As a case on its own this wouldn’t have been as interesting, but combined with the focus on DNA technology and how it’s changing, this really worked for me.
The murders of Tanya Van Cuylenborg and Jay Cook in 1987 went unsolved until 2018, when the cold case detective, Jim Scharf, decided to use genetic genealogy on the case, and suddenly within weeks they had a suspect and an arrest. But the suddenness of events in 2018 was based on decades of cold case detecting, and more importantly, the evolution of DNA forensic technology, which Humes traces throughout the book as he simultaneously takes us through investigative updates on the case itself.
The Canadian couple had gone on a business road trip for Jay’s parents to deliver a boiler to Seattle from Canada, and it was their first major trip away as a couple. When they didn’t deliver the boiler, and didn’t return home, their families knew something was terribly wrong, even if police refused to investigate because they hadn’t been gone long enough. Tanya and Jay’s murders were just two that might have been solved, or prevented, had police not been sticking to the puzzling mandate of not looking for a person before they had been missing 72 hours, despite that time period being the most crucial in missing persons cases.
This is a very standard true crime story, with the added bonus of the history of forensic DNA technology. As mentioned above, that really saved this book for me, bumping it up a full star. It was really interesting to see how and when things evolved, as well as Humes speculating on what will happen in the future in terms of laws regulating the technology.
I’m glad I read this book, but I don’t know if I would recommend it to anyone who doesn’t already like true crime. Or DNA tech, I guess.