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The Babes in the Woods · Wicked and Grim: A True Crime Podcast

• 0:07
  Speaker 1: On a cold January afternoon in nineteen fifty three, a
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: man wandered off a trail in Vancouver's Stanley Park clearing underbrush.
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: It was just another normal day's work for him, that is,
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: until he made the discovery that would haunt Canadian investigators
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: for generations. There, hidden beneath layers of old leaves and
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: a tattered old fur coat, where the skeletal remains of
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: two young children. For nearly seventy years, the story remains
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: a complete mystery. While investigators tried to identify their remains
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: and asked the questions, who killed them and why has
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: no one reported the missing. This is the story of
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: one of Canada's oldest unsolved homicide cases and how it
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: slowly transformed into a national legend. Is the story of
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: the Babes in the Woods.
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: My name's Ben, I'm Nicole, and you're listening to Wicked
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: and Grim, a true crime podcasting.
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: The following podcast material for a mature audience listener discretion.
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: I'm on a bit of a Canadian true crime story
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: streak right now, BC. Really well, yeah, local to our
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: province for sure. I've been just I don't know, focusing
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: on those they're just really interesting me And yeah, I
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: don't know.
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: I'm all for that, to be honest.
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: Which is good, right. Yeah, so yeah, this is a
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: BC case. We've actually been in the area of where
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: this one has occurred. It is a long, long running
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: story that pretty much every Canadian has heard of at
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: some point in their life. And it's rather tragic, to
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: say the least.
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: Well, and it's like the one city that people know
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: of in BC. Yeah, because I feel like anytime you're like, yeah,
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: I'm from British Columbia, okay, Vancouver, yeah you know, or
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: how far away are you from? Vancouver?
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: So so yeah, you can actually kind of identify with
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: this story because hey, Vancouver, it's a.
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: Well known city, that's for sure. It's actually like awesome.
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: We love Vancouver. It's a good city.
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: It's a really good city. Though I will say I'm
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: not that much of a big city person, so I
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: like to visit Vancouver. Yeah. I would not be able
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: to live there.
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, No, I don't think we'd ever live there, but
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: as a little holiday or to go watch the Vancouver
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: come up.
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: Oh exactly, pretty aw exactly. Yeah, nothing against Vancouver, it's
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: just not my vibe. It's just too big and busy
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: as all that goes for any big city. It just
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: would not be my vibe. But I think we've chatted enough.
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: Do you want to just get into the story today?
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: Just get right to it. Let's just get right to it,
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: all right, Let's do that. So on the morning of Wednesday,
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: January fourteenth, nineteen fifty three, Stanley Park looked much the
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: way it had always done in the middle of Vancouver winter.
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: It was rainy, with no snow sticking to the ground.
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: It sounds odd for a Canadian city, but for Vancouver,
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: it's rather typical. There are towering Douglas fir trees and
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: Western red cedars that would muffle much of the noise
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: drifting in from the city beyond the trees in the
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: park as well. While Vancouver was growing rapidly in the
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: years following the Second World War, Stanley Park remained a
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: place where dense forests could make a person feel surprisingly isolated,
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: despite being only minutes away from the busy downtown. Narrow
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: trails wound between thick undergrowth, and in the quieter areas
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: of the park, it was at the time entirely possible
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: to walk for long stretches without seeing any other person,
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: and one of those quieter corners lay near the old
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: fish Hatchery between Beaver Lake and the Lion's Gate Bridge.
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: It wasn't an area frequented by tourists, but it was
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: where Vancouver's Park and Board employees would routinely work to
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: clear brush. They would remove deadfall and reduce the build
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: up of combustible debris that would fuel forest fires during
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: the warmer months. Even in January, that maintenance never completely stopped.
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: Now on that morning, a Park's Board laborer named Albert
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: Tong had been assigned to clear one of those heavily
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: overgrown sections. Albert had been working his way through the
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: thick brush with a rake, pulling away leaves and branches
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: and years of accumulated forest litter. It was ordinary work,
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: repetitive and necessary. As he moved across the forest floor,
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: he suddenly stepped on something hidden beneath a blanket of leaves.
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: But instead of the dull snap of a branch that
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: he was used to hearing from walking in the bush
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: like this, he instead heard a sharp and brittle sounding crack.
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: It immediately struck him as different. Curious, he stopped what
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: he was doing and used his rake to pull back
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: the leaves, and that's when something pale emerged from beneath
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: the debris. At first, it was only a round shape,
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: but then the eye sockets came into view. It was
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: a human skull, but the skull was far too small
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: to belong to an adult. Realizing what he was looking at,
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: Albert carefully continued moving away the leaves surrounding it, and
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: only a short distance away he discovered a second skull,
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: equally small, but both clearly belonging to children. Now covering
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: the remains was an old fur coat that had deteriorated
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: after years of exposure to elements, though enough remained to
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: show that it had once been a relatively expensive garment.
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: But beneath and around the coat were the scattered skeletal
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: remains of two children who were lying side by side.
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: Albert quickly reported what he found, and Vancouver police were notified.
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: Hey, dang, that is just freaking heartbreaking.
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah, just a scene like that would be like hearts stopping, almost,
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: like you would, just your stomach would sink realizing what
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: you're finding. And I can't imagine being an Albert.
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: Shoes Honestly, I think like the world would just stop.
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it would feel like it did.
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah a few moments, hey, because wow, sure now.
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: Officers soon arrived at the secluded clearing and began examining
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: the scene. Now, crime scene investigation in nineteen fifty three
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: looked nothing like it did today. There were no forensic
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: identification units, no DNA collection team, no laser scanners, or
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: any sort of extensive scene documentation. The officers worked with
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: what they had available to them, relying largely on observation,
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: handwritten notes, and a limited number of black and white photographs.
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: But that doesn't mean they didn't take care in their work, though,
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: so As they carefully removed leaves and forest debris, the
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: layout of the scene slowly emerged. The larger of the
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: two skeletons lay on its back, while the smaller one
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: rested face down nearby. Both remained remarkably intact considering the
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: passage of time. Most of the soft tissue had long
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: since disappeared, but the skeletons still wore much of their clothing.
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: Their shoes even remained on their feet, which suggested scavenging
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: animals had disturbed the bodies very little after they'd been covered.
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: Surrounding the children were also several personal belongings and near
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: the bodies. Investigators even found a small shingler's hatchet, which
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: was a very common roofing tool of the era. It
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: had a sharp cutting blade on ones side, like you'd
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: expect from a hatchet, and then a flat kind of
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: hammer head on the other side. Nearby there was a
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: blue metal lunch pail, its contents long since decomposed into
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: an unrecognizable mass, but although the food inside had rotted away,
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: its presence immediately caught investigators' attention. It suggested that whoever
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: had brought the children into the park may have intended
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: to spend time there, or at least wanted to have
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: it appear that way. There were also two leather aviator
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: style flying helmets that were recovered, one associated with each child.
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: These were popular among children in the years immediately following
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: the Second World War. They resembled flight caps worn by
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: military pilots and were something many kids used as like
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: play wear and dress up during the late nineteen forties.
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: Now close to the skeletons, officers also located a pair
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: of aviator goggles, though it was never determined which child
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: would have been wearing them. They also recovered a single
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: brown penny loafer shoe. It was a woman's shoe measuring
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: approximately size seven and a half, and no other matching
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: shoe was ever found. The children's clothing, which was very
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: well preserved, though still badly weathered, was their jackets, pants, shoes,
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: and other articles that investigators hope might eventually identify the victims.
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: But even with all the lucky findes, years of weather
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: had erased nearly every trace that might have once existed here.
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: Whatever had happened there had occurred not recently, and it
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: was clear that the children had been lying beneath the
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: forest floor four years, and things were gradually disappearing, and
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: the leaves in the forest was gradually covering them up
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: layer after layer with fallen leaves. And estimating exactly how
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: long that they had been laying there well, it proved
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: extremely difficult. Investigators noted the accumulation of organic debris covering
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: the bodies and attempted to judge the passage of time
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: by counting the layers of decomposed leaves above them. It
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: was an imprecise method, but based on their observations, they
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: believed that the children had likely died several years earlier,
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: rather than anything like several months now, the weather offered
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: little additional help. Vancouver's relatively mild coastline climate meant snow
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: rarely remained on the ground for long, and the constant
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: cycles of rain and damp conditions accelerated decomposition while preserving
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: surprisingly little forensic evidence. Now, once the scene had been
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: photographed and the visible evidence collected, officers carefully gathered the
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: skeletal remains and every item recovered from the clearing.
• 10:30
  Speaker 2: Okay, I just have to say something like, that's so
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: surprising that they were there that long without being spotted.
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: Well, it's one of those things where, like you know,
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: undergrowth and stuff can cover so much so fast. And
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: not to mention, they also had this fur coat laying
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: on top of them, which probably would have helped camouflage
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: them quite well into the underbrush too.
• 10:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, I was kind of like picturing like a
• 10:53
  Speaker 2: white coat, but I guess it could be quite darker
• 10:56
  Speaker 2: and then, yeah, you're right, it would camouflage quite a Yes,
• 10:59
  Speaker 2: if it's.
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: A brown fur coat, it would blend into the ground
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: really easy. And you have to think, this is not
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: the Vancouver we know today. This is not the Stanley
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: Park that we've been to. This is nineteen fifties Vancouver. Yeah,
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: much different.
• 11:11
  Speaker 2: And yeah, it could have been in an area that's
• 11:13
  Speaker 2: not really you know, I'll visit it a lot.
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: And that's exactly what this was. It was a bit
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: of a corner of the park that was kind of
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: hidden away, not many people really went to or anything,
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: so you know what, it didn't take much for that
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: undergrowth to really cover them, and then when someone did
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: eventually come by, they just couldn't see them.
• 11:31
  Speaker 2: Jeez, that's just wild.
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Now, much of the evidence that they had collected
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: was placed into simple cardboard boxes before then being transported
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: away from Stanley Park. The two unknown children, whose identities
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: had vanished along with the passing years, were taken to
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: the Vancouver City Morgue, where doctors hope that their bones
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: might finally begin to tell their story. The examination there
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: fell primarily on doctor T. R. Harmon, a medical doctor
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: working alongside doctor John Whitbread. Now, both men had considerable
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: experience dealing with sudden deaths, but neither specialized in forensic anthropology.
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: At the time, that field was still in its infancy
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: stage in Canada, and many of the techniques now considered
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: standard practices just simply didn't exist. Then the remains of
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: the children were painstakingly cleaned and laid out as completely
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: as possible. The first and most obvious question on hand
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: was what was the cause of death. Now, both skulls
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: showed several severe fractures that could not have occurred naturally,
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: while their bodies were just exposed to the elements. One
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: skull had actually sustained injuries that appeared to match the
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: sharp blade of the hatchet recovered beside the bodies, while
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: the other displayed crushing injuries more consistent with blows from
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: the hammer end of the same tool.
• 12:56
  Speaker 2: That seems so savage is that kind of death? But
• 12:59
  Speaker 2: then they're literally laid to rest with a fur coat
• 13:04
  Speaker 2: over tap like that just I don't know, it doesn't
• 13:06
  Speaker 2: match in my brain.
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a contradicting situation here, Like you're saying you
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: have such a savage, violent incident, but then that for
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: cop being laid over top suggests care.
• 13:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so care or like yeah, you're like laying them
• 13:23
  Speaker 2: to rest, like not necessarily regret, I guess, but sympathy, right.
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. So you have this this negative and positive
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: both both interacting in the same situation, which it's funny
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: you already pick up on that, because that's a very
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: big part of the story actually, But we'll get into
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: that now. Doctor Harmon physically compared the blade of the
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: shingler's hatchet against the fractures in one of the skulls,
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: and it fit remarkably well. It was enough for investigators
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: to conclude that the hatchet found at the scene had
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: almost certainly been used as the murder weapon. The injury
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: showed that they're deaths were clearly the result of repeated
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: blows to the head delivered with considerable force. Now, exactly
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: how many strikes each child suffered, unfortunately could not be determined,
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: as the conditions of the remains made that impossible. Only
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: the damage preserved within the skull itself is what remained. Now,
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: investigators next turn their attention to identifying the children themselves.
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: Based on the size of the skeleton and the degree
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: of skeletal development, Doctor Harmon estimated that the larger child
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: had been somewhere between seven and maybe even upwards of
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: twelve years old, while the smaller child was believed to
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: be slightly younger. Then came the conclusion that would shape
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: the investigation for nearly half a century. Although determining biological
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: sex from juvenile skeletons is notoriously difficult, especially when remains
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: are incomplete. The examination resulted in investigators believing the larger
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: skeleton belonged to a boy and the smaller skeleton belonged
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: to to a girl. It wasn't presented with complete certainty, though,
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: but once it entered the investigation it quickly hardened into
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: accepted fact. Detectives now believe they were searching for a
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: missing brother and sister. With little more to learn from
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: the bones themselves, police began examining the children's clothing in
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: extraordinary detail. The larger child had been wearing a red
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: Fraser Tartan jacket manufactured in Canada, along with beige corduroy pants,
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: brown leather shoes, and one of the leather aviator helmets.
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: Now with the second one particularly heartbreaking. A detail emerged
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: during the examination, and that younger child's underwear had been
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: far too large for them, so rather than replacing it,
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: someone had folded the waist bent over and secured it
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: with a safety pin so it would fit. Now, it's
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: a very small observation, but it quietly suggests that the
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: family may have been struggling. They could have been trying
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: to save money. Finances could have been tough now. Hand
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: me down clothing was very common in the years following
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: the Second World War, particularly among families trying to stretch
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: every dollar. Now, their shoes also attracted considerable attention. Police
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: consulted manufacturers and retailers in an effort to try and
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: determine when the children's shoes had first become available for sale,
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: and the results suggested that they'd been manufactured somewhere up
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: until after the end of the World War, so it
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: helped investigators try it kind of narrow that possible time
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: frame a little bit, but still it was a rather
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: large window. Attention then shifted to the woman's belongings recovered
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: beside the body. The fur coat, though badly deteriorated, had
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: once been relatively fashionable. Experts determined that it had likely
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: been manufactured around nineteen forty three, making it consistent with
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: clothing worn during the middle years of the war. Using
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: the coat and the single brown penny loafer that was found,
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: investigators concluded that this woman was probably about five feet
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: three inches tall, weighing somewhere between one hundred and twenty
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: five and one hundred and thirty five pounds. Though that
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: was a shot in the dark, they didn't really know
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: too much, it was their best guess now. To help
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: generate public leads, police wanted people to see not only
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: the recovered clothing, but what it might have looked like
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: when they were worn. So to do so, they approached
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: Woodward's Department Store, one of Vancouver's largest retailers at the time,
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: and there they borrowed children's clothing matching the garments recovered
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: from the scene as closely as possible. The outfits were
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: then placed on mannequins that were approximately the same size
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: as the victims, and they were photographed to be released
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: to the newspapers. The fur coat was also reconstructed as
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: accurately as possible for additional photographs too. Investigators hoped that
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: someone out there might recognize the distinctive tartan jacket, or
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: the flying helmet, or another piece of clothing that memory
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: alone had failed to connect to a missing child's story.
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: At the same time, the skeleton remains were being examined
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: by doctor Erna Ingell Berdorf, a forensic anthropologist and sculptor
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: whose life story was remarkable on its own. See, she
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: was a survivor of Auschwitz and had only recently arrived
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: in Vancouver, and she specialized in reconstructing faces from human skulls.
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: Working from the damaged remains and the measurements provided during
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: the examination, she painstakingly sculpted plaster facial reconstructions of both
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: of the children, and those final sculpts were haunting. They
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: transformed from anonymous skeletons into young children's faces. Newspapers across
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: British Columbia soon published photographs of the reconstructions alongsides of
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: the images of the recreated clothing, asking readers the simple question,
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: who are these children?
• 18:58
  Speaker 2: The reconstructions so interesting to me because I don't I guess,
• 19:02
  Speaker 2: I don't understand how how it could be realistic? I
• 19:08
  Speaker 2: guess how would you know that that just from like
• 19:11
  Speaker 2: the skull, How would you know that that's what they
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: look like?
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: Well, it's you don't know that's what they look like.
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: That's an estimate of what they could look like. So
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: as far as my understanding, you take things about like averages,
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: So a person, this age, this biological sex, what's the
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: average depth of skin they have on this part of
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: their face or this part of their face or this
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: part of their face. Things like that. You can say, Okay,
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: this person has an underbite, or they've got where on
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: the jaw over here, so maybe their mouth would have
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: been like crooked over this way. And there's a lot
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: of artists interpretation for sure, but it's analyzing the skull
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: and taking the averages and trying to meld them too
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: into a face that would be unique on its own.
• 19:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, like, I'm sure they did it an awesome job,
• 20:01
  Speaker 2: but just me sitting here, I'm like, frick, that would
• 20:04
  Speaker 2: be hard.
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: It would be I don't even.
• 20:05
  Speaker 2: Know how you'd begin to do that. But yeah, I
• 20:08
  Speaker 2: guess there's little tiny ways that kind of identify someone,
• 20:12
  Speaker 2: even from their skull so exactly.
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: And like I say, I know nothing about it, just
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: from what I've seen on like Netflix documentaries and other
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: true crime shows and things like that. When they show
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: a bit of the reconstruction, that's kind of my guess.
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: They put peg like they of course usually use a
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: replica of the skull, and they'll put like pegs on
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: different like location marks of the skull and start building
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: the clay up to the certain depths that they estimate
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: the skin and muscle to have been huh wow. Yeah. Now,
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: as investigators continued reviewing every piece of evidence, the lunch
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: paiale being brought into Stanley Park and the fur coat
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: seemingly deliberately covering the bodies, well, that stood out, and
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: detectives began considering the possibility that the children had been
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: brought into the park by their mother. Perhaps, they reasoned,
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: she had packed a meal, then they walked into this
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: secluded area and she killed them with the hatchet, then
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: covered their bodies with her coat, and then disappeared herself.
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: I mean, the theory fit the evidence that they had
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: right in front of them, but whether it was correct
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: remained another matter entirely Now. Regarding the photos being released
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: to the public, the response was pretty immediate. Within days
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: of the photographs appearing in newspapers across British Columbia, telephones
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: began ringing inside Vancouver's police headquarters. Letters arrived by the handful.
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: Some people believed they recognized the distinctive tartan jacket. Others
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: were certain that they had seen the leather flying helmets before,
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: and every time a new edition of the newspaper hit
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: the streets, more calls would follow. For investigators, it was
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: rather encouraging because somewhere they believed that they had a
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: chance for someone to actually recognize these two kids. But
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: the challenge was separating the genuine memories from mistaken ones,
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: and responsibility for that largely fell on Detective Dawn McKay,
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: an experienced Vancouver homicide investigator. Now, unlike most murder investigations,
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: Detective Don McKay wasn't beginning with a victim whose identity
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: could lead police towards friends, relatives, or even enemies. Instead,
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: he was working backwards. Before detectives could hope to even
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: identify a suspect, establish a motive, or even determine exactly
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: when the murders had occurred, he had to answer the
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: question of who were the children first. Now, he started
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: by comparing the reconstructed faces and the clothing against reports
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: of missing children from Vancouver and the surrounding Lower Mainland.
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: They examined police files, contacted neighboring departments, and searched through
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: every report involving a missing boy and girl whose ages
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: roughly matched the estimates provided by the corner. But one
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: after another, the leads dissolved. Some of the children had
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: been found years earlier. Others simply moved away with their families,
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: and as the local search failed to produce answers, the
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: investigation expanded well beyond Vancouver. Detectives contacted school districts throughout
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: British Columbia, asking principals and teachers to review attendance records
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: dating back to the late nineteen forties. They asked if
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: a brother and a sister had suddenly stopped coming to
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: class without any explanation. Officers also reached out to orphanages,
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: children's homes, churches, and provincial welfare agencies. Records were examined
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: for families that had quietly disappeared or children who had
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: somehow slipped through the cracks. Every single institution that might
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: have crossed paths with vulnerable children was asked to help.
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: The work was, of course, painstakingly slow. There were no
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: centralized databases, no digital archives, and certainly no computers to
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: search thousands of records and seconds. Every single file had
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: to be pulled by hand. Every inquiry answered through letters, telephones,
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: or face to face interviews. Detectives often waited weeks for replies,
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: only to learn that another promising lead had gone nowhere. Still,
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: the investigation continued to spread. Police eventually examined seventy six
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: different pairs of missing children, not just from British Columbia,
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: but from elsewhere in Western Canada as well. Whenever a
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: pair seemed remotely possible, investigators followed the lead until they
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: could either confirm or eliminate it. In several cases, officers
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: trace families who had immigrated overseas after the Second World War,
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: eventually confirming that the children were just living in places
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: even as far away as Scotland and Australia, and that
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: they were safe and accounted for. Every elimination narrowed the field,
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: but none brought investigators any closer to identifying the victims.
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: And through it all, one question became increasingly difficult to ignore,
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: and that was, if two children had been murdered, why
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: had no one reported the missing? Detectives struggled to understand
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: this because someone should have noticed their disappearance, whether it's
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: a teacher, a neighbor, a relative, or a family friend.
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: Who should have you know, wondered what had become of them?
• 25:20
  Speaker 2: Well, yeah, no, shit, especially if the one is older,
• 25:22
  Speaker 2: like twelve right upwards at that age, Yeah yeah, because
• 25:25
  Speaker 2: I was thinking at first if they were just like babies, right, maybe,
• 25:30
  Speaker 2: but the fact that it's like an older kid.
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: Because they would have been a little more integrated into.
• 25:34
  Speaker 2: Insight school and yeah, have people have met them.
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: And stuff, so yeah, but instead now you basically have
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: two kids that just seemed to vanish from history. So
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: it's odd for sure. Now his public interest in the
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: case grew, so did the number of witness statements, and
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: among the earliest accounts was that of a sailor and
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: his girlfriend. They told police they had visited Stanley Park
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: several years earlier, and during their walk, they claimed they
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: had seen a distraught woman emerge from the woods there.
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: According to them, she wasn't wearing a coat and appeared
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: to have only had one shoe on. They even described
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: her as letting out a chilling scream before disappearing from sight. Now,
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: given what investigators had found at the crime scene, that
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: statement made a lot of sense. The problem was that
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: neither could confidently place the event within a specific year,
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: so without a reliable date, police had no way of
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: knowing whether the woman had anything to do with the murders,
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: or if the sighting was simply an unfortunate coincidence or
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: even a hoax. Eventually, the lead stalled out and it
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: was filed away with dozens of others that seemed promising
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: but couldn't be verified. Another witness also came forward after
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: studying the newspaper photographs of the reconstructed clothing. He was
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: a logger who recalled seeing a red haired woman traveling
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: with two young children. Both were wearing unusual leather flying
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: helmets similar to the recovered in Stanley Park. According to
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: his memory, the family had been in the Mission area,
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: east of Vancouver. Detectives traveled to Mission and began retracing
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: the logger's accounts. They interviewed local residents, searched employment records,
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: and attempted to identify the woman that he was describing,
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: But as investigators dug deeper, the story gradually unraveled. The
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: woman was eventually identified, The children that she had been
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: traveling with were located, and none of them had any
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: connection to the Stanley Park murders. The investigation continued in
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: much the same way over the following months, with reports
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: following the frustrating dead ends that they kept coming up with. Now,
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: the theory that was developing inside the investigation was that
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: their mother had brought them to Stanley Park and there
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: she killed them with the hatchet, covered them with her coat,
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: and then later even taken her own life, possibly by
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: entering the Burrard inlet, and eventually it gradually became the
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: working hypothesis. Years passed, but the case refused to move forward.
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: The steady flow of tips should have slowly kept building,
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: but instead they slowed down to only a trickle. Detective
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: McKay and other investigators had not failed for a lack
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: of effort. They had pursued the case with remarkable determination,
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: but it didn't make a difference. The evidence was soon boxed, labeled,
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: and placed into storage, where it would remain for decades.
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: The unknown children from Stanley Park became one of British
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: Columbia's most haunting unsolved mysteries, and as the years slipped
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: quietly by, they became known simply as the Babes in
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: the Woods, which is a name borrowed from an old
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: English folk tale about two abandoned children who died in
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: a forest.
• 28:44
  Speaker 2: Babes in the Woods. That title alone just like it's
• 28:48
  Speaker 2: Frickin' heart break.
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: It's spine chilling too, because it's just like Oh my god,
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: what happened. It's like you said, it's heartbreaking. It sends
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: chills up my spine and then it just like crushes
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: my heart because I feel so badly for these two kids.
• 29:02
  Speaker 2: Well yeah, and I'm glad that you mentioned something, because
• 29:05
  Speaker 2: in my head, I was like, the only way this
• 29:08
  Speaker 2: makes sense to me is if it like first a
• 29:12
  Speaker 2: parent to kill their children, if it was like a
• 29:14
  Speaker 2: murder suicide type thing. Right, yes, So I'm like, she
• 29:18
  Speaker 2: also can't be alive, and you did just say like
• 29:20
  Speaker 2: maybe she what did like what did you say?
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: They she ended up in the barard in Les?
• 29:25
  Speaker 2: Okay? Yeah, so because I'm also I was kind of
• 29:29
  Speaker 2: expecting to find like, you know, a woman or a
• 29:31
  Speaker 2: female or a parent's body there as well.
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: But they didn't. They didn't, I mean, not to say
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: that she's not nearby, just not discovered or not or
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: you know something like that.
• 29:41
  Speaker 2: Well, yeah, if you go in water, it's it's a
• 29:43
  Speaker 2: bit difficult, a bit more difficult to be found.
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: Definitely, especially when it's the ocean exactly. Now, this name,
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: while it's very memorable, it slowly transformed the investigation into
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: something larger than the actual crime itself. It appeared regularly
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: in newspaper retrospectives and books examining British Columbia's most infamous
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: unsolved cases, and even television documentaries exploring Canadian mysteries, and
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: of course, podcasts. The generations learned about the discovery in
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: Stanley Park, often without realizing that behind the infamous nickname
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: were two very real children whose names, families, and histories
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: had been completely lost, and that growing public fascination became
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: both a blessing and a curse. On one hand, every
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: article and television segment generated new tips. Someone would remember
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: a family that had suddenly disappeared in the late nineteen forties,
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: or recall seeing children dressed in clothing similar to the
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: ones that were reconstructed. But on the other hand, time
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: also encouraged speculation. Rumors began circulating that had little connection
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: to the evidence that was collected in nineteen fifty three.
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: Some people suggested the kids had been victims of organized crime,
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: while others believed that they had been abandoned refugees arriving
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: in Canada after the war. Others imagined serial killers or
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: secret societies, or even elaborate conspiracies, and none of those
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: theories were supported by the investigation itself, though, but of
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: course it didn't matter. They still became woven into the
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: folklore of the case itself. Now Throughout the following decades,
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: advances in forensic science encouraged periodic reviews of the case.
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: Specialists revisited the skeletal remains and physical evidence, thinking they
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: might find something that was previously overlooked, and while no
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: dramatic breakthroughs occurred, several long held assumptions began attracting some
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: greater scrutiny, and one of those assumptions involved the children's
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: estimated age and biological sex. By the latter half of
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: the twentieth century, forensic anthropologists had become increasingly cautious about
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: assigning biological sex to juvenile skeletal remains, because, unlike adults,
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: children's skeletons had not yet developed many of the anatomical
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: features that were relied upon for accurate identification. But that
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: realization didn't immediately change the investigation. Police continued searching for
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: a missing boy and girl because no evidence existed to
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: prove otherwise. Nevertheless, some specialists quietly questioned whether the original
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: examination was correct. Other evidence also received fresh attention to
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: like the clothing it was repeatedly examined, and the reconstructed
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: faces was also evolving as forensic techniques improved and evolved.
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: The original plaster sculptures by doctor Erna engel Berdorf well
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: they remained remarkable achievements for the time, but facial reconstruction
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: had advanced considerably since the early nineteen fifties. New artists
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: revisited the skulls using updated methods, producing revised images intended
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: to generate renewed public interest. Eventually, the case found its
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: way onto the dough Network, an international database dedicated to
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: identifying unidentified human remains and long term missing persons. The
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: list made the Stanley Park victims accessible to investigators and
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: amateur researchers around the world, which greatly expanded the number
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: of people comparing miss and children's against the unidentified pair.
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: But once again names were suggested, records were compared, and nothing.
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: Every comparison failed. Perhaps the most frustrating aspect of the
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: investigation was that it never truly lacked any sort of effort.
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: Over the years, countless detectives, forensic specialists, journalists, and private
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: citizens devoted time to trying to identify these two children,
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: but not much changed. They were at a dead end
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: with no leads or identities. What did change, though, was
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: the science available to interpret the evidence. By the nineteen nineties,
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: forensic biology was transforming criminal investigations around the globe. Cases
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: once thought impossible to solve, were suddenly being reopened because
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: of advances in DNA analysis. Biological evidence that had sat
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: untouched for decades was beginning to identify victims and offenders
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: alike with unprecedented accuracy. Across North America, police agencies were
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: re examining their oldest unsolved murders to determine whether any
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: preserved evidence could benefit from these new techniques, and the
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: Stanley Park case was no exception. Brian Honeybourne, a veteran
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: Vancouver Police detective with a deep interest in cold cases,
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: believe the case needed something more. Brian had followed the
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: investigation for years and he recognized something that many people overlook,
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: and that's the fact that cold cases are rarely solved
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: because someone suddenly has a bright idea. More often than not,
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: they are solved because an investigator is willing to question
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: assumptions that had gone unchanged for decades. So when Brian
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: finally in inherited responsibility for the file. He resisted the
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: temptation to begin with the theories. Instead, he started where
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: every good investigator should start, with the evidence itself, and
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: he requested the original case material. And when he reopened
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: the Stanley Park murders, nearly fifty years had passed since
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: the bodies were discovered, and time had solved none of
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: the case's biggest questions. But what surprised Brian the most,
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: almost immediately when he opened those boxes was how little
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: of the original investigative files remained. Despite extraordinary amounts of
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: work carried out during the nineteen fifties, much of the
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: documentation had either been condensed, misplaced, or simply failed to
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: survive the passing decades. In fact, Brian had even said
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: that the original investigative file at this point only consisted
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: of two pages. It was an astonishingly small record or
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: a case that had become one of British Columbia's most
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: well known unsolved murders. Now. Fortunately, the physical evidence itself
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: had been preserved far more carefully. The children's clothing, the hatchet,
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: the photographs of the crime scene, the Corners report, and
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: most importantly, the skeleton remains that had all been there,
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: they survived.
• 36:20
  Speaker 2: Okay, well that's good, but I also like, frick yeah, Brian,
• 36:25
  Speaker 2: the fact that he wants to just start from the
• 36:27
  Speaker 2: beginning and not have like biasness in his head, you know,
• 36:32
  Speaker 2: as he's like going through trying to figure out what happens, Like,
• 36:35
  Speaker 2: that's really good.
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: That's huge, That's that's amazing. That's what investigators should be doing.
• 36:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, because I imagine you read like these theories or whatever,
• 36:43
  Speaker 2: and then it would just put you down a rabbit
• 36:45
  Speaker 2: hole and you wouldn't use your own creativity to try
• 36:49
  Speaker 2: to like figure out, you know, what actually happened here exactly.
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: And I think it's so easy to get led down
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: a rabbit hole. Even if you unintentionally hear a theory
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: or see a piece of evidence wrong. Hient, it can
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: get your brain in a situation or a path to
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: go this way when the reality is a complete opposite direction.
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: It can be unintentional and it just takes.
• 37:11
  Speaker 2: You well, yeah, because it could make a total sense
• 37:14
  Speaker 2: and then all of a sudden, that's just what you're believing,
• 37:17
  Speaker 2: and you're not able to, like you open your mind
• 37:20
  Speaker 2: up to think of something else exactly.
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: Now, as Brian worked through the evidence, he found himself
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: questioning several conclusions from the earlier investigation, like the belief
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: that the remains were that of a young boy and
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: his younger sister. So Brian turned to doctor David Sweet,
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: one of Canada's leading forensic odentologists and a pioneer in
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: recovering DNA from degraded human remains. Even then, success was
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: far from being guaranteed, though the children had lain beneath
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: the damp soil of Stanley Park for years before being discovered,
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: and to top it all off, nearly five decades had
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: passed since their remains had been recovered. There was no
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: certainty that enough usable DNA still existed to produce meaningful results.
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: Now carefully, they selected bone samples to be submitted for
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: DNA testing, and the investigation entered another period of waiting.
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: Recovering DNA from these old skeletons. It was a process
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: that can take you weeks, It could take months, It
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: could take years, requiring scientists, you know, isolate minute fragments
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: of genetic material before determining whether they are even suitable
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: for any analysis. Brian knew there was every possibility that
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: the effort would end with the laboratory, concluding no usable
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: DNA remained, and eventually he received a telephone call. It
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: was years later, in the early two thousands when Brian's
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: phone rang. It was doctor Sweet. He began the conversation
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: by asking a simple question, quote are you sitting down?
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: Explained that not only had his team successfully recovered DNA
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: from the remains, but the results had overturned one of
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: the central assumptions that guided the investigation since nineteen fifty three.
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: The children were not a brother and sister. They were brothers.
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: They were two.
• 39:19
  Speaker 2: Boys, no kidding? Are you sitting down? For this?
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: For nearly fifty years, detectives had searched school records, missing
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: persons reports, welfare files, all looking for a missing boy
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: and a missing girl. In modern DNA analysis had now
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: demonstrated that investigators had unknowingly been searching for the wrong
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: people the entire time. The DNA analysis continued to reveal
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: other important information too. After additional testing, they established the
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: boys were biologically brothers, but only half. They shared the
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: same mother but had different fathers, which complicated some things
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: because instead of searching for a conventional family bloodline consisting
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: of two parents and two children, investigators were now looking
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: for a woman who had children with at least two
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: different men, which broadened the range of possible family histories
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: to be considered.
• 40:15
  Speaker 2: It does, but then I also feel like it then
• 40:18
  Speaker 2: it's two dads that are missing kids. But obviously they
• 40:22
  Speaker 2: I guess they didn't come forward, So maybe that doesn't
• 40:24
  Speaker 2: help things at all.
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so there's the two sides to the coin and them. Yeah,
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: definitely right now. The findings breathe new life into the investigation,
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: but they did not provide detectives and with the answers
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: that they wanted most basically, which was who were they
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: and who had killed them? If anything, the discovery actually
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: forced investigators to start over, basically from scratch. Almost every
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: major lead pursued in nineteen fifty three had been based
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: on the assumption that they were searching for a brother
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: and sister, but now it seemed like somewhere in British
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: Columbia's past were instead two little boys who disappeared without
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: anyone connecting them to one of the province's most infamous murder.
• 41:02
  Speaker 2: Cases, which changes things a lot.
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: It does. Responsibility for trying to solve all of this
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: soon fell onto a group of small investigators who understood
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: that solving the case often requires equal parts detective work
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: and historical research. Leading the effort was Inspector Dale Weedman,
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: who oversaw Vancouver's Police Department's cold case unit, alongside Detective
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: Kat Thorson and others, who gradually assembled a fresh investigative
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: strategy See. Rather than relying solely on witness statements collected
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: decades earlier, the team began reconstructing the social history of
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: postwar Vancouver itself. They wanted to understand how vulnerable families lived,
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: where records were kept, and why two children could seemingly
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: disappear without leaving an obvious paper trail. Detectives spent countless
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: hours going over records again with the new light. A
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: single promising name could take weeks to eliminate, and even
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: locating the right records often depended on knowing which government
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: department or historical archive might even still possess them. Particular
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: attention was also given to school records, because even if
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: no missing person report had been filed, a teacher might
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: remember two boys who simply stopped attending class. Attendance book
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: from schools throughout Vancouver were revisited, this time with investigators
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: looking specifically for a pair of brothers rather than brother
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: and sister. It was painstaking work, made more difficult by
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: the fact that many schools had closed, merged, or even
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: discarded records during the decades since the murders, because you
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: have to remember, this is fifty years later.
• 42:41
  Speaker 2: Why would you think that you need to keep those exactly.
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: The team also revisited several of the most promising leads
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: that had captivated earlier investigators. One involved a woman named
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: Isabella Jensen, whose family circumstances had once appeared similar enough
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: to warrant serious consideration, but there was no evidence linking
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: her to the Stanley Park victims. It was another long
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: standing theory that was just dismissed. Now these conclusions may
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: have seemed disappointing, but they were essential because they were
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: eliminating possibilities until only the most plausible explanations remained. But
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: even now with the DNA, detectives continued running into the
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: same obstacle. Traditional policing depended on comparison. Fingerprints are compared
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: to known fingerprints, dental records are compared to dental records,
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: and DNA is compared to family members or criminal databases.
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: In this case, investigators had none of those reference points.
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: They possessed the victims DNA, but they had no idea
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: whose day DNA it should be compared against. Without knowing
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: the boys' names, they couldn't identify relatives. Without relatives, they
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: couldn't identify parents, and without parents, they remained no closer
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: to understanding how the children had arrived in Stanley Park
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: and how they were killed. By this point, investigators had
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: exhausted virtually every conventional investigative method available to them, and
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: the investigation had reached another crossroad, much like it had
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: in the late fifties. Fortunately, another revolution in forensic science, though,
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: was quietly unfolding on the horizon around the world. Investigators
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: had begun solving decades old murders using a technique that
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: would have seemed almost impossible only a few years earlier.
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: And that's forensic genetic genealogy. It's a technique we've talked
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: about on this podcast many times at this point. It's
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: something that has revolutionized criminal investigations, as it has helped
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: solve countless cold cases. See, rather than comparing DNA to
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: criminal databases, scientists could compare it against enormous public genealogy
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: databases created by people researching their family history when they
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: use platforms like ancestry, dot com and twenty four and meters.
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: With this, even if a victim had no close relatives
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: in the database, distant cousins could could provide enough information
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: for genealogists to begin reconstructing family trees that stretched back
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: generations before working forward again to identify unknown individuals. For
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: investigators on the Stanley Park case, the implications regarding this
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: were huge. The boys DNA had already survived the passage
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: of time, so if it could now be used to
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: locate distant biological relatives, detectives might finally be able to
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: accomplish something that had eluded generations of investigators before them.
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: On May eighteenth, twenty twenty one, the Vancouver Police Department
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: announced that it had partnered with Redgrave Research Forensic Service,
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: a Massachusetts based forensic genetic genealogy company, in the hope
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: that modern DNA technology could finally identify these two boys.
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: By this point, the company had already assisted law enforcement
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: agencies across North America in identifying unknown remains and solving
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: decades old cases. Their work combined advanced DNA sequencing with
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: traditional genealogical research, allowing scientists and genealogists to build family
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: trees from even the most distant biological relationships. The process, however,
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: was anything but straightforward. Although DNA had already been recovered
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: from the boys years earlier, the samples available were not
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: suitable for the type of extensive genetic sequencing that was
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: required for the forensic genealogy. Scientists first attempted to extract
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: enough high quality DNA from the preserved remains to build
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: a complete genetic profile, but the initial effort failed to
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: produce material of sufficient quality. After more than seventy years,
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: at this point, the effects of moisture, soil, acidity, and
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: natural decomposition had left the surviving DNA badly fragmented. And
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: abandon the effort, investigators authorized another attempt, using different portions
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: of the skeletal remains and more advanced laboratory techniques that
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: had only recently become available. This time, the results were
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: dramatically different. Scientists successfully recovered enough genetic material to perform
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: a whole genome sequence, creating the detailed DNA profile needed
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: for the genealogical analysis. That profile was then uploaded in
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: accordance with applicable legal and privacy requirements to public genealogy
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: databases that permitted law enforcement use. Detectives understood that they
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: were unlikely to find a close relative waiting in the database.
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: More realistically, they hoped to locate distant cousins, people who
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: might share only a small percentage of DNA with the
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: unidentified boys, but whose family's history could eventually be traced
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: and tracked back to a common ancestor somewhere. And the
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: first matches were exactly that they were distant cousins. Now
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: none identified the children directly, nor did any immediately reveal
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: their parents. Instead, genealogists were presented with a very complex
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: network of distant relatives scattered across multiple family lines, providing
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: the starting point for reconstructing an extensive family tree which
• 48:22
  Speaker 1: stretched back all these generations. Now Leading much of that
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: work were forensic genealogists Olivia M. Carter and Ada Rodriguez,
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: whose task required an extraordinary combination of patients, historical research,
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: and analytical thinking. Working alongside genealogists Anthony Redgrave, they began
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: assembling family trees using birth certificates, marriage records, census documents,
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: cemetery records, newspaper archives and countless other historical sources. Every
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: newly identified ancestor created a disitional branches, each of which
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: who had to be followed through the timeline in hopes
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: of eventually arriving to these two unidentified boys living in Vancouver.
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: The process consumed months and months of meticulous work. Every
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: generation had to be documented manually. Families expanded, married, immigrated,
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: changed surnames, and disappeared from public records, and some branches
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: grew into hundreds of descendants, and any one of them
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: could potentially lead investigators towards these boys. And then gradually
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: one family began drawing increasing attention. The genealogical evidence consistently
• 49:39
  Speaker 1: pointed investigators towards a woman named Eileen Dalton. Eileen fit
• 49:46
  Speaker 1: the timeline in remarkable detail. Historical records showed that she
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: lived in Vancouver during the year's Investigators believed that children died,
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: and more importantly, she had children whose lives appeared to
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: intersect with the growing body of genealogical evidence. Genealogy alone, however,
• 50:05
  Speaker 1: was not enough. Investigators now needed documentary evidence that could
• 50:10
  Speaker 1: either confirm or disprove what the DNA appeared to be suggesting,
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: and That search led them into school archives that had
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: already been examined decades earlier, but could now be approached
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: from an entirely different perspective. Rather than searching broadly for
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: unidentified brothers, detectives were looking for two specific boys connected
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: to one particular family, and those records brought investigators to
• 50:34
  Speaker 1: Henry Hudson Elementary School in Vancouver. Attendance registers showed that
• 50:39
  Speaker 1: two brothers, Derek Dalton and David Dalton, had once attended
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: the school. Their names appeared exactly where detectives hoped they might,
• 50:49
  Speaker 1: but only briefly. After a period of attendance, both boys
• 50:54
  Speaker 1: simply disappeared from records. There was no indication that they
• 50:59
  Speaker 1: had transferred to another school, nor was there any explanation
• 51:02
  Speaker 1: for their absence. The entry simply stopped. Additional records placed
• 51:07
  Speaker 1: the family at a residence on Artibus Street, providing investigators
• 51:12
  Speaker 1: with an address that corresponded closely with other historical documents
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: gathered during the investigation. As detectives continued assembling the family history,
• 51:21
  Speaker 1: each newly discovered record reinforced the very same conclusion. Birth registrations,
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: school documents, city directories. All of it converged towards a
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: single ancer. The unidentified children discovered beneath a fur coat
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: in Stanley Park where Derek Dalton and his younger brother
• 51:40
  Speaker 1: half brother, David Dalton. After nearly seven decades, the boys
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: finally had names, and on February fifteenth, twenty twenty two,
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: Vancouver Police Department publicly announced they finally identified the babes
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: in the woods as Dereck and David Dalton.
• 52:00
  Speaker 2: Holy shit, this is huge, massive, Okay, Like I think,
• 52:05
  Speaker 2: this is just awesome that they're identified. But it also
• 52:10
  Speaker 2: then you're like, oh my god, like they were murdered.
• 52:13
  Speaker 2: This is terrible. But you can just appreciate too how
• 52:17
  Speaker 2: much effort went into them being identified. I think is
• 52:20
  Speaker 2: what is like, you know, kind of exciting. I guess,
• 52:23
  Speaker 2: oh for sure, because I don't. It almost makes you
• 52:26
  Speaker 2: feel like it gives you some faith and humanity in
• 52:29
  Speaker 2: a sense, because that could so easily have just stayed
• 52:31
  Speaker 2: in the boxes and like no one figure it out.
• 52:35
  Speaker 2: So the fact that these two boys are now identified
• 52:37
  Speaker 2: is like.
• 52:38
  Speaker 1: Awesome, There's people out there who never gave up, yeah,
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: these little boys, yeah, and have never given given up.
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: Because this case is still ongoing. Spoiler alert, Okay, well,
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: I mean I do say it in the in the
• 52:51
  Speaker 1: intro and everything, but yeah, it's uh. They they're working
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: at it, they've always worked at it, and they're fighting
• 52:57
  Speaker 1: to find out the story of these two boys. And
• 53:01
  Speaker 1: the fact they took almost seventy years to identify them
• 53:04
  Speaker 1: and they never gave up. It's so inspiring that it is.
• 53:08
  Speaker 1: It's huge and I.
• 53:09
  Speaker 2: Love it well and yeah, it's like almost I don't
• 53:13
  Speaker 2: know the word to say here, but it just gives like,
• 53:16
  Speaker 2: I don't know, the like appreciation, Like you're showing appreciation
• 53:20
  Speaker 2: to these boys, I guess right, Like you're not letting
• 53:22
  Speaker 2: them just have just not have a name anymore. They
• 53:26
  Speaker 2: have a name.
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 53:27
  Speaker 2: So but then yeah, then I'm like, I feel excited,
• 53:30
  Speaker 2: but I'm also like, holy shit, like they got murdered. Oh,
• 53:33
  Speaker 2: I don't know. It's a very mix of emotions here.
• 53:35
  Speaker 1: It is. But now with the identification of their their identity,
• 53:40
  Speaker 1: the identification of their identity little redundant, but you get
• 53:43
  Speaker 1: what I mean. It also came with other questions and
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: that kind of pointed us towards the mother. I lean now,
• 53:51
  Speaker 1: like many aspects of this case, her story was rather complicated.
• 53:56
  Speaker 1: I lean Dalton, and her history was very fragmented, and
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: it had to be reconstructed only after detectives piece together
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: dozens of historical records spanning several different decades, birth certificates,
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: school records, all of it. All this information, and even
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: interviews with surviving relatives gradually revealed the outline of a
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: woman whose life had been marked by instability long before
• 54:19
  Speaker 1: her sons actually ever disappeared. Eileen herself had spent part
• 54:23
  Speaker 1: of her childhood in an orphanage. Although records from that
• 54:26
  Speaker 1: period are incomplete, investigators learned that she experienced a difficult
• 54:30
  Speaker 1: upbringing and entered adulthood with little of the family support
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: that many people rely upon. By the late nineteen forties,
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: she was living in Vancouver, moving between boarding houses and
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: rental rooms as she attempted to support herself and now
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: her growing family. Now, life in post war Vancouver was
• 54:48
  Speaker 1: far from easy for a single mother like Eileen. The
• 54:51
  Speaker 1: city was expanding rapidly as veterans returned home and new
• 54:55
  Speaker 1: industries attracted workers from across Canada, but affordable housing remained scared,
• 55:00
  Speaker 1: which sounds a lot like Vancouver even today. Boarding houses
• 55:04
  Speaker 1: provided inexpensive accommodation, though they were often crowded and offered
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: very little privacy. Families moved frequently, and it was not
• 55:12
  Speaker 1: uncommon for children to wear hand me down clothes or
• 55:15
  Speaker 1: share small living space with unrelated tenants, and much of
• 55:19
  Speaker 1: what investigators had observed from the boy's clothing decades earlier,
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: including repaired underwear secured with a safety pin, now fit
• 55:27
  Speaker 1: within the picture emerging from Eileen's life. The investigation also
• 55:31
  Speaker 1: confirmed that Derek and David had different fathers, though identifying
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: those men proved considerably more difficult. Records established their identities
• 55:40
  Speaker 1: to investigators, but neither appeared to have ever played a
• 55:43
  Speaker 1: meaningful part or role in the boy's upbringing, and little
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: evidence survived to suggest either man maintained regular contact with
• 55:50
  Speaker 1: the family either. Essentially, they were estranged. School records show
• 55:55
  Speaker 1: that Derek and David had attended Henry Hudson Elementary School,
• 55:59
  Speaker 1: and from there they simply disappeared from the educational record.
• 56:03
  Speaker 1: That abrupt absence, combined with the city directory information showing
• 56:07
  Speaker 1: Eileen gradually disappearing from records as well, led investigators to
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: conclude that the family likely vanished sometime during the autumn
• 56:16
  Speaker 1: of nineteen forty seven, approximately six years before the children's
• 56:20
  Speaker 1: bodies were discovered in Stanley Park. Now, while the exact
• 56:24
  Speaker 1: date could never be established, the available evidence consistently points
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: towards October of nineteen forty seven as the most likely
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: period in which the murders occurred, and what happened during
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: those final weeks remains unknown. Investigators develop a theory, and
• 56:42
  Speaker 1: it suggests that Eileen had taken David and Derek into
• 56:46
  Speaker 1: Stanley Park where she killed her own two boys with
• 56:50
  Speaker 1: that hatchet that was found beside the remains. Then she
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: covered their bodies with the fur coat as a way
• 56:56
  Speaker 1: to lay them to rest. And now, because i Leen
• 56:59
  Speaker 1: herse also disappeared from historical records at roughly the same time,
• 57:04
  Speaker 1: detectives believed it was possible that she died shortly after
• 57:08
  Speaker 1: the murders, perhaps by suicide or under circumstances that were
• 57:12
  Speaker 1: never connected to the case. However, that's only a theory.
• 57:17
  Speaker 1: No evidence has ever been found to establish that Eileen
• 57:20
  Speaker 1: was present when the boys died. She herself has never
• 57:24
  Speaker 1: been located. Now, not everyone accepted that theory. As detectives
• 57:29
  Speaker 1: contacted surviving relatives following the boy's identification, some family members
• 57:34
  Speaker 1: questioned whether Eileen could have been responsible for killing her
• 57:37
  Speaker 1: own children. Those who remembered stories being passed down through
• 57:41
  Speaker 1: the family described her as someone who supposedly cared deeply
• 57:45
  Speaker 1: about her sons despite the hardships that she faced. They
• 57:49
  Speaker 1: acknowledged that life had been difficult, but they struggled to
• 57:52
  Speaker 1: reconcile those memories with the possibility that she murdered Derek
• 57:55
  Speaker 1: and David before disappearing herself. Relatives also discribribed hearing stories
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: that she loved her children and often worried about their welfare.
• 58:05
  Speaker 1: Some recalled being told that she had cried over the
• 58:08
  Speaker 1: boys during periods of hardship, suggesting a woman under considerable
• 58:12
  Speaker 1: emotional and financial strain rather than someone known for violence.
• 58:16
  Speaker 1: Those recollections, while sincere, came from memories passed through generations, though,
• 58:22
  Speaker 1: and couldn't answer what had happened during the family's final days.
• 58:27
  Speaker 1: What we do know is that on February fifteenth, twenty
• 58:30
  Speaker 1: twenty two, nearly sixty nine years after two children's remains
• 58:34
  Speaker 1: were discovered beneath a decaying fur coat in Stanley Park,
• 58:38
  Speaker 1: the Vancouver Police Department stood before the public and announced
• 58:41
  Speaker 1: that the children, known to history as the babes in
• 58:44
  Speaker 1: the woods had finally gotten their names back. Derek Dalton
• 58:49
  Speaker 1: was approximately seven years old when he died, and his
• 58:53
  Speaker 1: younger half brother, David Dalton, who was about six years
• 58:57
  Speaker 1: old when he lost his life in October nineteen forty
• 59:00
  Speaker 1: seven in what appeared to be a very violent death
• 59:04
  Speaker 1: by a shingler's hatchet. And ultimately it was a culmination
• 59:08
  Speaker 1: of decades of investigative work involving dozens of detectives, forensic scientists, genealogists,
• 59:14
  Speaker 1: and historians who found their names as for who killed
• 59:17
  Speaker 1: them and what happened to their mother, Eileen, No one knows,
• 59:22
  Speaker 1: not her whereabouts and not her fate. Restoring what they
• 59:26
  Speaker 1: could in those identities brought a measure of dignity back
• 59:29
  Speaker 1: to the boys and offered surviving relatives' answers they had
• 59:32
  Speaker 1: spent a lifetime without. Among those relatives was someone named Ali,
• 59:38
  Speaker 1: a member of the extended Dalton family, who learned, like
• 59:41
  Speaker 1: so many others, that two forgotten branches of her family
• 59:44
  Speaker 1: tree had become part of Canada's oldest unsolved murdered investigation.
• 59:48
  Speaker 1: She later spoke publicly about the emotional impact of finally
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: knowing what had happened to Derek and David. For years,
• 59:54
  Speaker 1: the boys had existed only as names missing from old
• 59:57
  Speaker 1: family stories. But now there was an explanation, an incomplete one,
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 1: but at least one grounded in evidence rather than whispers. Now,
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 1: as investigations progressed in this story, another remarkable discovery emerged.
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 1: Family photographs of Derrick and David were located for the
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 1: very first time. For nearly seventy years, the public had
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 1: known the boys only through facial reconstructions sculpted from their skulls,
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 1: and though they served a great purpose, they could never
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 1: truly capture the children and who they actually were. The
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 1: recovered photographs changed that They showed two ordinary young boys,
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 1: dressed much as investigators had imagined, allowing people to see
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 1: not victims of an infamous crime, but children whose lives
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 1: had once been filled with ordinary experiences of family, school,
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 1: and growing up in Vancouver, British Columbia. But ultimately, even today,
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 1: the Stanley Park investigation remains classified as an unsolved double homicide.
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: There are, of course theories about their death and the
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 1: possibility that their mother, Eileen, played a role in the events,
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 1: but they are just theories. No individual has been charged
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 1: with the murders, and no definitive evidence has emerged establishing
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 1: precisely what had happened during the family's final days in
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 1: nineteen forty seven. But what we do know is their names.
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 1: They were Dereck Dalton and David Dalton. After nearly seven
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 1: decades of silence, the boys are no longer remembered as
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 1: anonymous victims hidden beneath the trees of Stanley Park. They're
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 1: remembered as brothers whose story, though still incomplete, has finally
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 1: been returned to history. And before I officially end this episode,
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 1: I want to add one more thing. If you ever
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 1: find yourself in Vancouver, British Columbia, you should go to
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 1: the Vancouver Police Museum in Archives. Within their True Crime exhibit,
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 1: they have a portion dedicated to this story, and there
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 1: you can see real tangible pieces from this case, including
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 1: the murder weapon, which is the shingler's hatchet, and the
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 1: two skulls that were found in Stanley Park all those
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 1: years ago that still bear the marks that fit the hatchet.
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 1: It's a fantastic exhibit, and it's nice to see that
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 1: Derek and David are being looked after with such care
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 1: after all these years and that's the story of the
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 1: Babes in the Woods.
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 2: Well, first of all, we've gone to this crime museum.
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 1: We have We've seen the exhibit.
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and like, yeah, we want to go back. It
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 2: was definitely an interesting place to check out for sure.
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so we recommend, highly recommend.
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 2: I'd have trouble with this one. I have trouble, Like
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 2: everything points to the fact that the mom killed them,
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 2: but that's also very very hard to believe. You know.
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 1: Well, I mean when an investigation occurs, who's the first
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 1: people that investigators talked to, close family members, loved ones.
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 2: So see, I'm if she, if she did do it,
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 2: I'm feeling like she felt either maybe she had some
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 2: really some dark things happening, like mental health issues. Yeah,
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 2: and she just like felt like this was her only option,
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 2: maybe because I don't think she would have wanted to
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 2: do this, right, I don't know.
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 1: I don't think she would have here because what if
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 1: we know that she grew up in orphanages, we know
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 1: that she had a harder upbringing, we know she didn't
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 1: have family support, we know she was hard on money,
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 1: So what if she couldn't bear to be around anymore,
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 1: she had these self harm thoughts. She had the idea
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 1: of taking her own life, and she was in a
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 1: very dark place, and she knew if she did that,
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 1: she would be leaving her sons in the exact same
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 1: shoes that she was in when she was their age,
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 1: and she couldn't bear that thought for her own children.
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 2: I know, I know, I honestly like that hurts my heart,
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 2: but it still isn't.
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 1: Okay, it's not. But maybe that's what happened. And maybe
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 1: she was she was in a spot where it's I'll
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 1: see you in the other life, you know, I'll see
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 1: you on the other side. Things will be so much better.
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 1: Maybe that was her thought. If she did, in fact
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 1: do this, we don't know.
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 2: I no, we don't know, like she like, I guess
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 2: she could have gotten hurt herself or something, or murdered
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 2: right as well, could have and then someone else murdered
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 2: her kids too, or they murdered them all, you know.
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Or maybe maybe they were in the park that
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 1: day enjoying a nice picnic and someone came along murdered
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 1: those two boys and kidnapped her.
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but if that happened, would they have been I
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 2: think it's the coat, the coat laid on top of
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 2: the boys, right with care is what's hard.
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 1: Well, we don't technically know it was laid on top
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 1: with care. We are assuming that, oh what if the
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 1: coat was placed on top to hide the bodies from view.
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 2: M just okay, frig, I don't know. This case just
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 2: really is breaking. It breaks my heart, it is.
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 1: It's a very difficult one to reconcile.
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 2: Oh frig. Yeah, yeah, And I kind of wonder if
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 2: we'll ever know for sure really after this amount of time.
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 2: I mean, it's incredible and amazing that they found out
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 2: who they were, but are we going to actually know
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 2: what the frick happened?
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 1: I don't think so. Yeah, too much time has passed.
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 1: There's not enough evidence. We will never know. We don't
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 1: have witness statements, we don't have fingerprints, We don't have
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 1: any evidence to point towards any sort of murderer. We
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 1: only have evidence to point towards victims. The only evidence
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 1: outside of the victims themselves is the coat and the shoe.
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 2: That's it, right, yep? Okay, Well, you did a good job,
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 2: and the investigators also did a real good.
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 1: Job here, did they ever? So I'm going to say
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 1: that the investigators on this case, the investigators, who, over
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 1: the entirety of the nearly seventy years, every single one
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 1: of them is officially our badass of the day for
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 1: being such fucking badasses in doing their job and doing
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 1: their job right no to find these boys and not
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 1: giving up. Yes, so cheers to them, shout out to them.
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 1: They're amazing. And also, you guys are amazing for supporting
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 1: us and sticking around like you have. We are an
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 1: independent podcast, written, produced all of it with us, no
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 1: one here supporting us. We do it because you guys
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 1: listen and you support us, and so we just keep
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 1: doing it and it's amazing and we love it. So
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 1: thank you so much for being here. We appreciate the
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 1: hell out of you, and I'm just going to leave
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 1: it at that. You guys are also our bad Asses
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 1: of the day. Thank you for being here and until
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 1: next time, stay wicked.
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 2: Ob oh oh