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Forensic Tales discusses topics that some listeners may find disturbing. Listener discretion is advised. A 16-year-old high school student from Washington is savagely raped and brutally murdered just yards away from her classmates. She's raped and killed as her classmates board a school bus to head out for a dance competition.
With dozens of potential eyewitnesses and two boys who saw the suspect, it seemed like it was an open and shut case. But it would take investigators almost three decades before they had a potential suspect in the murder. Was a killer about to get away with the perfect murder? Or could the advancements in genetic genealogy finally crack a cold case?
This is Forensic Tales, episode number 40, Sarah Yarborough. ♪
Thank you.
Welcome to Forensic Tales. I'm your host, Courtney Fretwell. Forensic Tales is a weekly true crime podcast that discusses real, bone-chilling true crime stories and how forensic science has been used in the case. Some cases have been solved through cutting-edge forensic techniques, while other cases remain unsolved.
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Another way you can support Forensic Tales is by leaving us a rating with a review. Now, let's talk about the story of Sarah Yarborough. Hey, Forensic Tales listeners. Thank you so much for joining me for the 40th episode of the show.
As some of you know, my fiancé and I, we were supposed to have gotten married two days ago. But just like many other couples, we've been forced to postpone our wedding due to COVID-19. So we'll be going on vacation, but don't worry, there will still be an episode released next Monday to satisfy your true crime and forensic science itch.
The case we're covering this week was a request from one of our very own Forensic Tales listeners.
If there's a case you want covered here on the show, let me know. Connect with the show on Instagram or send an email to Courtney at ForensicTales.com. We get a lot of requests. And if you've submitted a case or a story, rest assured it's on our content calendar to cover in a future episode. So please keep sending them in.
The story of Sarah Yarborough comes out of the state of Washington. It's a case that remained cold for decades, that haunted the victim's family and the entire community for years. In December 1991, Sarah was a 16-year-old high school student at Federal Way High School in the city of Federal Way. Federal Way is a city in the Seattle metropolitan area settled right into King County.
And with a population just under 100,000, it's the 10th largest city in the state. Sarah was a girl who if you passed by in the hallways in between classes, you couldn't help but notice her. She was tall, she was beautiful, and you couldn't miss her big red curly hair.
Her younger brother, Andrew, who was 11 years old at the time, described his big sister as someone who loved music and loved art. She danced, and she was even on her high school's drill team. He remembers his big sister always looking out for him. She was really the best big sister any 11-year-old boy could ask for.
On the morning of December 14th, 1991, Sarah left her house to go to Federal Way High School around 8 o'clock in the morning. Now, even though it was a Saturday, she was going to campus because the drill team she was on had a competition later that day. So the entire team was going to meet at the school, get on buses, and head out to the competition.
When the rest of Sarah's teammates arrived at the high school, they began boarding the bus. But Sarah was noticeably missing from the team, and she never made it on the bus. While the members of the drill team boarded that school bus just after 9 a.m., two 12-year-old boys spotted a man coming out of the bushy hillside right behind the school.
The boys briefly made eye contact with the man and watched as he walked away. Once the man was out of sight, the two boys approached the hillside and they looked down. Right there on the hill was a lifeless body of a young girl dressed in her drill team uniform. That's when they discovered Sarah's body.
The two boys ran as quickly as they could back home to tell their parents about what they saw, about the gruesome discovery of Sarah's body. Sarah's body was discovered in a bushy area right next to Federal Way High School, just 150 yards away from where she parked her car. Even more troubling than discovering that Sarah had been murdered was
was the fact that she was murdered in broad daylight as she arrived at school. Witnesses recalled seeing Sarah arrive at school around 8, 10 in the morning. So she would have been murdered just moments before the rest of the drill team arrived and were supposed to get on the bus at 9 a.m. Sarah had been beaten and strangled to death with her own stockings.
There was also evidence that she had been sexually assaulted by her killer. From a criminological perspective, this is a very bold move by the offender. We know that she was killed sometime around 8 o'clock in the morning. We know that football players were practicing on campus that day, that the drill team was out there. So that leaves the possibility for a lot of potential eyewitnesses.
So this is a really, really bold move by whoever the killer is, which suggests to me that this likely isn't the first time he's done something like this before. He has too much comfort and he's displayed way too much confidence in himself for this to be his very first victim. At least that's what I get from this offender's behavior, right?
He could have been caught almost instantly by any one of these potential eyewitnesses. So once Sarah's body was discovered, the police had the absolutely heartbreaking job of notifying Sarah's parents. In an interview for True Crime Daily, Sarah's brother Andrew, who was 11 years old at the time, remembers that he was at a soccer tournament that day with his parents.
And he remembers several uniformed police officers showing up to that soccer game and telling his parents that something terrible had happened to Sarah. Police interviewed Sarah's classmates and all the students who were on campus that morning. No one that police interviewed heard any screams or anything like that.
A jogger came forward who reported seeing the suspect interact with Sarah in the bushes that morning. He told police he was running by the high school. He saw a woman lying down with a guy on top of her. He said he thought that the two kids were making out. So he didn't think much of it. And when he saw the kids, he thought they were making out. He just kept jogging.
But that was it. The jogger was the only other person besides the two boys who discovered Sarah's body who recalled seeing any unknown male interact with Sarah that morning. Police also interviewed Sarah's family and friends to see if maybe she had any enemies or anyone out there that would want to harm her. But they didn't learn anything out of the ordinary.
She wasn't into drugs. She didn't have any jealous ex-boyfriends. No one could think of a single person who would want to do something so terrible to someone like Sarah. It just didn't make any sense. Nobody could explain or even rationalize why someone would murder her.
Sarah's murder didn't just rock the community a federal way. It rocked the entire state of Washington. It was absolutely shocking that a 16-year-old girl could be strangled and killed in broad daylight with so many potential witnesses. People in the community were scared. People were afraid to be out at night. Kids started walking in groups.
It was a really scary time for the community, especially knowing that whoever killed Sarah was still out there. Are there other victims? Has he done something like this before? And who's next? Her murder was so violent and seemed so random that people started wondering if they could be next or their daughter could be next.
Is there a serial rapist or a serial killer who's targeting young girls living in the community? After Sarah's murder, over 2,500 tips poured into the King County Sheriff's Department, the law enforcement agency who was in charge of the investigation. People in the community were desperate for answers. They needed to find her killer. They needed justice for Sarah.
But even after receiving over 2,500 tips, police weren't able to identify any persons of interest or possible suspects. Even though the tips didn't bring any possible suspects, investigators working the case had something much better. Investigators recovered one very important piece of forensic evidence, and that was DNA.
They recovered a full male DNA profile from the crime scene. The DNA profile came from a semen sample that was located on Sarah's clothes. This discovery was huge for the investigation. Not only was this a DNA profile, it was a full male DNA profile.
The sample was in perfect condition for DNA testing to be done in order to generate a suspect. The kind of sample that police had with this one doesn't really get any better from a forensic perspective. They thought they hit the jackpot. But when the sample was sent to the lab for testing and for the sample to be run through CODIS, our national DNA database, they didn't get a hit.
The DNA sample didn't match any known offenders in the database. So now authorities were back to square one. All they really had were the two 12-year-old boys who discovered the man and possibly saw the suspect. And then they also had the jogger who passed by and thought it was just two teenagers making out with each other.
Without being able to identify the DNA sample, investigators didn't have much to go on in Sarah's murder. And that's when weeks turned into months and months turned into years. Years would go by with only a handful of people emerging as possible persons of interest in the murder. But there was never any arrest in the case.
And as the years rolled on, Sarah's classmates went on to graduate high school, to attend college, and to start careers of their own. But it was Sarah who was frozen in time. One of Sarah's high school classmates was a man by the name of Ted Bow.
This classmate would eventually become a police captain with the Kings County Sheriff's Department and be one of the officers in charge of Sarah's case many years later. As head investigator on the case, this was personal for Captain Bowe. He knew Sarah. He grew up with this girl.
He knew that he needed to solve this and finally bring some justice and peace to Sarah's family, as well as the entire community, a federal way. The only physical description they had of the suspect was that he was in his late teens, possibly early 20s, and he's thought to have had shaggy, dirty blonde hair. And there was a high likelihood he had blue eyes.
With a description like this that probably matched half the student body at Federal Way High School or many of the other young men living in the greater Seattle area. But with this physical description, authorities knew they couldn't just wait around for there to be a hit on the DNA profile. So several years into the case, which had now become cold,
Investigators enlisted the help of a forensic sketch artist. With that description, the forensic artist was able to put together a composite sketch of Sarah's killer. The sketch was shown around everywhere in hopes that someone, anyone out there, would recognize who this person is and call in a tip. But same thing. Weeks turned into months turned into years.
with nothing. For many, many people, the murder of Sarah from the beginning seemed like it should have been a very easy case to solve. She was murdered in broad daylight right next to a high school with dozens of kids present. Two boys even saw the killer. A jogger passed by during the act and
Many felt like this case should have been solved within just a few days. Sarah's case also had a lot of media attention and there was a lot of community awareness. People were really involved. They wanted answers and they wanted this case to be solved. It wasn't going to be a case that was just swept under the rug and forgotten about. And I think that's one of the hardest parts of the story is
Everyone wanted this murder to be solved because it was so brutal and it was so pointless. And it just wasn't happening. They weren't getting any good leads or suspects in the case. So the case remained active, unsolved, for the next 28 years. Authorities had to wonder whether or not their suspect was even still living in Washington after all of these years.
If Sarah was alive, she would have been in her mid-40s. And many people move to different places throughout their adulthood. They get new jobs. They start a family. Not everyone stays in the same area their entire life. And they didn't even know if their suspect was even from the area at all. Or he was just passing through at the time of Sarah's murder.
So the police didn't know if the suspect remained in Washington. Did he move? And it's even possible that this person is dead. With so many years going by, it's quite possible that the offender we're all looking for is long gone. But because authorities had the killer's DNA profile, they were hopeful that this person would likely re-offend.
And once they do, they will have to submit their DNA into the database. It's very rare that an individual who commits a random sexual assault or even a random murder just to offend once, especially with sexual assaults like Sarah's. This type of offender typically re-offends.
They don't just commit one crime, especially one as violent as this, and then just go on to live a normal life afterwards. This criminal profile tells me that whoever killed Sarah is likely to harm again. But it's never that simple. Even in criminology, there's no black and white, there's no always, and there's no nevers.
Authorities were simply hopeful that their suspect would re-offend again, but there's no guarantee. By 2018, the initial composite sketch needed to be updated because the suspect would be almost 30 years older now.
So investigators working on the case partnered with Parabon Nanolabs, which is a private laboratory in Virginia, to replace the composite sketch with a new age progression portrait of the suspect. They used a technique called polymorphism, which takes DNA markers from the suspect to envision what he would look like now.
Even with this new age progressed portrait of the suspect, police still didn't have any new leads in the case. Even with the setbacks over the years, authorities in the community never gave up hope that they would finally solve Sarah's case.
By 2018, many law enforcement agencies were starting to look at ancestry websites to try and solve their cold cases. This was being done in almost every case in which law enforcement had a DNA profile, but they didn't have a suspect. So they started scanning ancestry websites to look for a match to the DNA profile.
During their search, they found that the suspect's DNA had a direct relationship to the Fullers, a family who came over to America on the Mayflower. Yes, in case you're wondering, that's how far back these ancestry websites can go.
So this hit that Sarah's killer was very distantly, but had a direct relationship to the Fuller family. This generated a lot of new tips for the investigators. This was really the boost that they needed in 2018. But as they looked into some local people in the Seattle area with that last name, with the Fuller name,
They were all ruled out by their DNA. No one with the last name of Fuller was Sarah's killer. But investigators continued their search on Ancestry websites, and in October 2019, they finally got the hit they've been waiting for.
In October 2019, only a year ago from the time of this recording, genealogists assigned to Sarah's case zeroed in on two brothers who were identified through the technique of genetic genealogy. We know from the Golden State Killer case and countless others that
Genetic genealogy allows us to compare the DNA from our suspect to members of their family. This technique can identify even distant relatives, like second, even third cousins to the suspect.
Using genetic genealogy, they found two brothers whose DNA profile came from the same family as Sarah's killer. The discovery of these two brothers was absolutely groundbreaking for the investigation. This was the best lead they've had in the case in almost three decades. And now they have two brothers together.
And they know from the DNA profile and the genetic markers that one of these brothers is their guy. One of the brothers identified by the genealogist was ruled out. They were able to rule this brother out from being Sarah's murderer because of a prior rape conviction that required him to submit his DNA into CODIS.
And the first time investigators ran that semen sample from Sarah's case in Dakotas, it didn't match as any of the DNA profiles that were registered, which now leaves the second brother. The second brother is a man by the name of Patrick Nicholas. By 2019, Nicholas was now 55 years old.
But at the time of Sarah's murder, he would have been 27 years old. Nicholas had served time in prison for an attempted rape back in 1983. But unlike his brother, his DNA was never entered into CODIS, the National DNA Database. And in 1993, Nicholas was also arrested for child molestation.
He ended up pleading guilty to a lesser charge of fourth-degree gross misdemeanor assault. But just like before, just like with the 1983 rape conviction, his DNA was never entered into the database. So now once police strongly believe that they finally have their suspect, they started to conduct surveillance on Nicholas. They were watching his every move.
Because they needed to get a DNA sample from him in order to prove he was Sarah's killer all those years earlier. And how they got their sample comes from one of the oldest techniques known to detectives. They waited for him to drop a cigarette. Once he did, they went in and grabbed it.
The DNA from the cigarette was compared to the semen sample left on Sarah's clothing from all those years earlier, almost three decades later. And the DNA found on the cigarette was an exact match to the DNA on Sarah's clothing. Patrick Nicholas is Sarah's killer.
Finally, on October 22, 2019, Patrick Nicholas was arrested and taken into custody for murdering Sarah back in 1991, and he was charged with first-degree murder. By the time of Nicholas's arrest, more than 4,000 tips were received by the King County Sheriff's Department.
But none of these tips were able to identify the real killer. It wasn't until authorities used genetic genealogy to finally track down Nicholas and his brother. Police on the case found no apparent connection between Nicholas and Sarah. It seems as though what happened to Sarah was completely random, with no other motive besides pure evil.
It's unclear if Nicholas targeted Sarah before the attack or was simply in the area and her murder became a crime of opportunity. The only person with that answer is the killer himself. From Nicholas's prior arrests and contact with law enforcement, the attempted rape and the child molestation charge, we learn a lot about what kind of offender he is.
He has a long history of wanting to exert power over his victim. Many people associate rape with a sexual motive. But what research has told us is that most sex crimes are about power to the offender, not the sexual aspect of it.
These offenders have a strong desire to control their victim. They want to feel powerful. And oftentimes, young females and children become their targets because they're quite vulnerable. They don't have as much means to defend themselves. And sadly, children are even more vulnerable than victims like Sarah.
Now, with no connection between Nicholas as the perpetrator and Sarah as the victim, the facts of the case tell me that this was likely a random attack. It's possible that Nicholas was hanging out around the high school on the hunt for his next victim.
When he saw Sarah, he saw that she was by herself and took the opportunity. Because her body was found so close to her car, that makes me think that he likely caught Sarah completely off guard as she exited her vehicle. Possibly he hit her or restrained her in some other way. He took her to the bushes where no one could really see him.
He sexually assaulted her, then used her stockings to strangle her and beat her to death. I think he killed her because unlike his earlier victim, the child molestation case, he probably knew that Sarah could identify him. And the only way to make sure that didn't happen, he killed her.
Another explanation, in my opinion, is that maybe she fought back and he decided that he needed to kill her. After Nicholas's arrest, the King County Sheriff's Department held a press conference with Sarah's mother. Sarah's mother, Laura, reminded us that her daughter was an excellent student who always had a book in her hand.
that she was so excited to graduate high school and attend college. She had big dreams for her bright future. Laura admitted that even when she would give up hope in ever finding her daughter's killer, the detectives working the case were always there to remind her to keep the faith. She ended her speech by telling the community and the world that
If you're going to do something heinous, don't do it here because they'll come get you. The arrest of Patrick Nicholas for Sarah's murder almost three decades later finally brought a sense of justice to not only her family, not only the community, but it also brought justice to those two 12-year-old boys who saw the killer.
Those two boys had to live for almost 30 years knowing that they saw Sarah's killer, but couldn't quite identify who he was. One of the boys, who remains anonymous in the articles that I read, described the incident as seeing evil face-to-face and knowing that it's real and that it's there.
This boy, who is now a grown man and a father himself, remembers that Nicholas was only 25, maybe 30 yards away from him and his friend that day. And he remembers looking this man in the eyes. The next thing they see is Sarah's lifeless body. This is something that those boys have had to live with their entire lives.
Patrick Nicholas must have thought that he was going to get away with the perfect murder. But with forensic science, there is no such thing as a perfect murder. It may take a few hours, or in Sarah's case, almost 30 years. But the truth will catch up, and DNA evidence never lies.
With the advancements in genetic genealogy, we've only touched the tip of the iceberg when it comes to solving cold cases. With more and more people entering their DNA into ancestry websites and more and more DNA profiles will be able to be compared to profiles left behind at crime scenes.
And thanks to genetic genealogy, the mystery of Sarah's brutal and senseless murder is finally solved. The End
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