Forensic Genealogy for the Win - William Talbott, II

Suzanne: Warning. This episode may contain graphic and disturbing content. Listener discretion is advised.

June: Hi, y'all and welcome to Crime With My Coffee. I'm your fabulous hostess with the mostess, June. 

S: And I'm Suzanne. We're gonna tell you some stories you've heard. 

J: Some you haven't. 

S: And some you'll wish you hadn't. 

J: All with a Texas twang. 

S: Well, hi there and welcome back to Crime With My Coffee.

J: Hi, y'all. Glad you could join us.

S: Yes. So today, I ventured away a little bit from my regular cup of Folgers. I'm drinking the Veranda Blend by Starbucks. It's a lighter roast coffee. And I chose this because our case today takes place in the general Seattle area. 

J: Nice. Nice. You know, I ventured out a little bit myself. A friend of mine that I used to work with, at a place we will not name, took vacation to New Mexico and brought me back a bag of whole bean traditional New Mexico Pinion Coffee. It is you know just the regular medium blend. It's, you know, inspired by the the subtle, sweet pinion nut found in the southwest. And I'll tell you what, it definitely gives you a smooth, very, not even bitter cup of coffee with a little hint of nuttiness. And it's, ah, the rich aroma is just amazing. 

S: You’ll have to make me some of that next time I come down. I have a friend of mine from New Mexico. She doesn't live there anymore. She lives in Texas. But she's from New Mexico and she has her parents send her some of that coffee on the regular. 

J: Oh, I, I know why. That stuff is delicious. It's fabulous coffee. 

S: So yeah, I'd just go steal her coffee, but you live, oh, I don't know five hours closer than she does to me. 

J: Okay, well, ya know where I'm at. You know where my coffee pot is, and my coffee, coffee bean grinder. So. 

S: Yeah, I'm gonna have to come try that coffee soon. 

J: Oh, yeah, it definitely is some good stuff. So. 

S: Well, today, I want to talk about the conviction of William Earl Talbot, II. This conviction was the first conviction ever using forensic genealogy to track down the bad guy.

J: Oh, wow, that's awesome.

S: I - he was not the first arrest, but he was the first to go to trial and be convicted.

J: Cool.

S: So this case -

J: And he probably needed to be convicted.

S: Oh, oh, oh. Absolutely. Absolutely did. So our story starts with two people, a couple, Tanya Van Cuylenborg and her boyfriend Jay Cook. Tanya was 18 in 1987, when this case begins, and her boyfriend was 20. They were from a little town called Saanich, in British Columbia in Canada. They had been dating for about six months at this point, although they'd known each other longer than that, because they had gone to school together, and they did have mutual friends. They were only two years apart. So on November 18 of 1987, they left their home in Saanich, driving the Cook family van. It was a bronze colored Ford Club Wagon, which I didn't know what that was. So I had to Google it. And it's the big huge full size econo vans. Yeah, I had no idea. So it's one of the big econo - econo line vans. They were leaving Vancouver Island, where they lived, headed to Seattle, Washington in order to buy parts for - furnace parts that Jay's dad needed for his heating business. So they planned to return the next day, on the 19th. So they left Sannich and drove down to Victoria. And there they boarded the Coho Ferry and rode it across Canadian-US border to Port Angeles. Once they got to Port Angeles, they continued their trip to Seattle. They drove through little towns like Hoodsport and on over into Allyn and up into Bremerton. They bought a ferry ticket in Bremerton to Seattle for the 10:35 pm crossing. They were going to sleep in the van in the back of the van, they had taken the backseat out of the van because this family used this van as their company vehicle. So they were just going to sleep in the back of the van in the parking lot of the business where they were going to get these parts from so they were there first thing in the morning when this company opened, they could get the parts and then start making the trip back home to Canada. 

J: Right. They'll be rested up and everything. 

S: Read- absolutely ready to go. So the ticket that they bought in Bremerton is the last known sighting of the couple together.

J: Oh, no.

S: When they didn't return home the next day, like they had originally planned, their families began to call all of their friends. They began to call other family, they started calling the police. Hey, our kids are missing. This is a problem. You know, they're they're not home. They were supposed to be home. They're not here, help us find our kids. 

J: Right. And this is way back before cell phones and you know. 

S: Absolutely. So on November 24 of 1987, there was a body of a woman reported in Skagit, or Skagit, County. She was reportedly up against a rusty culvert on Parson Creek Road in a wooded area between Old Highway 99 and Prairie Road, in the woods. She was not wearing any pants or underwear, her bra had been pushed up over her breasts. She was restrained with white zip ties and had been shot in the back of the head. 

J: Oh my God.

S: She was later identified by her brother and her father, who happened to be in the Seattle area putting up missing person flyers and asking around, looking for her, looking for Jay, looking for the van, trying to find anything. And so they happen to be there when they got the call saying hey, we think we might have found who you're looking for. We need you to come tell us if it's her. 

J: Yeah, I don't like where this is going.

S: So they went down and identified this woman as Tanya Van Cuylenborg. 

J: Oh, so sad.

S: So very sad. At this point, they still hadn't found the van and they still hadn't found Jay. So the cops were telling her family and his you might want to prepare for the fact that he's the guy that did this. And both of the families are like uh no way. He would never do anything like that. Like seriously, you're barking up the wrong tree here dude. 

J: Right. 

S: The next day, on November 25, 1987, Tanya's wallet was found behind a tavern in Bellingham, Washington, by employees who were out back smoking. They had found her purse in the trash can and looked in the wallet and realized that the picture and name on this ID match the picture and name on the missing flyers- missing person flyers that they had seen around town. So they call the cops.

J: Now, do we know how far this little tavern is from the culvert where she was found? Do we know how far a distance it is? 

S: I’m gonna say about 30 miles, if I remember correctly. 

J: Wow. 

S: I’ll have to double check that but I think it was about 30 miles away.

J: Oh, wow.

S: The cops show up. And they take this ID and they start kind of looking around. And they find a box of .380 ammunition, 

J: Uh huh. 

S: Some gloves, and the keys to the van.

J: Oh, wow.

S: So one of the detectives was headed out, headed back to the station to take all this evidence in. When he happened, he and he decided to take the back alleyway out to the main road instead of just driving back around to the front of the building to the main road. Lucky for everybody that he did, because towards the end of the alley, he happened to look over and he saw this big copper colored Ford van. 

J: Oh, wow. 

S: It happened to have license plates from British Columbia.

J: Hmm. I think we found it. 

S: So they had found the van. They had the van towed in to the department, and they started going over it. They photographed every inch of this van from the outside. And then they opened it up and started photographing and collecting evidence from the inside of this van. So they found a pair of black women's pants, a used tampon, which normally I wouldn't mention that but it becomes a little important later on. 

J: Okay. 

S: Zip ties, similar to the ones found on Tanya. Possible blood where the second row seat would have been, possible little blood spots. 

J: Right. 

S: And a full palm print on the back door. On November 26, 1987, which happened to be Thanksgiving Day to us Americans - 

J: Yes, 

S: A pheasant hunter called the cops because he had located the body of a male south of Monroe in Snohomish County, almost 65 miles away from where Tanya's body was discovered, covered with a blue blanket. The cops came out and realized that this guy had been restrained with white zip ties. 

J: Uh-oh. 

S: He had been - uh-oh yeah, he had been beaten about the head with rocks and strangled which did not kill him. So he was actually strangled with twine that was tied to dog leashes.

J: Oh, my God. Dog leash? Did they? Did the family have a dog? Or I mean, where'd the dog leashes come from? 

S: I don't know. 

J: Oh, wow. 

S: I was unable to find that out. I have no idea where the dog leashes came from. 

J: Wow.

S: Upon his autopsy - by the way this body was determined to be that of Jay Cook. 

J: Hmm. 

S: So he was obviously not the killer. 

J: Obviously not, because I'm pretty sure he didn't do that to himself. 

S: No. No, he didn't. So through the course of his autopsy, they also found a tissue that had been shoved down his throat and a pack of cigarettes that had been shoved into his mouth. 

J: Oh, my goodness.

S: His official cause of death was his asphyxiation, whether it was from the strangulation, or the fact that having this tissue in his throat and the cigarettes pushed his tongue to the back of his throat, which caused him to quit breathing, it was not clear.

J: Oh, wow.

S: Now, there are no suspects. None at all. They did, however, fortunately, recover some DNA from Tanya's body and the same DNA from her pants in the van. 

J: Oh, wow. Okay. 

S: So, so if they do ever identify a suspect, they can rule them out or say, hey, you're the bad guy from this sample. 

J: Yes. 

S: Well, it gets a little bit worse.

J: How can you get worse than that?

S: Well, that December, close to Christmas time, the families of both victims began receiving greeting cards in the mail, Christmas cards, birthday cards. They would get cards on Father's Day, Mother's Day, etc. that were postmarked from various places in the United States, such as Seattle, New York, San Diego, Los Angeles. In these greeting cards, there were letters that had graphic descriptions of the murders. 

J: No way. 

S: Yes. The families received in total 19 of these greeting cards and letters.

J: Oh, my God. Both families? 

S: Both families. 

J: Oh my gosh. 

S: The parents of both victims. So cops knew that all of these greeting cards and letters came from the same person, because the handwriting matched, and a lot of the phrases that he used in these letters were the same throughout. In 2010, the author of the cards and letters was located.

J: What?

S: Yes, he was located. It turns out that he was a 78 year old Canadian transient that had mental health issues. Cops were like, Hey, we need to test your DNA, make sure you didn't do this. And he's like, heh, okay. His DNA didn't match. He had absolutely nothing to do with these murders. 

J: Wow. 

S: He was just some guy that was writing these letters to the families for kicks. 

J: Why? Why would you do that? Why? Why?

S: I have no idea. 

J: Some people's kids, I swear. Ugh. 

S: Exactly some people's kids. 

J: Some people's kids.

S: Well, now it gets a little bit better. 

J: Oh, thank goodness. 

S: 31 years after the murders, in 2018, the police heard about this new thing where they could upload their suspect DNA that they had into websites like 23andme.com, ancestry.com, the one in particular that they used was gedmatch.com. 

J: Ah, we've come such a long way. 

S: We have. They got two hits. 

J: Oh, oh, oh, I'm getting excited, now. 

S: These two hits were second cousins to their suspect.

J: Oh.

S: These two second cousins were not related to each other.

J: How does - how does that happen? 

S: So you have a second cousin from the suspect's mother's side, and a second cousin of the suspect's father's side.

J: Oh my goodness.

S: So they start building these family trees for these two second cousins to where they meet and where they met was with the marriage of William Talbott, Senior and Patricia Peters.

J: Oh, wow.

S: These two had met in college, got married. And they were together for 55 years before Patricia sadly passed away. 

J: Aww. 

S: They ended up having four children. Three of them were girls. One of them was a boy. So the only person this DNA could come from is their only son, William Earl Talbott, II. 

J: Oh my goodness. 

S: So the cops immediately put around the clock surveillance on this guy. They find him and start following him everywhere. 

J: Good. 

S: He was a trucker in the Seattle area. So they're following him around, and at one of his stops, he got out of his truck, and a disposable coffee cup fell out. And when he got back in his truck to carry on with his day, he didn't pick this cup up. So the cops went over and picked up this cup and sent it off to have it tested for DNA. They get the results back. It's a match. 

J: Well, that's what he gets for being a litter bug. 

S: They eventually arrest him, which we'll get to that in just a minute, but not not long after it comes back that it's a match, he's arrested and they do a cheek swab in a controlled environment. 

J: Yes. 

S: And that sample as well comes back as a match to the DNA found at two of the crime scenes back in 1987.

J: Woohoo.

S: Yes. So let's learn a little bit about Mr. Talbott, II.

J: Ugh. Do we have to? Geez.

S: Yeah, he's kind of a jerk. 

J: Yeah. Kind of an asshole .

S: So he was 24 years old when these murders occurred. 

J: 24?

S: 24.

J: Wow.

S: Once - of course, once they knew who the subject, er who the suspect was, and they were able to piece other little bits and pieces and clues together. He was 56 years old when he was arrested. His parents, come to find out, lived a mere seven miles from where Jay's body had been found. 

J: Oh, my goodness, you can walk seven miles. 

S: Yes, yes, you can. He was a trucker. And he did plead not guilty and was held on a $2.5 million bail. 

J: Good. Not high enough, but go ahead.

S: Well, he wasn't able to get out so...

J: Well, good. 

S: There’s that. 

J: Well, being a trucker? I'm pretty sure you probably don't make that much money being a trucker. 

S: I would assume not. But I'm not a trucker, so I can't guarantee that. His family members his his father, and some of his sisters were interviewed after his arrest, so that they would feel safe and they had some stories to tell about this guy. 

J: Uh oh.

S: So his youngest sister said that he had kicked her several times while he was wearing boots and that she had witnessed a shoving match between him and their disabled father...

J: What?

S: when her brother was around 11 years old. 

J: Oh my god, yeah, he's got some serious issues. 

S: Yes. Now his father did say that he and his wife, Patricia, did seek counseling for all of their children after some of his son's outbursts, but they didn't feel that it helped at all.

J: It does not sound like it.

S: He also said that his son had threatened to run him over as soon as he got his driver's license. 

J: I don't think I'd be helping him get his license anytime soon. 

S: That's exactly what his dad told him. His dad told him Well, I'm not going to help you get your license. You'll get it when you can get it on your own, buddy. 

J: Oh, yeah, way to go Dad, way to go. 

S: So another sister of his said that when she was about 11, and he was about 13, he sexually assaulted her. 

J: Oh my God.

S: He had beat her up and broke her tailbone when she was about 15, and he was about 17, all because he wanted the radio in her room turned up to fill, to full volume.

J: What an asshole.

S: She said that she was locked in her room, changing clothes, listening to the radio, and she wouldn't turn it up and he kept yelling at her to turn it up and she wouldn't do it. And so he broke through her locked door, turned the radio all the way up, and attacked her.

J: Yep, he's an asshole.

S: She also said that there was a point in time when he dropped the family cat into the well. And their father had to get the cat out and sterilize the well. 

J: Oh my God. The cat was okay, right? Please tell me the cat was okay. 

S: I could find - 

J: Just say yes. 

S: Okay. 

J: Just, yes.

S: Yes, yes. 

J: Yes. The cat was okay. Good. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. The cat was okay. 

S: If you want to go with that you believe that all you want to. 

J: Absolutely. I'm a psychic. I pretend. 

S: So his younger sister said that at the point in time that he had been arrested that he'd been estranged from his family for about 20 years. He wouldn't return phone calls. He wouldn't take phone calls. He wouldn't return emails. She said that she had sent him a wedding invitation to her second wedding, and he returned it to sender. She also sent him an invitation to her daughter's high school graduation, his niece's high school graduation. And on the envelope he wrote return to sender and sent it back.

J: Wow. Wow.

S: He didn't even attend his mother's funeral. 

J: Ah. Oh my God. Oh, this guy, oh. I just want to choke him. 

S: Yeah, this guy's pretty much definition of douche.

J: Yes, absolutely. Douche.

S: Now we're going to trial. 

J: Good. 

S: So it's now 2019. He's been in jail for about a year because he couldn't make bail. His defense attorneys basically just said he didn't rape and murder these people. He did have sex with Tanya. It was consensual. But consensual sex doesn't equal murder.

J: Oh, sure. Mm.

S: That was pretty much their defense.

J: Well, I don't believe it. I don't buy it. No.

S: Neither did the jury.

J: Oh, good. Good.

S: So the trial lasted eight days. And then the jury had a three day deliberation. Over the course of those three days, they concluded that A, the same person had to have killed both Tanya and Jay. It just had to have happened that way.

J: Right, because they were together.

S: In a foreign country. 

J: Exactly. 

S: They also concluded that they had to have met their killer sometime in the eight hours between when the ferry docked in Seattle and the time the store opened the next morning, because otherwise they would have been at the store when it opened. 

J: Exactly. So that narrows that down a little bit as well.

S: Exactly. One comment that the defense attorneys made totally backfired.

J: Oh, good.

S: So this jury was made up of seven women and five men. And like I said, the defense was pretty much basically, he had consensual sex with her and that was the end of the story. And so he couldn't have murdered him or he couldn't have murdered them because it was consensual sex and then he left. Well, the comment that they made, claimed that because Tanya's bodily fluids were mixed with his DNA, that meant that she was aroused, and it was therefore consensual.

J: No, no,

S: It’s not how that works, buddy. 

J: No. 

S: One woman juror was quoted as saying, "It was like the one attempt at maybe making some defense of consensual sex, and it was completely off base." Obviously, they didn't believe the consensual sex angle. 

J: Good. I'm glad they didn't. 

S: Their way of thinking on this was Tanya was out of her home country. She was on a trip with her boyfriend. 

J: Boyfriend. Exactly. So why would she want to have sex with somebody else? If she's with her boyfriend? And why would the boyfriend want her to do that? 

S: Well, remember the used tampon that was found in the van earlier that I mentioned? 

J: Yes, I do remember. 

S: She was also on her period. 

J: Oh, yeah. Nobody wants to do anything like that when they're on their menstrual cycle. 

S: So they really didn't buy that she would hook up with some random stranger, considering all these factors, and then coincidentally meet another random stranger that would then kill her and her boyfriend without leaving a trace of DNA. 

J: Yeah. Yeah.

S: So on Friday, June 28 of 2019, the jurors came back with a verdict. He was found guilty of two counts of aggravated murder.

J: Oh, good.

S: So I looked up the difference between, you know, murder and aggravated murder and all that. And in the state of Washington, aggravated murder is defined as when the accused is alleged to have done one of the following: killed someone intentionally with planning, which I don't think is what was done here.

J: Yeah, I don't think he planned it because I think it just happened. 

S: I happen to think like you, it was a wrong place wrong time for these two people. The alleged had to have intentionally killed a person younger than 13 years of age, which obviously, also doesn't apply here.

J: Right,

S: intentionally killed a person while serving a term in prison or while as a prison escapee. Again, that doesn't apply here. 

J: Unfortunately. 

S: Or they killed someone or illegally terminated a person's pregnancy, while in the process of committing rape, kidnapping -

J: Ope. 

S: - arson, robbery, burglary, terrorism, or trespassing. 

J: Wow. Well, how do we know it? He didn't rob them to? Do we know that?

S: Well, sh- all of her stuff was still in her wallet. 

J: Oh, okay.

S: When it was found. But she did bring along a 35 millimeter camera, a fancy one that had like, different lenses and stuff. 

J: Uh huh. 

S: With her to - on this trip.

J: Yeah. And take snap shots.

S: Exactly. The camera has never been found.

J: Oh, oh.

S: One of the lenses showed up in a pawn shop. 

J: Hmm. 

S: But nobody's ever found the camera. And as a little extra snippet of information here, Talbott’s mother, Patricia, had a dark room in the basement of her house, which he happened to be living in in 1987 when these occurred. 

J: Oh, wow. I wonder if he developed the film maybe seen he was on there? Maybe? I don't know. 

S: Maybe, maybe quite possibly.

J: Oh, wow. Wow.

S: This camera's never been found.

J: Hmm.

S: They said he was guilty. 

J: Good. 

S: When the verdict was announced, it's reported that he gasped, flinched and said, "No, I didn't do it." Those were the only words he spoke through the entire course of this trial. 

J: Oh, wow. No, dude, you did it. You did it. DNA proved you did it. 

S: Exactly. And I want to say it was like a one in 5 billion chance that the DNA was wrong.

J: Oh, wow. 

S: I can't remember if it was 5 billion, or like 500 billion. It was one of the two.

J: It’s a billion number and it's a big one.

S: And he did it. 

J: He did it. Oops.

S: So he was eventually wheeled out of the courtroom in a wheelchair in an apparent state of shock.

J: Hahaha, whatever. 

S: Yeah. 

J: Trying to get some sympathy, dude, it's not gonna work. 

S: So after the verdict was read, the jurors met privately with the prosecuting attorney. And they were told that Talbott’s DNA had been found on a zip ties in the van. 

J: Ha, ha, ha.

S: They didn't present this at trial. Um, they did tell the jurors after they came back with their verdict, but they did want to put their mind at ease that, you know, his DNA was on these zip ties. 

J: I wonder why that was not brought up in trial? Oh, we'll get to it? We'll get to it? Oh. Oh, oh, tell me. 

S: So they didn't present it at trial because about - right before the trial started, t hey were contacted by one of their labs. And they said, Hey, we got some new equipment in. And it's better at testing mixed DNA than our other equipment. So we know you had some zip ties that had mixed DNA on them. Do you want us to test those again? And the prosecutors were like, you know what? Absolutely. Because it might not be him. It might not have his DNA on it. So yes, let's test it, that way if it doesn't have his DNA on it, we can give that to the defense, because it's exculpatory evidence. And we'd have to do that, you know, we have to give give this guy every chance we can.

J: Right, right. 

S: Well, in the middle of the trial, the DNA test results did come back. But since they were his, they didn't present it. They didn't have to turn it over to the defense, you know, and they didn't want to interrupt the trial in the middle of the trial, to have to restart all over again.

J: Right. Right. That's understandable.

S: So that's why it wasn't brought up at trial.

J: Wow. Which, you know, would have come in handy, had something miraculous happened, that he wasn't convicted. They could have used that evidence, trying him again. If it, you know, I can't, I don't want to say if he wasn't convicted, you know, because if you're found not guilty, you know. 

S: Double jeopardy and you can't do that. 

J: But right, but you know, a mistrial or something like that would have happened, then that evidence they could have brought in to another trial. 

S: Yes. Oh, absolutely. 

J: Oh, they did good. 

S: So well. This douchebag was sentenced to two life terms. 

J: Yay.

S: Without parole.

J: Good. Even better. 

S: He is to serve them consecutively. He was, at the time that they charged him, eligible for the death penalty in the state of Washington. 

J: Yes. 

S: But the prosecutors didn't try to seek the death penalty, because the death penalty was currently under review by the Supreme Court in Washington.

J: Uh huh.

S: And it actually turned out that just I want to say three months, four months after his conviction, they abolished the death penalty in Washington State. 

J: Ah. So even if he would have gotten the death penalty, if that would have happened, they probably would have been converted to life anyway.

S: Yes, He is, unfortunately, currently appealing his conviction. He's still saying he didn't do it. Even with the DNA. 

J: Oh.

S: He didn't do it.

J: Sure. He didn't do it. 

S: Yeah, yeah. Oh, by the way, the the palm print on the back of the door in the van was also his palm print.

J: Oh. Oh, but he just accidentally got it there when he was having consensual sex with this girl. Whatever. 

S: Yeah. So he is however currently serving his sentence in Washington State Penitentiary, 

J: Good. 

S: And like I said, he has become the first person to be convicted using forensic genealogy. 

J: Wow, that's so awesome. Good. Good case. That's awesome. I haven't heard this one before. So that was very exciting to hear. Thank you so much.

S: I came across it and was like, No, this is the case I have to do. I was actually researching a completely separate case and said, No, this is the one that I have to do. 

J: Wow. And you know, and it's very recent. You know, but that's awesome. 

S: The conviction was.

J: Yes. Yes. That's so awesome. That's great. I'm glad. 

S: I found it really interesting. And I knew you would like it. 

J: I did. I really, really did enjoy that. That was so awesome.

S: That’s why it became this week's case instead of the case I was originally researching. 

J: Nice, very, very nice. 

S: Thanks for listening today. Be sure to tune in next week for another episode of Crime With My Coffee.

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