Murders of Jay Cook and Tanya Van Cuylenborg

The Washington State Supreme Court, on 23 December 2022 reinstated the guilty verdict as the defense did not dismiss the juror. Talbot remains in custody awaiting further appeals.

On 7 December 2021, an appellate court overturned the conviction of William Earl Talbott II citing juror bias. Prosecutors were planning on holding a second trial. On 22 December 2022, this was rejected.

On 11 April 2018, a composite sketch of the suspect was released based on the DNA collected from semen found on Van Cuylenborg's trousers at the crime scene using a process called "snapshot DNA phenotyping" by Parabon Nanolabs. The case was also investigated by Parabon using genetic genealogy by uploading the DNA to the public website GEDmatch.com, the same site that led to the arrest of the Golden State Killer suspect Joseph James Deangelo.

On 18 May 2018, the Snohomish County Sheriff announced that William Earl Talbott II had been arrested for the murder of Van Cuylenborg. He was found guilty in June 2019 of two counts of aggravated first-degree murder and sentenced to two sentences of life imprisonment without parole.

In the months after the murders, both victims' families received a series of taunting greeting cards featuring graphic descriptions of the murders. The cards bore postmarks from Seattle, Los Angeles, and New York, and were written by the same person. In 2010, it was announced that the writer of the cards had been found: a 78 year-old Canadian transient with mental health issues. The police confirmed that he was not the killer and had no connection to the crime.

Cook and Van Cuylenborg met in high school and had been in a relationship for about six months. On 18 November 1987, they left in Cook's father's bronze 1977 Ford Club van for an overnight trip to the Seattle area to purchase parts for Cook's father's business.

Jay Roland Cook (16 December 1966 – 18 November 1987) and Tanya Van Cuylenborg (7 March 1969 – 18 November 1987) were a Canadian couple from Saanich, British Columbia who were murdered while on a trip to Seattle, Washington in November 1987.