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Forensic Files II

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

People , Dna , Suspect , Cece-moore , List , Amounts , Higher , Gedmatch-system , 3 , Narrator , Cousins , Records

Forensic Files II

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

Tanya-van-cuylenborg , Plastic-zip-ties , Items , Victims , Item , Clothing , Dozens , One , Narrator , Body , Pants , Jim-scharf

Forensic Files II

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. ♪

People , Narrator , Cold-case , Jim-scharf , Cases , Investigator , Lead , Man , Nobody , One , Anything , Killer

Forensic Files II

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,"

Narrator , Evidence , Letters , Handwriting-analysis , Break , Source , Exemplars , Murders , Problem , Handwriting , Tips , Suspects

Forensic Files II

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.

People , Dna , Murders , Crimes , Suspect , Crime-scenes , Charges , Connection , Homeless , Narrator , Cold-case , Something

Forensic Files II

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

Narrator , Anyone , Dna-wasn-t-in-codis , Individual , Dna-sample , System , Swing , A-didn-t-match , Letters , Database , Profile , Touch-dna

Forensic Files II

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.

Dna , Idea , Detectives , Analysts , Case , Coffee-cup , Balance , 30 , Match , Markers , Series , Lottery

Forensic Files II

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,

Narrator , Dna , William-talbott , Person , Perpetrator , Genealogist , Child , Mix , Murders , Family , Time , Road

Forensic Files II

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 --

Jay-s-van-that-didn-t-match , Evidence , Tanya-van-cuylenborg , Story , Police-say-talbott , Police , Victim , Part , Rapist-hunting , Plastic-zip-ties , Gun , Purpose

Forensic Files II

by going through the yoders' chiropractic business. the evidence appears to indicate she spiked a protein shake with so much colchicine that mary yoder overdosed almost immediately. when kaity tried to throw off investigators by writing the anonymous letters, she didn't realize the typewriter could be tied back to her. she also didn't know that the e-mail address, the one she thought could keep her anonymous, would not only reveal her identity, it would show how she searched online for the colchicine, a murder weapon she thought no one would ever discover. finally, despite all her attempts to frame adam yoder for the murder, kaity's dna, not adam's, was on the key pieces of evidence. groah: i had such a tough time thinking that she would do that because she was such -- she was such a sweet girl in that office.

Colchicine , Investigators , Kaity-conley , Chiropractic-business , Evidence , Yoders , Protein-shake , Mary-yoder-overdosed , Anonymous , Letters , Wasn-t-his , Typewritten