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The Murder of Sophie Sergie: Is the Right Man on Trial?
A DNA match should have led straight to a conviction, but there are now concerns this may not be the case.
Sophie Sergie was a young woman who had made plans to visit a friend at the University of Alaska Fairbanks one weekend in the spring of 1993. It would make a pleasant stop-off en route to have dental treatment in the same town the next day, she thought.
However, she never made it to her appointment and her body was later found on the college campus, where she had fallen victim to a vicious attack. When forensic evidence was linked to a suspect decades later, police triumphantly announced they had her killer in custody.
But in an astonishing turn of events, doubt has been cast on whether this is really true. Will a conviction be secured after all in the curious case of Sophie Sergie?
The night of the murder
Sophie Sergie was 20 and came from the Alaskan village of Pitkas Point in the western part of the ‘Last Frontier’ state. She had been a student of oceanography and marine biology at University of Alaska Fairbanks, but had decided to take a sabbatical in 1992 so she could find a job to afford some orthodontic work she needed.
