Chelsea Rustad story: How did a Halloween photo lead to a killer?

In 2015, Chelsea Rustad, a resident from Tumwater, Washington, used a decades-old Halloween photo of herself to enter an Ancestry DNA contest, winning herself a DNA "spit kit" and using it to build an open website called GEDmatch. Rustad's DNA was later used by detectives to connect evidence from the crime scene to her cousin, truck driver William Earl Talbott II.

Following that, Talbott was convicted of two counts of murder in a decade-old case of a Canadian couple. He was sentenced to life in prison in June 2019, making him the first person to be convicted as a result of genealogical research.

CBS 48 Hours chronicles the bizarre story of Chelsea Rustad in an episode titled A Killer in the Family Tree. The official synopsis of the episode, which was originally released on November 20, 2021, states:

"When a woman uploads her DNA to a genealogy website, authorities show up at her door. Is there a double murderer in her family tree?"

This article will further dive into the investigation that led to the arrest of William Earl Talbott II using Chelsea Rustad's DNA.

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Chelsea Rustad's search for her familial roots helped investigators solve a decades-old cold case

In 2013, 31-year-old Chelsea Rustad used the internet to build a family tree and learn more about her familial history, learning that her roots stretched from Washington State through North Dakota and back to Norway.

Rustad's search led her to connect with many distant family members and even get in touch with a family of her second cousins who lived in Snohomish County. That was when she first came across the name of her cousin brother William Earl Talbott II, who she believed had a strange lifestyle from the beginning. She reportedly told CBS that:

"The most striking thing about him would be his absence. He doesn't have a social media presence. No Facebook. No Instagram. No Twitter. No YouTube."

Two years later, Chelsea Rustad entered an Ancestry DNA contest to submit a photo of herself from when she was five. She was dressed as a ballerina on Halloween and won herself a free home DNA test kit, the results of which confirmed the ancestry.

Rustad then posted her raw DNA from the kit to a website called GEDmatch, where users can share their results in an open database. However, she failed to find any new family members, a situation that soon changed after cold case detectives used the same DNA profile to link her to a killer who had been evading justice for decades.

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Chelsea Rustad's distant cousin William Earl Talbott II was behind the 1987 murders of Tanya Van Cuylenborg and Jay Cook

Years ago, in 1987, Tanya Van Cuylenborg and Jay Cook's bodies were discovered in two different Washington State counties after the couple went missing while on the road from British Columbia to Seattle. Tanya was reportedly r*ped before being shot in the head, while Jay was beaten and strangled to death. At the time, foreign DNA samples from semen found on Tanya's clothing were collected for further investigation.

Authorities were left in the dark for about two decades after the sample failed to match anybody in the police database. The case remained unsolved for years. However, in 2018, investigators decided to use genetic genealogy to locate DNA samples that were identical to the one that was retrieved from the murder scene.

Subsequent research on the DNA concluded that it was genetically similar to two samples already in the system. One of those samples belonged to Chelsea Rustad, eventually leading authorities to her second cousin, William Earl Talbott II. The latter's DNA was a perfect match to the one from the crime scene, who was convicted of two counts of murder and sentenced to two life terms.