Face of Nation : When William Talbott II spoke this summer during his sentencing for murdering a young B.C. couple in Washington state more than 30 years ago, he told the court he wasn’t a violent person.
“The level of violence in this is something that I can’t even comprehend,” Talbott said before he was sentenced for killing 18-year-old Tanya van Cuylenborg and 20-year-old Jay Cook. “I’ve gone all my life as a very passive person, never raising my hand towards anyone. I rarely even get angry.”
But police interviews with his family that were obtained by The Fifth Estate through access to information requests provide a markedly different portrait of the first man to be convicted as a result of genealogical research.
Van Cuylenborg and Cook had been travelling from Saanich, B.C., to Seattle for an overnight trip in November 1987 when they disappeared. She was found shot to death in a ditch in rural Washington state six days later. Cook was strangled to death and his body was found two days after his girlfriend’s. Talbot, now 56, was arrested on May 17, 2018. In interviews police did with Talbott’s father and two sisters that day, a picture emerged of a disturbed boy who grew into an angry, violent man.
“Bill had a lot of anger issues,” his youngest sister, Malena Grail, told police when they interviewed her at home in Oregon shortly after her brother’s arrest. “He kicked me a few times with boots on, and I ended up calling the police. “You know … he felt like life owed him something.”
Grail remembered one pushing incident in their home in Woodinville, Wa., between her brother and father, who was disabled from a motorcycle accident. She said Talbott was no more than 11 years old at the time.
Talbott’s father, William Earl Talbott Sr., told police he and his late wife, Patricia, got Talbott and his sisters counselling following some of Talbott’s outbursts in their family, but it didn’t seem to help. When Talbott was 16, he told his father he was planning on running him over with a car as soon as he got his licence.
“He was gonna show me when he was 16 and gonna run me over so I said … you won’t get your driver’s licence till you can get it yourself,” Talbott Sr. told police. Talbott’s other sister, Inga Routh, told police she suffered very serious injuries at the hands of her brother. “He beat me up, broke my tailbone. I had to go to the hospital,” Routh said when she was interviewed in her home.
