A genealogy website helps crack another cold case, police say, this one a 1987 double homicide

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Morning Mix

A genealogy website helps crack another cold case, police say, this one a 1987 double homicide

By Meagan Flynn May 21 at 5:16 AM [link:[e-mail]|Email the author]



Tanya Van Cuylenborg and Jay Cook standing in front of their bronze Ford Club wagon, the van they were driving when they went missing. (Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office)

For the past 30 years, evidence found at the scenes of the killings of Jay Cook and Tanya Van Cuylenborg was mostly confined to a blue blanket wrapped around Cook’s body, an abandoned bronze 1977 Ford Club Wagon and, crucially, the killer’s DNA.

The couple was from Saanich, British Columbia, and on the evening of Nov. 18, 1987, they were traveling in the Cook family van to Gensco Heating in Seattle to pick up a part for Cook’s father. They were last seen purchasing a ticket around 10 p.m. in Bremerton, Wash., to board a ferry to Seattle, but they never made it there. Several days later, 18-year-old Van Cuylenborg’s body was found partly clothed, dumped in a ditch in a wooded area in Skagit County, Wash. She had been raped, police said. Cook’s body was found near the Snoqualmie River.

Since 1987, police had received more than 300 names from tipsters who thought they had information about the couple’s alleged killer. William Earl Talbott II was not on that list.

But then investigators ran the DNA from the scene through a genealogy website. They turned up two second cousins of Talbott, which led them to him. ... And now they have charged Talbott, 55, with murder, saying his DNA profile found through his ancestors this month matches the DNA left at the crime scene 31 years ago.
....

Meagan Flynn is a reporter on The Washington Post's Morning Mix team. She was previously a reporter at the Houston Chronicle and the Houston Press. Follow @Meagan_Flynn

[maxsolomon]

1. I remember this case.

It happened a month after I moved to Seattle.

He got away with it for 30 years. Life, no parole.

[MosheFeingold]

2. Happy they caught the guy

But to the civil libertarian inside me, it is creepy as hell that these websites are used like this.

[maxsolomon]

3. I'm OK with it for horrific murders like this.

But for spitting on the sidewalk? Yeah, no.

There's a slippery slope around this issue, but fuck double murderer/rapists. This crime is unforgiveable - the specifics were Twin Peaks creepy.

[murielm99]

4. I agree.

The chances for misusing the information are too strong.