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00:00December the 14th 1991 at Federal Way High School in Seattle two boys see a
00:08suspicious man run from the bushes as they got near the area of where the man
00:14had emerged from they looked over and saw the body of a young woman lying
00:18motionless in the grass they call for help police arrive quickly on the scene
00:24the investigators could tell she had been sexually assaulted in some way shape
00:30or form a composite sketch of the killer is distributed across the state we had
00:37really everything you could wish for as an investigator we had eyewitnesses we had
00:42a single male profile DNA sample from the victim and we all thought that this would
00:49be resolved fairly quickly you had a small town where people didn't really lock
00:53their doors and now we know the boogeyman is not only real but he's in our own
00:57backyard it was upsetting to her friends because they were always wondering is
01:02that person out there are they gonna come and get us the case goes cold but in
01:082011 a pioneer in genetic genealogy approaches law enforcement with a
01:13groundbreaking tool to help solve it was the first case ever that used genealogy
01:21to produce investigative leads so before that there was nothing criminals who
01:28have hidden in the shadows for years find there's no escaping science and their
01:31own family DNA welcome to bloodline detectives
01:51federal way is a city in King County just south of Seattle in Washington state federal way is located right off Pacific
02:10Pacific Highway Pacific Highway is a north-south highway
02:17it's a popular route to take it parallels Interstate 5 so it offers an easy access for
02:26people that are traveling from Seattle King County is actually the largest county in
02:31the state of Washington it's home to large cities like Renton Tacoma and Seattle and two-thirds of
02:42the population of the county live in the suburbs of Seattle on the morning of
02:51December the 14th 1991 two teenage boys are startled by a stranger emerging from the
02:57bushes at federal way high school the body was discovered by two boys who were cutting through
03:04the high school grounds on their way to skateboard at a nearby shopping complex
03:09as they were walking down the lane they saw a man emerged from the brush of this hillside nearby that
03:22man made eye contact with them in turn and began to walk the opposite direction quite briskly the two
03:28boys continued on and as they got near the area of where the man had emerged from they looked over and saw
03:35the body of a young woman lying motionless in the grass they ran home one boy told his stepfather the
03:46other boy stayed behind at the house made the 911 call the stepfather drove with the other boy back to
03:51where this was he realized pretty quickly that this person was deceased and then they waited for the
03:59police to respond the first personnel on scene would be uniformed patrol officers and their job
04:06essentially is to get to the scene contain the scene which basically means make sure they properly secure
04:13it so that there aren't people coming in and out they need to protect evidence they need to make sure if
04:19there's any witnesses that are there that those witnesses are detained so that investigators can
04:24speak with them I don't know exactly what was going through the minds of the detectives at that time
04:31but I knew them personally and grown to work with several of them over the years and I knew them to be
04:37very astute and very well grounded and very good at what they did and very tight into behavioral
04:45characteristics and those kinds of things so I would imagine what was going through their mind at that
04:51point was okay this is really unusual it's in the middle of December it's early in the morning we're
04:59at a high school there isn't any school activities so I would think that they must have just been standing
05:06there trying to make sense of this because it was out of context it didn't make sense with what we
05:12would typically see one of the first things that detectives want to do too is to identify who our
05:19victim is because when you can identify your victim then you can start doing some background investigation
05:26on them find out was there anybody that had any issues with them was there anybody that would have
05:31wanted to harm this person you can also start to establish their timeline their chronology of where
05:38they were prior to arriving at the school it's probably one of the the first steps of the of the
05:43investigative process in any homicide investigation they realized pretty quickly that this was a young
05:50girl who was probably a student of the school there was a uniform that looked like a cheerleading
05:55uniform or for the drill team and they even saw a piece of fabric that was embroidered with the name
06:01sarah people had arrived for the drill team practice and they had already been calling around trying to
06:08find out where sarah was because her car was in the parking lot and she wouldn't have missed practice
06:13so that combined told officers pretty quickly that this was the body of 16 year old sarah yarbro
06:20off after sarah was identified as the victim they contacted her friend they contacted her friend's
06:29mother who told them where the family was which was in ocean shores so the detectives here at the
06:35sheriff's office notified the ocean shores police department we were at a soccer tournament and
06:44andrew was on the field playing and police officer came to the field and said are the yarboros
06:50here he gave us a message that we were to call a king county detective gave us the number and that
07:03they wanted to talk to us that we knew something serious must have happened um i guess i thought
07:10maybe she'd gotten in a car accident or something we were kind of discombobulated and somebody said
07:17andrew was playing they said well we'll bring andrew home so we got in the car with our other son they
07:24didn't want us to go to our house they wanted us to go to one of her friends house we didn't know then
07:31why i guess didn't even occur to us to ask why but the press i guess was camped out in our front yard
07:39so we went to her friend's house and the detective told us when we got there
07:44that they found her body at the school that morning i was playing in a game i do recall
07:54seeing my parents leave i do recall feeling very uneasy
08:02until i called my father and my dad just explained what happened at that point so
08:14sarah was 16 years old and she was a pretty typical teenager she participated in drill team
08:20she loved athletics and art and really enjoyed spending time with her family and her friends
08:26being the youngest she spent a lot of time watching me and as she got older you know got her driver's
08:36license uh had had to or chose to she drove me to practices to school before she was able to drive
08:48you know selflessly walked me in the early morning to swim practice just about every morning all summer
08:55it's so long ago i was so young but looking back and thinking about it she was nurturing she was
09:00very patient with me and my brother she would make peace if needed to between my brother and i so she
09:10had kind of a calming effect on her brothers i think a civilizing effect and uh she was she was
09:19tender towards them she would help andrew with his homework and when i would get frustrated and she
09:26would say mom just let me help him she liked jane austen she was reading emma and northanger abbey when
09:36she was killed and i remember she liked phantom of the opera she had that playing that was kind of the time
09:43when that musical came out so um i know she was listening to that she was kind of eclectic and what
09:51music she liked she would sit downstairs for hours learning to play the piano on her own you didn't have
10:01a youtube video to to watch an instructional video she just you know sat and and worked on it and that
10:08sometimes it was terrible but you could tell that she there was a gradual improvement i think you
10:15know that impression of her and seeing her interests and and how she pursued them with dedication and
10:21passion for things she had sketches she had art books teaching yourself how to draw tech books so
10:30yes very likely could have gone in and studied art history and or at the same time merged her passion for
10:37math and science and art and become an architect i couldn't say what you know a 16 year old would
10:47have would have done but i think there's probably a lot of different prospects and avenues she could
10:52have been or maybe an engineer like her grandfather and father i think she genuinely had joy in spending
11:00time with us and her friends there's clearly a selflessness about her just that selflessness and genuine
11:09care and conversations that you had with her
11:16investigators begin their search for the killer by building a timeline of events leading up to the murder
11:23after they identified our victim as being sarah they were able to speak with one of her friends that
11:28saw her that morning who had stayed the night with sarah at her house so that friend
11:34stated that sarah had left the house at around 7 45 that morning sarah had arrived at the school
11:42about an hour before she needed to she had mistakenly thought that she needed to be at the school at
11:48one time whereas it was actually an hour later when she needed to be at the school
11:52we would learn that there was a drill team event taking place where the members of the drill team
11:59were to be meeting to compete in a drill team competition out of the area and then take a bus
12:05together to this event so by happenstance she arrives at the school early and for some reason
12:13the individual responsible for killing her happened to also be there at the school so we know the two came
12:20into contact somehow in some way and ultimately she ends up being murdered by him and her body is found
12:29about 200 to 300 yards away from where her car was parked in the parking lot by the time that our
12:36victim was found the only vehicle in the parking lot was her vehicle
12:40that was one of the questions that investigators had was how did she end up getting from the vehicle
12:50to the location where ultimately her body was found there wasn't anything that i recall seeing in the
12:56case file that indicated any type of drag marks or anything of that sort so it's hard to know if
13:04the person who did this when he approached her was able to engage her in conversation was able to
13:11lure her to a different part of the campus for some reason we have kind of a mystery as to how
13:16she ended up going from the car to where she was found we do know that there wasn't any evidence at the
13:23vehicle or inside the vehicle that indicated any type of a struggle or anything of that sort that would
13:29have happened right there at the vehicle the next step is an autopsy to determine how sarah died and
13:37gather any additional forensic evidence the forensic pathologist who's conducting the autopsy will walk
13:45the detective through what it is he or she is seeing in sarah's case it was a nylon stocking which is a
13:52very soft material but the ligature marks around her neck would be important so they would be able to
14:00look at that nylon stocking perhaps take some measurements of it stretch it out see if that
14:07would be consistent as the tool that was used to actually strangle her and in this case ultimately
14:13they were able to to make those conclusions
14:15on her clothing was semen and so that was of course collected as evidence that would have been
14:25the semen of our suspect as the crime scene investigation wraps up detectives turn their
14:32focus to the two young witnesses whose recollections reveal vital clues about the man they are searching for
14:45in 1991 the king county sheriff's office in washington state is investigating the sexual assault and murder of
14:5616 year old sarah yarbro found in the overgrowth beside her school grounds with the crime scene secured and
15:04evidence collected detectives now turn to the two boys who discovered her body to learn exactly what they saw
15:10with interviewing children it can be difficult at times because what has happened to them is traumatic
15:19so there's going to be an element of of stress and it's important to help them decompress it's important
15:25to help them understand what it is that they just saw in this case they were key they were the eyewitnesses to
15:34what had happened one of the two boys questioned was 14 year old drew miller drew miller was a very
15:42important witness him and his friend they were the only two witnesses to lay eyes on the person that we
15:49believed to be the man who murdered sarah and they spoke with drew miller and they had a composite artist
15:56show up at the house
15:57from the composite sketch detectives were able to put together an image of a white male in his
16:07mid-20s with hair that was longer in the back and shorter in the front which we call a mullet
16:14at that time and still do drew miller described this man as having what appeared like acne or scars
16:21from acne on his face and they described him as having walked down the hill when he made eye contact
16:28with them he turned and walked in the opposite direction pretty quickly to get out of the area
16:33and they didn't see where he went from there
16:38the composite sketch was key because that was something that was visual that we could actually
16:43put out to the public it was a great starting point so by getting that out to the public and in 1991
16:51the way to do that was primarily through the newspapers and so we used one of the big seattle
16:56newspapers and they printed out a whole story on the case and also put out those composite sketches
17:03and that generated numerous tips
17:08in the end this case generated over 4 000 tips and it came in part from information from the sketch
17:17as well as other details that were provided to the public
17:23they had pictures up all around town for i don't know several years it seemed like of the composite
17:32drawing that the police had of the person so we were always going somewhere and those pictures were
17:38there and even though it was not a really small town everybody in town knew about it so even you know
17:47going to the grocery store people they didn't know whether to look at you not look at you and
17:53say something not say something and so you know that was always difficult
18:01people were terrified in this community this became a real-life boogeyman
18:05this man who showed up out of nowhere
18:08murdered this girl on the grounds of a high school which is supposed to be one of the safest places for
18:13children and then disappeared there was a lot of fear in the area because this was someone who was
18:21brazen this person clearly didn't really have a concern for being caught because they killed her in
18:29broad daylight so the fact that she was murdered and on school campus was all just hard for anyone to
18:37believe it was such a combination of loss and fear you had a small town where people didn't really lock
18:44their doors and now they're wondering who is this guy in the sketch that did this because now we know
18:50the boogeyman is not only real but he's in our own backyard it was upsetting to her friends because they
18:57were always wondering is that person out there are they going to come and get us you know especially at
19:02first you know they didn't know if it was somebody that targeted her or somebody that was part of the
19:10school about a year and a half after sarah was murdered her family and the community got together
19:20to memorialize her and they did this with a really beautiful piece of art that is at the school and
19:26it's a bench and then on the bench are some bronzed items that were either her items or represent items
19:33and it was really a great opportunity for everyone to celebrate and remember her and a big part of this
19:39coming together was done by a man that was family friends robert fuller he was the one that actually
19:46arranged all of it they had an auction to raise money for it and people donated money and they hired a
19:54sculptor larry anderson to do the sculpture they wanted to do the things that most they felt most
20:01represented her which was her school bag and the books that were in it it's a great reminder of sarah's
20:09passions and of all those the symbols of you know i think there was also ballet slippers or a dog and
20:16some of the symbols of her interests you know i'm happy it's still still there for for people and um
20:24and hopefully people ask questions and keep that memory going for for new people it's a beautiful
20:32memory piece and it's important that that be there for the students i think every student that attends
20:38that school needs to understand a little bit about what happened and how that had an effect on the entire
20:47community it really changed the community and their feeling of being safe and secure that was stolen from
20:55them the investigation team believes they are getting closer to identifying the killer
21:02in this case we had really everything you could wish for as an investigator we had eyewitnesses we had the
21:09community that was on board and doing everything that they could to help we had a lot of information
21:16that was coming into our office we had a single male profile dna sample from the victim
21:24so from an investigative standpoint it was great and we all thought that this would be resolved fairly
21:31quickly and i recall very clearly what that energy was like it was literally all hands on deck
21:38everybody drop what they're doing the entire major crime unit was tasked with working on this case so it
21:45was it was really something else detectives have a semen sample from the killer and an emerging forensic
21:54tool that could help identify him the fbi's national database codis the combined dna index system
22:02codis came into fruition about 1993-94 we still knew it was being developed but essentially it was a tool
22:10for investigators to submit dna samples and enter them into this database and the idea was for those dna
22:19samples that were from an unknown person or persons could then be linked up with the dna of offenders
22:25that qualified to be in the system so as you were arrested or convicted for specific felony crimes
22:33over the years your dna would be taken or was supposed to be taken and entered into this database
22:39so it could be compared against unknown offender dna that would be entered by investigators who are trying
22:45to resolve or solve a case that went online the dna evidence that was collected from the semen was
22:54uploaded into codis detectives were hopeful that there would be a match to somebody who was in codis
23:03this is you have to remember this was this was a sexually motivated homicide so that's a very
23:09significant crime this person would have committed some other serious crimes prior to this that's
23:16that's that's a pretty significant crime to be a first-time offender but as as they waited for the
23:22codis results to come back there was no match to anybody in the codis system so that was disheartening
23:27for the detectives at the time they followed the nearly 4 000 leads that they got but they all led nowhere
23:36and they still had the composite sketch out but that wasn't bringing in any information either
23:41so time went on and soon the case went cold it was always looked into and hopes that there was
23:48something that was missed along the way but nothing really came to be and then as the years went on
23:54that was still difficult because you always wondered are they going to catch the person and then that's
24:01going to be very emotional and then there's going to be the trial and so it was kind of this thing
24:06that you're dreading that might happen in the future and then eventually i thought you know maybe the
24:13person had died or you know left the area and i actually didn't think they'd ever catch him
24:22the case goes cold yet again
24:23but in 2011 genealogist colleen fitzpatrick reaches out to law enforcement to offer a scientific breakthrough
24:32that could solve cold case crimes this breakthrough will become the first method of its kind in forensic
24:39science
24:51in king county washington detectives are investigating the 1991 sexual assault and murder of 16 year old
24:57high school student sarah yarbro detectives worked vigorously to solve the cold case throughout the
25:03years and the suspect's dna was entered into codice but no matches were found now in 2011 dr colleen fitzpatrick
25:12an expert in genealogy believes an untested scientific method could help solve this murder
25:20traditional genealogy relies on documentation
25:24birth marriage death records census records military records are very common in our world baptismal records
25:35but genetic genealogy introduces dna so that revolution began about 2000 when there were a few
25:42entrepreneurs that realized that the documentation wasn't there the orphanage burned down or there was a flood
25:49still you still could connect with those relatives through dna so when documentation would be wrong
25:56dna would not be wrong it would point to you know relatives and on the other hand dna is not
26:02always specific but the records can be specific if they are accurate so dna and documentation go hand
26:11in hand they're complementary and genetic genealogy exploits that complementarity
26:17genetic genealogy came into being in about 2000. in the early days we can only use y dna and that
26:25goes along the male line of the family so that was suitable for genealogists because that's the same way
26:32the name is passed down in the family so genealogists caught on and i had my brother tested for example to see
26:39if we could connect with other fitzpatricks
26:41in 2011 one night i was falling asleep and i realized you know what the genealogists are using
26:49the same markers as law enforcement is using for their y profiles so i said male adoptees have been
26:56using this to try and find their birth fathers if a male adoptee takes a y dna test puts it in the
27:03genealogy databases and he comes up with matches to certain names he has a fair chance that that's his
27:09father's last name so law enforcement was using those same markers and i thought what does it matter
27:16if it's an adoptee or a violent offender or a john doe it's still dna from somebody who doesn't know who
27:23they are you don't know who they are in 2011 she visited seattle she met with some local detectives
27:33and broached the subject of using genetic genealogy to start doing a start constructing an ancestral
27:42chart of our suspects to help identify them and give them a name she states that she was practically
27:48laughed onto the room um it was this new technology nobody had ever heard of uh there's this new practice
27:57and and it she didn't really generate a lot of interest at that time i think their supervisor had
28:04told them hear this little old lady out you know what she had to say and whatever just pat her on the
28:09head whatever but it was okay you know they they gave me a fair hearing they weren't interested and i said
28:17i lost the battle but i i'm not going to lose the war however county sheriff's office detective jim allen
28:24who was in attendance at that meeting approached her afterwards and brought up and mentioned to her
28:31that he had precisely the case that might be a great candidate to use genetic genealogy and that
28:37was a sarah yarborough case sarah yarborough was the first case ever that used genealogy to produce
28:44investigative leads so before that there was nothing dr fitzpatrick's novel idea to apply
28:53investigative genetic genealogy to cold cases is put to the test and almost immediately the first
28:59leads begin to surface with the dna evidence of our our mr x in sarah's case which was our suspect
29:08she was able to trace the ancestry back to the year 1620 uh to uh persons with the surname of fuller
29:17mayflower they all went back to a robert fuller in massachusetts in the 1600s he was not on the
29:25mayflower but he was a relative of the mayflower fullers so of course i'm told jim allen all of this
29:33so now we don't know who the killer is but we have a cousin and we know his genealogy back to the 1600s
29:41i told jim allen that of course and we started working on it
29:45there were probably half a dozen fullers in the federal way area and that did eventually lead to
29:51the biggest breakthrough at that point which was an actual name of a possible suspect and that name
29:58was robert fuller this was shocking to everyone robert fuller had been the one who helped to get
30:04the statue for sarah he was close family friends to the yarborough family it seemed impossible that he
30:10was the culprit looking into it a little further he was clearly not the right age he didn't even
30:16resemble the sketch a little bit nothing really added up he did do a dna sample it was not a match
30:23he clearly hadn't been the killer as the years passed the fuller name brings no new dna matches
30:33but in 2017 forensic genetic genealogy improves and dr fitzpatrick calls detectives with an innovative
30:41approach i want to emphasize here i was tracking the technology this took a long time and then in 2017
30:50and 18 when it became a thing to do cold case not with ancestry itself but ancestry-esque like the same
30:59as you do adoption searches i said okay six times a charm and i called kathy decker and i said please
31:09can i do sarah yarborough i realized that william fuller and the killer were relatives but i didn't
31:16know how close they were related that's when snip testing started it was sort of prehistoric ancestry
31:24testing right now ancestry you know is very popular it tests you on 600 000 point snips on your dna and
31:32they use that data to produce your dna list of dna cousins the more snps that match between two samples
31:39the closer they are related right away this technology proved to be very useful i had two genealogists
31:47gretchen stack and holly turk working on it there's they were sisters and they took them two weeks
31:53that's actually pretty quick for a lot of the work we do
32:00i remember that day getting the phone call from dr fitzpatrick was surreal it still is today when
32:06i think about it colleen called i took the phone call and she said um we figured it out we've solved
32:13it and i said i'm sorry what you've solved it and she said yes my team and i think that we have
32:21figured this out she goes i'm giving this to you as a tip because that's what it is it's an
32:25investigative lead um however um i would recommend that you you know focus on this i think it's good
32:32information and so she gave us the information on the brothers it was patrick leon nicholas and edward
32:39nicholas
32:42detectives finally have a lead the two brothers are still alive and one of them is the killer
32:47the investigation now ramps up to track them down and bring sarah's killer to justice
33:04detectives are reinvestigating the 1991 sexual assault and murder of 16 year old sarah yarbro whose
33:11body was discovered in the grounds of her high school in federal way washington the case went cold for
33:17decades until investigators were approached by dr colleen fitzpatrick who utilized investigative genetic
33:23genealogy to narrow the suspect list down to two brothers patrick and edward nicholas we knew right
33:32then and there that okay we need to drop what we're doing and we're gonna focus all of our attention on
33:38these two brothers and try to figure out who is involved how they may have been involved and get to
33:45the bottom of it one of the brothers edward had dna already in codis so we knew that it wasn't edward
33:52so that caused us to focus our attention on his brother patrick and we started gathering all the intel
34:01we could on him through computer systems that gave us some ideas of his prior arrest record we knew that he
34:08had been arrested for rape in the 80s unfortunately that was well before codis was in existence so there
34:14was no dna that was taken from him that that crime would have qualified for dna but it was before codis
34:22even existed we knew that he had an arrest record it included child molestation and that was at a time
34:30when codis was up and running and that would have been a qualifying crime as well but that crime was
34:35actually dropped down to a misdemeanor charge which happens and in that case the victims weren't able
34:41to to testify so when it got dropped down it no longer qualified as a codis crime unfortunately so
34:49he kind of skirted the system but we gathered all that information we obtained photographs of patrick
34:57from department of licensing so driver's license photos going back in time booking photographs anything
35:04that we could find that showed how his appearance had changed or if it had changed much over the
35:09years and one of the things that was most striking to us when we started getting back to that early 90
35:15time frame was how much he fit the composite sketch of the suspect with the hair short in the front long
35:24in the back the pockmarks on the face we couldn't make much sense of that then we later felt that that
35:32likely would have been perhaps from sarah scratching him that those may have been some marks on his face
35:38that the that the kids saw um but it was just this whole quick in motion um we had all the investigators
35:48that we could gather involved in this as we needed to do a lot of things at the same time we needed to
35:55figure out what patrick did daily we needed to understand what his lifestyle was we needed to
36:01have surveillance teams set up on him we needed to confirm that he was in fact living at the address
36:07that he said he was living at on his driver's license or at his arrest records so we had a whole
36:13lot a lot of work to do detectives can't believe their luck patrick nicholas is still living at the
36:20address listed on his driver's license they move quickly launching surveillance on the suspect
36:25what we really needed to do was get a sample of dna from patrick nicholas so although we were able to
36:33have a link at this point we still needed conclusive evidence that showed that this was the person that
36:40committed this crime so we had some of our undercover detectives began to surveil patrick nicholas when he
36:47got home from work when he would walk from his house and one evening they followed him as he walked on
36:53foot from his house to a laundromat to do laundry as he went outside of the laundromat to smoke a cigarette
37:01he dropped the cigarette he actually dropped two he smoked two cigarettes and threw both of the
37:05cigarette butts on the ground these were collected by our detectives
37:12they were immediately transported to me and we got those to the crime lab
37:17asap we all knew hey we think we're finally here this might be it and so she was able to to make that
37:25connection call us and say yes now we can say definitively we have a match the dna that is on
37:33the cigarette butts that is off the napkin is in fact the dna profile of patrick nicholas however what
37:41we also needed to do at that point because those dna samples were coming off items and not directly
37:47from patrick the next step was to obtain a search warrant which we did for patrick once we had him
37:55under arrest and we swabbed him for his dna so that was a direct dna sample now from patrick
38:03and we were able again through the crime lab to say yes this is consistent not only do we have dna from
38:09the cigarette butt but but we also have directly from him it's a match this is your guy
38:18at the station patrick nicholas claims he doesn't know why he's been brought in he refuses to answer
38:23questions until he suddenly says something that stops the detective's cold i remember when we mentioned
38:30to him that he was being investigated for attacking a female that this was a homicide investigation
38:39there was a point where he asked what year and we were really put off by that we didn't expect that
38:48and i looked at detective free and he looked at me and we're like okay wow that's interesting of course
38:54we didn't verbalize that but inside we're like okay well that's not good right so how many how many of
39:01these do we have is what i'm thinking and so that even furthered the necessity of us to get as much as
39:08we could from him in the timeline because this is your one opportunity to do that i mean we don't know
39:14how many other cases there are out there that might need to be resolved
39:19we put nicholas into a potent cell to be transported to the king county jail to be booked
39:28once he was transported from the precinct we then joined our colleagues over at the suspect's house
39:36to assist with the search warrant detective free and i responded to the compound which is where
39:43he was living at the time which was a series of kind of dilapidated buildings there was no electricity
39:51there was a lot of garbage it was frankly pretty disgusting place to try to survive and live
39:58and so we spent a little bit of time there just trying to learn from the investigators who were tasked
40:04with searching that compound what it was that they were finding and they were finding some really
40:10we thought important evidence such as information about sarah's case newspaper clippings bulletins that
40:19had been put out of her those kinds of things so there's definitely was a connection or an interest between
40:25he and and sarah he had piles of pornography throughout the home a lot of which was animated or cartoon
40:33which was very unsettling and most damning they found in some desk drawers photos of young
40:40girls high school aged wearing a uniform very similar to the uniform sarah was wearing when she was murdered
40:49at that point once we had finished processing the scene we gathered our evidence we had a debrief
40:57one of the things that we wanted to do first was to make contact with the yarborough family and
41:02tell them that we had made an arrest in sarah's murder
41:04andrew was their point of contact so he was the one they contacted first when they arrested him
41:14i didn't recognize the name or know know anything about that person so um but yeah it was uh
41:21a little bit overwhelming that many years later to get a call late in the evening to
41:28to find uh to receive that news but the name didn't mean anything to me
41:38in 2020 the covid19 pandemic sweeps across the globe
41:43patrick nicholas remains in custody and it takes more than three years for his case to reach trial
41:48we knew that it was going to be emotional for the family and for her friends and even for the
41:56prosecutors as well as the investigators there was not a single person involved in this investigation
42:02that wasn't somehow deeply affected by it it's important that the family know that sarah is being
42:09looked at as a human being that she was a loving living person and not just some entity or piece of
42:16property and that this be a focus about her and not about patrick nicholas and that her family deserve to
42:25have answers after a five-day trial the jury returns a guilty verdict he was found guilty of murder first
42:36degree and murder second degree with sexual motivation and sentenced to 46 years in prison
42:42during the sentencing phase of the trial victim impact statements were read and dozens of people
42:49came to share with this man the impact he had made on their life people that knew and loved sarah
42:56people that were affected by her loss i heard the victim's impact statements and that will never leave me
43:04one of the people that got up was the neighbor who lived across the street from the yarboros
43:10and the woman said that she'd get up at night to use the bathroom she looked across the street and
43:15the light was on in sarah's room and the mother was sitting on the bed crying
43:20as i heard story after story after story like that and that will never leave me
43:28you kind of settle in with the feeling of loss and grief along with your normal feelings and they just kind of
43:36co-exist i guess um but you're you never get over it it's never gone
43:47i don't have a trial in front of us to sit through again relive all of that
43:54but i had a daughter last year and
43:57i just remember mourning sarah and and not in the in the painful sense of losing her
44:08it was almost in the sense of um on behalf of my parents
44:13i had had this this beautiful child for a couple of days
44:18i can't imagine having her for 16 years of her life and then losing her
44:22so i mourn sarah again and in a way more like my parents
44:31after more than three decades of tireless work by the king county sheriff's office on the sarah
44:36yarborough case her killer is finally behind bars all thanks to dr colleen fitzpatrick
44:43a pioneer in forensic genetic genealogy
44:48i do know she was a former rocket scientist which amazes me
44:52so i often when we're in conversation i'll be like well it doesn't take a rocket scientist
44:55oh yes it does that's right it does take a rocket scientist so yeah she has an amazing
45:02background and what's unique about her but she's highly intelligent but she has the ability to
45:08speak to you in a way that helps you to understand what it is that she does because it's it's pretty
45:15complex so with the dna databases that were available then and that are available now i think that that's
45:24that's brilliant um and why not try everything possible to resolve a case i mean the families deserve that
45:32i'm very happy that i was at the right time in the right place to figure this out not only to solve
45:41the case but to start a revolution i didn't mean to do that all i wanted to know was was this idea
45:47going to work or not that was it and it worked and it worked like spades so now you know in the
45:55early days i got laughed at in that first meeting but all i have to say is who's laughing now
46:02so
46:06so
46:11so
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46:17so
46:23Transcription by CastingWords
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