SNOHOMISH COUNTY, Wash. — A Washington state appeals court reversed the cold-case murder convictions against a SeaTac man accused of killing a young Canadian couple in 1987.
Detectives arrested William Earl Talbott II, now 58, in 2018 using genetic genealogy to identify him as the killer of Jay Cook and Tanya Van Cuylenborg. The practice involves finding suspects by entering crime-scene DNA profiles into public databases that people have used for years to fill out their family trees.
However, on Monday, the appeals court found that one of the jurors should have been dismissed because she said she didn't know if she could be fair in a trial about violence against women, according to court documents.
The killings of Van Cuylenborg, 18, and Cook, her 20-year-old boyfriend, occurred in November 1987. The two disappeared after they left their home in British Columbia for what was supposed to be an overnight trip to Seattle.
When the couple didn't return from their trip, their families began a search that included renting a plane to find the copper-colored Ford van they had been driving.
About a week later, Van Cuylenborg's body was found down an embankment in a rural area north of Seattle. She had been shot in the back of the head. Hunters found Cook two days later in brush near a bridge over the Snoqualmie River — about 60 miles from where his girlfriend was discovered. He had been beaten and strangled, authorities said.
Prosecutors said once Talbott became a suspect, investigators picked up his discarded coffee cup and tested the DNA from it, confirming it matched evidence from the crime. He has maintained his innocence since his arrest.
A lab report unsealed after the jury's conviction showed investigators found additional DNA from Talbott on zip ties discovered at the crime scene.
In Talbott's case, a genetic genealogist used a DNA profile entered into a database to identify distant cousins of the suspect, build a family tree linking those cousins and figured out that the sample must have come from a male child of William and Patricia Talbott.
The couple had only one son: William Earl Talbott II.