A SeaTac man was arrested Thursday in the death of a Vancouver, BC, woman who was killed 31 years ago in Western Washington along with her boyfriend, the Snohomish County Sheriff's Office said Friday. It was thanks to groundbreaking technology that uses DNA and genealogical profiles.
William Earl Talbott II, 55, was booked into the Snohomish County Jail on one count of first-degree murder in the death of Tanya Van Cuylenborg. KING 5 News typically does not name suspects until they are formally charged, but he is being named because the sheriff's office is asking the public's help for more information on him and his previous whereabouts.
Talbott, who was arrested leaving his trucking job in Seattle on Thursday. A judge set his bail at $2 million during Talbott's first court appearance on Friday.
On November 18, 1987, Van Cuylenborg, 18, and her boyfriend Jay Cook, 21, left their home in British Columbia for an overnight trip to Seattle. The pair arrived in Port Angeles around 4 p.m. from the Victoria ferry and bought a ticket at 10:16 p.m. in Bremerton for the ferry to Seattle.
WATCH: Timeline of the case
Van Cuylenborg’s body was found in a Skagit County ditch in a wooded area off Parson’s Creek Road on November 24, 1987. She was sexually assaulted and shot in the head.
The Cook family van was found the next day in an abandoned Blue Diamond parking lot in Whatcom County.
The day after that, Cook’s body was found in Snohomish County along Crescent Lake Road near the Snoqualmie River. He had been strangled.
The DNA evidence detectives collected during the investigation did not match any profiles in any law enforcement database. But that DNA can be used to track what the killer might look like using predictions from ancestry like eye color, hair color, skin color, freckling, and face shape.
The Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office and the Skagit County Sheriff’s Office worked with Parabon NanoLabs, a DNA technology company in Virginia, to create an image of the suspect. Using a process called phenotyping -- predicting physical appearance and ancestry from unidentified DNA evidence -- they released a series of images of what a suspect might have looked like at the time of the deaths.
They created profiles of what the man might look like at three different age points. Talbott would have been 24 at the time of the deaths. This image the company created is for a 25-year-old.
The sheriff's office said Talbott was identified using genetic genealogy. That's the use of DNA testing in combination with traditional genealogical methods to establish the relationship between an individual and their ancestors.
PHOTOS: 1987 Cold Case Murder
Here is how the sheriff's office explains it:
A digital file containing DNA genotype data derived from evidence at the crime scene was uploaded to GEDmatch, a public genetic genealogy website, and promising matches were found for two of the suspect’s relatives (see family tree). After Parabon’s genealogists deduced Talbott’s identity, police subsequently acquired an abandoned DNA sample from a cup he had used. Washington State Patrol’s crime lab confirmed that it positively matched the DNA profile from the crime scene evidence.
“We never gave up hope that we would find Jay and Tanya’s killer,” said Snohomish County Sheriff Ty Trenary in a statement. “Yesterday’s arrest shows how powerful it can be to combine new DNA technology with the relentless determination of detectives.”
For a year after his killing, Jay's mother says she still set a place for him at the dinner table.
"On one hand, we're close to closure. On the other, we're still at a loss and I don't have my only son, Jay," said Lee Cook.
Police say Talbott has no criminal record to speak of and at this point they have no idea what his motivation may have been or how he may have come into contact with Jay and Tanya.
"Yesterday, the killer had his last sleep in his own bed, his last coffee break, his last day of freedom. For my family and I, it is our first day without the weight, the burden of not knowing who killed my brother Jay and his sweet, shy girlfriend, Tanya," said Jay's sister, Laura Baanstra.
Detectives believe Talbott was living in the Woodinville area in 1987. His parents' home was about seven miles from where Cook was found.
The sheriff's office said it would like to talk to anyone who knew of Talbott's activities in 1987 and 1988. Investigators also want to know if anyone saw Talbott with the Cook family van.
Detectives are still looking for a Minolta X700 35 mm camera that belonged to Van Cuylenborg. The sheriff's office says it's possible Talbott took the camera and gave it to someone else.
They also want to know more information about a light blue blanket that Cook's body was found wrapped in and whether Talbott had access to it.
Anyone with information is asked to call the Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office tip line at 425-388-3845.
