Your DNA Is Out There

Source-Bloomberg- On the afternoon of Nov. 18 1987 Jay Cook and Tanya Van Cuylenborg left Saanich B.C. their hometown to pick up some furnace equipment in Seattle for Cooks father. Saanich and Seattle are a little more than 100 miles apart but the trip takes almost five hours: a ferry into the U.S. across the Strait of Juan de Fuca another across Puget Sound and between them a winding coastal drive through evergreen forests and fishing towns. The young couple planned to make an overnight jaunt of it. A blurry photo snapped at the time shows them beside the bronze Ford van they took. Van Cuylenborg 18 holds a walk-like-an-Egyptian pose; Cook two years older and a head taller looks off to the side half-smiling his dark hair falling over one eye. The next day they didnt show up at the heating-supply store nor did they return home that night as planned. On Nov. 24 Van Cuylenborgs partially clothed body hands bound by a zip tie was found in a roadside ditch 75 miles north of Seattle. She had been raped and shot in the back of the head. Two days later hunters spotted Cooks body wrapped in a torn blue blanket under a bridge in a small town outside Seattle. Hed been beaten over the head with a rock and strangled; a pack of cigarettes was stuffed in his mouth. Your DNA Is Out There. Do You Want Law Enforcement Using It? Detectives from Snohomish and Skagit counties sheriffs departments had a few things to go on. There was the blue blanket which didnt belong to either of the victims and there was Van Cuylenborgs missing Minolta camerathe lens turned up in a pawnshop in Portland Ore. The killer left behind extra zip ties and a box of .380-caliber bullets and in what seemed like a taunt the surgical gloves hed used to ensure that there were no fingerprints. Investigators carefully gathered up and tagged what they found. They also gathered something else a new type of evidence.