The Hunt for Sarah Yarborough’s Killer | Full Episode

Sarah Yar, 16, was always remembered as talented, creative and kind. Sarah was a high school student. Every time you saw Sarah, she always had a smile. This case is about a 16-year-old girl who had the right to grow up. This case is about Sarah and everything she should have been allowed to become was on Friday, December 13, 1991. Her parents were out of town to go to her brother's soccer game. She stayed at home. I didn't want to leave Sarah. She did not want. Come, of course, because she had the whole weekend planned, so a friend of hers came over and stayed with her that weekend.

We went to a basketball game. We went to buy junk food at the supermarket. Some fast food. You, we're 16. We were carefree, there was absolutely nothing that made us think that the next morning everything would change, so on Saturday morning Sarah woke up in a little panic, she woke up and said: I'm late for practice , put on the drill team uniform. and ran out the door, went to school and found out he was early so he parked his car and waited for the rest of his team to show up shortly after the phone call started where Sarah, do you know where she is, they found to Sarah?

Within an hour, where was her body discovered? So her car was still in the parking lot. Her body was approximately 100 yards away still on school property. They took away some of her clothes. She had nylon stockings tied around her neck. Remember to just say no Sarah no Sarah no Sarah over and over again the suspect is a white male 6 feet tall and of medium build they had evidence D they had everything they had Witnesses in that first week or so it sounded like they had a lot of evidence At least for a moment I felt like of course they were going to catch him and then when they didn't and they didn't, your expectations changed, you don't know if it's your next door neighbor, you don't know if. it was a random stranger there was a constant fear of this happening again we literally had a monster in the community and we just didn't know who it was how often do you think about December 14, 1991 and what happened at that time ?

Quite a day is a very traumatic thing that more than 30 years have passed, but the details of that day have never faded for Drew Miller I, my friend, spent the night at my house, we woke up that morning, we watched cartoons, we ate cial, we went to go skateboarding Drew, who was only 13 at the time, lived down the street from Federal Way High School, near Seattle, Washington, the school grounds have changed quite a bit, drastically, yeah , the tennis court is the only thing that is still here. Drew often took shortcuts through school to go skateboarding like he and his friend did that day, we used to jump over the fence here and cut around here it was so cold that day, I mean there was ice on all the puddles of clay, you know, we started breaking them because it's fun.

I know it sounds like broken glass, that's when Drew says they noticed a man in the bushes right where you are at the edge of this Dugout here, which were all bushes that were probably about this tall, so we couldn't see him until he was He stood up, he's just looking. He looked at us from the bushes, that was pretty jarring, but then he just walked out of the bushes, so we assumed he was just smoking weed or something which the mystery man kept to himself and walked ahead of the guys. Drew says they didn't think much about it. until they came upon a horrendous scene there in the bushes where the man had just been was the body of a young woman it was horrible absolutely horrible the way he left her body she was clearly fighting for her life Drew says his shock turned into fear when he realized that the man who was still only a few meters in front of them was now staring back at him.

Does that look still haunt you? oh yeah, yeah, it's frozen in my mind the boogeyman and then the legit boogeyman, the boys ran to Drew's house and called the police. to the scene when we approached the victim on one of the clothes we saw Sarah's name, Detective Scott Strathy of the King County Sheriff's Office was one of the first officers on the scene and of course we later found out which was Sarah Yarboro. Even for experienced investigators, this scene was really difficult to handle, just with the innocent nature of this young girl in the school drill team uniform and her hot curling iron still in her hair. partially dressed her jacket her underwear her bra had been removed and placed next to her body the police discovered that the car Sarah had driven that morning was parked in the school parking lot about 300 feet from where her The body there didn't really look like there would be some kind of fight in the car, Detective John Free with the King County Sheriff's Office Major Crimes unit would later join the investigation.

He had a container of orange juice that he had prepared that morning. He was sitting in the front seat. There was nothing. He rolled over, so the question was how did he get from her car to this hill, what got her there. Sarah was one of those people who would help anyone with anything at any time and part of our working theory was if they convinced her to keep going, you know. the suspect said something like I'm looking for my lost dog or I can't find my car keys maybe Sarah in an attempt to help this person may have followed him to that area tell me about this one it was less than a week I think before she died, I said: Can I take your picture?

Because your great-grandmother really wants a photo of you and your drilling team. She is fine. It was too incredible to believe that could happen. Sarah's parents, Laura and Tom Yarboro, that is. Who thinks her daughter is going to be murdered? Tom and Laura had the excruciating task of having to tell their two children the tragic news. Sarah's younger brother Andrew was only 11 at the time, at that age he probably never saw or heard your parents cry. a lot, but that pain in the voice is very, very vivid. Sarah, who had just started her junior year in high school, had big plans for her future, starting with college, she didn't want to go to a state school, she wanted to go to a school.

Far away she loved to travel. In fact, I heard her say I can't decide if I want to be a museum curator or an engineer like my father, yes, and I was always rooting for Liberty Barnes museum curator Christy Gutieres Amy Perod and Mary Beth Tomy were some of her closest friends. Sarah, so this was after the last day of tenth grade and we were just joking around afterwards and that I mean, you can see there's Sarah right in the middle being silly, the bright red hair was her personality yeah, she was artistic, she was creative, she was smart, she was feisty, imaginative, all those things, she would be the last one to wait for someone to always be there with a smile, she helped with homework, she was the ultimate kindness after Sarah was torn from their lives, They say their sense of security is gone forever.

You grow up having all the safety conversations with your parents and bad things can happen and everything is kind of a vague possibility and then all of a sudden it was like no. no, no, no, it really can happen, it really just happened, everyone was hands on, the Sheriff's Office put everything they had into solving this case as soon as possible and the

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left important evidence behind. Sarah had not been raped, but the

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's DNA was found on pieces of her clothing, seen on her underwear, and on her jacket. We had a complete male DNA profile.

DNA technology was new in 1991, but investigators hope DNA will one day lead them to Sarah's killer in the meantime. She had eyewitnesses. I thought for sure someone would know him. Drew and his friend, who was with him the morning Sarah's body was found, worked with the police and a sketch of the man they saw in the bushes was given to the public police, who would later release a more elaborate portrait. sketch I remember very vividly going through the yearbooks and everything was fine, who looks like the sketch? Everyone felt like at one point they were suspects, but as the days went by and the leads dried up, the police kept coming back to Drew and his friend, they just made me feel. like I'm the only person who could help them figure this out.

I know that wasn't the intention. like you know the officers are doing the best they can. How much pressure were you feeling? Sarah's killer, this case was never forgotten In early June 1993, a year and a half after the murder of Sarah Yarbro, the local media was there as students gathered in the Federal Way High School courtyard to honor her family friend Bill Fuller who helped spearhead the move for a memorial to remember Sarah unveiled it with the help of Sarah's younger brother Andrew, it was a great day, lots of tears when they looked at it and could see Sarah in that bank.

Bill Fuller has known the Y Bros for years and his daughter was in Sarah's Class. It was fun being with Sarah, that was probably what we missed the most. It was fun to be around the bench read carpedm see the day a mantra Sarah lived by encased in bronze are some of her favorite possessions ballet slippers a replica of Sarah's beloved dog Gibby and books. It's good that people cared so much about her. Andrew Yarro, now an adult, admits that he had problems as a teenager. It was especially difficult to see those sketches in town of the man police believed murdered his sister.

You know, there were drawings of the person's face everywhere in the businesses in town, you know, I do all that pretty much just having that kind of constant reminder, looking back, I feel like we didn't do a very good job with the kids. , I think we were so consumed by our own pain for not taking the time to help them. I think we didn't really know how to help them. I mean, it wasn't something we had experience with. We didn't know anything about grieving ourselves or how to help them. They got through it and were not alone in his pain.

Shannon Grant, the last friend who saw Sarah alive, says she lived with constant regret. I wish we could go back and do it all again. She would have asked the other members of Dr. what time. The practice was, you know, maybe he left it. I mean, there are a lot of things that the milestones were especially painful about. There was survivor guilt, like why am I filling out my college applications when Sarah wanted to go to college. And this is not fair in all cases. joyous occasion had this yes sadness that accompanied it is that one is missing from the crowd here graduation day June 12, 1993 was an emotional day but even more so because it fell on what would have been Sarah Laura yarro's 18th birthday came to support your daughter friends, I don't know where she found the strength to do that, she loved that green dress, right, yes, she wore a lot of green with her hair.

Lori Yarro says Sarah's friends helped ease some of her pain and she believes she filled the void for them too. sometimes they were like, well, I'm going out with this person and I just wanted to let you know because I wasn't sure if Sarah would approve of this person, so they would look for approval through you, you became kind of South again, yeah. Life moved slowly and investigators continued working on the case. I describe it as a relay race in which the baton was passed from one detective to another over years and decades. I refer to myself as the fifth beetle in this early years investigation.

Investigators in the 2000s had received more than 3,000 tips and advances in technology gave them hope that they entered DNA from the crime scene into the newly established Koda system, a national DNA database that includes profiles of convicted felons. The strategy was to continually try to see if there would ever be a match while also investigating leads but over time it seemed like there was no match so we had DNA evidence of the suspect but we didn't have that link to anyone it just didn't make sense it seemed hard to believe this suspect would have committed no other previous crimes where his DNA would not be in the system.

That's when he says the detectives realize they had to go in a different direction. My name is Colleen Fitzpatrick and I am one of the pioneers of forensic genetic geneology in 2011. She contacted Fitzpatrick to ask about the use of forensic genetic genealogy. The practice of using software to compare unknown DNA profiles with information from public DNA databases and search family trees to identify suspects. Genetic genealogy is well known now and has been used to solve numerous cold cases, but at the time it was in its infancy when I started in this field. Fitzpatrick says that most law enforcement agencies had been interested in this new tool. police investigationHe thought I was crazy, you know, this little old lady with a crazy idea and I.

Actually, there was almost laughter in the room, but the King County Sheriff's Office took a chance on Fitzpatrick. It was free. He just wanted to see if it worked. What are you going to lose if you try something the AR Bros encouraged? I think it was like that. It wasn't until we met Colleen Fitzpatrick that I really started to think that they knew they were going to find this person and it wasn't long before Fitzpatrick came up with the name of a possible suspect that surprised almost everyone. The beginning was very promising and the story took a truly strange turn in 2011, 20 years after Sarah's murder, when forensic genetic genealogist Colleen Fitz Patrick began working on the Yarboro case and traced the family tree of Sarah's killer to a man named Robert Fuller, whose family had come. to America on the Mayflower I found numerous matches with the name Fuller when Fitzpatrick gave the name Fuller to the King County Sheriff's Office, they immediately knew of a person with that last name Bill Fuller, Yo's close family friend who helped get that Memorial.bench built for Sarah, naturally, that piqued our interest from the beginning.

Sarah's family and friends believe that Bill Fuller had nothing to do with Sarah's murder. He looked nothing like the suspect. The wrong hair color. It is low. He is not tall. Just no. fit the profile at all Fuller's age also didn't fit the profile he is now 79 but was 48 at the time of Sarah's murder at least two decades older than the man Drew Miller described there was no way I could be Even remotely connected to the case, he cooperated

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y with the police and voluntarily gave them a DNA sample that did not match the DNA found at Sarah's crime scene, but Fitzpatrick remained optimistic.

The good news is that we came up with a possible last name to investigate and this. It was the first break in the case in 20 years. Fitzpatrick knew that Sarah's killer was somewhere in the Fuller family tree, so she and her team got back to work, and as the years went by, she knew he was only getting closer, especially after 2018, when Forensic genetics Genealogy was used to identify the Golden State Killer. Golden State Killer really started the great revolution. Things had evolved, we had the data to work with the technology, it was in place and we could try it.

Then, in September 2019, Fitzpatrick's team made a breakthrough. He came up with two new possible suspects, brothers Edward and Patrick Nicholas, who, DNA showed, were distant cousins ​​of Bill Fuller. You know, this is 8 years of on and off and looking at it, you never give up. This is exciting. Edward Nicholas was a registered sex offender, his DNA was in the system, he was in Cottis, but Edward's DNA didn't match, so they zeroed in on his brother Patrick, who in 2019 was a lonely divorcee living a couple of blocks away. Federal Way cities. We found out that he was working at an auto parts store he lived alone uh no kids no friends or acquaintances to even visit him everything he did was mostly by bus he didn't drive detective fre says he found out that when Sarah was murdered, the Nicholas bus route used to pass through Federal Way High School back then.

Nicholas was only 27 years old and at the time he looked a lot like the sketch description, he seemed promising at the time but we still needed to get a DNA sample from him to match the DNA evidence we had so at the end of September 2019, investigators hatched a plan: We assigned a team of undercover detectives to begin surveillance on Patrick Nicholas in hopes of obtaining a surreptitious DNA sample. Finally, the undercover detectives followed Nicholas to a in the laundry room they saw him come out and smoke a cigarette and Patrick Nicholas was seen throwing the cigarette butt on the floor which was picked up by our detectives that's what you needed right there that cigarette butt Yes, actually Two cigarette butts and a napkin fell out of his pocket and the three items were collected, the DNA samples were quickly taken to the crime lab and a few days later the detectives received the call that they had been waiting for the DNA match.

This was our suspect, the perfect match. Yes, Patrick Nicholas was arrested. There were so many suspects. How old was Patrick Leon Nicholas named as a suspect among 4,000 clues? He was never named. I was quite shocked. The news came as a relief to Sarah's family and friends, who had never given up hope of getting answers to anything. The detectives kept telling us that technology would eventually solve this case. I trusted that and they turned out to be right and I remember going out to my car and dancing, finally, they finally caught it when Drew Miller, who had seen Sarah's killer, came back.

In 1991 I saw Patrick Nicholas's face, he says he knew they had the right person, what did he look like? I think you are there. I have no idea during his interrogation at the church when the detectives asked him specifically about Sarah's murder. He gave an alarming answer. What we are investigating is the death of a young woman. Interestingly, he asked what year she was and actually. He sent a flag Why would you ask they are telling him this is a murder case? We are wondering at this time if there are other victims. This is all. I'm not going to say it after 1 and a half hours.

Nicholas asked for a lawyer and stopped talking, but his criminal record said it all. I am the one who escaped on a quiet June morning in 1983, 8 years before Sarah's murder. A 21 year old crony was sitting next to her car next to the Columbia River in Richland Washington when a man approached her, he seemed normal, kind of friendly, actually just friendly. I asked her if she had ever water skied because she said she just moved to the city and said she didn't know how to swim and said my name is Pat. Nicholas after a few minutes of small talk she felt uncomfortable I noticed her voice was getting shaky and I told her I had to leave, I went to close the door and he put a knife to my throat, everything stopped at that moment, told me.

To remove her clothes, Nicholas stuffed her underwear into her mouth to stop her from screaming, forced her out of the car, and took her to the river bank. We got halfway to the shore and he told me to stop. I ran and jumped into the river because I was thinking he couldn't swim I swam as hard as I swam for your life I swam for My Life Passersby found Ann on a nearby dock and called the police, as it turns out that Patrick Nicholas, 19 years old, he was no stranger to the law. police officer and had a record, had raped two women and attempted to rape a third, had been convicted of rape when he was a minor and had actually only been free for a few months when he attacked me days after the attack by a man who was located and arrested and pleaded guilty to attempted rape, he told authorities I realize I have a problem with the rape of girls at his sentencing hearing and I spoke out.

I was actually very angry and asked the judge for the maximum sentence and the judge agreed and sentenced him to 10 years. so I thought it was over, I thought justice had been done, but Patrick Nicholas didn't serve the

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10 years in prison, he was released after only three and a half years and was never notified that I barely thought about him again until October of 2019, the police. They knocked on my door and said there were detectives in Seattle who wanted to talk to me about a cold case. I was informed that Patrick Nicholas had been arrested again this time for the murder of Sarah Yarro.

I was told there were similarities in the case. cases and I was devastated, it had never occurred to me that what I escaped from was murder, what's more, if Nicholas had served his entire prison sentence, he would still have been behind bars that December morning in 1991, unable to murder Sarah Yaro, how angry are you? Hearing that he was released so early and so early brought up a lot of the old anger and even more anger that the system failed. King County Deputy District Attorneys Celia Lee and Mary Barbosa describe him as a serial predator with a clear pattern of all of them.

He would approach women in or near their car, strike up a conversation, then pull out a knife and attack them. He said they had to walk, where he ordered them to take off their clothes and then he raped them. Nicholas had also been convicted of sexually assaulting a minor. in 1994, 3 years after Sarah's murder, five sexual assaults that investigators were aware of, none of which required him to submit his DNA, so there was no record of him in the codus database, but in previous hearings At trial the judge ruled that Nicholas' criminal record could not be introduced into evidence, finding that it would be unfairly prejudicial to the defendant, but prosecutors were hopeful that their case was strong enough.

It all emerged for the jury in early 2023, more than 30 years after the murder of Sarah Yarber, her accused killer, now 59, gone. At the trial, Sarah's childhood friends were there. I remember very clearly the morning before the trial began. I don't know if I can do this like you know. He had so many different emotions flowing and it was like no, we need to be there. There was an absolute love for Sarah and the children that she was so strong in. Did you feel like there was a lifeline for you? Yes, sit down, you were not alone in this, you were all together when the trial began, the focus was on DNA, what was her strategy then in dealing with this case?

We needed them to trust science. There was a field that was emerging called forensic genetic genealogy. Patrick Nicholas' public defender, David Montes, questioned how forensic genetic genealogy was used to first identify Nicholas. I want to investigate. in science because the first time that type of defense was used in Washington state, the technology not only improved but it just hit, he's not really the person who killed the police, he needed an answer more than the right answer , so they turn to new Genetic genealogy with Nova's unproven technology is a new field that really hasn't been tested in case we make important decisions based on something that is not well or deeply understood, but prosecutors said the argument was debatable because Patrick Nicholas' DNA matched the DNA found at the Yarro crime scene and the free detective says that the numbers were astronomical the probabilities were one and 120 billion of that billion yes, of course, it was someone else yes the numbers pointed to Nicholas' guilt, authorities say so was the evidence found in his home around the time of his arrest in 2019 it was almost like a den there was no electricity in this house loads of porn all over the place we also found a newspaper from 1994 that had an article on its cover about Being AR Bres and how it went through one of the kitchen drawers we found a torn photograph taken from a magazine of a woman dressed as a cheerleader when prosecutors showed that photo in the courtroom the oxygen left the room yes Montes downplayed its importance I think both tests were not particularly strange Given the general state of his house, there were piles and piles of newspapers throughout his house.

This is an evidence tape. Patrick Nicholas was unfazed when the evidence was shown to be emotionless throughout the trial, but Sarah Yarbro's presence was especially felt as the Captain now retired. Scott took pains to unpack carefully and showed Sarah's clothes that had been in storage for over 30 years, her drill team jacket, her shoes, her sweater, even her nylon tights, this was like the opening of a capsule. of time, suddenly they were real things, they weren't even photographs. They were the things he had in his body when he died you just felt yourself falling apart after nine long days of testimony the case went to the jury everything for the jury it took them a little over a day to come to a verdict he was shaking and like there was just like there was so much. adrenaline and so much anticipation, the jury found the defendant Patrick Leon and everything just fell and it's like why do you think it took authorities so long to identify Patrick Nicholas as a suspect?

Check out the Case Timeline on 48 Hours.com This is Washington State vs. Patrick Leon Nicholas Sarah Yarbro's loved ones had waited more than 30 years for this moment. The jury finds defendant Patrick Shock not guilty of first-degree murder. The premeditated Patrick Nicholas was found not guilty of the first charge. Premeditated murder in the first degree. I remember dropping my head into my hands. He was angry. I couldn't believe it when the first one arrived innocent. I closed my eyes, but there were other charges and there. There was still hope for a conviction guilty of the crime of murder in the first degree guilty in the second degree Patrick Nicholas was found guilty of murder in the first degree andsecond degree murder the jury ruled that both had been committed with a sexual motivation I remember hearing the family behind me I cried and made eye contact with the jurors and nodded my head, you know they got it, they did it right.

I feel so grateful for those detectives, for the guys, for the previous victims, for every witness who took the stand, so grateful that all of these people came together two weeks after Nicholas' conviction. Dozens of people who had been involved in every part of Sarah's case gathered in court for the sentencing hearing. Prosecutors asked the judge to impose extra time to take into account all of Nicholas' crimes. stimulating in a way I never expected. It was probably the rawest human courage I have ever seen in my life. Sarah's death left our family devastated and we have never been the same.

The pain in my father's voice on the phone telling me that Sarah was. Dead person after person took to the podium to say all that Patrick Nicholas had taken from them, coming face to face with pure evil that that day has deeply impacted my entire life, he took her life and what was sure to be a bright future. for her in By taking Sarah, it took the innocence of each of us to confront Patrick Nicholas and tell him what they had wanted to say to his face for 30 years. Patrick Nicholas is pure evil. There was so much power in the room it was electric and then a sidekick who wasn't allowed to testify at Sarah's trial started talking.

She simply looked at him twice and shuddered when he stood up as if he had seen a ghost. Yes, I'm sure he wasn't expecting to see my face or hear my name. Once again we rely on a justice system that is designed to protect us from predators like Nicholas and this system failed me, it failed Sarah, her family friends and many others. I asked the court to please not make the same mistake after everyone spoke, Judge Josephine Wigs. I went to court when I think about this poor girl, this poor girl, what she experienced fighting for her life, the judge put her fist on the thing and said it was a girl, she kept saying that and all I could think It was, oh my God, that's right.

They were children and Nicholas received a sentence of almost 46 years for Sarah's family and friends. The sentence brought mixed emotions. I don't know that this is Justice. It is a verdict and it is imprisoning someone for something they did but he was given 30 years that she did not. received I am angry that he was free for so many years and who knows how many other people were hurt during that time. I don't know if we'll ever know and that could have been avoided. Forensic genetic genealogy helped solve Sarah's case, but prosecutors. They say similar technology could have identified Patrick Nicholas years earlier if only familial DNA searches were allowed in Washington state.

A familial DNA search compares an unknown DNA sample to profiles already in the code to look for possible family members remember that Patrick Nicholas' brother's DNA had been in codus for years, the legislation simply does not exist in the state to allow that search. California uses it in the UK, as I understand it. York New York Wisconsin New York Minnesota Colorado Florida Do you think it's time to change that law? We do the Y. burough agrees and I hope that Sarah's case can make a difference. I would like to know that other parents don't have to wait 30 years.

What do you hope her legacy will be? I think her legacy is that she was always someone who brought people together. She has brought everyone together. the people together who attended the trial that's the kind of person she was to Drew Miller, who at age 13 found Sarah's body the connections that made it the trial finally brought him some peace knowing he's in prison is fantastic , but knowing his family and friends is much more important to me because that is what has given me the real healing I needed. This is probably the beginning of our third year.

Sarah's friends will always remain united by Sarah's stolen past and future. Not only was she beautiful, her soul was beautiful and the grace and beauty that she had. she taken and left with all of us we will never forget her we will never forget her after the wall murders a new lead heats up this unsolved case the mysterious unsolved death of steven smith do you think steven was murdered? I investigate another tragedy in Murdog country what really happened to St Smith 48 hours Saturday on CBS and streaming on Paramount Plus