The Hidden Murderer

Sophie Sergie was born on June 4, 1972, in Pitkas Point, a Yup'ik village of about seventy people on the lower Yukon River in western Alaska. She was four foot nine and the first person in her family to go to college. She enrolled at the University of Alaska Fairbanks in 1990 on a BP scholarship for Native students, after the Navy rejected her for being too short. In December 1992, in her sophomore year, she got braces, and she took the spring 1993 semester off to pay for them, working as a teacher's aide at the Pitkas Point School and as a clerk in nearby St. Mary's. Braces need adjusting, so every few weeks she flew more than 500 miles to Fairbanks for an appointment, staying with her best friend Shirley Wasuli in her single room on the second floor of Bartlett Hall.

On April 23, 1993, she left Pitkas Point, having bought her three-year-old brother a cheap kite and promised him a better one if he behaved while she was away. She spent the Friday night with a family friend in Anchorage and flew to Fairbanks on April 24. Her appointment was at 10 a.m. on Monday, April 26. On Sunday, April 25, she spoke to her mother Elena at about four in the afternoon and they laughed about the kite. That evening she went to a movie and then up Murphy Dome to watch the sunset with her former roommate Jolene and a friend, Eric, who photographed her in blue Navy sweatpants and a dark jacket. Around eleven she was outside Hess Commons, smoking. Around midnight she and Shirley went up to Shirley's room; Shirley's boyfriend Noah came over, they ordered pizza and watched a movie. Shirley then said goodnight and went to Noah's room, leaving Sophie in hers. Sophie wanted a cigarette, but it was freezing outside, so she said she would smoke in the second-floor women's bathroom by the exhaust fans.

At about 1.30 a.m. a senior named Jennifer Roy, showering in the west bathroom, heard someone come into the east bathroom and into the bathtub room through the shared wall. She heard no voices, no struggle and no gunshot. Sometime between 1.30 and 4 a.m. Sophie was raped, struck with a blunt instrument, gagged with a ligature, stabbed twice in the corner of her left eye while she was alive, shocked with a stun gun and killed with a single .22-calibre round to the back of the head. The killer turned off the water, drew the curtain and left the light on.

Shirley came back to her room at about nine that morning. The door was unlocked, the lights and television were on, the bed was made and Sophie's things were there, but Sophie was not. Assuming she was in the shower before her appointment, Shirley called into the bathroom and someone answered, 'Yeah, I'm here.' Sophie missed her ten o'clock appointment, and at two in the afternoon a janitor opening the tub curtain found her body and ran out screaming. The state crime lab in Anchorage flew a team to Fairbanks that evening, and the university held a meeting for the residents; by the next morning about half the female students had moved out.

Investigators interviewed more than 500 people over the years. A student had seen a white man with a darker complexion, about five foot eight and black-haired, in a grey T-shirt leaving the bathtub area in the early hours, and that description fitted a student named Kenneth Moto, but his DNA later excluded him. the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it A student named Williamson, infatuated with Sophie, was considered the prime suspect for a time but was later cleared and had an alibi. No weapon was ever found, the case went cold, and a $20,000 reward went unclaimed.

Elena Sergie filed a $4 million wrongful death suit against the University of Alaska in 1995, which the state settled. DNA work continued slowly: a full profile was developed by 2000 but matched nobody on CODIS, and by the end of 2003 the case was dormant. It was reopened in 2007 and the file grew to 14 volumes; in 2015 the state shut down the troopers' cold case unit altogether.

In 2018 the investigator Randy McFerrin sent the sealed semen sample to Parabon NanoLabs, which ran it against GEDmatch. this part of the story is covered for now He had no criminal record and his DNA was not on file. Investigators flew to Maine in February 2019, went through his rubbish without finding a usable sample and then knocked on his door on February 13. details of the account remain covered until revealed

the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it this part of the story is covered for now details of the account remain covered until revealed the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it this part of the story is covered for now