Sixteen-year-old Shelley Connolly loved to party and dreamed of becoming a cosmetologist. On January 6, 1978, Shelley told her mother she was going roller skating with friends, but instead, Shelley went to Chilkoot Charlie’s, a rowdy Anchorage bar, where a bouncer should have blocked a 16-year old from crossing the threshold.
The following morning, tourists discovered Shelley’s body next to the train tracks near Beluga Point, south of Anchorage. Detectives interviewed numerous witnesses and possible suspects, even flying to the lower 48 to track down some individuals. None of their leads panned out, though, and the case went cold.
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Sophie Sergie traveled from the small Yupik village of Pitkas Point to Fairbanks for an appointment with her orthodontist. While she was there, she stayed with her friend Shirley at Bartlett Hall, a dormitory on the campus of the University of Alaska at Fairbanks. The last known photo of Sophie, taken in the early morning hours of April 26, 1993, shows her dancing outside the dorm, a radiant smile on her beautiful face. Later that day, a janitor found Sophie’s body jammed into a bathtub in a bathroom in Bartlett Hall.
Detectives encountered a nightmare of a crime scene. Sophie was murdered, or at least her body was found in a college dorm with limited security, where students and non-students could move freely not only between floors but also between dorms. The investigation was further hampered because the murder occurred toward the end of the spring semester when students were finishing their classes and leaving the campus for at least the summer and perhaps forever. In 1993, 670 students lived within the Moore, Bartlett, and Skarland dormitory complex.
Add to this number the non-residents who might have been visiting the complex or staying with friends, just as Sophie was. At the crime scene, detectives collected DNA and hair and fiber samples, but the evidence did not lead to a suspect. Over the years, new investigators studied Sophie’s case, hoping some emergent technology would provide the tool they needed to find Sophie’s killer.
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On the evening of May 4, 1996, Jessica Baggen visited her sister, who lived in a trailer court off Sawmill Creek Road in Sitka, Alaska. She was last seen alive when she left her sister’s house to walk home. Searchers discovered her body two days later, concealed in a hollow beneath a fallen tree. The Sitka police were not experienced murder investigators, and they faced intense public pressure to close the case. When Richard Bingham, a local man with substance abuse issues and mental deficiencies, confessed to the crime, the police jailed him and closed the case. A jury found Bingham not guilty, and the search for Jessica’s murderer resumed.
Over the years, the Sitka Police Department, the Alaska State Troopers, and a private detective hired by Jessica’s family have investigated the murder of Jessica Baggen. Authorities were able to clear more than 100 potential suspects by comparing their DNA profiles to the profile obtained from evidence left on Jessica by her killer. Nothing brought investigators any closer to finding Jessica’s murderer.
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As the years passed, hope faded for the families of Shelley, Sophie, and Jessica. It seemed unlikely the murderers of these three young women would ever be caught and convicted. Then, Cold Case Trooper Investigator Randy McPherron took charge of their cases and began researching new methods for solving old murders.
In 2018, McPherron read an article about a new type of forensic DNA analysis called genetic genealogy. In California, authorities had just arrested “Golden State Killer” suspect Joseph James DeAngelo by obtaining a familial match from comparing the DNA collected at one of the crime scenes to a commercially available DNA database. Parabon NanoLabs was the facility that analyzed the DNA in the Golden State Killer case, so McPherron called Parabon and asked if they would take a look at the DNA profiles from some of his Alaska cold cases.
The field of investigative genetic genealogy is new, powerful, and somewhat controversial. Investigators create genetic profiles from DNA samples gathered at crime scenes. They then upload these profiles to websites such as GEDMatch, where citizens have posted their genetic profiles to learn more about possible relatives and ancestors. If the investigator locates a relative, such as a distant cousin, who matches a suspect’s DNA, she then searches for all relevant family records, including birth and death certificates. She also studies family connections on social media. She then reverse-engineers a family tree, building backward to a common ancestor, such as a great-great-grandparent. Next, the investigator climbs down the family tree until she finds the subsection of the family containing the unknown suspect. Sometimes this process takes hours, but other times, the investigator must work months to construct the family tree.
Sophie Sergie’s case was the first Alaska case solved by using genetic genealogy. On December 18, 2018, a forensic genealogist submitted a report comparing the unknown suspect’s genetic material from the crime scene to a likely female relative. The woman whose DNA is a familial match to DNA collected from the sperm left at Sophie’s crime scene is the aunt of Steven Downs. Downs was an 18-year-old college student living at Bartlett Hall at the time of Sophie’s murder.
Police arrested Downs at his home in the small town of Lewiston, Maine, and charged him with the sexual assault and murder of Sophie Sergie. He denied any involvement in Sophie’s rape and murder, even though a sample of his DNA taken after his arrest matched a sample collected from sperm cells at the crime scene.
In the Shelley Connolly case, Parabon compared the DNA samples taken at her crime scene to the GEDMatch database and found a woman in Florida who shared enough genetic material with the DNA profile to be a first or second cousin to the offender. From there, an investigative genealogist built a family tree and traced the woman’s family back to Pennsylvania. He then created family trees for other top DNA matches and linked them all to a common ancestor, John J. McQuade, who was born in Ireland and had a son named John C. McQuade. John C. McQuade served in the U.S. military in WWII and was stationed in Alaska. He married a woman from King Cove, Alaska, in 1943, and they had nine children, six girls, and three boys.
All three of the McQuade brothers were young adults at the time of Shelley’s murder, and a consideration of the DNA evidence suggested any one of them could have been the perpetrator. Authorities soon learned, though, that Donald McQuade moved from Seattle to Anchorage with his mother in 1971. Donald was a high school dropout. He worked as a laborer and had a few run-ins with the law. He spent time in jail for theft, burglary, and carrying a concealed weapon. In 1978, Donald McQuade was on probation and living with friends in Anchorage.
Donald McQuade now lived in Gresham, Oregon, and Gresham detectives agreed to assist in the case. Their task was to collect Donald McQuade’s DNA and determine if it matched the DNA found on Shelley’s clothes and under her fingernails. Investigators followed McQuade for one hour and collected two cigarette butts he discarded. The DNA on Donald McQuade’s cigarette butts matched the DNA samples from Shelley’s fingernails and clothes. Oregon police arrested Donald McQuade on August 30, 2019.
In 2019, the Alaska Bureau of Investigation’s cold case unit uploaded a genetic sample taken from the original crime scene of Jessica Baggen’s murder. Two genetic genealogy experts, one from the Alaska state crime lab and one from Parabon NanoLabs, worked together to compare the profile to a familial DNA database. By 2020, Investigator Randy McPherron said the genealogists had constructed a very complicated family tree that pointed to a clear suspect.
The suspect was a former Sitka man named Steve Branch. Branch once lived on the road where searchers found Jessica’s body. Branch was accused and tried for felony assault around the time of Baggen’s murder, but for some inexplicable reason, authorities never considered him a possible suspect in the Baggen case.
Steve Branch now lived in Austin, Arkansas. Arkansas police were unsuccessful at following and collecting a discarded DNA sample from Branch, so Alaska investigators flew to Arkansas to confront Branch. Branch denied killing Baggen and refused to give detectives a DNA sample. The investigators left Branch’s residence to obtain a search warrant for his DNA, and a half-hour later, Branch shot and killed himself.
Branch will never be tried and convicted for the murder of Jessica Baggen, but authorities feel justice was served, and they closed the case. The cases against Steven Downs and Donald McQuade have not yet gone to trial, and until they do, we won’t know if jurors in Alaska will accept genetic genealogy as a legitimate method to determine guilt.
Some people feel genetic genealogy invades the privacy of individuals who have uploaded their DNA to search for family members, but GEDMatch warns users that their information might be used for purposes outside of genealogy. Other sites allow an individual to opt-out of sharing their profile with law enforcement. Most companies only permit law enforcement searches in cases of violent crimes. At present, genetic genealogy provides a valuable law enforcement tool for apprehending violent offenders. Without using genetic genealogy, it is unlikely authorities would have found the murderers of Shelley, Sophie, and Jessica.
