Steven Downs, now 47, is charged with first-degree murder and first-degree sexual assault in the case that goes back 29 years.
Steven Downs was an 18-year old from Maine, and living on the third floor of Bartlett Hall in the 1992-93 school year. Down the hall that year lived Oliver Emerick Althoen. He testified Monday, January 31, 2022 that he and Downs were good friends that first year of school.
“We would party together, we'd drink alcohol. Um, we would play music - we'd play, you know, I'm a guitar player and we all sort of played music together, you know, rock and roll. I think it was a pretty standard dorm life.”
At the end of that school year, Sophie Sergie was found shot to death in the women’s bathroom one floor below where Downs lived. She had also been stabbed. Attorneys questioning Althoen asked if he thought Downs was dangerous.
“No, he was a friend. We had good times together. I never saw him do anything violent.”
Althoen testified that Downs had a pump action shot gun and a .22 caliber pistol they went grouse hunting with, maybe half-a-dozen times, but could not remember which year.
“It's hard to remember exactly the timeline. I know I did shoot guns with Steve. But after I lived there for a year, I came home to California for a year. And then I moved back up to Alaska in the summer of 94. And in that second year, we all were all living off campus and we would go shooting sometime.
And I actually don't remember if we ever went shooting when we lived in the dorms. I think maybe we didn't because we were just busy with school and stuff.”
Another old friend, Bleu Moon Roesbery grew up in the bush near Cordova, and came to UAF in 1992. She testified on Friday, January 28, that she dated Downs briefly the fall of 1992.
“We hung out quite a bit, maybe three or four times a week. I wanted a relationship, but he just wanted to be friends.”
Roesbery liked photography in college and remembered that she had taken a picture of Steven Downs when they were friends, holding a knife she had seen sometimes on his desk in his dorm room.
“It was a fairly large, fixed-blade hunting knife. And the only reason I remember it was because of the photo I took,” she said.
She testified that she didn’t find the knife that unusual, because in her experience, they were commonplace.
“You know, growing up in the wilderness of Alaska, knives and guns really didn't make an impression on me cause everyone that I grew up with had them. Just a tool.”
The prosecution may wrap up its case Wednesday, including playing recordings of interviews with the defendant. A key witness may not be able to appear this week because of the need to quarantine after COVID-19 exposure, and defense attorneys are making arrangements.
Defense attorneys say their case has mostly been made through cross-examination but will call five or six witnesses. The trial is expected to wrap up this week.
The courtroom is closed to the public to prevent COVID-19 sickness. But the court is video streaming the trial on the Alaska Court System website. Prior permission to record the proceeding for this story was granted.
