(ominous music)
(dramatic music)
- [Narrator] An employee in the world's greatest park
discovers something terrible underfoot.
- He feels a crack underneath his boot.
It turns out to be bone.
- [Narrator] What the park worker discovers
would unearth a mystery that would
make headlines around the world.
(camera shutter clicks)
- Underneath leaves
and a woman's fur coat,
police find the skeletal remains
of two young children.
Whoever did this hid their body several years earlier.
- [Narrator] Once the media gets ahold of the story,
the two children become known as the Babes in the Woods,
a mystery that remains unsolved for 70 years.
- It becomes the most notorious
double murder in Vancouver's history,
a mother suspected of murdering her own children,
but police don't know who they.
(dramatic music)
- [Narrator] A maverick cop
takes matters into his own hands,
and with new breakthroughs in technology
might solve what many think is an unsolvable case.
Can the Babes in the Woods be given justice
after decades of searching?
(suspenseful music)
(somber theme music)
- The unsolved ones we have to stand up.
- And approach these cases in a way outside the box.
- Let the world know.
Those out there that did commit a murder,
you know, there are people that are coming after you.
- There's just a lot of good people
trying to do the right thing.
(faint radio chatter)
- Because it's something that
you have to be passionate about.
- Solve this.
Bring some peace to the family at least.
Just doing my job.
(dramatic music)
(gavel bangs)
(light idyllic music)
- [Narrator] In 1953,
Vancouver's Stanley Park
overlooks the Pacific Ocean to one side
and a growing metropolis to the other.
Park employee, Albert Tong,
walks through the woods in Stanley Park
to clear the area and reduce the risk of a forest fire.
- As he's walking through the area,
the park worker feels a crunch underneath his boot.
When he inspects further,
he discovers a woman's fur coat.
- [Narrator] When Albert Tong lifts the fur coat,
he reveals a hidden crime scene.
(ominous music)
The crunch underfoot was from a small skull
hidden under the ground and wrapped in the coat.
- The fur coat is covering
the skeletal remains of two small bodies.
With tree roots growing over the remains
and the state of decomposition the bodies are in,
Tong would know he's come across a shallow grave
that has been there for some time.
- [Narrator] The location is close
to an old fish hatchery
and the trail to a bridge,
but the heavily wooded area
would conceal anyone's activities.
- This could have been a case
where two children were lost
and exposed to the elements.
Then wrapped themselves up in a fur coat for warmth,
but it doesn't take long for police to rule that theory out.
(ominous music)
(dramatic music)
- [Narrator] When detectives arrive on the scene,
they discover a trove of physical evidence.
- The bodies are positioned head to foot.
From appearances, they are two children,
one slightly larger than the other.
The smaller skeleton lies face down.
While the other larger one lies with its head
and shoulders on top of the feet of the smaller one.
- An Air Force flying helmet
is still on one of the skulls,
but each skull shows signs of injury.
(pensive music)
- [Narrator] Police believe the murder weapon
has been left at the scene:
a small lathing hatchet broken at the handle.
(pensive music)
This type of hatchet is small, light, and cheap.
It has a hammer end for driving nails,
and a thin blade for chopping.
Typically used for lath and plaster walls
or roof framing, or by campers,
the hatchet is easy to carry.
- In the 1940s and 50s,
it would be fairly common for someone
to be seen carrying a hatchet in Stanley Park.
It wouldn't be unusual for someone
to chop up some firewood for camping
or for home heating if they lived close to the park.
- [Narrator] There are light wounds
on the skulls of each child,
indicating blows from the hatchet,
but they're not struck with a lot of force.
- The light wound suggests
that whoever struck with the ax,
did not have a lot of strength.
1950's thinking leads them to believe
that a woman possessed the hatchet.
The bodies were also covered
in a woman's fur coat.
(camera shutter clicks)
- [Narrator] The fur coat is deteriorated,
but it's a short coat and size 16,
indicating the wearer was stocky.
It was made locally from rabbit and mouton.
(pensive music)
(gentle music)
Vancouver's Stanley Park
voted the greatest park in the world.
The thousand acre park covers the northwest half
of Vancouver's downtown peninsula,
while skyscrapers and bridges begin
to fill the skyline to the south.
- Although Vancouver has its share of crime,
generally in the 1950s people feel like it's safe
for kids to play outside in the sprawling parks.
- [Narrator] A The jewel of Stanley Park is Beaver Lake
where indigenous peoples have gathered
since time immemorial.
The park worker makes his discovery
in a wooded area nearby.
The park is home to half a million trees,
many of them more than a century old.
The Vancouver News Media
show up to report on the grizzly discovery,
and soon newspapers around the world tell the story of
two children who have been found in this shallow grave
nicknaming them the Babes in the Woods.
- Using the tattered clothing and shoes at the scene,
police determine the bodies are a boy and a girl.
The girl is approximately eight-years-old
and the boy six or seven.
Because they appear to have the same prominent jawbone,
police predict them to be siblings.
(dramatic music)
- Stanley Park in the heart of Vancouver,
two innocent lives were lost.
Who would do such a thing?
(somber music)
- Beneath the shoulder of one of the children,
police recover a woman's shoe size five-and-a-half.
- [Narrator] Police believe that in a panic,
the woman may have run away from the scene of the crime
and left her shoe lodged beneath one of the bodies.
- Combined with a coat that is smaller
and made from rabbit fur,
police believe they are looking
for a smaller woman of modest means as a suspect,
possibly the children's mother.
- [Narrator] Given the amount of foliage in the grave site,
police estimate the murders
to have taken place years earlier.
- With the help of the media, police try linking
missing persons cases with the murder scene.
At the same time,
they've collected statements from anyone
who may have witnessed suspicious activity
involving a woman at Stanley Park in 1947.
(light mysterious music)
- Given the fact that the woman may have left
her shoe beneath the body of one of the children,
police believe she may have panicked
and run away from the scene.
They speculate she threw herself into
Burrard Inlet she committed the murders.
(light dramatic music)
- [Narrator] For Vancouver,
in the middle of the 20th century,
a mother driven to these desperate lengths
could be simply a sign of the times.
After the Second World War,
the influx of male workers
to Vancouver from the east
as well as returning soldiers from the war,
made it nearly impossible for women to hold on to
the jobs that they had during the war years.
(somber music)
Single mothers were then left with low-wage jobs,
such as retail or domestic service,
that required long hours.
(dramatic music)
With no access to childcare resources,
widows and single mothers
would inevitably be driven further into poverty.
- If you're a single mother in the late 40s
and your only source of income gets taken away,
things could become very desperate.
- In 1948, there were seven murders in Vancouver
and three involved mothers and children.
- [Narrator] One case is reported where
a mother throws her children off a bridge.
In another, a mother locks herself
and her child in a gas-filled room.
- Police conclude they're looking at another case
where a mother or female guardian believes they've
run out of options to care for their children.
(suspenseful music)
- [Narrator] The mothers who were driven
to kill their children,
experienced extreme socioeconomic disadvantages
and possible mental health complications,
such as psychosis or depression,
and at the time, there was an absence
of preventative social services
to protect these children
and get these mothers help.
(dramatic music)
While tips begin to flood
into Vancouver's police department,
experts try to use modern police methods
to reconstruct the victims.
- The idea here is to try
and humanize the evidence as much as they can.
There isn't a lot of technology
at the disposal of law enforcement,
so they try to give their victims a face,
rebuild their wardrobes,
and hope it gives them some clues.
- [Narrator] The clothing worn by the children
is reconstructed in a laboratory
using only the scraps that remained on their bodies.
- The girl's clothing has deteriorated almost completely.
They note that she wears underwear so big,
it needs to be taken in by a safety pin at the back.
The boy is confirmed to be wearing
a Canadian made red tartan jacket.
He also wears beige corduroy trousers and scamper shoes.
- Police believe that the children's shoes
offer them a piece of information.
They're the same type of rubber soled shoe,
but different sizes.
And that type of shoe
only became available in 1947,
so they believe they can narrow down
the date of the murders to about 1947 or 1948.
(dramatic music)
- [Narrator] While investigators piece together
the skeletons of the two children,
an anthropologist is brought in from Austria.
Erna Van Baiersdorf
specializes in sculpting unidentified victims.
- She makes busts of what the two young victims
could look like if they were alive.
The two busts would be photographed,
and the pictures placed in newspapers
to try and identify the victims.
- [Christine] Medical examiners find holes in the skulls.
They are consistent with the wounds caused by the hatchet
police discover at the scene.
- [Narrator] The hatchet,
commonly used by shingle weavers and lathers,
was likely used to strike the boys over the head.
(sinister music)
- There are three cleft marks
that fit the thin blade of the hatchet.
While fracture wounds could have been
caused by the hammer end of the hatchet.
- [Narrator] The sculptor says
the two children look very similar,
possibly with blonde hair,
and are Swedish or Norwegian.
(dramatic music)
The Babes in the Woods case
becomes very famous very quickly.
A $500 reward is offered for information.
Police circulate pictures
looking for a break in the case.
- Tips begin to flood into law enforcement.
As the number of leads increase,
police must search through many eyewitness accounts
from years before to try and identify their victims.
- [Narrator] In 1953, no one is aware
that the search would last almost 70 years.
(dramatic music)
(somber music)
(suspenseful music)
(dramatic music)
In the heart of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada,
famed Stanley Park is one of the great parks of the world.
But in 1953,
shockwaves are sent through Vancouver and beyond
when a park employee discovers the skeletons
of two children buried in a shallow grave
covered in a woman's fur coat.
Dubbed the Babes in the Woods by newspaper reporters,
police believe the two children,
a boy and a girl aged seven and eight,
were killed by their mother years earlier
and buried in a shallow grave.
(tense dramatic music)
Police scour through hundreds of tips
trying to identify the woman
who left her shoe and a fur coat
behind with her children.
- Because of the mental state
detectives believed the woman was in,
they wonder if she may have run away
from the scene of the murder
to the nearby Lion's Gate Bridge and jumped off.
- Police are looking for reports
of a woman wearing a fur coat
accompanied by two children in Stanley Park
sometime in the winter months of 1947.
- [Narrator] There are no shortages
of eyewitness accounts to sort through.
A woman is found dead in a gas-filled room later in 1953.
Prior to her suicide,
her two children haven't been seen for months.
- While the children closely fit the description
of the Babes in the Woods,
the case reaches a dead end.
- [Narrator] In 1950,
a woman and her two children
rent a small boat from nearby
Kitsilano Beach never to return.
Her body is later found in Burrard Inlet,
but the children and the boat are never found.
- Police can find no evidence that this
is connected to their Babes in the Woods case.
(tense music)
- [Narrator] A young boy befriends two children
who seem to vanish afterward.
When the boy asks their mother what happened to them,
she brushes them off without answering.
(tense suspenseful music)
Police visit a hotel where they believe
a guest could be George Pafell,
who is wanted for the abduction
of his own children in New Jersey.
- After divorcing his wife,
George Pafell gets permission
to take his two young boys to the park.
They're never seen again.
- [Narrator] But the man isn't Pefall
and the children in question are both boys.
(suspenseful music)
A biology teacher says
he was collecting specimens for his class
when he saw two young children and a woman
walking along the Stanley Park sea wall.
One child banged a hatchet against the metal railing.
Later that day,
the teacher sees a woman looking distraught,
sitting on a bench overlooking Beaver Lake.
- She has blood on her ankle,
wears only one shoe and has no coat.
When the man asks her what happened,
she replies she fell in a ditch.
- [Narrator] But the teacher's visit takes place in 1951,
which doesn't fit the timeline.
(suspenseful music)
(light mysterious music)
A local woman gives police a recollection
that seems very close to what they're looking for.
- The witness recounts
she was in the park on October 5, 1947,
and had written in her diary
that she had seen a woman wearing a fur coat
with two children walking towards the bushes.
The woman is carrying a hatchet,
presumably to chop some wood.
This isn't unusual in the 1940s and 50s.
- [Narrator] As the eyewitness leaves the park,
45 minutes later, she sees the same woman
alone walking out of the bush.
This time with no coat and one shoe.
- The witness takes the police
to where she saw the woman with the shoe.
She leads them to within 50 yards
of where the children's bodies were found.
(tense music)
- [Narrator] Detectives lock in on the date
October 5, 1947.
(dramatic music)
At the same time, newspaper reports prompt
members of the public and other police forces
to send missing persons cases to Vancouver
that may fit the description of the Babes in the Woods.
In all, police investigate 41 pairs of missing children.
- A lot of investigation time is spent tracking down
all of the allegedly missing children.
While none of them turn out to be
the children found at Stanley Park,
police do locate 26 of the 41 missing pairs of kids,
some as far away as South America, Scotland,
and the United States.
At this point, Vancouver police are working
with other police forces across Canada on this case.
They're searching school records, social agencies, and tips.
(dramatic music)
- [Narrator] Months of investigation turn into years,
but by 1960, all the leads dry up.
- Police have located 76 pairs of children
reported missing in Western Canada.
They still can't connect any missing persons
to the Babes in the Woods.
- [Narrator] One missing pair of children can't be located.
Their mother Madeline Fortier,
lives in a small town in Quebec.
- Madeline Fortier was in Vancouver around 1947.
She had a boy and girl who matched
the approximate ages of the Babes in the Woods.
Fortier told authorities
they were given up for adoption.
- [Narrator] But police aren't allowed
to travel to Quebec to investigate the lead.
Police don't believe the case will ever be solved,
but just in case, they keep the skeletons
of the two young children found in Stanley Park.
- At the time, police don't know
what they may need to use as evidence.
The bones and other items recovered at the scene
are placed in three file boxes.
Then they are placed in the basement
of Vancouver's Coroner's Court.
- [Narrator] And it's here where the children
would stay for 25 years,
until a rogue cop takes matters into his own hands,
and the course of the case finally changes.
(tense music)
(suspenseful music)
(somber music)
(dramatic music)
The crime scene in Vancouver's Stanley Park
makes headlines around the world.
(sinister music)
Police are desperate to determine who the children are
wrapped in a fur coat believed to belong to their mother.
After years of investigation,
the children remain unidentified.
- The Babes in the Woods case is never forgotten.
In the 1980s,
a crime stopper recreation is made asking for tips.
Police always believed the answer is somewhere out there.
(dramatic music)
- [Narrator] For decades, the remains of the children
sit in evidence boxes locked in a basement
while the police museum offers a recreation
of the crime scene for all to see.
- The Babes in the Woods case becomes the most notorious
unsolved murder in Vancouver's history.
- [Narrator] But in 1997,
a Vancouver detective takes evidence without permission
and alters the direction of the Babes in the Woods case.
(suspenseful music)
(dramatic music)
Without telling his supervisors,
Detective Sergeant Brian Honeybourn
removes all of the skeletal remains
from the museum displays and storage.
He has the bones cremated.
(dramatic music)
- Detective Honeybourn is a local
and grows up knowing about this case.
He has two daughters of his own,
so he feels the importance
of protecting these children's remains.
(dramatic music)
- [Narrator] With a ceremony on English Bay,
with the police chaplain, the cremated remains
of the Babes in the Woods are scattered to the ocean wind,
but not before small samples are kept for DNA testing.
- With the advent of DNA profiling and using PCR tests,
police know they only need a few viable cells
to collect good DNA samples.
This is a revolution in forensics science.
- [Narrator] Detective Honeybourn as part of
the British Columbia Unsolved Homicide Unit
sends a tooth from each skeleton
to the University of British Columbia's
forensic dentistry experts.
- Teeth are the last parts
of the human body to decompose,
which means it's more likely
to extract viable DNA from them,
and in Vancouver here's one of the world's
foremost experts in extracting DNA from teeth,
which is needed because the remains are now 50 years old.
(pensive music)
- [Narrator] The teeth are decontaminated, frozen,
then ground into a fine powder.
The powder is then treated with chemicals to expose cells,
and DNA is extracted from those cells.
- When the results return,
they shatter over 40 years
of assumptions in the case.
(dramatic music)
(mysterious music)
- [Narrator] The Babes in the Woods are both boys.
- For those 45 years,
leads from witnesses in 1953
who had suspicions about two boys
in Stanley Park have been disregarded.
Instead, every story involving
a boy and a girl was investigated.
DNA evidence proving they are both male changes everything.
The original assumption was a crucial error.
(light dramatic music)
- [Narrator] Tipsters calling in with information
regarding the two missing boys,
may have been ignored completely.
The truth is lost to the ages.
- In 1997, all detectives can do
is review the files to see if there
are any accounts involving two boys.
They hope to discover DNA that confirms
or eliminates the lead.
(gentle dramatic music)
- [Narrator] What police do know
is that the boys shared a mother
but had different fathers.
They know the hatchet is the murder weapon,
but they don't know when the murder would've taken place.
(dramatic music)
Looking back at the files,
Detective Honeybourn his unit
realized the time estimate
was based on unreliable information.
- The original time estimate of 1947,
is based on the availability of a child's shoe,
which turned out to be false.
Also by the size of the tree root growth
and leaves on top of the shallow grave,
a botanist was never brought in to examine the site.
The assumption that the crime
may have taken place years later seems hasty.
- [Narrator] Detectives scour through files,
eliminating old leads and re-investigating new ones.
(suspenseful music)
A sailor reports that he saw a woman
jump out of the woods in May, 1944.
She had one shoe and no coat,
made a guttural sound and ran off.
(dramatic music)
But one report seems most promising to Detective Honeybourn.
Two brothers disappear from a rooming house
near the city's skid row.
- Skid rows are considered a place in the city
where the poorest of the poor live.
The skid row in Vancouver
was one of the original logging trails.
- Awareness is changing towards the needs of poor people
and the social supports they need.
In the mid 20th century,
not only is there an absence in social services,
it was not unusual for society to be indifferent
to the plight of people in poverty.
- [Narrator] The boys' parents claim
a married couple from Manitoba adopted them,
and identifying the Manitoba couple,
will unlock the identities of the Babes in the Woods.
- In 1998, Detective Honeybourn is very confident
that he will soon identify the Babes in the Woods,
so he speaks to the nation's media about it,
announcing that the case will soon be solved.
- [Narrator] But the detective's hunch comes up empty.
(dramatic music)
Once again, the Babes in the Woods case goes cold.
- By the start of the new century,
investigators know less than what
they thought they knew in 1953.
At this point, things look bleak.
- [Narrator] Decades have passed,
and the answer of who killed the Babes in the Woods
may never be solved.
- At this point, detectives believe a victory
would be identifying these boys by their names.
After four decades, this brings a degree of closure.
- [Narrator] But DNA profiling hasn't closed the case.
It would take 20 more years before the two boys found
in a shallow grave in Stanley Park
could be given their names.
(gentle music)
(somber music)
(suspenseful music)
(dramatic music)
After four decades, as Vancouver's
most notorious unsolved murder,
the Babes in the Woods case
is turned upside down in 1998.
(suspenseful music)
Police discover through forensic dental analysis
that the Babes in the Woods are actually two boys
who were murdered in the 1940s.
(suspenseful music)
Two young boys who have shared a mother
but have different fathers, of modest means,
wearing aviator helmets,
murdered with a small hatchet,
and left to rest in a shallow grave
discovered years later by a park's worker.
(suspenseful music)
Police know that bringing
a killer to justice is very unlikely,
but 21st century investigative technology
gives them the hope that they can find out who the boys are.
- Giving the boys their names back would be a moral victory,
and help put the case to rest.
(suspenseful music)
(light dramatic music)
- [Narrator] Detectives want to close the case
for the sake of generations of police investigators
who have poured countless hours into finding answers
that have yet to come.
Tracking a family tree through genetic genealogy,
finally giving each Babe in the Woods an identity.
- With availability of DNA kits to build family trees,
law enforcement sees an opportunity to use
genetic genealogy for criminal investigations.
Genetic genealogy can find the relatives
of a criminal, partial chromosomal matches,
which can lead to a full DNA match.
- The first example of genetic genealogy
being used to solve a murder
is the Golden State Killer case in California.
(light dramatic music)
- [Narrator] Joseph James DeAngelo Jr.,
the Golden State Killer,
known by many other names,
such as the Original Night Stalker,
is one of California's most notorious serial killer rapists.
(light dramatic music)
- He is a former police officer,
dangerous and widely known for stalking
and taunting his victims and law enforcement.
He's been able to get away with at least 50 rapes,
13 murders, and 120 burglaries,
but his trail goes cold over three decades.
- [Narrator] But advances in technology
eventually turn the tide against him.
(light dramatic music)
In a radical move, investigators upload
the killer's DNA profile to a public genealogy site.
California law enforcement
linked DNA from a rape kit to a close relative.
- [Christine] And locate a fourth cousin of the killer.
From there, they create a family tree,
and narrow down their search to find DeAngelo.
- [Narrator] DeAngelo is arrested,
and finally in June 2020,
pleads guilty to 13 counts of first degree murder,
and 13 counts of kidnapping
in a deal to avoid the death penalty.
He receives multiple consecutive life sentences
without the possibility of parole.
(sinister music)
(dramatic music)
- Before DNA technology came along,
you needed a smoking gun,
a fingerprint, or an eyewitness.
Now you can connect those dots
on a molecular level using genetic genealogy.
It gives police a lot of hope
that they can now name the Babes in the Woods.
- [Narrator] Police team up with a firm in Massachusetts
that specializes in forensic genetic genealogy
where they link incomplete DNA strands to family trees.
This firm, Redgrave Research Forensic Services,
had helped solve the murder
of nine-year-old Christine Jessop,
a well-known cold case in Canada.
(dramatic music)
- Vancouver police used bone fragments
to extract DNA from the older boy,
and sent it to the lab for sequencing.
The firm then uploads the DNA to the databases.
Then the search begins.
- [Narrator] Redgrave uploads the DNA to sites like
GEDmatch, a public genetic genealogy database,
and Family Tree DNA, a genetic testing company,
where they can potentially compare the DNA
extracted from the bone fragment
with DNA profiles of living relatives.
- [Christine] With thousands of people
voluntarily undergoing DNA testing
in order to research their family trees,
more profiles are available to investigators
than ever before.
(dramatic music)
- [Narrator] Meanwhile, elsewhere in Vancouver,
a young woman also hopes advances in genetic genealogy
will solve the mystery of her missing family members.
(gentle music)
While flipping through a family album,
26-year-old Ally Brady
discovers pictures of two young boys.
One has blonde hair and blue eyes.
The other has darker features.
When the young woman asks her grandmother Diane,
who the boys are,
Diane says they are her long-lost brothers.
- For some people when you hear about your
long-lost relatives, you want to know more,
but Diane is evasive.
- When family members ask Diane
about what happened to her brothers,
she gets teary-eyed and says, "It's in the past."
She doesn't want to talk about it.
- [Narrator] Clearly to Ally,
something terrible happened to Diane's brothers.
Ally's grandmother refuses to give any details,
but the family hopes that DNA ancestry
may give them clues about their missing relatives.
(light mysterious music)
Hoping to find a connection to her great uncles,
Ally Brady and her mother collect a DNA sample
from the saliva of Diane.
- Ancestry databases like this
are great for finding long-lost relatives,
but in this case,
the results are disappointing.
- [Narrator] But in 2020,
Ally Brady reaches out to a local podcaster
who has covered the Babes in the Woods case.
Ally tells the podcaster her story.
With true crime podcasts
becoming increasingly popular
in the years leading up to 2020,
investigative podcasters have been bringing
long gone cold cases back into public discussion.
While at times they can be sensational
or insensitive to victims and their families,
they also can be an enormous help.
The growing true crime curiosity
has inspired their audiences to take action,
give tips, or investigate their personal stories.
In some cases, this can even break cases wide open
and might solve what many think is an unsolvable case.
- The true crime podcaster
connects Vancouver Police with Ally Brady,
and this ultimately provides investigators
with a confirming piece of genetic evidence.
- Police use a special database called GEDMatch,
which does not automatically include the DNA samples
from major ancestry services.
In order to protect privacy of its users,
people have to opt in to allow law enforcement
to use their DNA samples on GEDmatch.
(gentle music)
- [Narrator] Once Ally Brady gives police
permission to acquire the DNA sample,
they send it to the lab for analysis
and comparison to the skulls.
(suspenseful music)
The lab results come back.
It's a match.
- After so many years, there is finally a piece
of indisputable evidence confirmed by two DNA samples.
Finally, police have the answer.
(suspenseful music)
- [Narrator] After seven decades,
the Babes in the Woods have been identified.
(suspenseful music)
(somber music)
(dramatic music)
The remains of two young boys are found in Stanley Park.
The Babes in the Woods case
becomes Vancouver's most notorious unsolved murder
with the skulls of the boys left on display
at a police museum,
and their bones filed away in cardboard boxes.
DNA analysis done in the 90s
sheds new light on the case,
but doesn't go far enough to give the boys a name.
(dramatic music)
But in 2021,
police submit DNA samples
to a forensic genealogy firm
hoping to find living relatives.
At the same time,
Ally Brady and her family connect with police.
They believe they are the relatives of the missing boys.
(suspenseful music)
- Ally Brady's DNA sample from her grandmother
confirms the work of the forensic genealogists.
The Babes in the Woods have finally been identified.
(suspenseful music)
- [Narrator] The Babes in the Woods
are Derek and David D'Alton.
Derek and David are half-brothers,
sharing a mother but with different fathers.
They attend elementary school in Kitsilano.
Their mother, Eileen D'Alton,
is listed as a widow in 1941.
(eerie music)
- In the 1940s, Eileen went from place to place.
She works in a coffee shop for a time
and lives with various family members.
But when the murders take place,
there is no record of Eileen's whereabouts
until she appears on the front page
of the Vancouver Daily Province.
- [Narrator] In an unusual twist,
Eileen D'Alton and her twin sister Doreen Taylor
post their pictures and shared a dress
in some kind of match game,
which puts her on the front page of the newspaper in 1949.
(eerie music)
- [Glen] From this we know
Eileen lived with her sister
and Eileen's oldest daughter Diane.
- [Narrator] Diane would tell Ally stories
of how they'd have to jump out of windows
of places they were renting in Vancouver
to avoid paying rent that they couldn't afford.
Diane would later tell her granddaughter, Ally,
that the boys were taken away by social services
while she stayed with her mother.
(somber music)
Although this story has been passed down in the family,
Vancouver detectives were not able to verify whether
Derek and David had been taken by social services.
As they could find no trace of records to indicate this,
it is still uncertain who had custody of the boys
at the time of the murder.
(light dramatic music)
In the 1950s,
Eileen changes her family name to Bousquet.
An innocent question from a granddaughter
about pictures in a photo album
unlocks a chain of events
that solves the 70 year mystery.
(light dramatic music)
- For Ally Brady it's confirmation
of her longstanding suspicions.
Derek and David D'Alton, her great uncles
are the Babes in the Woods.
(gentle music)
- Today I'm pleased to announce
that the Vancouver Police Department
has positively identified the two young victims
as David and Derek D'Alton.
The murders of David and Derek
have haunted generations of homicide investigators.
It brings me great satisfaction
to be able to stand here today
to give these children, finally after this many years,
a name and to bring some closure to this horrific crime.
Last week, members of the investigative team
had an opportunity to meet with distant relatives
of Derek and David and to inform them
of our investigative findings.
The family members have decided not to be here today,
and we want to respect their privacy by not
providing personal details on them.
- [Narrator] As Vancouver police make the announcement,
they state that the person who killed Derek and David
was likely a close relative
who died approximately 25 years ago.
They theorize the boy's mother is the likely suspect.
This makes little sense to the family.
They had thought of her as a gentle person
who babysat children often.
(gentle music)
The fur coat, which was used by the killer
to cover Derek and David's remains,
seems to support the belief
that Eileen did not kill her young sons.
- In fact, the evidence no longer suggests
that Eileen D'Alton is the killer.
The fur coat the boys are wrapped up in is size 16.
Eileen is five-foot-one,
and being petite her entire life,
she is closer to a size two.
This case is now 70-years-old,
and investigators are reasonably certain
that whoever killed these boys is no longer alive.
- [Narrator] For the family of Derek and David,
knowing what happened to them
does bring a modicum of closure,
but questions remain,
questions that may never be answered.
(gentle music)
- Police now know that it's Derek and David D'Alton
who were found in Stanley Park in 1953.
However, they may never know why the boys were killed,
or who did it.
- [Narrator] The killer may never officially be known,
but in the end,
it's not about vengeance or retribution.
It's about providing dignity to the two boys.
(somber music)
Given the variables,
and length of the case,
and the fragility of the evidence,
the fact that the boys now have names is substantial.
Generations later,
police are stepping up to find resolution
with tools and processes once never imagined.
These completely old and cold cases are given new life.
- There's a sense of relief to finally bring justice
and closure to the families of the victims.
Unfortunately, many of them did not live to see it,
but it's important for those who did.
The truth is that this case was almost unsolved.
If it wasn't for the hard work
and perseverance of the many investigators,
it might still be.
(gentle music)
(suspenseful theme music)