assaulting and murdering 20-year-old Sophie Sergie in 1993.

In sentencing Downs on Monday in the Rabinowitz Courthouse in Fairbanks, Superior Court Judge Thomas Temple noted that there was nothing the Court could do to restore the harm caused by Downs’ actions. In his sentencing remarks, Judge Temple commented that Sergie’s life was taken by Mr. Downs’ senseless act and noted Downs gave zero regard to her autonomy as a person, to her value of life, and pointed out that she is forever gone because of Downs’ callous choice. Judge Temple commented that in addition to taking Sophie from the world, Downs robbed her family of their ability to love her, experience life with her, to continue time on earth with her. 

For nearly three decades after Sergie’s murder, there were no suspects in the cold case. A DNA sample taken from Sergie’s body was put into a national DNA database, but did not match another profile in the database. But in 2017, a new investigative method linking DNA technology and genetic research was used to solve a murder case in…