(King County) New information has been developed regarding the identity of the suspect in the murder of 16 year old Sarah Yarborough in 1991. Sarah was last seen alive on the morning of December 14th, 1991 leaving her residence to go to Federal Way High School to participate in a dance team competition. Yarborough was found dead on the school campus later that morning.
Story- King County Sheriff’s Office detectives have recently sought the services of Parabon NanoLabs (Parabon), a DNA technology company in Virginia that specialized in DNA phenotyping: the process of predicting physical appearance and ancestry from unidentified DNA evidence.
Using DNA evidence from Sarah’s murder Parabon was able to produce trait predictions for the associated person of interest. Individual predictions were made for the suspect’s ancestry, eye color, hair color, skin color, freckling, and face shape. By combining these attributes of appearance a composite was produced depicting what the suspect may have looked like at 25 years old with a body-mass index (BMI) of 22. These default values were used because age and BMI cannot be determined from DNA.
It is important to note that the composites are scientific approximations of appearance based on DNA, and are not likely to be exact replicas of appearance.
The results of the phenotyping DNA test can also determine kinship between DNA samples out to six degrees of relatedness. Detectives are hoping this new information will help generate leads on the case.
Above are predictions obtained from Parabon for the suspect at age 18, 25 and what he may look like now.
If you have questions about this technology please contact Parabon Labs at media@parabon-nanolabs.com
You can also see the links below to get an idea of their involvement in the Sarah Yarborough investigation.
Subject Identified https://snapshot.parabon-nanolabs.com/posters
Some media examples: https://snapshot.parabon-nanolabs.com/examples
If you have information about this crime please call the King County Sheriff’s Office at 206-296-3311 or you can email mcutips@kingcounty.gov
