48 Hours - Finding Sarah Yarboroughs Killer
Episode Date: January 11, 2026A high school student on her way to drill team practice is found murdered on campus. What it took to close the case after 30 years. Natalie Morales reports. After you listen to this episode, don’t... miss the "It Could've Been Me" companion episode in the 48 Hours podcast feed. Natalie Morales sits down with survivors to revisit the crime that nearly took their lives. Through in-depth interviews and the trusted reporting of 48 Hours, the series offers a thoughtful look at these extraordinary cases—and the haunting realization that the same could happen to any of us. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Transcript
Discussion (0)
16-year-old Sarah Yarborough is being remembered as talented, creative, and kind.
Sarah was an A student at the high school.
Whenever 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 that she should have been allowed to become.
It was Friday the 13th in December of 1991.
Her parents were out of town for her brother's soccer game.
She stayed home.
I was reluctant to leave Sarah.
She didn't want to come, of course, because she had her whole weekend planned out.
So she had a friend come over and stay with her that weekend.
We went to a basketball game, went and got junk food at the grocery store,
a little bit of fast food.
You know, we're 16.
We were carefree.
There was absolutely nothing that that was just food.
that would make any of us think that the next morning,
everything would change.
So Saturday morning, Sarah woke up kind of in a panic.
She woke up and said, I'm late for practice.
She put on her drill team uniform and ran out the door.
She went to the school and discovered that she was early.
So she parked in her car and waited for the rest of her team to show up.
Shortly after the phone call started, where Sarah?
Do you know where she is?
Sarah was found 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 the school property.
Part of her clothing was removed.
She had nylon stockings tied in a ligature around her neck.
I just remember just saying, not Sarah, not Sarah, not Sarah.
over and over again.
The suspect is a white male, six feet tall, with a medium-built...
They had DNA evidence. They had everything. They had witnesses.
And that first week or so, it sounded like they had so much evidence.
For at least a short while, it felt like...
Of course they're going to catch him.
And then when they didn't and they didn't, your expectations change.
You don't know if it's your next-door neighbor.
You don't know if it's some random stranger.
There was that constant fear.
of is this going to happen again?
We literally had a monster in the community
and we just, we didn't know who it was.
How often do you think about December 14th, 1991
and what happened on that day?
Quite a bit.
It's a very traumatic thing to go through.
It's been over 30 years,
but the details of that day have never faded
for Drew Miller. I had my friend spent the night at my house. We woke up that morning,
watched cartoons, ate cereal, left to go skateboarding. Drew, who was just 13 at the time,
lived down the street from Federal Way High School near Seattle, Washington.
The school grounds have changed quite a bit, right?
Drastically, yes. The tennis court's the only thing that's still here.
Drew often took shortcuts through the school to go skateboarding, as he and his friend did that day.
We used to hop the fence right here and cut through here.
It was freezing cold that day.
And there was ice in all of the mud puddles.
We just, you know, started smashing them because it's fun.
You know, it sounds like breaking glass.
That's when Drew says they noticed a man in the bushes.
Right where you see the edge of this dugout right here,
that was all bushes that were probably this tall.
So we couldn't see him until he stood up.
He's just staring at us from the bushes.
that was pretty jarring, but then he just walked out of the bushes.
So then we just assumed he's just smoking weed or something.
The mysterious man kept himself and walked ahead of the boys.
Drew says they didn't think much of it until they came across 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 that he left her body, she clearly fought for her life.
Drew says his shock turned to fear when he realized the man, who was still just feet in front of them,
was now staring directly back at him.
Does that look still haunt you?
Oh, yeah, yeah.
It's frozen in my mind.
The boogeyman, then.
Legitimate boogeyman.
The boys raced to Drew's house, and police were called to the scene.
When we approached the victim on one of the pieces of clothing, we saw the name Sarah.
Detective Scott Strathie with the King County Sheriff's Office was one of the first officers on the scene.
And of course later we found out that that was Sarah Yarborough.
Even for experienced investigators, this scene was really hard to deal with.
just the innocent nature of this young woman
in her school drill team uniform
with her hot curlers still in her hair
this was just pure unadulterated evil
investigators believed this was a sexually motivated murder
she was partially clothed her jacket her undergarments
her bra had been removed
and placed next to her body.
Police discovered that the car Sarah had driven that morning
was parked in the school parking lot,
about 300 feet from where her body was found.
There didn't really appear to be any sort of a struggle in the car itself.
Detective John Free with the King County Sheriff's Office's Major Crimes Unit
would later join the investigation.
She had a container of orange juice that she had made that morning.
It was just sitting in the front seat.
Nothing was tipped over.
So the question was, how did she get from her car to this hill?
What led her there?
Sarah was one of these people that would help anyone with anything at any time.
And part of our working theory was she coaxed into following the suspect.
Did he say something like, I'm looking for my lost dog, or I can't find my car keys?
perhaps Sarah, in an attempt to assist this person,
may have followed him to that area.
Tell me about this one.
That was less than a week, I think, before she died.
I said, could I take your picture because your great grandma really wants a picture of you and your drill team?
And she goes, okay.
It was just too incredible to believe that it could even happen.
Sarah's parents, Laura and Tom Yarborough,
I mean, who thinks that your daughter's going to be murdered?
Tom and Laura had the excruciating task of having to tell their two sons the tragic news.
Sarah's youngest brother, Andrew, was just 11 years old at the time.
At that age, you probably've never seen or heard your parents cry much,
but that pain in the voice is 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.
I actually would hear her say. I can't decide if I want to be a museum curator or an engineer like my father.
And I was always rooting for the museum curator.
Liberty Barnes, Christy Gutierrez, Amy Perodi, and Mary Beth Tomi were some of Sarah's closest friends.
So this was after the last day of 10th grade when we're just kind of goofing around afterwards. And that totally
I mean, you can see there's Sarah right in the middle of it, just being goofy.
The fiery red hair.
Was that her personality?
Yes.
She was artistic, she was creative, she was smart, she was feisty.
Imaginative.
All of those things.
She would be the last one to wait for someone.
Always be there with a smile.
She would help with homework.
It was her ultimate kindness.
After Sarah was ripped from the,
their lives, they say their sense of safety was gone forever.
You grow up getting all the safety conversations with your parents and bad things can happen,
and it's all this sort of like vague possibility out there.
And then all of a sudden, it was like, no, no, no, no, no, it can really happen.
It really did just happen.
It was all hands on deck.
The sheriff's office put everything they had into solving this case as soon as they could.
And the killer left behind important evidence.
Sarah had not been raped, but the killer's DNA was found on pieces of her clothing.
There was semen found on her underwear and on her jacket.
We had a full male DNA profile.
DNA technology was new back in 1991,
but investigators hoped that DNA would someday lead them to Sarah's killer.
In the meantime, they had eyewitnesses.
I thought for sure somebody would know him.
Drew and his friend who was with him the morning they found Sarah's body worked with police,
and a sketch of the man they saw in the bushes was released to the public.
Police would later release a more elaborate sketch.
I very vividly remember going through yearbooks going, okay, who looks like this sketch?
Everyone, it felt like at one point was a suspect.
But as days went by and as Leeds driving,
up, police kept coming back to Drew and his friend.
They just made me feel like I was the only person that could help them solve this.
I know that wasn't the intent.
Like, you know, the officers are just doing their best.
How much pressure were you feeling?
It's unimaginable pressure.
And despite everyone's best efforts, it would take years to find Sarah's killer.
This case was never forgotten.
In early June of 1993, one and a half years after Sarah Yarbrose murder,
local media were there as students gathered in the courtyard of Federal Way High School to honor her.
Bill Fuller, a family friend who helped spearhead the move for a memorial to remember Sarah,
unveiled it with help from Sarah's younger brother, Andrew.
It was quite a day.
A lot of tears as they looked at it and could see Sarah in that bench.
Bill Fuller has known the Yarbrose for years, and his daughter was in Sarah's class.
Sarah was fun to be around.
That was probably what we missed the most is she was fun to be around.
The bench reads Carpe Diem, Seize the Day, a mantra Sarah lived by.
Encaped in bronze are some of her favorite possessions, ballet shoes, a replica of Sarah's beloved dog Gibby and books.
Nice that people cared about her so much.
Andrew Yarbrough, now an adult, admits that he struggled as a young teenager.
It was especially difficult to see those sketches around town of the man police believed murdered his sister.
You know, there was drawings of the person's face all over in businesses in town.
You know, I do recall that quite a bit, just having that kind of a constant reminder.
Looking back, I feel like we didn't do a very good job with the boys.
I think that we were so consumed by our own grief that we didn't take 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 through it.
And they weren't alone in their grief.
Shannon Grant, the last friend to see Sarah alive, says she lived with constant regret.
I wish we could go back and do it all over again, that I would have asked the other
team members what time practice was, you know, maybe dropped her off.
I mean, there's a lot of the what-ifs.
The milestones were especially painful.
There was survivor guilt.
Like, why am I filling out my college applications when Sarah wanted to go to college?
This isn't fair.
Every joyful occasion had this sorrow.
that went with it that was, there's one missing from the crowd here.
Graduation day, June 12, 1993, was an emotional day.
But even more so, since it fell on what would have been Sarah's 18th birthday,
Lori Yarbrough came to support her daughter's friends.
I do not know where she found the strength to do that.
She loved that green dress, right?
Yeah, she wore green quite a bit with her hair.
Lori Yarbrose says Sarah's friends helped ease her grief somewhat,
and she thinks she filled the void for them as well.
Sometimes I would say, well, I'm going to date 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 seek approval through you.
You became sort of their surrogate.
Yes.
As life slowly moved forward, investigators kept working the case.
I describe it as like a relay race where the baton was handed off.
from one detective to the next over the years and decades.
I kind of refer to myself as the fifth beetle in this investigation.
By the early 2000s, investigators had received over 3,000 leads,
and advances in technology made them hopeful.
They entered the DNA from the crime scene into the recently established CODIS system,
a national DNA database that includes profiles of convicted offenders.
The strategy was to continually try to see if there were
ever be a match while also investigating leads.
But over time, there appeared to be no match.
For us to have DNA evidence from the suspect, but not have that
link to anybody, it just didn't make sense.
It seemed hard to believe that the suspect hadn't committed any other prior
crimes where his DNA wouldn't be in the system.
That's when he says detectives realized they had to go in a different
direction.
My name's Colleen Fitzpatrick, and I'm one of the pioneers of forensic genetic genealogy.
In 2011, investigators reached out to Fitzpatrick to inquire about using forensic genetic genealogy,
the practice of using software to compare unknown DNA profiles to information from public DNA databases
and searching family trees to identify suspects. Genetic genealogy is well known now and has been used to solve numerous
cold cases, but at that time it was in its infancy.
When I started in this field, it didn't exist.
Fitzpatrick says most police agencies had been skeptical of this new investigative tool.
The police thought I was crazy, you know, this little old lady with a crazy idea,
and I was actually almost laughed out of the room.
But the King County Sheriff's Office took a chance on Fitzpatrick.
It was for free. I just wanted to see if it worked.
What are you going to lose if you try something?
The Yarbrose were encouraged.
I think it wasn't until we met Colleen Fitzpatrick that I really began to think,
well, you know, they're going to find this person.
And it didn't take long before Fitzpatrick came up with a name of a possible suspect
that surprised just about everyone.
Everyone went no way.
From the beginning, it was very promising.
And the story took.
some really bizarre twist.
In 2011, 20 years after Sarah's murder,
when forensic genetic genealogist Colleen Fitzpatrick
started working the Yarborough case,
she traced Sarah's killer's family tree
back to a man named Robert Fuller,
whose family had come to America on the Mayflower.
I found numerous matches to the name Fuller.
When Fitzpatrick gave the name Fuller
to the King County Sheriff's Office,
they immediately knew of one person with that last name.
Bill Fuller, the Yarbrose close family friend,
who helped get that memorial bench built for Sarah.
Naturally, that peaked our interest.
From the beginning, Sarah's family and friends believed Bill Fuller
had nothing to do with Sarah's murder.
He didn't look at all like the suspect,
the wrong hair color, he's short, he's not tall,
he just didn't fit the profile at all.
Fuller's age didn't match the profile either.
He's 79 years old now, but was 48 years old at the time of Sarah's murder, at least two decades older than the man Drew Miller described.
There was no way that I could be even remotely connected to the case.
He fully cooperated with police and voluntarily gave them a DNA sample.
It didn't match the DNA sample. It didn't match the DNA.
DNA found at Sarah's crime scene. Yet Fitzpatrick remained optimistic. The good news is that we came up
with a possible last name to investigate, and this was the first break in the case in 20 years.
Fitzpatrick knew that Sarah's killer was in the Fuller family tree somewhere, so she and her
team went back to work, and as the years went by, she knew she was only getting closer,
especially after 2018 when forensic genetic genealogy was used to identify the Golden State Killer.
Golden State Killer really started the big revolution.
Things had evolved that we had the data to work with.
The technology was in place that we could go for it.
Then in September of 2019, Fitzpatrick's team made a breakthrough.
They came up with two new possible suspects, brothers Edward and Patrick Nicholas,
who, as the DNA showed, were distant cousins of Bill Fuller.
You know, this is eight years of on and off and looking at it, never giving up.
This is it. This is exciting.
Edward Nicholas was a registered sex offender.
His DNA was in the system. It wasn't Codas.
But Edward's DNA wasn't a match.
So they zeroed in on his brother Patrick, who in 2019 was a divorced loner,
lived a couple of towns away from Federal Way. We learned that he was working at a auto parts store.
Lived alone, no children, no friends or acquaintances that would even visit him. Everything that he did
was mostly by bus. He wasn't driving. Detective Ree says he discovered that when Sarah was murdered,
the bus route Nicholas often took happened to go past Federal Way High School. Back then, Nicholas was
just 27 years old, and around that time looked very much like the description of the sketch.
It looked promising at that point, but we still needed to get a DNA sample from him to match up to
the DNA evidence that we had.
So in late September 2019, investigators came up with a plan.
We assigned a team of undercover detectives to start doing surveillance on Patrick Nicola.
in the hopes of obtaining a surreptitious DNA sample.
Eventually, undercover detectives followed Nicholas to a laundromat.
They saw him go outside and smoke a cigarette.
And Patrick Nicholas was seen throwing the cigarette butt on the ground
that was collected by our detectives.
That's what you needed right there, that cigarette butt.
Yes.
Actually, he dropped two cigarette butts and a napkin that fell out of his pocket.
And all three items were collected.
The DNA sense.
Examples were rushed to the crime lab, and within days,
detectives received the call they had been waiting for.
The DNA match. This was our suspect.
Perfect match?
Yes.
Patrick Nicholas was arrested.
There were so many suspects over the years.
Was Patrick Leon Nicholas ever named as a suspect?
Out of 4,000 tips, he was never named.
I was pretty in shock.
The news was a relief for Sarah's family
and friends who had never given up hope that they would get answers.
One thing the detectives kept telling us was eventually technology is going to solve this case.
I trusted that.
And they turned out that they were right.
And I remember going out to my car and bawling, just bawling.
Finally, they got him.
When Drew Miller, who had seen Sarah's killer back in 1991, saw Patrick Nicholas's face, he says he knew they had the right person.
What did he look like?
The same guy, just older.
Just the same evil eyes.
Those evil eyes stayed the same.
All these years later.
Yeah.
But it was not over yet.
What do you think of it?
I have no clue.
During his interrogation, when detectives specifically asked him about Sarah's murder, he gave an alarming response.
Interestingly, he asked what year this was. Interestingly, he asked what year this was. And that really sent up a flag. Why? Why would you ask that? He's being told this as a murder case. We're wondering at this point, are there other victims?
This is it. I'm not going to say it.
After one and a half hours, Nicholas asked for an attorney and stopped talking.
But his criminal record would speak volumes.
I am the one that got away.
Whether it's with your besties or date night,
get to all the hottest concerts with Go Transit.
Go connects to all the biggest entertainment venues and makes it affordable with special e-ticket fares.
A weekend pass offers unlimited travel across the network on any weekend day or holiday for just.
$10. A weekday group pass offers the same weekday travel flexibility from $30 for two people
up to $60 for $5. So no matter what day of the week, Go's got you covered. Find out more at
go-transit.com slash tickets. Do you have a dark curiosity? Heart starts pounding, horrors,
hauntings, and mysteries is a weekly podcast hosted by me, Kailen Moore. Each week, I'll take you on a
dark journey through terrifying true urban legends, bizarre true crime cases, chilling tales of backwoods
horror and more. So if you're looking to join a passionate community of The Darkly Curious,
check out Heart Starts pounding on the free Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts. And remember,
stay curious. On a quiet morning in June 1983, eight years before Sarah's murder,
21-year-old Anne Cronie was sitting by her car along the Columbia River in Richland, Washington,
when a man approached her. He seemed normal.
Kind of friendly, actually.
Just friendly.
I had asked him if he'd done any water skiing yet
because he said he had just moved to town.
And he said he couldn't swim.
And he said, my name is Pat Nicholas.
After a few minutes of small talk, she became uncomfortable.
I noticed his voice was getting shaky,
and I told him I had to go.
I went to close the door, and he put a knife to my throat.
Everything kind of stopped at that.
moment. He told me to take my clothes off. Nicholas stuffed Anne's underwear into her mouth to prevent
her from screaming, forced her out of the car, and led her to the riverbank. We got about halfway
down the bank, and he told me to stop. I ran and dove in the river because I was thinking he
couldn't swim. Swim as hard as I could. Swim for your life. I swim for my life.
Passers by found Anne at a dock nearby.
and called police.
As it turns out,
19-year-old Patrick Nicholas
was no stranger to law enforcement
and had a record.
He had raped two women
and attempted to rape a third.
He'd been convicted of rape
as a juvenile
and had actually only just been out
for a few months
when he attacked me.
Days after Anne's attack,
he was tracked down,
arrested, and pled guilty
to attempted rape.
He told authorities, I realize that I have a problem concerning raping girls.
At his sentencing hearing, Anne spoke out.
I was actually very angry and asked the judge for the maximum sentence.
And the judge did agree and sentenced him to 10 years.
So I thought it was over.
I thought that justice had been served.
But Patrick Nicholas did not serve the full 10 years in prison.
He was released after just a year.
three and a half years. Anne was never notified. She barely thought of him again until October
2019. The police knocked on my door and said that there were detectives in Seattle that wanted
to talk to me about a cold case. They informed Anne that Patrick Nicholas had been arrested again,
this time for the murder of Sarah Yarbrough. He told me that there were similarities in the cases.
and I was crushed.
It had never occurred to me
that what I escaped from was a murderer.
What's more, if Nicholas had served his full prison sentence,
he would have still been behind bars that December morning in 1991,
unable to murder Sarah Yarbrough.
How angry are you to hear that he was released that early?
Very.
It brought up a lot of the old anger and even more anger because the system failed.
King County Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Celia Lee and Mary Barbosa
describe him as a serial predator with a clear pattern.
All of the women were approached at or near their car.
He would strike up conversation and then pull a knife and tell them that they needed to walk
where he would order them to take off their clothes and then rape them.
Nicholas had also been convicted of sexually assaulting a minor in 1994, three years after Sarah's murder.
Five sexual assaults that investigators knew of, none of which had required him to submit his DNA.
So there was no record of him in the CODIS database.
But in pretrial hearings, the judge ruled that Nicholas's criminal history could not be entered in as evidence.
She found that it would be unfairly prejudicial to the defendant.
But the prosecutors were hopeful their case was strong enough.
All right for the jury.
In early 2023, more than 30 years after Sarah Yarbrose murder,
her accused killer, now 59 years old, went on trial.
Sarah's childhood friends were there.
I so clearly remember the morning before the trial started,
just going, I don't know if I can do this.
Like, you know, I had so many different emotions flowing through, and it was like, no, we need to be there.
There was this absolute love for Sarah and the Yarbrose that was so strong.
Did you feel like they were a lifeline for you?
Yeah.
Be seated.
You weren't in it alone.
You were all in it together.
As the trial got underway, the focus was on the DNA.
What was your strategy then in trying this case?
Well, we needed them to trust the science.
There was a field that was emerging called forensic genetic genealogy.
Patrick Nicholas's public defender, David Montez, challenged how forensic genetic genealogy
was used to first identify Nicholas.
I want to dig into the science.
The first time that kind of defense had been used in Washington State.
They used technology that is not only an improvement, but just, wow, really.
He's not the person that killed Sarah.
The police needed an answer.
than they have no right answer.
And so they turn to new, novel, untested technology.
Genetic genealogy is a new field.
It really hasn't been tested out.
Should we be making important decisions
based on something that is not well or deeply understood?
But the prosecutor said that argument was moot
because Patrick Nicholas's DNA matched the DNA found
at the Yarbrough crime scene.
And Detective Free says the numbers were astronauts.
The odds were one in 120 quadrillion that...
Quadrillion, yeah.
Right.
That it was somebody else.
If the numbers pointed to Nicholas's guilt, law enforcement says so did evidence found
at his house near the time of his arrest in 2019.
It was almost like a layer.
There was no working electricity at this house, stacks of pornography all throughout the place.
We also found a newspaper from 1994 that had on his front page an article about the Sarriarbor case.
And going through one of the kitchen drawers, we found a torn photograph taken from a magazine, a woman in a cheerleading outfit.
When the prosecutors showed that photo in the courtroom, the oxygen left the room.
Yeah.
Montez downplayed their significance.
I think both of those pieces of evidence were not especially strange.
given the general state of his house.
There were stacks and stacks of newspapers all over his house.
This is evidence tape.
Patrick Nicholas didn't flinch as the evidence was shown,
showing no emotion throughout the trial.
But Sarah Yarbrough's presence was felt,
especially when now retired captain Scott Strathie
carefully unpackaged and displayed Sarah's clothing
that had been in storage for over 30 years.
Her drill team jacket, shoes, sweater, even her nylon stockings.
This was like an opening in a time capsule.
All of a sudden, they were real things.
They weren't even photographs.
They were the things she had on her body when she died.
You just, you sort of felt yourself crumble.
After nine long days of testimony, the case went to the jury.
All right for the jury?
It took them just over a day to reach a verdict.
I was shaking.
And like just that, like, there was so much adrenaline and so much anticipation.
We, the jury, find the defendant, Patrick Leon Nichol.
Everything just dropped and it's like, what?
Why do you think it took law enforcement so long to identify Patrick Nicholas as a suspect?
Take a look at a timeline of the case at 48Hours.com.
This is the state of Washington versus Patrick Leon Nicholas.
Sarah Yarbrose loved ones had waited over 30 years for this moment.
We, the jury, finally defend, but then, shock.
Not guilty of the crime of murder in the first degree premeditated.
Patrick Nicholas was found not guilty of the first charge, premeditated first degree murder.
I remember dropping my head to my hands.
I was angry.
I was in disbelief.
When that first one came in not guilty, I closed my eyes.
But there were other charges, and there was still hope of a conviction.
Guilty of the crime of murder in the first degree.
Guilty in the second degree.
Patrick Nicholas was found guilty of first degree murder and second degree murder.
The jury ruled both had been committed with a sexual motivation.
I remember hearing the family behind me cry.
And I made eye contact with the jurors and nodded at them.
You know, they got it.
They got it right.
I feel so grateful for those detectives, for the boys, for the previous victims, for every witness who took the stand.
So grateful that all these people came together.
Two weeks after Nicholas's conviction, dozens of people who had been involved in every part of Sarah's case gathered back at the courthouse for his sentencing hearing.
Prosecutors asked the judge to impose extra time to take into account all.
of Nicholas's crimes.
The sentencing hearing was exhilarating in a way that I never expected.
It was probably the most raw human courage I have ever seen in my life.
Sarah's death left our family broken and we've never been the same.
The pain in my father's voice over the phone telling me Sarah was dead.
Person after person took to the podium to say all that Patrick Nicholas had taken from them.
Come and face to face with pure evil that day has deeply impacted my entire life.
He took her life and what was sure to be a brilliant future from her.
In taking Farah, he took the innocence of every one of us.
To face Patrick Nicholas and to say what they had been wanting 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, Anne Crony, who wasn't allowed to testify at Sarah's trial, started speaking.
He just did like a double take and shuddered when Anne stood up.
Like he saw a ghost.
Yes.
I'm sure he didn't expect to ever see my face or hear my name ever again.
We rely on a system of justice that is designed to protect us from predators,
like Nicholas, and this system failed me.
It failed Sarah, her family, friends, and countless others.
I asked the court to please not make the same mistake.
After everyone spoke, Judge Josephine Wiggs addressed the court.
When I think about this poor child, this poor child,
what she experienced fighting for her life.
Judge Wiggs put her face.
on the thing and said, this was a child.
She kept saying that, and all I could think was,
Oh, my gosh.
That's right.
We were children.
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 putting someone away for something that they did.
but he got 30 years that she didn't get.
It makes me mad that he was free for so many years,
and who knows however many other people were hurt during that time.
I don't know that we'll ever know, and that could have been avoided.
Forensic genetic genealogy helps solve Sarah's case.
The prosecutors say similar technology could have identified Patrick Nicholas years earlier,
if only familial DNA searches were allowed in Washington State.
In a familial DNA search, an unknown DNA sample is compared against profiles already in CODIS to search for possible family members.
Remember, Patrick Nicholas's brother's DNA had been in CODIS for years.
The legislation just doesn't exist in the state to allow that search.
California uses it the UK, as I understand.
New York, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Colorado, Florida.
Do you think it's time to get that law changed?
We do.
We do.
The Yarboroughs agree and 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 is?
I think her legacy is she was always someone who brought people together.
She's brought all the people together that attended the trial.
That's the kind of person she was.
For Drew Miller, who at 13, found Sarah's body,
the connections made at trial finally brought him some peace.
Knowing he's in prison is fantastic,
but knowing her family and friends is way more important to me
because that's what's given me the actual healing that I needed.
This is probably beginning of our junior year.
Sarah's friends will always remain bonded by the past,
and Sarah's stolen future.
Not only was she beautiful, her soul was beautiful,
and the grace and the beauty that she carried and left with all of us.
We won't forget her. We will never forget her.
Ready to take on Canada's worst invasive plant?
The call for proposals for the invasive Fragmites Control Fund is open.
These funds support collaborative projects led by municipalities,
conservation authorities, indigenous communities, and non-profits
that focus on Fragmite's mapping,
monitoring, planning, control, and innovation. Applications must be submitted electronically by
January 23, 2026 at 1159 p.m. For more information and to apply, visit our website.
