The Forever Witness

How DNA and Genealogy Solved a Cold Case Double Murder

By: Edward Humes

Narrated by: Edward Humes

“Thought-provoking true-crime thriller…the book raises urgent questions of balancing public and private good that we’ll likely be dealing with as long as the title implies.”—Wall Street Journal

A relentless detective and a civilian genealogist solve a haunting cold case—and launch a crime-fighting revolution that tests the fragile line between justice and privacy.

In November 1987, a young couple from the idyllic suburbs of Vancouver Island on an overnight trip to Seattle vanished without a trace. A week later, the bodies of Tanya Van Cuylenborg and her boyfriend Jay Cook were found in rural Washington. It was a brutal crime, and it was the perfect crime: With few clues and no witnesses in the vast and foreboding Olympic Peninsula, an international manhunt turned up empty, and the sensational case that shocked the Pacific Northwest gradually slipped from the headlines.

In deep-freeze, long-term storage, biological evidence from the crime sat waiting, as Detective Jim Scharf poured over old case files looking for clues his predecessors missed. Meanwhile, 1,200 miles away in California, CeCe Moore began her lifelong fascination with genetic genealogy, a powerful forensic tool that emerged not from the crime lab, but through the wildly popular home DNA ancestry tests purchased by more than 40 million Americans. When Scharf decided to send the cold case’s decades-old DNA to Parabon NanoLabs, he hoped he would finally bring closure to the Van Cuylenborg and Cook families. He didn’t know that he and Moore would make history.

Genetic genealogy, long the province of family tree hobbyists and adoptees seeking their birth families, has made headlines as a cold case solution machine, capable of exposing the darkest secrets of seemingly upstanding citizens. In the hands of a tenacious detective like Scharf, genetic genealogy has solved one baffling killing after another. But as this crime-fighting technique spreads, its sheer power has sparked a national debate: Can we use DNA to catch the murderers among us, yet still protect our last shred of privacy in the digital age—the right to the very blueprint of who we are?

Fascinating story

This was a great book but I wish a pro had read it. I found the narration a little lacking. But an amazing story and well written and researched.

Slow Burn

Interesting case, but very drawn out in this author’s writing style. The actual people, investigation and court proceedings are really really captivating, but the main course through the plot was just a little lacking in good story telling. Everything about genealogy in forensic science and all its current breakthroughs though was truly remarkable.

Well done and detailed

This is a fascinating true crime story with exhaustive and well detailed research, leading to the conviction of a rapist and killer, who escaped detection for far too long. The author has done an excellent job, pulling together all of the details that spanned so many years.

Fascinating.

A miracle that we can bring justice to these suffering families; and we can finally punish those responsible. This true story puts all the pieces together a good narration by the author himself.

Very interesting

Well written, researched, and read account of the first trial using genetic genealogy. Endlessly fascinated by this subject