Posted on 05/18/2018 1:25:02 PM PDT by Red Badger
Full Title:
A Double Murder From 1987 Was Just Solved Thanks To The Genealogy Website Used For The Golden State Killer
Jay Cook and Tanya Van Cuylenborg Snohomish County Sheriff
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Forensic genealogy has cracked a second major case, less than a month after the arrest of Joseph James DeAngelo, alleged to be the Golden State Killer.
At 11 a.m. PDT in Washington state, the Snohomish County Sheriff announced the arrest of a 55-year-old man from the Seattle area for the 1987 double murder of a young Canadian couple, Jay Cook and Tanya Van Cuylenborg. He is William Earl Talbott II, a local truck driver.
On Nov. 18, 1987, Cook, 20, and Van Cuylenborg, 18, drove from Saanich, British Columbia, to the Seattle area in a van owned by Cook’s father. It was supposed to be an overnight trip, and when they didn’t return, they were reported missing.
Then, on Nov. 24, Van Cuylenborg’s body was found in a ditch in rural Skagit County, Washington. She had been raped and shot. Cook’s body was found two days later more than 50 miles away, covered with a blue blanket. He had been strangled and beaten.
On Thursday, BuzzFeed News reported that a company called Parabon NanoLabs had loaded DNA data from about 100 crime scenes into a public genealogy database called GEDmatch — finding matches with people estimated to be a suspect’s third cousins or even closer in about 20 cases.
From that search, a DNA sample from Van Cuylenborg’s murder scene gave especially promising leads. “The significant matches were at about the second cousin level,” CeCe Moore, the genealogist working with Parabon, told reporters at a press conference to announce Talbott’s arrest.
This meant that Moore had to draw family trees back to the great-grandparents of the people whose DNA profiles matched with the crime scene sample. Then, looking at descendants of these people, she found that the family trees converged on a couple who had only one son.
That was Talbott. His DNA has since been shown to match the crime scene sample.
Family tree of suspect in genetic genealogy search. CeCe Moore/Parabon NanoLabs
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“Detective work has sure come a long way in 30 years,” said Laura Baanstra, Cook’s sister.
Investigators said that they still don’t know the motive, or how Talbott met the couple. They appealed for help from anyone who knew Talbott at the time, or may have seen him in November 1987 in the stolen van or with Van Cuylenborg’s camera. “The investigation still has more work to be done,” Snohomish County Sheriff Ty Trenary told reporters.
Family members of the victims said they were relieved that the alleged killer is finally in custody.
“It’s a sense of some justice that’s starting to happen here,” said John Van Cuylenborg, Tanya’s elder brother.
And a lot of would-be DNA donors will avoid GEDcom
like the plague
Genealogy is a different subject.
I watched the show about the actor Tom Bergeron. He is a descendant of Marguerite Ardyron from 17th Century France.
She came from Protestant La Rochelle in France, converted to Catholicism, moved to Quebec as a “fille du roi” - bought land outside Quebec city had kids and died there.
Genealogy can show you things about your ancestors you don’t even know. I don’t know anything about mine - they’re lost in the mists of time.
So I traded in my lederhosen for an orange jumpsuit and shackles.
Let me guess, you have a bumper sticker that says “Don’t like abortion, don’t have one.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/23andMe
The company was founded by Linda Avey, Paul Cusenza and Anne Wojcicki in 2006 to provide genetic testing and interpretation to individual consumers.[14][15] In 2007, Google invested $3,900,000 in the company, along with Genentech, New Enterprise Associates, and Mohr Davidow Ventures.[16] Wojcicki was married to Google co-founder Sergey Brin at the time.[7]
Cusenza left the company in 2007 and was appointed CEO of Nodal Exchange in 2008.[17] Avey left the company in 2009 and co-founded Curious, Inc. in 2011.[18]
In 2012, 23andMe raised $50 million in a Series D venture round, almost doubling its existing capital of $52.6 million.[19][20][21] In 2015, 23andMe raised $115 million in a Series E offering, increasing its total capital to $241 million.[5][22][23]
The company sponsored the PBS TV series “9 Months That Made You”.[24]
Another $250 million of financing was raised in September 2017, led by new investor Sequoia Capital. Sequoia is joined in the financing by new investors Euclidean Capital, Altimeter Capital and the Wallenberg Foundation.[25]
In 2017, 23andMe created a brand marketing advertisement featuring Gru from the movie Despicable Me.[26] In 2018, the company further marketed its brand in advertisements narrated by Warren Buffett.[27]
I’m thinking maybe I should download my DNA results to GEDcom. It is recommended for finding more relatives - not that I want to find a murderer in my family, and I certainly would not expect to. But this tool looks to be a wonderful thing for resolving cold cases.
GEDcom has probably only a small fraction of DNA info that is available on all the genealogy sites.
I have traced my family back two thousand years. It’s amazing how many people I’m related to, and I haven’t found any disreputable characters yet !
DNA is a good investigative tool but I can forsee a clever criminal obtaining another’s DNA and planting it at the scene to throw off or even frame an other individual.
Just run though another persons garbage with rubber gloves and place said items at the crime scene and viola!
Making sure ONE’s own DNA is not present is a problem though. Unless you are wearing a full Hazmat suit....
They couldn’t get it from the masses by volunteers so they use those sites.
...
And hasn’t the DNA from those sites been volunteered?
And of course no conservative would ever dream of doing the same, now would we?
Louis XVII was by all accounts a decent man. But the past caught up with him. His great grandfather Louis XIII was a mass murderer, a nasty piece of work.
You pay more than you think for the sins of the past.
Yes...............
And convicted criminals and I believe some LEOs federal, state and local.
The database will be completed when all us old people die off and the newborns are all sampled...........
2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024, 2048, 4096, 8192, 16384, 32768, 65536, 131072, 262144, 524288, 1048576................
That’s just 20 generations.................
Like they sing in the ancestry commercials:
Getting to know you, getting to know all about you
No thanks. These dna companies are NOT about giving you the warm fuzzies regarding your ancestry, although YOU’LL feel that way.
Nope. It far far more nefarious than you think. Remember, this DNA s**t took off under oblowme. Can’t trust ANYTHING about that lying traitorous bunghole.
I’m not worried about rapists and murderers having any “reasonable expectation of privacy” in the DNA they leave behind while committing their crimes. I’m glad to see them be caught. The information the cops used was public. Anybody could create a profile to see who they were related to on one of these websites. What reasonable expectation of privacy do you have in your relatives’ DNA? Its theirs, not yours.
I’m concerned about the 4th amendment being all but gutted by government online snooping. I’m not concerned about the police using public information to trace DNA left by criminals and catch them with it.
Yes but the DNA is suppose to only be used to identify your remains.
Yes...and the DOJ and FBI are not suppose to fix elections.. but it happens... /s
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