Review — THE FOREVER WITNESS: How DNA and Genealogy Solved a Cold Case Double Murder by Edward Humes
A relentless detective and an amateur 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 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, 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?
Release Date: November 29, 2022
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My ThoughtsThe Forever Witness is a fascinating look at a decades-old, unsolved double murder, a persistent detective, and the innovative use of DNA.
As the subtitle suggests, this book does a deep-dive into DNA and genealogy. Content gets science-heavy at times, but it’s written in a way that’s easy to follow and understand.
The cold case is an interesting puzzle, and of course, a sad one. I appreciated the way the author represented the young couple, bringing them to life for us to get to know as people instead of simply murder victims.
This case, and others to follow, raise thought-provoking questions of privacy in relation to our DNA. What are a person’s rights, exactly, once they upload their DNA onto one or more of the many ancestry sites? Should the police be allowed to access your uploaded DNA to form a family tree leading them to a killer?
We have opinions on both extremes of this debate, leading to legal battles that will need to be resolved for future criminal cases.
*I received an eARC from Dutton Books, via NetGalley.*
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