Page 13 - Thomas Temple News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

  “The current posture of that is that we are not connected to the internet, intentionally, and this may exist for another few days to a couple of weeks,” Fairbanks Superior Court Judge Thomas Temple said Wednesday in a teleconference call from his courtroom. “I don’t know what the result is,” he said, but noted, “we will not be able to have a Zoom hearing this week” as planned. Aside from a week’s worth of hearings in February in which the attorneys appeared in the courtroom, more recent pretrial hearings in the case have relied on videoconference, with only the judge appear...

The bullet that killed Sophie Sergie in 1993 could have been fired by a pistol owned by Steven Downs — and possibly a million other guns — according to testimony heard Tuesday. Two firearms experts testified via videoconference in the rape and murder trial against Downs, 46, who had been a student at the University of Alaska Fairbanks at the time of the brutal crime. On Tuesday, Fairbanks Superior Court Judge Thomas Temple heard testimony from witnesses presented by prosecutors and the defense who reached the same conclusion, that the .22-caliber bullet removed from 20-year-old Serg...

Gillis said she tested three guns taken from Downs’ Auburn home during a February 2019 police search. She ruled out a rifle as being the possible murder weapon. She said she couldn’t eliminate a Ruger and an H & R pistol owned by Downs as the gun that fired the lethal bullet, but said the Ruger was less likely. Asked by Assistant Attorney General Chris Darnall whether the H & R pistol could have fired the bullet, Gillis said, “Yes, the individual characteristics and class characteristics that I see all correspond.” But, she added, “it’s not enough for an identification” due to t...

The genetic information derived by Parabon from the crime scene DNA evidence was provided to a Florida company called GEDmatch, which uses DNA information submitted by genealogy DNA testing services.

increase font size DNA expert says she found suspect Steven Downs through profile matching in 1993 Alaska murder case The murder trial for Steven Downs, an Auburn man accused in a 1993 murder case out of Fairbanks, Alaska, continues. Steven Downs appears in Androscoggin County Superior Court in Auburn in March 2019 for an extradition hearing. Russ Dillingham/Sun Journal A self-described professional genetic genealogist testified Thursday that she was the one who identified an Auburn man as a match for DNA found at the scene of a murdered woman in Alaska more than two decades ago. CeCe Moor...