A Washington State trucker linked to the cold case deaths of a Vancouver island couple has been charged with a second count of aggravated first-degree murder.
Fifty-five-year old William Earl Talbott was charged on Friday.
Police say they used public genealogy websites to identify Talbott as a suspect in the 1987 deaths of 18-year-old Tanya Van Cuylenborg and 20-year old Jay Cook.
WATCH: Crime Stoppers: Jay Cook & Tanya Van Cuylenborg
Talbott was arrested after a DNA sample was obtained from a cup that fell from his truck. DNA was then uploaded to a public online genealogy database.
Van Cuylenborg and Cook left their Saanich homes for an overnight trip to Seattle more than three decades ago. Their bodies were found days later.
Van Cuylenborg had been sexually assaulted, bound and shot in the head. Cook was beaten with rocks and strangled.
“From all available information, these acts of violence were as random as they were savage,” Craig Matheson, Snohomish County’s chief criminal deputy prosecutor, wrote in court documents.
— With files from The Canadian Press and The Associated Press
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