Ep 3: The Stanley Park Babes in the Woods Murders Part 1

Show Notes

In part one of this episode, hosts Lauryn and Nima discuss the Stanley Park Babes in the Woods murders, an unsolved case that haunted Vancouver for over seven decades. Join us as we follow the painstaking police investigation from 1953, revealing the challenges they faced in identifying the victims and the alleged perpetrator responsible for this crime over the first 3 decades of the investigation. 

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Special thanks to Lindsay Macdonald (@lindsaymacdonaldmusic) for recording and producing our intro and transition music.

Episode Transcript

Nima: [00:00:00] Rooted in Crime contains coarse language and mature themes such as violence and sexuality, which some listeners may find disturbing. This episode in particular contains discussion around violence towards children. Listener discretion is advised.

Lauryn: Welcome to Rooted in Crime. I'm your host, Lauryn Macdonald, and I'm Nima Hodoudi, and this is the podcast that uncovers the hidden stories of historical true crime through the lens of genealogy. Together we're going to look at historical criminal cases from around the world using a modern perspective to dig deep into the secrets of the past.

Although this is technically our third episode, it's our fifth release, and so far it's been such a fun journey to research these cases and talk about them together. It's been even more fun to hear the thoughts and feedback from you listeners. I wanted to quickly say thank you again for listening, and if you're enjoying the podcast, please consider taking a moment to follow the show, leave a review, or share this episode with your friends and family.

We'd really [00:01:00] appreciate a bit of help to share these stories with even more true crime and history lovers.

On today's episode, we're looking back at one of Vancouver's longest unsolved cases, the Stanley Park Babes in the Woods murders. On the morning of January 14th, 1953, a groundskeeper at Stanley Park in Vancouver, British Columbia discovered the decomposed remains of two small skeletons buried in a pile of leaves.

Clues were left behind as to who these children were and who could have done this to them, but police were unable to determine the answer to these clues in their initial investigation. Decades passed, but investigators continued to press for answers. These efforts were ultimately successful when answers were finally discovered thanks to the help of a new forensic investigative technique and descendants looking for answers.

Let's get into the story of the Stanley Park Babes in the Woods.

Nima: Let's do it.[00:02:00]

Lauryn: This case takes us to Vancouver, which is situated on the unceded traditional territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil Waututh nations. Vancouver, situated on the Pacific coast of British Columbia, is today known as one of Canada's largest cities, with a skyline filled with dense and expensive condo towers.

Back in the 1940s and 50s, however, Vancouver was a very different city. The population was half of what it is today, sitting around 340, 000 in 1951 compared to Toronto at the time, which was sitting at 660, 000. and Montreal was just over 1 million. During the Great Depression, Vancouver developed a reputation as a destination for the unemployed and clandestine.

Vancouver was, and still is, known for its mild climate and picturesque mountain naturescapes. Booms in local industries like shipbuilding and forestry during the war and post war years facilitated [00:03:00] even more lower and middle class migration to the city. Following World War II, the population started to boom, like other urban centers across the country, and the small city was marked by single family houses and low rise apartment buildings.

Among the other defining features of Vancouver was, and still is, Stanley Park. The park was created alongside the city and opened in 1888. The park is west of downtown, sitting on the peninsula that divides Vancouver from West and North Vancouver. And I will say, as a former Ontarian, I didn't know before moving out west that Vancouver and West Vancouver and North Vancouver were all separate cities.

I thought those were just different parts of Vancouver, so I'll just throw that in there for any non-West Coasters, FYI.

Stanley Park is about four kilometres squared, and it's one of the most popular parks in the city, and it has been essentially since it opened. In the 1950s, the park was managed by the city, and on the morning of Tuesday, January 13th, [00:04:00] 1953, forestry worker Albert Tong was walking through the northern end of the park with other workers who were clearing brush from the areas around park roadways close to the Lions Gate Bridge entrance, which is on the north side of the park, not too far from Beaver Lake.

While walking through a pile of leaves, Albert felt something snap under his feet, but he was too busy to stop and take a look to see what made the sound. He said to his fellow workmen, I think someone's buried under there.

Nima: That's creepy.

Lauryn: Very ominous. He ended up working in the same spot the next day, which was about 300 yards or 274 meters from the bridge.

So on Wednesday, January 14th, he decided to return to that leaf pile to see what it was that had made that sound. He made an incredibly gruesome discovery. He pulled back the carpet of leaves to discover two small skeletons laying feet to feet in a line under a woman's fur coat which was placed over them.

So what do you think is going through Albert's head when he's pulling these [00:05:00] leaves up and all of a sudden there's two little bodies that Are completely decomposed.

Nima: Well, first thing is, oh, I called it, you know? I mean, really, right? Like, he felt that way and decided, oh, I have to go and double check. But then after that is, so many questions, right?

How long have they been there for? Whose bodies are they? They look like children, you know? So, lot of questions. Whose coat is that, right? So many questions. Just so many questions,

yeah, yeah.

Lauryn: And so with that, police were called to the park pretty much immediately. Albert notified his supervisors and they called police.

And when they arrived to investigate, they immediately found that there were several items with the skeletons that could give them some clues as to who these skeletons were and who could have done this to them. Okay. The bodies were covered by a cheap fur coat and both were wearing brown rubbered oxfords shoes, one pair being larger than the other.

So the feet of one of the skeletons was bigger than the other.

Nima: Okay, so one was older, probably.

Lauryn: Exactly. [00:06:00] Yeah. They were both in tattered clothing, and they were wearing two small leather aviator caps with goggles, which were very common for little boys to wear at the time. You know, think of Amelia Earhart next to the plane with that cap on.

They had little ones of that that they would have worn.

Nima: Yeah, totally.

Lauryn: Just like little boys today wearing superhero capes and that sort of thing. There was also a small blue metal lunchbox found near the bodies, along with a woman's shoe and a small dull hatchet.

Nima: Hmm. That's a lot of stuff.

Lauryn: There was a lot of stuff left behind.

So, a fair bit of clothing from the bodies, stuff to cover them up. Yeah. Something from a woman, the shoe that came off her, the lunchbox. Right. The hatchet. Right. A lot of things.

Nima: But it's the 50s, so it's tough to, there's no like DNA evidence by that point, right?

Lauryn: No, we don't have that at this point. Yeah, okay.

There were also about six inches of moldy leaves covering the bodies under the fur coat, which allowed investigators to initially estimate that they had been [00:07:00] buried there for about three years.

Nima: Oh, wow. Okay.

Lauryn: Investigators were also certain that the smaller body was that of a boy aged about 6 to 8 years, but initially weren't sure if the older child was a boy or a girl, but put the age around 8 to 10 years old.

Nima: Okay. That makes sense.

Lauryn: After pathological examination, though, they determined the older child was in fact a girl. Really? So, sister and brother, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. One thing that I found kind of interesting during my research was that the two major Vancouver papers at the time, which were the Province and the Sun, they had two very different approaches to reporting this case.

The Sun first put forward theories that perhaps the youngsters were out chopping down a Christmas tree and got caught in the cold or met accidental misfortune before stating that police were also considering the possibility of murder. After

Nima: what? How could you even put that out? Under...

They're found in the woods, they've got a hatchet...

Under leaves in a coat? I mean, okay, maybe they're using the [00:08:00] coat to heat them, I don't know, I guess. Sure, okay, sorry, keep going.

Lauryn: Now the province, however, they said outright in their initial reporting that police believe this to be a murder case. With their January 15th headline reading, skeletons hint murder of girl boy stanley park seen a find.

Nima: That makes sense to me.

Lauryn: Now what I found really striking about this is it really speaks to the different attitudes at the time towards the truly evil parts of society where so many people either couldn't or wouldn't believe that something so terrible could happen. So why would we jump to that worst conclusion when It could have just been, you know, something accidental, total misfortune that never was meant to happen.

Yeah. Coming back to the coverage of the case, the province actually sent reporters to the crime scene shortly after police arrived. And while they were there, they found two buttons, a broken safety pin, and what they believed to be a small chunk of human bone, likely from a joint, either elbow or knee.

Nima: Hmm, okay.

Lauryn: They then [00:09:00] placed these objects in an envelope and handed it over to police. Oh. You seeing anything wrong with this?

Nima: That's, there's so much wrong with that. Why did they touch it? Yeah.

Why are they there?

Lauryn: Because, because the police never secured the scene because that wasn't standard

practice

then.

Nima: I was gonna say, that seems to be a theme, hey, is they don't secure the scene a lot. Like even in a lot of the shows that we watch about murder and crime back in the day, there's so many where they don't secure the scene and evidence is constantly tampered with. Like cops just walking through. And just like bloody shoes walking through a whole house like hello.

Yeah, that was crazy

Lauryn: at the time They didn't know about you know, these really intense ways of examining things forensically They didn't know about dna the best that they could do to look at something was under a microscope. Basically, you know, you could Not do that much? Yeah, yeah. You're pretty limited with, with that.

And so you weren't thinking about these future technologies where maybe we need to preserve this for decades from now. That type of... You wouldn't know. No, and [00:10:00] there was no like historical investigation into crimes because they didn't have those forensic techniques, right? Basically, you know, anything that was unsolved or had been cold for a long time, they'd pretty much just be relying on like witnesses to come forward at that point.

Yeah. Because... You don't have any of these things.

Nima: Yep, that makes sense.

Lauryn: Police did start combing through local missing children's reports and sent requests to other police jurisdictions across the country and in the U. S. to see if they had any missing children's cases that could help to identify the victims.

Locally though, there were no official police reports of two children who had gone missing together. Hmm. Tips did begin pouring into police and the Vancouver Sun also put out a 500 reward for information leading to a discovery in the case. There were some reports from neighbors and other community members which came in describing sightings or strange encounters.

One tip was that a woman from Kitsilano, a beachfront neighborhood in southwest Vancouver, had gone missing with her [00:11:00] two boys after renting a boat from the beach. Her body was later recovered, but her children never were. This theory was quickly ruled out though.

Nima: Okay, why? Do you know how?

Lauryn: I couldn't find reporting about why it was ruled out.

I honestly didn't look into that particular case for the details, but I would imagine...

Nima: I'm wondering if it was just a gender thing. They just saw it was two boys and they're like, okay, well, it can't be them kind of thing, you know, and just ruled them out that way.

Lauryn: It very well could have been. Very well could have been.

The Vancouver Sun reported a tip they received on January 19th that a family came forward to say that two children from a neighborhood family that their son played with suddenly disappeared. When the son later saw the children's mother in the street, he asked what happened to them, but she just brushed past the boy and continued walking.

Nima: Mm, that's sus.

Lauryn: It was reported that police would follow up on the tip, but I didn't see anything else in any news stories after that point that spoke to this tip. Okay. There were a lot of other tips coming in, like [00:12:00] hundreds of tips coming to both police and newspapers. There were some that the children were missing from the U. S., Scotland, or even South Africa. So police were getting all sorts of leads, sending them literally in all sorts of directions.

Nima: Yeah. That's brutal.

Lauryn: In early February, the province reported that three detectives were still working on the case and had come up with about 25 leads between tips, searching missing persons reports, and other investigative avenues, but they still didn't have any firm answers about what happened to these children.

By mid April, however, police released the details of their reconstruction of the children's deaths. As well as their theory that they were killed by their deranged mother, who fatally injured both children by slashing their skulls with the hatchet that was found near their bodies.

Nima: Hmm.

Lauryn: Autopsy findings showed that the younger boy's skull had two slash marks that fit the blade of the hatchet, while the girl's skull had one slash mark.

Nima: Oh wow.

Lauryn: These blows were noted to be light, which substantiated the [00:13:00] investigator's theory that a woman committed the murders, believing a man would have left much deeper marks from hitting them far harder. The woman's shoe and coat recovered at the scene also supported this theory. Police released that one of the aviator hats was found in the girl's hand, while the other was still on the little boy's head.

Police were able to recreate the outfit that the boy was wearing, which was a red and green tartan coat with light beige corduroy pants. However, the girl's clothes were too badly decomposed to be recreated. The particular shoes the children were wearing, which were identical except for the size, were found to have only been manufactured in the year of 1947.

Nima: Oh, wow, that's a tip.

Lauryn: The little boy was described as having dark brown hair and a sturdy build, and the girl had lighter brown hair and a slender build. It was also noted that both had prominent jaws and their teeth were filled with cavities. Coming back to the mother, police also believed that after she covered the children's bodies with her coat, that she [00:14:00] jumped into the waters below the Lions Gate Bridge, falling to her death.

Police believed that from the length of the fur coat, the woman was about 5'3 or 5'4, between 125 to 135 pounds. The coat was also reported to have been a style that was very popular in 1943. So we do see we're getting a few different dates emerging from the different pieces of clothing evidence. Police also stated that through pathological investigation, they believe that the children were killed sometime around December 1947, or that winter, or possibly the winter the following year, so winter 48 49.

Police used this dating to narrow the missing person search to look at reports that came in during or after November 1947. Despite this reconstruction, police still didn't have any solid leans into who the alleged mother was and who the children were. So I have two different questions for you here, Nima.

Okay. So the first is, what do you think the police will [00:15:00] continue to do to find this alleged mother based on the findings that they've shared publicly in April of 1953? Where do you think this investigation's headed?

Nima: Oh, I have no idea because, like, it's so hard to... be able to chase that without DNA evidence.

They have everything they need, but they just don't know it at that time. So, uh, I think the best thing would have to be asking around, right? Like asking people word of mouth, witness testimony. So maybe they'll up their ante and. You know, offer a larger amount for some more tips because they feel close. I don't know how they were.

Lauryn: Also, keep in mind that that reward's only coming from the Vancouver Sun newspaper. That isn't actually related to the police.

Nima: Right, right. So yeah, so I think maybe the police put out like a proper reward for maybe some info that could lead them to the arrest because that's really all you could do at that point, I think.

Lauryn: Yeah, just witness testimony, this is something that I overheard, this is what something told, something someone told me.

Nima: Yeah, that's why they took 25 leads and are like, oh, we're [00:16:00] gonna run with this because like, what can you do? There's nothing else you can do there. So that makes sense.

Lauryn: Now, you did say they have everything there that they need.

Mm hmm. So based on that, this leads right into my next question. Considering the information that they shared, do you believe there would be sufficient evidence to identify the children and solve the murders if the crimes were committed today?

Nima: Today? Yes, I definitely think so because like I mean even the hatchet, right?

Like you could go to the hardware store and look at the cameras and you know There's so many things that we have now. Maybe they had similar things Then but not to the level that we have now, right? We're so advanced. So I 100% think we could solve that today, easily.

Lauryn: Yeah, even just your point of cameras, I mean, the Lions Gate Bridge is an extremely popular thoroughfare.

Like, it's the one of the only, not one of the only ways I shouldn't say that. It's, it's a really easy way from the west side of Vancouver to get between actual Vancouver proper in the North Shore. So people are constantly coming and going, not just [00:17:00] to enjoy the park, but just for the sake of traveling to wherever it is that they're heading.

So there's plenty of traffic cameras, let alone security cameras, where I think just from that, plus either DNA or, like you said, being able to go back and reconstruct where these items came from with more information available to us, I think they would have been able to solve this pretty quickly.

Nima: I think very easily, for sure.

Lauryn: Well, we're saying that from 2023, not 20, oh, not even 20, 53, 1953, we are not there yet. So we're saying that 70 years removed. Right. So we have to keep that in mind. Yeah, absolutely. We will get into what the police do next to continue their investigation, but first let's take a quick break.

Nima: Let's do it.

And we're back.

Lauryn: We are back. And we're back to talking about what it was that police did to continue their investigation into the Babes of the Woods murders. Although there were no firm leads in the case by April of [00:18:00] 1953, police did not let this sway their efforts in solving the case. In July of 1953, I don't think you had this on your what are they gonna do next bingo card, Vancouver based anthropologist Dr. Erna Van Engel Baersdorff, who specialized in sculpting lifelike recreations of skeletal remains, Hmm. So she was tasked with creating lifelike plaster sculptures of what the children would have looked like at the time of their murders, based on their skeletal features, with the hopes of being able to have somebody recognize the children based on these recreations.

Nima: Interesting.

Lauryn: She believed from their bone structures that the children were of Nordic descent, likely Swedish or Norwegian. And she actually ended up making two versions of the sculptures, one of healthy children and one from under nourished children. As police believe the children came from poverty and were not taken care of based on, you know, cavities, the quality of the items that they found at the scene, you [00:19:00] know, cheap fur coat, which I know today we're like, oh, fur coat, but it's important to keep in mind back then, fur was extremely, extremely popular, especially up in Canada.

Um, it was manufactured very cheaply. Yeah, yeah. To us, we're like, Oh, that's bougie. It was not, it was just extremely common. You know, it would be like a cheap puffer jacket. By March of 1955, detective Don McKay from the sudden death detail of Vancouver city police was the lead investigator regularly working unpaid overtime on the case.

In an interview with the Vancouver Sun, McKay revealed police had combed through thousands of police, court, birth, school, children's aid, and dental records in their investigation, with no firm lead so far on who these children could have been. Sounds tedious. Most interestingly, however, was not a record that they combed through, but actually a diary that had come into police possession.

Nima: Hmm.

Lauryn: The diary belonged to a [00:20:00] woman who had broken up with her fiancé in Stanley Park on October 5th of 1947. This is probably one of my favorite quotes I've seen from a detective that, uh, not just from this case, but from any case that I've researched. So Detective McKay said that, uh, said this about the credibility of the woman's diary entry.

And this is a direct quote. "When a woman is emotionally upset like this, she often retains almost photographically the smallest details surrounding her upset." So because she's just gone through this upsetting time of breaking up with her fiancé, she's going to remember everything super vividly. Right. So the diary entry.

Nima: I would beg to differ.

Lauryn: I wonder if he's speaking from his personal experience. Like, does his wife just remember everything when she's mad at him and so that's why he thinks that?

Nima: Yes, he's like, all women are like that. Maybe. Must be, right?

Lauryn: I mean, we, we see it all the time, just how much [00:21:00] misogyny and sexism there is in society, even today, but this is the 1950s.

Nima: Oh, yeah, yeah. It was even worse then, right? So.

Lauryn: So, what else would we expect of a hysterical woman, you know?

Nima: Yes, exactly. Hysterical.

Lauryn: The woman wrote in her diary that during the argument with her ex fiancé at around 2. 30pm, she saw a woman wearing a fur coat with her two children, and the woman was chopping at a tree branch with a small hatchet about 50 feet from the park trail.

The diary writer heard the woman call the boy over, as the couple was arguing, and they walked past, noting that the boy's name was either Ronnie or Rodney. Hmm. Later, the couple saw the woman again, this time she was by herself and missing her coat, and also walking lopsided, as if she was missing a shoe.

Nima: Interesting.

Lauryn: To further test the woman's credibility, McKay asked the woman to take him to the spot where she had seen the mother and her two children. And he said it [00:22:00] was pretty much the exact spot about 50 feet from the path by Beaver Lake where the bodies were found.

Nima: Okay. Okay.

Lauryn: So. Apparently, this had never been publicly disclosed, the exact location, however, I did see in different newspapers basically little hand drawn maps as to the approximate location of where the bodies were discovered.

And obviously, it was publicly known if people like reporters were able to get there very quickly on the actual day that the bodies were discovered.

Nima: Yeah, yeah, of course.

Lauryn: Nonetheless, from all of this, police believed it was credible and thus estimated that the date of the murders was October 5th, 1947, since that was the date on her diary entry.

Nima: Which is right around what they said. It's very much fitting in with that timeline. Confirmation bias, right? Maybe, maybe not.

Lauryn: Maybe, we'll have to see. We'll see. That said, another lead did come in, in March of 1955, which accused a woman who had committed suicide two years prior to the discovery of the bodies of the [00:23:00] murders, since her children had not been seen for some months before her death, and they apparently matched the two descriptions of the dead children.

Hmm. This was reported by the Victoria Daily Times, that this was apparently the police's strongest lead yet. But to me it didn't seem to fit the timeline of pathological evidence, you know, it's apparently 47, 48, around that winter that they were allegedly murdered. However, this would put us at 1950, 1951.

Nima: Right.

Lauryn: So that kind of fits in with the initial estimate that it was about three years. But now they're saying that's too early. It was at least, you know, five or six years. So why this was reported as the strongest lead, I don't know. I don't know if there was other holdback info that they weren't reporting in this, but holdback info wasn't really a thing at the time.

I mean, we saw how much they put out in the initial reporting.

Nima: Maybe it's because they fit the initial time frame that they had, so they thought, why not go for it, right? [00:24:00]

Lauryn: And ultimately, we're talking about two dead children, so it's worth looking into. every, you know, even slightly credible lead that comes in.

Nima: Yep, exactly.

Lauryn: So what do you think of all these different leads that we're hearing coming in at this point?

Nima: Honestly, it's like a wild goose chase at this point because the diary entry, I think, is the the most interesting. If she actually had those things written in there, um, then, yeah, then I can see that being the most credible lead at the time.

Um, not for the same reasons that the officer gave or the investigator, but. Uh, aside from that, I don't know, like, I don't know what's going to take them the right way. You know, the second one that you said doesn't make sense because it's three years rather than the six, but the three years was the initial that they said.

They said at least three years, but after the report, it's six. So, again, confirmation biases. Are they just trying to hold on to whatever they can at this point? Maybe. They just want to solve the case.

Lauryn: Yeah, and I mean, they're very publicly, at least [00:25:00] the Vancouver Sun, is putting out these... Rewards that, you know, anybody could come and get, so I'm sure a lot of these tips are coming in falsely with people thinking, hey, maybe if it leads to something, you know, who cares if it's actually related to this case if it leads to something and I get paid, great.

Nima: Yeah, good enough.

Lauryn: Leads did eventually slow down as public interest in the case began to peter out as the years went on. In April of 1960, the Vancouver Sun reported that Detective McKay had lost hope on the case, that it would ever be solved. However, the city morgue was still keeping the children's bodies for investigative purposes.

Okay. City Coroner Glenn MacDonald said that there were several reasons for keeping their bodies, like being able to compare their remains to past x rays and medical records if discovered through police investigation. He also said that there were no plans to bury the remains, but he also didn't think the bones would be stored indefinitely.

There were no real firm plans with what to do with their remains. Right. [00:26:00] Newspaper coverage of the case really started to die down and I wasn't able to find any reports on the case again until March of 1984.

Nima: Oh wow.

Lauryn: So 24 years later. Yeah, that's quite a while. The Sun reported that forensic anthropology students at Vancouver's Simon Fraser University believe that based on examination of jawbone development in both children that the two were actually fraternal twins and not about 14 months apart in age like previously believed by investigators.

Then retired Detective McKay commented on this new finding, saying that it could have been possible and that they would have overlooked reports of missing twins due to the believed age difference in the children.

Nima: Oh, that makes sense. Brutal.

Lauryn: And just a little refresher, the pathological findings of the initial examination were that the children's ages were about 7 years 8 months for the girl and 6 years 4 months for the boy.

Okay. So, scrap that, they're actually the same [00:27:00] age. Yeah. This article also reported that there was a French Canadian woman that McKay was interested in investigating at the time, whose children seemed to have disappeared also at the time, but were never located. However, budget constraints did not allow him to track her down back then, since he wanted to travel to Quebec for that investigation.

The professor overseeing the student examinations, Mark Skinner, did say that this method isn't the most reliable for dating remains, however the sex determinations by police at the time were likely correct. So based on their review of the bones, they felt that boy and girl were the accurate sexes to assign to those children.

Nima: Okay.

Lauryn: In 1986, Crimestoppers did a film reenactment which aired on TV to try and jog the public's memories into the investigation. . In an October, 1986, Vancouver Sun article, detective McKay was again interviewed and gave a bit more insight into the French Canadian woman theory.

He [00:28:00] believed that it was this woman and that she had claimed to given the children up for adoption And this is what she was very publicly telling everyone around her. Some tips did end up coming in from the reenactment that aired but ultimately no major breaks in the case came in from this. So at this point after the Crime Stoppers show airs, we're 33 years into the case since we've discovered the bodies.

So what do you think investigators are going to do next at this point?

Nima: Oh, that's so tough to say.

Lauryn: What do you think they're thinking about the case then? It's been 33 years since the initial discovery.

Nima: I mean, some of them are probably like, well, this is a dead case. Why are we even looking at it? Right?

That's what I would think. Why even spend the resources? But others are like, Probably thinking, hey, what happened here? Is there someone on the loose that shouldn't be? I mean, there's there's two sides of that coin typically, right? There's actually more but yeah, that's it's hard to say until DNA comes into play.

I think so for me at least.

Lauryn: Yeah, and at this point it seems that basically every Avenue has been exhausted, [00:29:00] you know They had the sculptors come in. She she did do the recreations and They were made public, but nothing really came in from that. You know, there wasn't really much reported after the initial, let me go back, was it 1955 they were doing that?

1953? Sometime in that. So after those years, really there's nothing else reported about the sculptures and if they were able to do anything in the investigation. You know, like you said, there's all these tips that have come in that have put them through all of these different... Leads, you know, they've jumped through so many hoops to track down information that ultimately is a dead end or Maybe it leads to another case, but it doesn't do anything for this one, right?

Yeah Yeah, I can only imagine how frustrated they are. I mean like you said 30 years later I'm sure there's a lot of people that are thinking this is a huge time and money sink But by the same token, there are cold case teams Yeah. That are dedicated to solving these crimes. For sure. So I think that's a bit of another discussion on whether or not those are worth it.

Personally, I think they're super worth [00:30:00] it.

Nima: Yeah, yeah. I like them. I like the idea of it. I just think when you think about it on the grand scheme of things, that it's tough to wrap your head around it sometimes.

Lauryn: Yeah. So like you said, Where are we going to go after this? Uh, at this point in 86, DNA is starting to come out, but it's very much in its infancy.

I didn't see anything reported about DNA from any of the 1986 articles, so to me it doesn't seem like that was quite on their radar at the time.

Nima: Mm hmm.

Lauryn: But we do see a break in this case come 13 years later in 1999. Okay. But we're actually going to discuss that break in the case on our next episode.

Nima: Sounds good.

Lauryn: So we'll get into how both forensic science and genealogy, one of my favorite things, came together to give us the identities of the Stanley Park Babes in the Woods. I'm excited. I can't wait. Please do not Google this case if you'd like to be surprised for part two. Yeah. So just a little disclaimer there.

Try and hold your [00:31:00] excitement if you can until the next episode in two weeks.

Nima: It'll be good. We promise.

Lauryn: And that's it for part one of the Stanley Park Babes in the Woods murders. Thank you so much again for listening and we hope you enjoyed this episode. The link to show notes, the episode transcript, and source information is available in the episode description.

Nima: We love hearing your feedback, so if you'd like to get in touch with us, you can find us on Instagram @rootedincrime or by email at rootedincrime@gmail.Com. If you like what you hear, you can follow the show on your favorite listening app to always stay up to date on new episodes. We release new episodes every other week.

Lauryn: If you'd like to support the podcast, you can find us on Patreon at patreon. com slash RootedinCrime. And a special shout out to Lindsay MacDonald for writing and recording our intro music. And that's it.

Nima: That's it.

Lauryn: Until next time, everyone.

Nima: Thanks, everyone.[00:32:00]

Sources

“Babes-in-Park Still Puzzle Detectives.” The Province. February 6, 1953. https://www.newspapers.com/image/499929243/.

“Canada City Population History: Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto & Vancouver.” Demographia, 2003. http://demographia.com/db-cancityhist.htm.

Canadian Press. “Mystery of ‘Babes in Woods’ Still Knits Brows of Police.” The Victoria Daily Times, January 19, 1953. https://www.newspapers.com/image/506034617/.

Canadian Press. “‘Babes in Woods’ Case May Be Near Solution.” The Victoria Daily Times, March 23, 1955. https://www.newspapers.com/image/506794574/.

City of Vancouver. “Acknowledging the Unceded Territories.” Land acknowlegement, n.d. https://vancouver.ca/people-programs/land-acknowledgement.aspx#:~:text=Acknowledging%20the%20unceded%20territories,(Tsleil%2DWaututh)%20Nations.

Glover, Jillian. “Picture It: Vancouver, 1950.” This City Life (blog), February 16, 2012. https://thiscitylife.ca/post/17699606962/picture-it-vancouver-1950.

Kheraj, Sean. “Stanley Park.” The Canadian Encyclopedia, January 8, 2017. https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/stanley-park#:~:text=Stanley%20Park%20is%20located%20on,city%20as%20a%20public%20park.

Lazarus, Eve. “Babes in the Woods Still Haunts City.” Essay. In Cold Case Vancouver: The City’s Most Baffling Unsolved Murders, 31–54. Vancouver, BC: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2015.

Lazarus, Eve. “The Babes in the Woods Get Their Names Back.” Essay. In Cold Case BC: The Stories Behind the Province’s Most Sensational Murder and Missing Persons Cases, 19–43. Arsenal Pulp Press, 2023.

Musgrove, Paul. “SFU Class Sheds Light on ‘Babes in Woods.’” The Vancouver Sun, March 26, 1984. https://www.newspapers.com/image/494833066/.

“New Heads Of Children To Be Cast.” The Province, November 28, 1953. https://www.newspapers.com/image/500099298/.

“Park Skeletons Definitely Girl and Boy.” The Vancouver Sun, January 19, 1953. https://www.newspapers.com/image/492556805/.

“Police Seek Clues to Bodies in Park.” The Vancouver Sun, January 16, 1953. https://www.newspapers.com/image/492556373/.

“Police to Show Soon How Murdered Children Looked.” The Vancouver Sun, September 1, 1953. https://www.newspapers.com/image/492082293/.

Porter, Bob. “Morgue Still Holds Bodies Of ‘Babes in the Woods.’” The Vancouver Sun, April 1, 1960. https://www.newspapers.com/image/492304962/.

“Province Newsmen Find Mystery Clues.” The Province. January 16, 1953. https://www.newspapers.com/image/500409068/.

Reynolds, Mac. “Broken Love Affair Seen as Key to Stanley Park Murders.” The Vancouver Sun, March 5, 1955. https://www.newspapers.com/image/492190283/.

Roy, Patricia E. “Vancouver.” Edited by Nathan Coschi and Leanna Fong. The Canadian Encyclopedia, December 16, 2022. https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/vancouver.

“Sculptress to Help Solve Park ‘Babes in Woods’ Murder.” The Vancouver Sun, July 17, 1953. https://www.newspapers.com/image/492383106/.

“Skeletons Hint Murder of Girl, Boy.” The Province. January 15, 1953. https://www.newspapers.com/image/500408760/.

“Sun Offers $500 Reward For Two Children’s Slayer.” The Vancouver Sun, January 17, 1953. https://www.newspapers.com/image/492556555/.

“Sun’s Reward Brings Many Death Clues.” The Vancouver Sun, January 19, 1953. https://www.newspapers.com/image/492556960/.

“Two Mystery Skeletons Found By Workmen in Stanley Park.” The Vancouver Sun, January 15, 1953. https://www.newspapers.com/image/492556226/.

“Vancouver, Canada Metro Area Population 1950-2023.” MacroTrends, n.d. https://www.macrotrends.net/cities/20404/vancouver/population.

Wong, Chris. “‘Babes’ Murder Film on Trail 33 Years Old.” The Vancouver Sun, October 20, 1986. https://www.newspapers.com/image/495133359/.

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