ceto 35 years. in december, sherry went before a judge. she hoped her story of being an unwitting accomplice in her husband's murder would buy her some mercy, but the evidence exposed that story as a lie. richardson: the judge couldn't stand her. he gave her 30 years. narrator: as unlikely as it seemed, tim and sherry apparently thought they could pull off this crime. their main mistake? they had no idea their cellphones had been tracking every move they made and proved without a doubt they had conspired to kill fred engel. the cellular data definitely shifted the direction of the investigation straight at her. richardson: i've described it over and over again as a busted lamp or a busted vase. the forensics is the glue that sticks it all together. cestare: that's what turned the whole investigation around to focus at her, to focus at timmy.

that's what also told us there was no other players involved in this other than those two. >> focus at heart, the focus of timmy that's what also told us there was no other players involved in this other than those two up next, a young couples road-trip ends in murder. >> that wasn't long before everything turned to help what was done to that was so horrified. police have plenty of evidence, but can't connect their victims to a killer. where did cross paths? >> and what exactly happened? those questions finally get answered? >> after technology available to anyone on the internet. greg's the case wide-open in

the summer of 1987, a young canadian couple had just started dating j. cooke was 20 his girlfriend tenure then carlin berg was 18 they both mental pay high, but they weren't in the same year at school. >> and so it was through some mutual friends. they met jay was six foot four, broad shoulders very lean, very handsome, both j and thani were quiet. suite loving people. jay's father owned a furnace business and in november, as the couple, if they could drive from victoria, 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. 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.