♪♪
Narrator: Up next, a young couple's road trip
ends in murder.
That wasn't long before everything turned to hell.
What was done to them was so horrifying.
Narrator: Police have plenty of evidence
but can't connect their victims to a killer.
Where did they cross paths, and what exactly happened?
Narrator: Those questions finally get answered
after technology available to anyone on the Internet
breaks the case wide open.
♪♪
In the summer of 1987,
a young Canadian couple had just started dating.
Jay Cook was 20.
His girlfriend, Tanya Van Cuylenborg, was 18.
Van Cuylenborg: They both went to Oak Bay High,
but they weren't in the same year at school,
and so it was through some mutual friends they met.
Baanstra: Jay was 6'4", broad shoulders,
very lean, very handsome.
Both Jay and Tanya were quiet, sweet, loving people.
♪♪
Narrator: Jay's father owned a furnace business
and in November, asked the couple
if they could drive from Victoria, Canada, to Seattle
to pick up some parts from a client.
This may have been the first prolonged trip
that they'd taken overnight out of the country.
Narrator: Jay and Tanya were using Jay's family van.
The trip was just over 100 miles,
but since they had to take a couple of ferries,
it was going to take some time.
So instead of rushing home, they planned to stay overnight
once they got to Seattle.
My dad had given them enough money to stay in a hotel.
As it turned out, they chose to save that money
and sleep in the van instead.
Narrator: Jay and Tanya didn't make it
to the next morning's appointment.
They didn't call the client, and they didn't call home.
No one knew where they were.
My parents were very concerned right away,
by that afternoon, that something was amiss.
Narrator: Days passed.
Police on both sides of the border mounted searches.
So did Jay and Tanya's families.
My dad had an acquaintance who had a small airplane.
They did a flyover of the Olympic peninsula
and out towards the cascade mountains,
just sort of looking for the needle in the haystack.
Unfortunately, it didn't turn up anything.
Narrator: Six days after Jay and Tanya left Canada,
a man collecting cans in a rural area
about 80 miles from Seattle found the body of a young woman.
She had been shot execution-style
in the back of the head.
A .380-caliber shell casing was nearby.
Plastic zip ties, presumably used to restrain the victim,
were found near the body.
All indications were she had been raped.
Narrator: Family members identified the victim
as Tanya Van Cuylenborg.
We were, you know, just dumbstruck with grief
of the fact that this was the end result for Tanya.
I mean, we were just bewildered.
Narrator: For now, the big question was, where was Jay?
The answer came 48 hours later, on Thanksgiving Day.
When Jay's body was found,
there was a ligature around his neck of twine and dog collars.
He had tissue and a pack of cigarettes
stuffed down his throat,
and he had been beaten in the head with rocks.
Narrator: Jay's body was located about 70 miles away
from where Tanya was found.
He'd been strangled.
The boy who found my brother's body was 24 at the time.
He's now in his 50s, and he remembers it
and has carried it with him this whole time.
Narrator: The plastic zip ties found with both victims
indicated this was not a haphazard,
spur-of-the-moment attack.
This was something that appeared to have been premeditated.
This person came equipped to commit this crime.
Narrator: Who would do this?
Jay and Tanya appear to have been targeted,
but they didn't know anyone in the area.
Tanya -- I mean, I couldn't even imagine her
coming close to having enemies of this sort.
Baanstra: We didn't know anybody that we could even dream
of doing this kind of damage to someone.
♪♪
Narrator: When detectives finally located
the van Jay and Tanya had driven from Canada,
they were hopeful evidence in the van
would point to the killer.
That same day, near a tavern a short distance from the van,
police found personal items belonging to Tanya.
Detectives now had four separate crime scenes --
the spots where Tanya and Jay's bodies were found,
Jay's van, and the tavern.
There were components of each crime scene
that were connected both to Jay and Tanya
but also from scene to scene.
Narrator: The key items were
ammunition for a .380-caliber firearm,
which was consistent with the gun used to kill Tanya,
a partial palm print lifted from Jay's van
that didn't match either Jay or Tanya or any of Jay's family,
dozens of plastic zip ties,
presumably used to bind both victims,
and among the various items of Tanya's clothing,
one item stood out.
Scharf: They found Tanya's pants,
which eventually were found to have semen on the pant leg.
Narrator: They also took swabs from Tanya's body
during her autopsy.
And so they kept some of the vaginal swabs,
and they retained them, frozen, in the laboratory.
Narrator: But this was 1987,
and DNA science was in its infancy.
In fact, the first-ever conviction using DNA evidence
happened in England just weeks before Jay and Tanya's murders.
Collins: When these murders happened in 1987,
we weren't using DNA testing.
It hadn't been brought into the lab yet.
Narrator: Despite being relatively unfamiliar
with DNA technology, analysts realized
they had potential evidence on their hands,
and the sample on Tanya's pants looked particularly promising.
Collins: The scientist at the time --
she cut that entire stain out,
and she saved that stain and she preserved it in the crime lab.
It was maintained in a freezer.
Narrator: At this point,
the physical evidence wasn't revealing
anything about the killer or killers' identity.
The case looked like it might stall before it really started.
They looked at persons locally who had committed
those kinds of crimes in the past.
They looked at registered sex offenders.
Hutton: Why pick these two kids?
There was no reason for anybody to commit
this horrible act against them.
And I think that's the big question, is why?
Narrator: There were no answers to that question
until there was a bizarre development.
Someone, possibly the killer,
reached out to Jay and Tanya's families.
The families received handwritten notes and cards
from a person claiming to have been involved
in the murder of Jay and Tanya, taunting the families,
and these were letters that were postmarked from various cities,
from New York to L.A. to Seattle.
One of the letters reads,
"Dear Mr. Cook,
as someone who instinctively hates all Canadians,
I couldn't pass up the opportunity
to kill Jay and Tanya."
They go on to say, "I'll do it again
if another opportunity presents itself."
Narrator: If this was the killer,
detectives were at a loss as to why he'd risk exposure
just to torment the families,
especially since it didn't appear the killer
even knew the victims.
Van Cuylenborg: They were very disturbing, of course.
They were written in a manner to be to be unsettling,
which they were because we were all uncertain,
as were even the police,
whether they were from the murderer or not.
Narrator: The letters were handwritten
with no apparent attempt at concealment.
Detectives hoped this bizarre cat-and-mouse game
might finally lead them to who killed Jay and Tanya.
There was some hope by investigators
that maybe this was it.
Maybe this was the break that they had been waiting for.
♪♪
Narrator: In the weeks after a young Canadian couple
were found murdered outside of Seattle,
their families received anonymous letters
from someone claiming credit for the crimes.
Van Cuylenborg: The first ones arrived Christmas of 1987,
and it continued,
you know, seemingly every couple of months or so.
There'd be either a letter or, like, a Father's Day card
and a Mother's Day card to the parents -- very cruel.
Narrator: In a possible break, they were handwritten --
a potential source of evidence.
As much as they could do was handwriting analysis,
so they had multiple letters and multiple exemplars
for handwriting analysis.
Narrator: The problem was that without suspects,
there was no one to compare the handwriting to.
Details of the murders and excerpts from the letters
were broadcast on television.
Hundreds of tips poured in, but none panned out.
Baldock: I think one of the most frustrating aspects
for investigators was,
despite the number of leads that they had,
none of them were really viable.
Narrator: In 2003, improvements in DNA technology
made it possible to identify a potential suspect
from the male DNA taken from the crime scenes,
but who was it?
Since it was an unknown person,
we gave it the designation of individual "A,"
and that was all we knew.
Narrator: By this time, CODIS, the national DNA database,
was in full swing,
but the DNA sample from individual "A"
didn't match anyone in the system.
Years and years went by with no luck,
no matches in the database.
Narrator: In 2010, DNA analysts turned to the letters.
Using touch DNA, they were able to lift a genetic profile,
but it did not match the DNA of individual "A."
In an attempt to generate more leads,
copies of the letters were broadcast and published.
Amazingly, someone recognized the handwriting.
A potential suspect was finally identified and confronted.
He readily admitted that he wrote the letters
and apologized for doing so.
Narrator: And the letter-writer's DNA
didn't match the DNA from the crime scenes.
He was mentally ill, homeless, and was eliminated as a suspect.
He never faced any charges in connection with the murders.
I've heard of people inserting themselves into crimes,
you know, especially people with some sort of mental illness
or something like that,
but this was about as extreme and strange
a case as you could imagine.
♪♪
Narrator: Dumbstruck and disappointed,
detectives were back to square one.
Though tips and leads kept coming in,
there was a real possibility
that Jay and Tanya's killer would never be found.
Van Cuylenborg: It was an open wound
that really couldn't heal.
It's very hard to not have any answers.
As a family, we still talked about Jay a lot.
We tried really hard to not think about the fact
that he had been murdered.
We just tried to think of him as gone.
This case is one of those cases
that just really sticks with you.
Nobody wanted to give up on this case.
Narrator: Luckily, the lead investigator,
Jim Scharf, was a man who knew more than most people
about working a cold case.
I've mentioned to people before that if anything happens to me,
I want him to investigate
what -- you know, try to find the perpetrator.
Narrator: In 2018, the alleged Golden State Killer
was finally behind bars, thanks, said prosecutors,
to a new forensic tool called genetic genealogy.
We knew we could and should solve it
using the most innovative
DNA technology available at this time.
Narrator: The question now was whether that science
could reveal who killed Jay and Tanya.
♪♪
Narrator: In the spring of 2018,
the suspected Golden State Killer
was finally arrested, accused in a crime spree
that had terrorized California for almost a generation.
What ultimately brought him to justice
was a new type of forensic technology.
The Golden State Killer suspect was arrested
thanks to genetic genealogy.
Narrator: Genetic genealogy is an offshoot
of the consumer genomics boom that started in 2013,
when people began using DNA and the web
to explore their family histories.
The purpose of traditional genetic genealogy
is to identify our long-dead ancestors.
Narrator: And it turns out it can also be used
to solve crimes.
The DNA databases used by consumers don't operate
in the same way as law-enforcement databases
like CODIS.
Moore: In CODIS, you're looking for that exact match,
but in genetic genealogy, we can go way beyond that
and use those hundreds of thousands of markers
to predict second, third, fourth cousins and beyond.
Narrator: However, there are serious concerns
about law enforcement having access to the DNA of people
who have never committed a crime.
That problem can be resolved if people are told their DNA
is going to databases used by police,
which is exactly what a company called GEDmatch did.
GEDmatch posted a notification on their site alerting
their users that law enforcement was using the database,
and that was what I needed to allow me
to finally make the decision to help law enforcement.
Narrator: In 2018, investigators took the DNA profile
from Jay and Tanya's case
and put it into the GEDmatch system.
Moore: What I'm looking at is a list of people
who share significant amounts of DNA with the unknown suspect.
I'm hoping to get people
who share around 3% of their DNA or higher.
That would be second cousins.
Narrator: Once these distant relatives
of a possible suspect were identified,
Cece Moore turned to more traditional methods --
things like public records and obituary pages.
So, in this way, I'm reverse-engineering
the family tree of the suspect
from the people's family trees that he shares DNA with.
Narrator: In Jay and Tanya's murder case,
high-tech -- genetic genealogy --
and low tech -- searches of public records --
led investigators to a Seattle-based family
with four children.
Three of those children were female,
so I knew they couldn't be the suspect,
and there was only one son, so there was only one person
who was carrying the correct mix of DNA.
And so the genealogist said that the perpetrator has to be
that male child.
Narrator: That person was William Talbott,
who was 24 years old at the time of the murders.
This was the first time that I'd ever heard the name
William Talbott.
He was not in the case file anywhere.
His family home was just about 7 miles down the road
from where Jay's body was found.
Narrator: Talbott, a never-married truck driver,
had no criminal record, so his DNA wasn't in CODIS,
the genetic database used by law enforcement.
Investigators needed a sample of Talbott's DNA
to either expose or eliminate him
as a suspect in Jay and Tanya's murder.
Collins: They were having a really hard time
getting a piece of evidence from him.
Narrator: But, eventually, Talbott,
who, after all this time,
had no idea detectives were following him,
discarded a paper coffee cup,
which was seized and immediately tested for DNA.
Detectives and analysts waited as their case,
now more than 30 years old, hung in the balance.
As I'm going along through the series of markers,
they're matching, and so it's almost like winning a lottery,
and you're saying, "Okay, that's a match.
That's a match."
Scharf: The odds of this not being William Talbott
was 1 in 180 quadrillion.
You would have to have 36 million planets
with the same population as Earth
to find William Talbott with that DNA profile.
Narrator: Old-fashioned forensics
also sealed Talbott's fate.
His palm print matched the partial palm print
lifted from Jay's van way back in 1987.
The evidence tells the story, or at least part of it.
Police say Talbott was a rapist hunting for a victim.
Police think he may have befriended Jay and Tanya
or may have threatened them at gunpoint.
They ended up in Jay's van,
and once they were under the gun, they were helpless.
He tied them up with the plastic zip ties
he'd brought along for just that purpose.
Without knowing it, he left his DNA on those plastic ties.
He strangled Jay.
Then he raped Tanya, creating even more DNA evidence.
He shot Tanya and then disposed of both bodies
at separate locations.
At some point, amid all this activity,
Talbott left a partial palm print
on the back of the van.
He really set out with a premeditated plan that day
or that evening to carry out some --
some form of heinous crime, which, unfortunately, he did
and just somehow crossed paths with Tanya and Jay.
Narrator: In June of 2019,
William Talbott was convicted of aggravated murder
and sentenced to two consecutive life terms
without the possibility of parole.
His case is a forensic first.
The suspected Golden State Killer
was exposed by genetic genealogy and is awaiting trial.
In Talbott's case, in a legal precedent,
the genetic genealogy evidence was presented to a jury
and helped put him behind bars.
This is a game-changer for investigators,
for forensic scientists, for prosecutors.
Genetic genealogy is the best crime-fighting tool
that's come along since DNA came along.
Moore: In Jay and Tanya's case,
genetic genealogy was able to develop a suspect
who had never even been considered previously.
William Earl Talbott really was the first good suspect
they ever had in all these years of investigating the case.