After a crime occurs, people trust that the police will be able to help make sense of it all. Unfortunately, some cases go cold and victims are forced to accept that justice will never be served.
After 2 Canadian families were left devastated by a savage and random attack, they demanded police find the person responsible and bring him to justice. When the case went cold, however, they feared that would never happen. Yet a new investigation method turned up a new lead more than 3 decades later…
A Short Road Trip
In 1987, a young Canadian couple from Saanich, British Columbia, decided to go on a short, overnight trip to Seattle. According to the pair’s families, the 20-year-old and his 18-year-old girlfriend were going to Seattle to buy some furnace parts for his family’s business.
Travel Plans
Since Seattle was only a little over 4.5 hours away from Saanich, they decided to drive together and stay the night in Seattle. According to the couple’s plans, they would leave for Seattle on November 18, 1987, and stay there overnight before returning home the next day…
Running Late
On November 19, however, the pair failed to return home when they told their families to expect them. At first, the families weren’t too worried and thought the couple was just running late. But as more time passed, they started to fear something happened to them.
The Worried Families
The family suspected the couple may have experienced car trouble or possibly missed the ferry back to Saanich, which is on the southern point of Vancouver Island. But it was unlike the normally responsible couple to not contact anyone if they were running late…
A Missing Persons Report
As more time passed with no word from the couple, their families contacted the police to file a missing persons report for 18-year-old Tanya Van Cuylenborg and 20-year-old Jay Cook. Police immediately sent the report to Seattle to notify the police there to be on the lookout.
Bad News
Over the next few days, the Canadian families prayed that Tanya and Jay would come walking into the door or that police would call them with news that they found them. Days later, on November 24, the police finally did call and explained they had some news. Tragically, it wasn’t the news they were hoping for…
1 Week Later
Police explained that on November 24, Tanya’s body was found in a ditch in rural Skagit County, Washington. The 18-year-old’s limbs had been bound with plastic ties and she had been shot in the head. An autopsy revealed even more gruesome details about her death.
The Autopsy
When the results of the autopsy came back, investigators learned that Tanya had been raped while she was alive. They also determined she had died on November 19 after being shot in the head from less than 2 inches away…
Another Victim
Jay’s body was nowhere to be found, and police rushed to track him down not knowing if he was still alive or not. If Jay was still alive, he would know what happened to Tanya. Yet just 2 days later, the police discovered that Jay hadn’t survived either.
Another Gruesome Discovery
On November 26, investigators found Jay’s body more than 50 miles away from where they had discovered Tanya’s body. According to the police, Jay was found covered in a blue blanket and had been beaten with rocks and strangled to death…
A Random Attack
The tan van, which belonged to Jay’s father, that the couple had taken for the road trip was nowhere to be found. According to Craig Matheson, Snohomish County’s chief criminal deputy prosecutor, the murders ‘were as random as they were savage.’
Demanding Justice
Tanya and Jay’s families were devastated by their deaths. Nothing would be able to make the situation right, but they demanded that the couple get justice and that the person responsible be punished for the grisly murders…
A Dead End
Detectives worked tirelessly to collect as much evidence as possible and follow up any leads that they came across. Unfortunately, they quickly ran out of leads and since it appeared to be a random killing, new leads were few and far between.
The Case Goes Cold
Months passed by without any new developments in the case and the police were no closer to finding the murderer. Eventually, both the investigators and the families started to fear whether they would ever find out who killed Tanya and Jay…
3 Decades Later…
Over the following decades, the couple’s families clung to the hope that 1 day a new piece of information would shed some light on the cold case. More than 30 years later, the day they had been hoping for finally came in the spring of 2018.
A Breakthrough
The new lead came after authorities sent DNA evidence from the cold case and many others to Parabon NanoLabs, a private lab in Virginia that conducts genealogy analysis. A lab genealogist, CeCe Moore, entered the DNA from the crime scene to GEDMatch, a free site where anyone who has ever had their DNA tested by sites like Ancestry or 23andMe can upload their results to expand their search for more relatives…
Connecting The Genetic Dots
After inputting the crime scene DNA, Moore found a partial match. “The significant matches were at about the second cousin level,” she explained. Moore then built out the family tree to the 2 second cousins’ great-grandparents.
The Main Suspect
After that, Moore worked her way through the family tree to the couple that tied the 2 families together. That couple had just 1 son, William Earl Talbott II, who was 24 years old at the time of the murders. Moore passed the information on to investigators, who then watched Talbott, now 55, for a few days…
A Match
When Talbott threw out a cup that he had drank from, officers surveilling him retrieved it collected DNA and tested it against the crime scene DNA. It was a match. The truck driver was taken into custody on May 17, 2018, and has since been charged with 2 counts of aggravated first-degree murder.
Justice Is Happening
Talbott has pleaded not guilty to those charges and is now awaiting his trial in jail. If found guilty, he will face life in prison. “We never gave up hope that we would find Jay and Tanya’s killer. Yesterday’s arrest shows how powerful it can be to combine new DNA technology with the relentless determination of detectives,” said Snohomish County Sheriff Ty Trenary. “It’s a sense of some justice that’s starting to happen here,” added John Van Cuylenborg, Tanya’s brother.
Trucker Faces Life In Prison Thanks To Cousin’s Genealogy Site Profile is an article from: LifeDaily