On December 14, 1991, 16-year-old Sarah Yarborough drove to Federal Way High School for drill team practice. She parked, then within an hour her body was found on school grounds — partly unclothed and strangled with nylon stockings. A nearby teen, Drew Miller, who had cut through the school that morning, later told investigators he had seen a man leave the bushes where Sarah’s body lay and later recognized that same man at the scene. Police recovered semen and a complete male DNA profile from Sarah’s clothing, and witnesses produced sketches of a man seen near the bushes.
The killing felt like a betrayal of a safe community. Sarah’s family remembered her as bright, artistic, kind, and full of plans for college and travel. Her parents, Tom and Laura Yarborough, and her younger brothers were devastated. A memorial bench and park plaque honoring her would later bear the words ‘Carpe Diem,’ a phrase Sarah had lived by.
Authorities treated the slaying as a sexually motivated murder and assigned major-crimes detectives. Investigators initially hoped that DNA, eyewitness sketches, and the victim’s parked car would quickly produce a suspect, but leads dwindled. Over the next decades the department logged thousands of tips, ran the unknown profile through CODIS as the national database expanded, and kept the file active as new forensic tools emerged.
In 2011 the King County Sheriff’s Office enlisted Colleen Fitzpatrick, an early practitioner of forensic genetic genealogy. Using public genetic databases and family-tree research, Fitzpatrick traced the crime-scene profile into a family tree and produced a lead pointing to the surname Fuller. That lead did not identify a suspect directly, but it opened a new investigative line. Continued genealogy work, along with advances in the field following other high-profile identifications, increased investigators’ confidence that the technique could produce a match.
Fitzpatrick’s research eventually narrowed the search to two brothers, Edward and Patrick Nicholas, distant relatives through the Fuller line. Edward’s DNA, already in CODIS, did not match the crime-scene profile. Investigators then focused on Patrick Leon Nicholas, who was living alone and working in auto parts.
Undercover detectives placed Nicholas under surveillance and in September 2019 collected discarded cigarette butts and other items from which they could extract DNA. Laboratory comparison returned a match: DNA from a cigarette butt matched the profile recovered from Sarah’s clothing. Patrick Nicholas was arrested and charged in the decades-old murder.
Nicholas’s criminal history complicated the case. In 1983 he had attacked Anne Croney, threatening her with a knife and attempting sexual assault; he was convicted of attempted rape but served roughly three and a half years of a ten-year sentence and was released years before Sarah’s death. Investigators later documented other sexual assaults and convictions for Nicholas in the early 1990s and beyond. Many earlier offenses had not produced DNA entries in CODIS, which helps explain why the Yarborough profile had no earlier match; the genetic genealogy work bridged that gap by pointing to Nicholas’s family tree.
At trial prosecutors emphasized the DNA match, describing the statistical odds that the crime-scene DNA belonged to anyone other than Nicholas as astronomically small, and presented physical items seized from his home in 2019, including stacks of pornography, newspapers about the Yarborough case, and a torn photograph of a magazine image of a woman in a cheerleading outfit. The defense challenged the new-technology genealogy methods and questioned initial investigative steps, but jurors weighed that cross-examination against the direct DNA match obtained from Nicholas’s discarded items.
More than 30 years after Sarah’s death, the trial brought survivors and witnesses back into court: Drew Miller and a friend who found the body, former victims who described attacks by Nicholas, long-time investigators, and many members of Sarah’s family and drill team. The jury convicted Patrick Nicholas of first-degree murder with sexual motivation and other charges; he was sentenced to nearly 46 years in prison.
The verdict produced mixed emotions. Sarah’s family and friends felt relief that someone had been held accountable after decades of uncertainty, but there was also anger that a repeat predator had been free for years. Survivors and friends recalled missed opportunities and early releases that left Nicholas in the community; Anne Croney, who survived his earlier attack and testified at sentencing, said the justice system had failed her and Sarah by not keeping him incarcerated longer on prior convictions.
Investigators and prosecutors called forensic genetic genealogy the turning point in the case. They noted that familial searches of CODIS — comparing the crime-scene profile to entries to identify possible relatives — might have identified Nicholas earlier if authorities had statutory permission or had used different policies. Whether changes in law or practice could shorten the time it takes to resolve cold cases remains a public debate; the Yarborough family has expressed support for laws that might speed answers for other families.
The case left deep, lasting scars. Friends and relatives described decades of grief, survivor guilt, and a diminished sense of safety in their community. Trial reunions offered some measure of closure, but many acknowledged a complicated mixture of relief and sorrow after a verdict so long delayed.
Sarah Yarborough’s legacy is both the memory of a promising young life and a prompt to improve how law enforcement uses science, databases, and legal tools to solve violent crime. Her friends and family say they hope her case will help other families avoid a decades-long wait for justice.