Events prior to the murders
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. Cook and Van Cuylenborg took the MV ''Coho'' ferry from Victoria toThe murders
On 24 November, Tanya Van Cuylenborg's half-naked body was found in a ditch by a rural road near Alger, in Skagit County, Washington, a short distance south of Bellingham. She had been raped, bound with plastic ties, and shot in the head. Investigators initially considered Cook a suspect, though both Cook's and Van Cuylenborg's families vehemently rejected this possibility. On 25 November, Tanya's wallet and keys were found discarded near the Greyhound station in Bellingham. The van was found a few blocks away. Inside the van were plastic ties of the same type used to bind Tanya, plastic gloves, and various receipts, including the Bremerton-Seattle ferry ticket, confirming the belief that the couple had taken the second ferry. However, Tanya's Minolta X-700 35 mm camera, which she had brought on the trip, was missing and has never been recovered. On 26 November, Jay Cook's body was discovered nearly 60 miles from where Tanya's body had been found two days earlier. Jay had been beaten with rocks and strangled.Investigation and later events
The police believed that the killer was taunting them by leaving the plastic gloves in plain view. Detective Robert Gebo of the Seattle Police Department stated: "He leaves those behind as a sign to the police that you needn't look for fingerprints because I wore these gloves. And he has confidence that there's nothing that's going to connect him with these crimes." The police were in fact able to obtain the suspect's DNA from the van, but there was no match on any of the criminal databases. Despite the lack of a match, the police believed that the specific manner in which the victims were killed (which has not been revealed in detail publicly) suggested that the killer was familiar with the prison system. The lack of a match despite a potential prison background could be explained by the suspect having been incarcerated before DNA collection from criminals became commonplace or technologically possible. Investigators believed that the couple might have met their killer on one of the ferries, most likely the second one, and offered him a ride upon reaching Seattle. 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.Perpetrator
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" bySee also
*References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Cook, Jay and Van Cuylenborg, Tanya 1980s in Seattle 1980s missing person cases 1987 in Washington (state) 1987 murders in the United States Couples Formerly missing people Missing person cases in Washington (state) Murder in Washington (state) November 1987 events in the United States Rapes in the United States