Murder in a College Dorm

The University of Alaska Fairbanks, 1993

Sophie Ann Sergie

The University of Alaska has three main campuses: The University of Alaska Fairbanks, The University of Alaska Anchorage, and The University of Alaska Southeast. The University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF) was once the main campus, but now, the Anchorage campus has a higher enrollment. Currently, 10,500 students are enrolled at UAF.

While UAF is a small university when compared to most state universities in the U.S., it must have seemed huge to Sophie Sergie when she enrolled there in 1990. Sophie grew up in the small Yupik village of Pitkas Point located near St. Mary’s and 525 miles south-west of Fairbanks. Pitkas Point has a population of only 150 people, but Sophie embraced the move to Fairbanks and the opportunity to get a university education. Sophie was very bright and a rising star. She was majoring in marine biology and was on a full academic scholarship from British Petroleum.

In December 1992, Sophie had braces installed on her teeth, and she took the spring semester off to work and pay for her orthodontia. She returned to Pitkas Point where she worked as a teacher’s aide, and she took a second job in nearby St. Mary’s as a clerk. By all accounts, Sophie was an intelligent, hard-working, respectable young woman.

Sophie periodically returned to Fairbanks to have her braces adjusted, and while there, she stayed on campus in the Bartlett Hall dorm with one of her friends, Shirley Wasuli. If you are not…