Court reinstates guilty verdicts in 1987 killings of couple

EVERETT, Wash. (AP) — The Washington state Supreme Court has reinstated two aggravated murder convictions for a man in the 1987 killings of a young Canadian couple. The Daily Herald reports that the high court on Thursday unanimously rejected the defense’s arguments that William Talbott II should be granted a new trial due to one juror’s alleged bias. The justices concluded that the defense could have dismissed the juror ahead of Talbott’s trial but opted not to. Detectives arrested Talbott in 2018 after using the then-novel method of forensic genealogy to connect him to the slayings of Tanya Van Cuylenborg and Jay Cook. He was convicted in 2019 and sentenced to life in prison.