Ep 3 - The Stanley Park Babes in the Woods Murders Part 2

Written By Lauryn Macdonald

Show Notes

In part two of this episode, hosts Lauryn and Nima discuss the DNA breakthrough in the Stanley Park Babes in the Woods murder case. By the 1990s, DNA technology had become sophisticated enough to give investigators the clues they were looking for. It would take the powerful new investigative technique, genetic genealogy, to finally give the Babes their names. Find out who the children were, the police's theory as to who the killer was, and what Lauryn and Nima think of it all.

Tune in every other week for new episodes. Your support for the podcast means so much to us. You can subscribe and review us on your favourite podcast listening apps, and support us at patreon.com/rootedincrime. You can stay updated by following Rooted in Crime on Instagram, @rootedincrime.

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

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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.

Nima: And I'm Nima Hodoudi.

Lauryn: 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.

This is part two of the Stanley Park Babes in the Woods murders. If you haven't listened to part one yet, hit pause here to go give the first part of the episode a listen. In part one, we discussed the discovery of the two Babes in the Woods 1953. The forensic and pathological evidence at the scene left [00:01:00] some clues as to the ages and the sexes of the children, and police believed their mother killed them.

Tips poured into the police and newspapers, which gave investigators over 25 leads, but ultimately nothing was uncovered during the initial investigation to reveal the identities of the children and their mother. Interest in the case died down, but the babes in the woods were not forgotten. In 1996, a Vancouver homicide detective from the Provincial Unsolved Homicide Unit decided to take on the case using new forensic DNA technology.

This not only gave investigators a breakthrough in the case a couple of years later, but in 2022, they discovered the identities of the two children using the incredible new forensic technique, genetic genealogy. Through my own research, I've been able to uncover a little bit more about the Babes and speculate about what could have happened to them to meet such a tragic end.

So let's get into part two of the Stanley Park Babes in the Woods murders.

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

Lauryn: In the decades since the discovery of the two children's bodies in January of 1953, investigators had exhausted virtually all leads that could have led them to the identities of the little boy and girl discovered in Stanley Park. The investigation reached a point that, until forensic technology progressed, investigators wouldn't be able to do much in the case.

By the 1980s, new anthropological and forensic examination techniques were being used to see if any new information could be discovered about the children. University researchers findings showed the children were likely fraternal twins rather than just brother and sister, but this didn't help to narrow down the search for the babes identities.

By the 1990s, DNA testing had become a reliable forensic tool that opened up [00:03:00] investigative avenues in cases around the world. And thanks to DNA, Vancouver police finally got the break in the case that they had waited over four decades for. Now, I messed up the date actually on part one. I said it was in 1999, but it was actually in 1998.

Nima: Oh.

Lauryn: I know.

Nima: Oops.

Lauryn: I was, I was bad with my research there. Yeah. But on March 20th, 1998, Police announced that they were able to find out that they had misidentified the sex of one of the children and that both victims were, in fact, boys.

Nima: Oh, no way.

Lauryn: Yeah. Oh. So that changes everything.

Nima: That changes everything, yeah.

Yeah. Wow. I did not know that. Well, now they'll be able to figure it out probably a lot easier because they were under the, initially it was they're a different age, then it was. Different age, but twins, but different sex. And now it's like, oh, we were totally wrong. Yeah. It's actually same sex as well.

Lauryn: It just goes to show how, and it's something [00:04:00] that I've seen a lot in my research, that in the anthropological examination of children's bones before they hit puberty, it can be really difficult to identify the sex.

Nima: Yeah, that makes sense. Because everyone kind of goes through it differently, right?

Lauryn: Well, not only that, but bone structures change a lot once you hit puberty. We've even seen, though, that post pubescent remains, like, I'm talking about like ancient remains, you know, of 4, 000 plus years old where they've seen, they've misidentified the sex previously just from looking at, The actual bones themselves and then in doing DNA, they're able to re identify actually who this is and that's through the presence of the Y chromosome typically.

I've seen also, and this is the case in dental DNA, where it's a certain protein that's present in females versus males.

Nima: Oh, interesting. Okay.

Lauryn: There's lots of intricacies within that. But nonetheless, you're able to find very distinct ways to identify the sex through DNA examination. Which is exactly what happens here in the 90s [00:05:00] when the Vancouver police start using those tools that are available to them.

Nima: Yeah, that's huge.

Lauryn: The DNA testing had also ruled out that they were not twins, showing that they were in fact half brothers born to different fathers.

Nima: What? Shoe size and stuff like that. They were saying there was quite a few differences.

And if there were... Actually fraternal twins I mean, you could see the differences one way or another, but I would be surprised if it was to that extent, right?

Lauryn: Yeah, everything that we're seeing from the DNA testing seems to be lining up with, I mean, we're looking at this again with all the information.

Yeah, hindsight's 20 20. Decades later. Yes. But it seems to be lining up with all of those little things where we went, hmm, that doesn't seem quite right. Yeah, yeah, totally. Now this breakthrough was achieved by testing DNA in both sets of the boy's teeth. Like I said, it was dental DNA that we looked at.

And although other bones had been kept by police for both sets of the remains, when they were boxed up in 1953, they actually, the police boxed everything together. So there was no way to [00:06:00] keep the bones separate to be able to identify which bones belonged to which child. Yeah. Now that said, the skulls have been kept separately for both the sculptural recreations that we saw in the 50s, but also they had been kept on display in the Vancouver Police Museum for some time.

So it was always known which skull belonged to which child because they were always clearly identified. Okay. Also, there were the difference in hash marks. Right. From the hatchet. So those were things that we could easily identify, okay, who's who, but the other bones were just too mixed up to be able to tell.

Right, okay. The province reported that with the DNA discovery, police also ruled out retired Detective McKay's theory about the French Canadian woman. Do you remember that one?

Nima: Oh, yes, yes, yes.

Lauryn: And they actually named this woman in the article, her name was Madeleine Fortier. And this woman had told Quebec police that she'd given up her children for adoption in Vancouver, but the police never actually confirmed this at the time.

Okay. This theory was ruled out due to the sexes of the children. [00:07:00] Madeleine was known for certain to have a daughter and son, not two boys. Right. There was another tip reported in this article that had been provided to police by Lawrence Samuel Smith, a high school biology teacher who remembered seeing a woman by the seawall with two children on January 3rd or 4th of 1947 while he was out collecting specimens with his class.

So the seawall, I know you're familiar with it, we've been to it, but for those unfamiliar with it, it's basically a huge retaining wall that protects the shores of Stanley Park from erosion. And it's also used as a pathway around the park, so it's a super popular walkway.

Nima: It's great.

Lauryn: In his tip to police, Smith said that he could hear the children's voices and noticed that one of them was carrying a hatchet and clanging it against the metal railing along the wall's edge.

A little while later, while walking through the park near Beaver Lake, remember Beaver Lake? He saw a hysterical woman sitting on a bench while a man paced back and forth. He [00:08:00] noted that she wasn't wearing a coat and was missing a shoe with fresh blood spattered on her leg. The man that she was with said that she'd lost her shoe when her foot got caught after losing her footing while crossing a ditch, which also caused her to scratch her leg, therefore explaining the blood.

Nima: Okay. Seems a little sus.

Lauryn: Definitely a little sus, and definitely something that investigators would have wanted to speak about with Smith. But unfortunately, he passed away in the 1970s, and that's before the DNA breakthrough, where police were even thinking of these other tips that weren't just about a boy and a girl, so they weren't able to follow up with him.

Nima: Brutal.

Lauryn: The tip from Lawrence Smith was also believed to be the most credible in the Babes in the Woods file at this time because of the description. Okay. There was also another tip from 1953 from a rooming house owner that a couple who had rented from him had two boys who mysteriously vanished in 1947 [00:09:00] who matched the description that was given by Smith.

Oh. So Sergeant Brian Honeybourn, who is the unsolved homicide investigator on the case at this time, he said that this clue had completely been overlooked by previous investigators because it didn't specify that it was a boy and a girl that had been sighted, just two children. Right, right. So because of that ambiguity, they were just looking for those boy girl sightings in the tips.

Nima: I love that they were so stuck on that. Like, I mean, I get it, but, because it was all they knew at the time. Yeah. Yeah. It's tough.

Lauryn: It is tough. And we're looking at it with all of the facts now. This is true. And we also now know from experiences like this, you can't quickly jump to conclusions without conclusive evidence.

Yes, exactly. Honeyburn also stated that the case had been dormant for some time until he found the two children's remains in the basement of the police museum, where they had been previously displayed, and he was really bothered by the fact that the case hadn't been solved yet. He was a senior in the department, so he had the authority to pick up [00:10:00] the case in addition to what was already assigned to him.

Honeyburn actually grew up in Vancouver and was familiar with the case, and felt haunted that the children never had the burial they deserved. After seeing their bones in the museum basement, he knew he had to take the case on. It was in 1996 when he picked up the case, and at this point, DNA technology had taken off in the forensic world.

So he sent the skulls off to the University of British Columbia's Bureau of Legal Dentistry lab for the DNA to be analyzed by forensic dentist Dr. David Sweet. I have to say, great name for a dentist, Dr. Sweet.

Nima: Dr. Sweet. Yeah, that's fair.

Lauryn: And Dr. Sweet was a leading world expert in salivary and dental DNA.

Nima: Of course he was.

Lauryn: After the DNA had been sequenced, some small bone samples were kept for future testing, and the rest of the children's remains were cremated, and Sergeant Honeyborne scattered them into the ocean in August of 1997 from a police boat just off of Kitsilano Point, Vancouver's southwestern shore.

Honeyburn held a small private [00:11:00] service with just a police chaplain without the knowledge of his superiors. The Vancouver Children's Festival was actually also happening nearby in Kitsilano at the time of the service, which Honeyburn felt gave a really nice meaningful touch. So what's going through your mind with all this new information, all of these old tips, the DNA breakthrough, everything?

Nima: Well, honestly that last part right there. So he went and took some bones and burnt them. Is that what you were saying?

Lauryn: Yeah, so at this point like the unidentified, like the ones from their remains that had been put together. Yeah that they couldn't identify He wanted to have some sort of proper funeral service for them.

So he was the one to actually cremate them after they sequenced the DNA and they had some reserved for future testing. So they weren't like totally burning everything. Don't worry They were thinking.

Nima: I was confused.

Lauryn: Don't worry. Don't worry. Yes at this point in the 90s With the way that DNA technology has progressed so far investigators know technology is going to be getting better and better So they really hold on to a lot of stuff.

So that's why you see a [00:12:00] lot of cases now coming up from decades ago, because they knew back then we have enough DNA, but what we have right now isn't good enough to actually test the DNA that we have in terms of our technology. So that's what they did in this case, but the bones that they couldn't really identify or use, but obviously where the children's remains, that's what was cremated.

And then that's what was scattered into the ocean off of Kitsilano.

Nima: Right. Okay. That makes sense. Okay. In that case, I guess what's funny is in the last episode, we, You know, we found out that there's some distruth to some of that evidence. And then as we move on already so quickly in, in part two here, I'm like, Oh, throw all of that out the window and things have completely changed.

I think that will make it so that obviously the case is going to be easier to solve, but I still have no clue, right? Like who they are, who they could be, because it really opens things up again. Right. So I guess we'll see.

Lauryn: [00:13:00] Where do you think investigators initially stumbled most aside from the fact that it was a boy and a girl that they were so stuck on finding?

Nima: Well, that's, that's tough because again, back then they don't have DNA evidence. They don't like that kind of stuff. Doesn't my biggest thing still from back then is not closing off crime scenes typically. Right. So that's, that's my biggest thing is but aside from that, I, I don't know, there's too many slip ups for me to say there's one or two that were really big.

I think the biggest thing was sticking to what they thought was, you know, boy and a girl. They thought, all of a sudden, twins, da da da da. These are the cases when the evidence didn't really line up, even though that's what they knew. I think that, and sticking hard line to that, made it so that they couldn't actually go and find out who this was back then, right?

And now that they have the DNA and they're able to find out, again, hindsight's 20 20, but now that they're able to [00:14:00] find out, I think that's where the biggest misstep was.

Lauryn: Yeah, absolutely. And we can only say so much knowing what we know now, but to the point that you made of contamination and evidence being brought in, who's to say what the credibility is of the evidence that's there, given anybody could have been coming and going from that crime scene at any point?

You know, some things are obvious, I think. The hatchet, the fur coat, just with the way either, The pathological examination shows the hatchet was used, the fur coat was molding covered over them, all of that makes sense, but there's other little things like a button, safety pin, who's to say that any of that has anything to do with the case, and these aren't just red herrings coming out.

Nima: Yeah, exactly.

Lauryn: Also, who knows exactly how long those remains were there. It was about six years, give or take, but we don't really know. A lot can happen in that time, not just from human intervention, but also from animal intervention.

Nima: Yeah, that's very true.

Lauryn: So, I mean, now we'll see, I think with the new [00:15:00] technology, we'll have some more breakthroughs, but yeah, back then, it's tough.

Nonetheless, the DNA breakthrough and ample media coverage surrounding it brought a lot of attention back to the case. In December of 1998, the Vancouver Sun reported another tip that came in, that Sergeant Honeybourn made public in hopes of finding more information. There was another tip in the original police file that a man who had given a ride to a woman and her two boys Into Stanley Park from Mission, which is about an hour's drive or 83 kilometers east of Vancouver This tipster described the woman as having red hair and the two boys were wearing aviator helmets Just like those found at the scene and believed they were about four and six years old, which were the very first ages that I saw reported in, I believe it was the Vancouver Sun.

Okay. I just want to throw that out there that from my Perspective in my research. That's very early information that was reported. I [00:16:00] just want to put that out there as we think about this Okay The woman also mentioned to the driver that she lived on Cherry Street in Mission and had had several police charges for Vagrancy, which was typically the charge given in prostitution arrests at the time She shared that she feared social services would come and take her children away Honeyburn believed that this was her motivation to kill the boys out of fear that they'd be taken away from her

Nima: Yeah, that makes sense.

Lauryn: Honeyburn was able to track down a man who delivered papers on Cherry Street in the 1940s, who remembered a family with the last name Grant that matched the description given by the tipster. So woman with red hair, the two boys, that sort of thing. Okay. Honeyburn was able to confirm that a Gordon and Harriet Grant had lived on Cherry Street and that the couple separated in 1948.

Harriet later moved to Vancouver with her children after the couple divorced, but Honeyburn wasn't able to confirm how many children she had and what their genders were. He appealed to the public for any [00:17:00] information about the couple and their children. By 2003, then retired Honeyburn tracked down descendants of the Grants, and he had determined that this Cherry Street venture was a false lead.

However, he hadn't discounted the original tip about the woman and her two boys who hitched a ride to Stanley Park, believing this was still a plausible lead. It just didn't have anything to do with the Grants.

Nima: Mm hmm.

Lauryn: Prior to his retirement, Honeyburn had also been able to debunk the theory that the boys were killed on October 5th, 1947, finding that the woman who wrote the diary entry on that day had lied.

So there actually wasn't a firm timeline as to when the boys died.

Nima: Hmm, interesting. So that's How did they know that that was a lie? Like, oh, they knew that they lied about seeing that person.

Lauryn: She, she had forged the diary.

Nima: I got you. I got you. Okay.

Lauryn: Yeah, he was, I'm not 100% sure how he was able to confirm the forgery, but it was forged.

Okay, sounds good. He had also debunked the shoe dating. You remember we got that date about the [00:18:00] rubber oxford shoes they were wearing?

Nima: Oh, yeah, yeah, that's right. And there's like one specific year, right?

Lauryn: So it turns out the shoes were actually available in North America prior to the war, whereas original investigators believed they were only available in 1947.

Nima: Oh, that sucks.

Lauryn: So then that also opens up the timeline as to exactly when if the war ended in 1945. Yeah, could have been. That's basically all of the 40s and even 39 that is available. Yep, totally. He also followed up on teacher Lawrence Smith's tip and was able to determine that the class trip had actually taken place in 1951, at which point the boys had already been deceased for some time.

Right. Honeyburn kept the media attention alive as he continued to research this case after retirement. Since it was a cold case he decided to pursue on his own, he still technically owned the case since nobody picked it up after his retirement, so this didn't interfere with any ongoing police investigation.

Okay. Local media outlets continued reporting on the case as police [00:19:00] agencies continued to call for more information in the case and internet blogs and podcasts, just like ours, attracted even more attention from amateur internet sleuths to crime beat journalists who helped to push for the case to be solved.

One of these was Vancouver based journalist and author Eve Lazarus, who took up interest in the case and became a prominent reporter on the Babes in the Woods during the internet era. She featured the case on her podcast, blog, and in her 2016 book, Cold Case Vancouver: The City's Most Baffling Unsolved Murders, continuing to bring awareness to the case.

Between police agencies, media outlets, and independent reporting, there was significant interest to solve the case. And in February of 2022, police finally received the answers that they had been searching for nearly seven decades. They finally had the identities to the two boys murdered in Stanley Park sometime before 1953.

Nima: Oh my god.

Lauryn: Now I'll let you know what that break was, but we'll let you know after a quick break of our own.

Nima: Okay, sounds good.[00:20:00]

Lauryn: And we're back.

Nima: We're back.

Lauryn: In July of 2021, Vancouver Police cold case investigators contracted Massachusetts based Redgrave Research Forensic Services to utilize the new forensic technique of genetic genealogy to see if it would be possible to determine who the boys were. Genetic genealogy is the science that combines DNA testing with genealogical tracing.

This technique was previously used in 2020 to identify who murdered Christine Jessup, a nine year old girl who was murdered in the greater Toronto area in 1984, and also most famously in the Golden State killer case from California. So how it works is that DNA from the unidentified victim or perpetrator will be compared to genealogical DNA databases where samples are provided through at home DNA testing.

So things like your 23andMe, AncestryDNA, those that we have become very familiar with. Yeah. [00:21:00] Then, using genealogical methodology, investigators are able to compare the unidentified sample to other samples which match some of your DNA, or some of the other samples DNA, I should say. Based on the proximity of the match, you can start to build out family trees and narrow down who the most likely members of that family are to match the DNA sample.

This means that you can analyze how much DNA is shared between matches, and from this, you can determine what the most likely relationship is. So, for example, you're going to share the most DNA with your parents, siblings, well, actually siblings, because you guys are going to have the same parents, so it's going to be the most similar.

Right. Then your parents come after that, you know, grandparents, aunts and uncles, so on and so forth. The less related you are, the less DNA you share. Yeah, that makes sense. So I'll give you an example of exactly how that genealogical examination works with respect to DNA testing. Okay. I'll also link some resources for further reading in the show notes and on my website if [00:22:00] you're interested in learning more about genetic genealogy.

So let's say I match to an unidentified male sample, and the most likely relationship, based on our match proximity, is a great uncle, great niece relationship. Meaning the sample most likely belongs to one of my grandparents brothers, but it won't pinpoint us to that exact person. Okay. We just know that much DNA is shared, most likely that's the relationship.

Okay. From this, genealogists would build family trees to provide the initial lead. Then investigators would use a variety of investigative techniques and processes to determine the validity of what the initial genetic genealogy analysis shows, so whether or not the lead is correct. So in my example, let's say there was only one great uncle of mine who lived near a crime scene at the time of the crime.

Let's say everyone else lived on the other side of the country, so we can for sure say they weren't involved. Right. It would make sense to then only investigate that one particular great uncle with both the genetic DNA match and then also fitting those [00:23:00] other details within the crime.

Nima: That's pretty cool.

Lauryn: Of course, all of this is contingent on there being a match in the databases that the samples are being compared to. So although it's an incredible way to create new leads in cold cases, it isn't a guarantee in each cold case.

Nima: Right.

Lauryn: Coming back to the case at hand, it was determined that the remaining bones that had not been cremated for DNA extraction purposes would be sent to Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Ontario to their paleo DNA laboratory for the boy's DNA to be extracted.

A sample was successfully extracted from the older boys bones, and it was sent to a genetic sequencing lab in Alabama to finish sequencing the genetic profile to compare to the profiles on private genealogy websites. They weren't able to get enough of a DNA sample from the younger boys bones, but the testing from the 90s already showed that they were biological half brothers, so it was totally fine to get.

Just the one profile. They have enough to find matches that will benefit both. Yep. Luckily, investigators found the [00:24:00] match that they were looking for. On February 15th, 2022, Vancouver Police Inspector Dale Wademan announced that, through genetic genealogy, they were able to identify the boys as 7 year old Derek Dalton and his 6 year old half brother David.

Nima: Hmm.

Lauryn: So we finally had names for the two boys, Derek and David Dalton.

Nima: Both Dalton.

Lauryn: Both Dalton.

Nima: So same father.

Lauryn: Not necessarily. Those were the names that they were given, but we know they were half brothers. Okay. And I'll get into that a little bit more down the line. But nonetheless, like, can you imagine how investigators must be feeling?

Nima: It's been seventy five Seventy years?

Lauryn: Seventy five years since the skeletons were originally discovered in Stanley Park.

Nima: That's insane. Holy shit!

Lauryn: Yeah, holy shit is right.

Nima: That's insane. That must feel so good. Especially for the original detective?

Lauryn: Well, the original detective, Detective McKay, at this point I believe he'd passed away.

Yeah. But, Sergeant Honeybourn, who had renewed the case. Although he was [00:25:00] retired, he was still heavily involved in all of that investigation. Leading up to actually being able to sequence the DNA and, and where the police are taking over to actually... Create those matches through their forensic, genetic, gene, through their genetic genealogy.

Right? Too many words.

Nima: Yeah, that must have been really really cool for him through all those years And I mean just for the police force in general to solve a cold case like that. That's pretty cool I mean they at least solved who they are But we still have other things to solve, don't we?

Lauryn: Yes. Which is funny because the next thing I have written is so how were they able to discover who the babes in the woods were?

Yeah, so that's gonna lead right into what you're asking.

Nima: Yeah, let's hear it.

Lauryn: Police released that they had found a match to a distant relative living in a nearby Vancouver suburb and that the relative had Uploaded their DNA to a genealogy website with the explicit purpose of finding out what had happened to the young boys that they were related to [00:26:00] Of course This match was related to the boys through their maternal grandmother Police kept many of the details about the boys family out of their announcement, but they did include a few That the boys were likely descended from russian immigrants who came to canada in the early 20th century That they had attended Henry Hudson Elementary School in Kitsilano That they had lived in extreme poverty and that they were never reported missing.

Nima: Oh, wow. Well, that says a lot.

Lauryn: We'll get to that.

Nima: Yeah, yeah.

Lauryn: Police also included that the family changed their last name to Bousquet sometime in the 1950s.

Nima: Okay, just to make things easier, or?

Lauryn: It'll all make sense.

Nima: Yeah, okay, okay. I have to ask these questions! That's what I'm here for.

Lauryn: I know, I know, I know. It'll all make sense.

Nima: Okay, okay, sounds good.

Lauryn: But just, there's all these like really weird kind of cryptic things from the police release.

Nima: Yeah. It's weird.

Lauryn: But it was actually really easy to find out the rest of it [00:27:00] because of some really awesome people that I'll talk about in just a moment. Investigators also released that they believed it was a family member, likely the boy's mother, who had killed them, just like we had heard initially from investigators.

Right. So that still had changed, or sorry, that had not changed in the case. No. Although a lot of other things had, this was constant. Right. Interestingly, another family member had lived near the entrance to Stanley Park at the time of the murders. Oh. So, that could help to corroborate some sort of timeline if they were able to discover one.

Okay. But just an interesting tidbit that they did have somebody in the family in close proximity to the crime scene. Right. Police didn't name their mother, but did say that she died 25 years ago. And that she had allegedly told family members that social services had removed the boys from her custody since she wasn't able to provide for them.

Nima: Okay. Okay. [00:28:00] So she, okay. So she didn't have them, someone, like foster care, social services had them?

Lauryn: So that's all the information released by the police.

Nima: But they had more, obviously.

Lauryn: Obviously they had a lot more. They just can't tell. Not to. Okay. But, honestly, even from what they released, if you had an Ancestry account, or you had a Newspapers.com subscription, you could pretty easily figure out who these people are, just from like, knowing Bousquet, name change to Dalton, all of those things. Okay. In my opinion, it would be pretty easy from what police had said to be able to further identify the family. Got it. But, I'm curious to know what your thoughts are about all this information because you don't have those tools at your disposal like I do.

Nima: I have no idea. Like, that's not, I get, I understand it now that obviously. I watch you do it and I understand, I understand how to do it. [00:29:00] I would not take the time to do it personally. So I guess in that case it would be like, I'm not the person to do it, right? But it's cool that it's an option. And for you, it's funny to see you say, Oh, it's so easy.

I'm like, yeah, it's easy. It's easy.

Lauryn: It's the internet age babe! Come on.

Nima: Come on. Just like look it up. It's super easy anyways but nonetheless, I understand why it's easy for you. It's not easy for me and that's kind of what makes this fun But that's why I ask the questions that I'm asking.

Lauryn: Right So and what do you think of? Those little bits of info released by a police, you know, speaking about the fact that they're likely descended from Russian immigrants, which elementary school they went to in Kitsilano, that they had lived in extreme poverty, the story that social services had taken the boys.

Nima: Sounds like they knew a lot. I mean, that's what it sounds like. Sounds like they knew everything by that point. So, there must be [00:30:00] some history or some background there if they knew all of that info. So, I'm curious to, to hear what the parents do, who they were, right? I think that's a big thing. So, I want to hear it.

Lauryn: Well, I'll tell you.

Nima: Okay, tell me, tell me. Let's hear it.

Lauryn: Although police didn't announce much more about the investigation, the family members that they had spoken with to identify David and Derek, those DNA matches, took it upon themselves to speak with author Eve Lazarus after receiving the news from police and looking into the case themselves.

Interesting. Like I mentioned earlier, Eve Lazarus was one of the individuals who kept the Babes in the Woods case alive in the public memory through different media. A woman named Ally contacted Lazarus a few days before the press release, saying that police had contacted her mother Cindy to tell her that her uncles David and Derek were the babes in the woods.

Oh. Neither Ally or Cindy had actually heard about the case, and [00:31:00] after some googling found Lazarus book and podcast, so they decided to get in touch with her. Cindy was related to the boys through their mother, not one of their fathers, because Cindy's mother, Diane, was actually the boys older half sister.

Nima: Oh, also a half sister.

Lauryn: Also a half sister. Okay. The woman who was mother to Diane, Derek, and David was named Eileen Bousquet, who also went by the last name Dalton. Cindy grew up knowing nothing about her uncles. It wasn't until one day in her 20s that she asked her mom Diane about two little boys that she saw her mother with in an old family photo.

Her mother refused to talk about it, as did her grandmother Eileen, and both women would get really upset about the questions. She eventually found out that the boys were her uncles, David and Derek, who had been taken by Child Protective Services sometime around [00:32:00] 1947, since their mother Eileen wasn't able to provide for them.

It then became something in the family that just wasn't talked about, which was an extremely common attitude to take towards situations that carry stigma and shame, just like losing your children.

Nima: Yeah, it still is, right?

Lauryn: Unable to find out more from family stories that had been passed down, Ally, Eileen's great granddaughter, did an at home DNA test in 2019 in the hopes of finding her great uncles, or at least finding out what happened to them.

Cindy also took her mother Diane's DNA swab shortly before her death in 2020 to aid in the search, since this would be the best genetic sample to match to her half brothers. What Cindy and Ally didn't know is that their samples would be compared to the Babes in the Woods samples by police. Thanks for watching!

So how does the genealogical story help us to understand what could have happened to Derek and David Dalton? We'll talk about that after a quick break.

Nima: Okay.

Lauryn: [00:33:00] And we are back.

Nima: Back again.

Lauryn: Back again.

Nima: Here we go. I'm excited. I'm honestly really excited.

Lauryn: So, okay, what are you most excited about then before we dive in?

Nima: Well, I mean, we're finally slowly starting to dig into Actually, what happened and the fact that it's 75 years later. I'm just excited to hear about Are they able to put everything together?

Does it make sense when they put it together? And how did they do that? Right?

Lauryn: So yes, and we only know as much as we're able to find going back in time, right? And that can really limit searches. You know, we often I think take For granted how available information is. Everything is digital. Like, think about our lives as millennials.

I mean, I'm a Gen Z cusper, I'd argue, but nonetheless, basically all of our [00:34:00] lives are recorded digitally.

Nima: Yeah, most of it.

Lauryn: We're in the computer age, right? At least, I know for sure, I'm born in 97. Like, my entire life, at least like, when looking at government records, has been documented online. For sure, yeah.

This isn't a thing that existed in the 40s and 50s. You know records could be stored somewhere and if they burnt up in a fire because places catch fire There go those records and those are gone So it's really interesting as you start to get into what is publicly available, you know There's lots of things i'm not going to be able to access because i'm not a part of any sort of investigative team Right.

I'm just somebody at home who likes to do these things for fun, right? But nonetheless there's It's really interesting layers to what we're able to find out, you know, even just from what we've covered so far, there's so many layers to this case that we're really just uncovering.

Nima: Yep. Absolutely.

Lauryn: So who were Derek, David, and Eileen Bousquet?

That question actually takes [00:35:00] us back another generation to Eileen's parents. Eileen's father, Joseph David Henri Bousquet, was born in 1886 in St. Boniface, Manitoba, to a Métis farming family. He went by Henri, since all of his seven brothers also had the first name Joseph, so they all went by their middle names.

And I know I'm saying Henri's because that's like the French Canadian pronunciation. Henry.

Nima: Yeah, I know it's Henry.

Lauryn: I'll switch to Henry. That's gonna be easier for everyone.

Nima: Yeah, Henry's probably easier for everyone, yeah, that's fair.

Lauryn: At some point before 1912, Henry made his way to Edmonton, Alberta.

Nima: Oh, shout out to Edmonton, dirty Eddie. Yes, somewhat.

Lauryn: In Edmonton, he met his eventual wife, Josephine Young. Josephine was born in 1892 in Russia and immigrated to Humboldt, Saskatchewan around 1904 with her parents and siblings. So both [00:36:00] of Eileen's parents, their families are coming from farming backgrounds. Okay. Yeah, that makes sense. Now Josephine, Eileen's mother, her maiden name was actually Merkowski, but her mother's maiden name in Russian can be anglicized as Young, so I wouldn't be surprised if she adopted this name in an effort to seem less like an immigrant, since Young is the maiden name given on her marriage records.

Nima: Okay.

Lauryn: This is something that can really cause issues in research, but thankfully many descendants from both of these lineages have made their family trees and DNA information public to be able to give accurate genealogical info. It wasn't clear to me why Henry and Josephine moved to Edmonton from their respective Manitoba and Saskatchewan, but it's safe to assume it was likely for work.

The couple married sometime in 1913, but I wasn't able to find if this was before or after the birth of their first son Joseph, who was born on June 6, 1913. I would assume that they married as a result of the pregnancy, so [00:37:00] I'm curious to know if this was before or after the baby was born. Hmm. The couple went on to have four more children, Joan born in 1916, twins Eileen and Doreen born in 1917, so Derek and David's mom is a twin, and Edward born in 1920.

Henry was definitely someone who struggled in a lot of ways. I was able to find a July 24th, 1913 Edmonton Journal article that stated he had been charged with false pretences, which was the typical charge for some kinds of fraud then, and his bail was set at 250. So this date is about six weeks after the birth of his first child, when he's getting arrested and jailed for these fraud charges.

So let's just keep that in mind. This is the kind of guy Henry is.

Nima: Okay, gotcha.

Lauryn: Henry moved the family around several times.

Nima: Okay, gotcha.

Lauryn: He first appeared in the Edmonton City Directory in 1912, but not [00:38:00] again until 1916 after his marriage. He and the family were not at that address listed in the City Directory when the 1916 Prairie Census was taken.

So that means they moved at least once in 1916. Right. Because a different family was living at that address when I actually looked at the census. They also didn't appear on the census at the address listed in the 1917 directory, so I figured, okay, maybe they moved after the directory was written up.

That's why they're not on the census there, but they also weren't at the next address in the directory, so it seems like they were moving around a lot in that period of 1916 to 1918. So that's in the time that Joan, Eileen, and Doreen are being born. It seems like there's a lot of transients. One thing I also noted is We don't see any employment information listed for Henry.

Quite often you would see either who their employer was or what their role was. So if, you know, somebody worked for, say, the [00:39:00] Canadian Pacific Railway, you might see, like, CPR next to their name and you knew they were a railway worker, right? There was nothing like that for Henry to indicate who he was working for, what he was doing.

So I really can't speculate to that.

Nima: Maybe under the table work.

Lauryn: Under the table work, or maybe he's unemployed. Yeah, either or. Who knows what he's doing, right? It's purely speculation. By October of 1918, Henry had abandoned the family, and Josephine actually had to sue him for child support. His case was remanded until November, when he didn't appear at court.

And at this point, he kind of falls off the paper trail. I really wasn't able to find anything about him past this point, until his name reappearing with the Babes in the Woods case.

Nima: Oh. Wow, okay.

Lauryn: Like, I struggled to find anything about him. Wow. By the 1921 census, though, Josephine is listed as a widow and caring for her five children on her own.

Nima: Oh, as a widow?

Lauryn: As a widow.

Nima: Oh, so maybe he [00:40:00] died?

Lauryn: Well, I wasn't able to find any death information for Henry around this time of 1918 to 1921. I went through the Alberta Death Index, couldn't find anything. So it's not clear to me if he really did die, and the death record is either listed under a different name, you know, I didn't see, and I saw the actual, like, handwritten document, I didn't see anything that remotely resembled Joseph or Henry or any of these other names Bousquet.

Nima: Fair enough.

Lauryn: So it's possible it was listed under a different name, or maybe that record isn't available, or, you know, maybe he moved and took up a new life, or even a new identity. There's so many things that could have happened as to how he's not here, but I feel like he probably did die if this is what's being said by.

His wife.

Nima: Yeah, it would make the most sense, but too much to speculate at this point.

Lauryn: Yes, and also it was something that happened where people, if a spouse just kind of up and took off and abandoned you, you would say that they were dead so you didn't have to go through the divorce process so you could remarry.

Nima: A lot easier.

Lauryn: I've [00:41:00] actually seen that in my own family tree.

Nima: On the legal side.

Lauryn: Yeah, and it was easy, you could make so much shit up.

Nima: Yeah, yeah, back then it didn't matter.

Lauryn: There was no Google, you couldn't find anything like that. So there's, there's all these possibilities with what actually happened to Henry.

We don't know. In any case, Josephine managed to provide for her children on her own, eventually running her own laundry business out of her home, as was listed in the 1924 Edmonton City Directory. So she's actually able to do something as a single mother, which is not common in the 1920s.

Nima: No, not at all, for sure.

Lauryn: Tragically though, Josephine died in September of 1925 from rheumatic fever, leaving her children behind as orphans, when Eileen would have just been eight years old.

Nima: Oh, that's unfortunate. Yeah. Yeah, that's the 20s I guess, hey?

Lauryn: Yeah. And from what I saw, it didn't seem like either Josephine or Henry had family from either Manitoba or Saskatchewan that were in the Edmonton [00:42:00] area.

Right. So it didn't seem like there were really any other options for the children other than going to an orphanage. Yeah. The boys and girls were placed in separate orphanages in St. Albert, just northwest of Edmonton, for the rest of their childhoods. When twins Eileen and Doreen turned 18 in 1935, they hitchhiked to Vancouver, a city that had become a sort of haven for the underprivileged and clandestine through the Great Depression, just like we talked about in the Jackie Bates episode.

Like their father, the twins had an inclination towards mischief and were charged with sending in five false fire alarms in September of 1935, just five months after they arrived in the city. So these two 18 year old girls pulling fire alarms, setting the false alarms on.

Nima: Already, right away, as soon as they get there.

Lauryn: Eileen told the judge they had just done this for fun, and the girls were sentenced to one day in jail.

Nima: Yeah, there you go, right? They literally did it for fun. Don't give a shit.

Lauryn: Well, think about it. They've had... Probably no structure or authority [00:43:00] at all in their lives, right?

Nima: They've barely had parents.

Lauryn: Yeah, and even before then, we don't know what kind of lives really they had.

I can imagine their mother struggled on her own with four, five children, five children. Yeah. Dad seemed to be a deadbeat. So I can only imagine it makes sense that they'd go about, you know, getting into trouble. Yeah, 100%. It's not a stretch. Yeah, it's not a stretch at all. By 1936, she was working as a maid for a family in Burnaby, which is a part of Metro Vancouver.

And by 1937, Eileen had her first child, Diane. And by 1940, she had assumed the last name Dalton. She was listed in the 1940 Vancouver City Directory as the Widow Dalton. So just like how people would have their employer listed if you were a woman and you were widowed, it would just say widow next to your name.

So that's how she was listed. However, I couldn't find any marriage records for Eileen and the supposed Mr. [00:44:00] Dalton. And I didn't want to take any guesses as to who this mystery Dalton could be. Right. It's also very possible that she made the name up and began using it, for whatever reason. Mm hmm. Just like we've talked about.

She later had her sons Derek, born February 27th, 1940, and David, born June 24th, 1941. So the boys were just 16 months apart in age, which is very close to what investigators had originally estimated. Yeah. Even though the children had different fathers, they were all given the last name Dalton. And the important thing to keep in mind here is Diane's DNA sample only matched with one of the boys.

And we know that the boys are half brothers.

Nima: Were half brothers, right.

Lauryn: We can say for certain there's at least two fathers, but up to three. Because it's possible that Diane and the half brother she didn't match with, they could have the same father, but who knows. Yeah. Nonetheless, all of the children had the last name Dalton.

Nima: Got it.

Lauryn: Eileen lived at several addresses listed in the Vancouver directories, [00:45:00] often living with her sister Doreen prior to Doreen's marriage, and in the 1945 directory, Eileen was listed as a waitress at a coffee shop, so typically needing to supplement paying for rent by either splitting that with her sister or she's really working, you know, whatever job she can find to support her family.

Eileen was listed consistently in the Vancouver directories from 1940 to 1947. However, she was not listed in 1948 and then appears again in 1949 until 1952. So consecutive through that period of time. Then from 1953 to 1954, she lived in White Rock, which is another part of Metro Vancouver, another suburb.

And then was living back in Vancouver in 1955, which is the last available historical city directory for Vancouver. These records from the first few decades of Eileen's life paint us a picture of a young woman whose parents lives were entangled with misfortune. [00:46:00] And this theme continued into her adulthood as she continued to struggle with poverty.

The Bousquet siblings all ended up living in Vancouver during the 1940s. Eileen's sisters Joan and Doreen both worked in the city before marrying Vancouver men. Thank Joan and her husband were the ones who lived near the Stanley Park entrance around the time of the boys murders. Their brothers, Joseph and Edward, had both served in World War II, and following the war, moved to Vancouver to be with their sisters, and Joseph later married, too.

Other than what's been publicly shared by Cindy and Ally, we really don't know much else about Derek and David Dalton. And, Nima, you're probably thinking, how do two boys just disappear with all this family around with... These lives that they were living. I mean, there's so much I've been able to find out just in that time about Eileen and her family What do you think of all that?

Nima: Yeah, I mean if you can find that much out I mean they knew a lot about them. So I guess what I'm thinking is what's the event or what happened to kind of make everything [00:47:00] flip and You know turn into that scenario. I found it interesting though the gap Where you couldn't find anything, what was it, 1948?

Lauryn: 1948. She's not listed in the Vancouver City directories. Again, there's that gap for 53 54. But we know for certain they were living in White Rock. There's other records to show that. So it's really only that gap of 48 that I wasn't able to find. And then past 1955 because the city directories aren't available.

There's other genealogical records that will help us to point and to pinpoint what her timeline is going forward. But it's really just those directories and census records that we're working off of for that earlier point in time.

Nima: Yeah, yeah. So, I mean, still a lot of questions to be answered here. You know, even though you know a lot, there's still a lot where you're like, well, what happened?

Lauryn: Yeah, what happened, you know, and like the investigators were told by Eileen's descendants, Eileen had told family members that the ministry [00:48:00] had taken the boys from her since she wasn't able to provide for them. Right, yeah. You know, and interestingly though, I wasn't able to find any explanation about why the boys were taken and Diane wasn't.

Nima: Hmm, that's a good point. I don't, yeah, that, that seems weird, but it, it also doesn't seem weird for that time, maybe, I don't know, maybe there's some crazy reason they take the boys and not the girl, you know, I'm just thinking, that, that's, but again, that's, these are all assumptions, so.

Lauryn: Yeah, it could be something like, well, at that point, maybe because the girl's 10 years old and she's a little bit older.

Sure. You could rationalize that she could take care of herself. Yeah. Where maybe the boys couldn't because they were younger, and that's not. for a 10 year old child to do, so. Yeah, something like that. I don't know. This is all our speculation. 100%. So. And really, the boys disappearance just simply wasn't talked about with these family members.

And police confirmed that there were no reports that the boys were ever missing. Yeah. So it's just something that was really swept under the rug, but like I said, those [00:49:00] things carry so much stigma and shame. Yeah. Cindy also acknowledged that her mother, Diane, and grandmother, Eileen, were extremely poor.

Her mother would tell stories of them literally jumping out of windows at the apartments that they rented to escape when the landlord came to collect the rent, and Eileen didn't have enough money. Oh, wow. As a little girl, this is what she's doing with her mom. As a girl and teenager.

Nima: That's crazy.

Lauryn: And like we've seen, it didn't seem that Eileen stayed in one spot for long or held down a job for very long either.

So there's just so much transience and we really don't know what's going on in between those gaps of when she's at a city directory or something's listed on a census. Mm hmm. Yeah. Life for the Daltons and Bousquets continued without David and Derek, and the genealogical records show us that they seemed to continue to live pretty normal lives after they disappeared.

In 1949, Eileen and Doreen were featured in the province for a twins contest. Where twins would submit their profiles and the newspaper would feature two [00:50:00] sets of twins. I'm going to post this on our Instagram and on the show notes, but Nima, here, I'll show you right now what this looks like. Okay. So, Eileen is the second from the right and Doreen is the furthest right.

Nima: Furthest right and second from the Oh, wow! So, Eileen, second, right? Yeah, okay, yeah, yeah. So it's kind of like, why is that a thing in the paper? Just like, ooh, we pulled these.

Lauryn: It's literally, it's literally just, these are some twins. And there's another set of twins that they're featured with. I see that. So there's four women total featured, two sets of twins.

Nima: I mean, they're all fraternal twins. They look alike, but like, I also, I don't understand. I'm very confused. This is news?

Lauryn: This was news. This is news. But I mean, this was, yeah, this was the 1940s. We didn't have social media. The local newspaper was really where you kept in touch and like up to speed with what Your neighbors and people in your community were doing.[00:51:00]

Nima: Right.

Lauryn: You would see really interesting details about you know Family from out of town coming to visit or people that you know Maybe had lived in the city for 30 years and moved away They were coming back to visit family and there'd literally be a little newspaper article about it. Like this is how people Interacted and got things out, right?

So it wouldn't be outrageous to me that You know, you and your twin sister might think, Hey, that would be fun. Let's submit our photos for this contest in the newspaper. I don't know if maybe there was some sort of prize if you were one. If there was, that would make a lot of sense to me if Eileen was like, Hey, sis, we could win, you know, 5 each or something like that.

That would go a long way. I don't know. I'm speculating. Yeah. But nonetheless, we see in that photo that Eileen and Doreen are smiling. It's 1949, so a year or two after the boys have allegedly disappeared. I mean, Eileen's smile isn't that big. I think there definitely is pain behind that smile. Yeah, I'm[00:52:00]

right. 47. And also we see that she's not listed in the city directory after that period of time. So she may have left for a little bit to perhaps distance herself from her neighbors in her community who may recognize that. Hey, didn't you have two sons? Where are they?

Nima: Yeah, maybe then just leave. Oh, we left them wherever she went, right?

Lauryn: Or it was when they weren't living in the city that they were taken, and then after they're taken she right, right. Yeah, exactly. Again, we don't know what that story actually is, what those fabrications were versus the truth. We're just piecing together what we can surmise from these genealogical records.

Yep. I found several articles that mentioned [00:53:00] Diane participating in a variety of extracurricular activities as a student. She seemed to be an active and intelligent girl. She played field hockey and figure skated. She won different science contests, being interested in physics and aviation, and was even nominated to be Miss White Rock in 1954.

So it's like a teen pageant contest. Mm hmm. They eventually returned to Vancouver proper since Diane graduated from Kitsilano Secondary School in 1955. Something interesting about Diane is that she actually legally changed her name from Diane Bousquet to Diane Dalton in 1959. The police had previously released that the family had changed their name to Bousquet in the 1950s.

So to me it seems like one of two things happened, and this is purely my speculation. Yeah. Either Eileen got married or assumed the name Dalton, which she gave to all of her children at birth. Then in the 1950s, changed her and Diane's names to the maiden [00:54:00] name Bousquet. And then Diane wanted to legally go by the name that she'd known for the majority of her life.

Or, Diane's last name had always legally been Bousquet, but she went by Dalton her whole life. So she needed to make the legal change for whatever reason. Right. I think it's that that this second option is more likely since every other document and article that I find about Diane has her last name listed as Dalton, right?

It'll be really interesting in 10 years when the 1941 census comes out. And we get to see at that point. We probably won't get to see David on that census because he's born June 41, late June 41. And they start taking the census at the beginning of June. So I don't know if he'll appear on that census because that's like right around the time he's born.

But we would be able to see Diane and Derek. Cool. So it's going to be interesting to get information from that to see what last name is there.

Nima: Mm hmm. Yeah, that's true.

Lauryn: A few different things, you know. Yeah. Yeah. Diane went on [00:55:00] to be a flight attendant, and in 1962 she married Robert Brady, a pilot who worked for the same airline that she did.

Nima: Shout out to workplace couples. We, we met through work, so.

Lauryn: Yes, we definitely have a, a soft spot for those.

A hundred percent. They lived in the U. S. for some time, but eventually moved back to Vancouver, where they raised their daughter Cindy. Eileen later married Thomas Campbell McAlpine, a Vancouver mining engineer, sometime in the 1960s.

Other Ancestry. ca users had about 1963 as the marriage year, but I wasn't able to find any records to confirm this. Interestingly, Eileen wasn't listed at his address on the 1968 Canada voters list, and Eileen had been a registered voter in years prior, so I'm not sure for what reason why she wasn't living with him at the same address if it was allegedly in the years prior.

Prior 1963 or so that they'd gotten married. [00:56:00] So it really doesn't give me any information about their relationship. Where I did find information about their relationship though, sadly was Thomas's obituary. The marriage, unfortunately didn't last long as he passed away in November of 1969. And Eileen didn't remarry afterwards.

Eileen stayed in Vancouver for some time after Thomas's death, at least until 1974, as per the 1974 voters list. She eventually moved to the Mission, and on June 11, 1996, Eileen Bousquet passed away at the age of 78, 43 years after the babes in the woods were discovered in Stanley Park. Eileen was remembered as a caring and loving woman by her surviving family.

Because of this, Cindy and Ally took issue with the police's theory that it was Eileen who killed her sons, saying she loved animals and children. Another hole they saw in the police's theory that Eileen killed her sons was that apparently she was much smaller in frame than someone who would [00:57:00] have worn the coat and shoes that were found with the bodies.

Like I said, it seems that Eileen went on to lead a relatively ordinary life after the boys left the family. But of course, the genealogical records only tell a very small piece of someone's story. Considering that Eileen's granddaughter and great granddaughter describe her as being a kind and caring person, yet the police considered her to be the prime suspect, how do you think perceptions of a person can differ within a family context?

Nima: Oh, I mean, that all depends on who's saying what. Mm hmm. Right? Like, it, who's saying it, why are they saying it, what's the history they've had. I think that goes. Towards anyone, but especially in a family where people think they know each other and oh, they must know that person. So I'm gonna listen to every word they say, but it kind of muddles things.

Yes, right? Yes. You know? Makes it [00:58:00] very confusing.

Lauryn: Yes. And often, with family stories, what will happen is over time, somebody will add either their spin on the story or maybe they heard something that was just rumored and wasn't actually true. Mm hmm. But then in telling that story, it gets passed down as true fact.

Nima: Yeah. Game of telephone, right?

Lauryn: Exactly. And. Quite often, like we see in stories like this where people pass away, there's no way for you to actually confirm with the people who were there what actually happened. Right. Yeah. So given that, we're gonna speculate in a moment about what we think happened, but we're gonna take a quick break first.

Nima: Let's do it.

And we're back.

Lauryn: We're back. And we're back for what I think is probably my favorite part of the episode, is getting into what we actually think happened with this. Yeah. And like I said before, this is [00:59:00] all of our own speculation. Yes. At this point, I've tried to report, you know, really just what I've seen is relevant.

And... The different city directories, census records, newspaper clippings. Really, that's all I've been able to find up until this point because that's all that's really available to point the story as to who these people were. Right. Like I said, aside from what their families have told us. And aside from that, there's really not much else.

I mean, there's not a ton that their families have said, but I understand that. They want to keep a lot of those family stories to themselves. That's private information. Yeah. But nonetheless, there's a lot of questions in this case. So I think let's get into what we think of of all of this. So Based on everything that I've covered, Nima, do you think Eileen killed her sons, Derek and David, as suspected by police?

Nima: It is so tough to make that call. Mm hmm. I don't know, I don't, I'm gonna say I don't think so. I don't, it [01:00:00] doesn't make sense to me. But that's, that doesn't mean it's right.

Lauryn: Why doesn't it make sense to you?

Nima: Well... You know, if the daughter grew up well and, you know, had a pretty normal life, it doesn't make sense that the sons wouldn't.

Unless, you know, she had such a vendetta against the fathers and had a moment of rage, which is possible. I'm not saying that's impossible, that's possible. But when she comes in on the story of, oh, well social workers took them. Well, once. They get into the hands of social workers or foster care. Well, I mean, anything can happen.

And especially back then, anything can happen and can go hush hush pretty easily. You can blame the mom and then sweep it under the rug because you really don't know what happened. You know? You have no idea. So. But, again, [01:01:00] that's not to say that she didn't do it. It's possible that they're right and they had the evidence and maybe they saw something that I didn't.

But it sounds like a lot of things didn't actually lead in the direction of her. Some did, but a lot didn't. So I don't know. What do you think?

Lauryn: It is really tough to say. It's very tough. I mean, we see that. We see that Eileen had an incredibly adverse childhood and continued to struggle well into her adulthood.

Mm hmm. She didn't have the support of her children's fathers, but she did have family nearby who maybe could have helped her out both with the children and with finances. We don't really know what their situations were like. Yeah. But, It's possible they could have been in a position to help, right? But like I said before, these really aren't things that people talked about when it came to really personal private trauma like that, like losing your [01:02:00] children.

It was, even if it was like something like, oh, her son had leukemia and passed away and it was like a very known and acceptable thing. It was still something that was really stuffed down and you didn't really talk about, you know, so To be in that situation where she's lost her children because she can't provide for them as the story goes That carries so much stigma and shame on its own Let alone the stigma and shame of I couldn't take care of my sons and I killed them, right?

Yeah Neither of those things are going to be things that you talk about with your family No, of course, and it's gonna be a lot easier to say that my children were taken away and it's I don't want to talk about it.

Nima: Yeah. That's true.

Lauryn: We also don't know if there's mental illness, PTSD from her childhood, you know, we don't know what she's been through with her ex partners and what their relationships have looked like, you know, with her children's fathers.

There's so much that we could speculate there that I don't really want to get into because there's just too many question marks, right? [01:03:00] There absolutely could be validity, just like you said that the ministry took the boys and that whoever was responsible for them afterwards did this to them. Keep in mind also Eileen's father was Métis.

I mean, I didn't really see any evidence of this that, you know, maybe because of that connection, the children were taken, you know, sort of through a 60 scoop type incident, even though it was already systemically happening where Indigenous and Métis children were being taken from their families. But I didn't see anything on, like, census records to indicate that Eileen was identified as Métis.

Maybe, like, her father had been Métis. Previously, so I don't think this is how the boys would have been identified for that to really be a factor That's more my speculative element, but it could be something that happened, you know, this is just on the eve of the 60s scoop where Rampantly children are taken indigenous children are taken by the government and either put in residential schools killed or placed in foster care with adoptive [01:04:00] families and going through awful things.

Yeah. So it's again, not crazy that their kids, her kids could have been involved in some sort of similar systemic issue within that foster care. System, right?

Nima: No, that makes sense to me for sure.

Lauryn: And of course, there's the question Why would a mother kill two of her children, but not her other child, you know that keeps coming up Like I said, there's so many things we could speculate on about what was happening behind the scenes to answer that question but I think any Rational person would ask how can you kill two of your kids and not all of them is I I feel like that's kind of An all or nothing situation personally unless there's like a moment of rage and like a very isolated incident with one of them I like I just I just yeah, I would agree

Nima: But like I just feel like you know, if it's a woman who is suppressed enough by the men in her life That it's a possibility that she would just murder the men or the males, right?

So that's what I keep coming back to where I'm like, [01:05:00] Ah, it's possible though, right? Like, you're right, it seems weird, it seems off, but I think it's possible because you have that vendetta, you know, against the, the male figures in your life.

Lauryn: Yeah, I mean there's so much speculation to that, but there could be a very valid reason that she just couldn't be a mother to these some boys for some reason, you know, maybe because of some resentment towards men, like you said, that had developed because of past relationships.

Nima: Or her father.

Lauryn: Or her father. Yeah. Or who knows, right? Right. She was in, you know, An orphanage. Exactly. For most of her childhood. Exactly. Who knows what happened there. There's so much we don't know. Now that said, I firmly believe in the results from the DNA testing. I mean, I have my own story within my own family tree of kind of some crazy stories that DNA testing gave us the real story of.

Ultimately though, I do agree with the police's assessment that she is the most likely suspect to have killed the [01:06:00] boys. But I don't think there's enough evidence to say beyond a reasonable doubt that it was Eileen who killed her boys. I would agree with that. I know I'm really sitting on the fence with that one.

I guess like, truly, from all of our speculation, I lean - s I lean, didn't mean like I not like Eileen, her name. You lean like I myself. No, Eileen. I, Lauryn Am leaning, you're leaning. I'm leaning. Not Eileen, the name,

Nima: not Eileen, the name. Got it.

Lauryn: I am leaning to the side that it was Eileen who killed her boys.

Nima: Yeah. Yeah. I, after we talked about it, I would, I would lean that way as well. I lean away as well.

Lauryn: I mean, another thing we can only speculate on is how different the investigation would have been if they had known the victims had been boys from the get go, if they were able to get that right. Oh, yeah. Oh, man.

Nima: Yeah, that would have been huge. That right? Yep.[01:07:00]

Lauryn: And Honeyborne did say, he was adamant that early investigators did everything they could given the science they had at hand, given the his, you know, all of the information they had at hand. And we've seen in other historical forensic and anthropological examinations, like I said earlier, that experts get it wrong all the time with that early science.

Yeah. So we can't really blame them for doing the best that they thought they were doing. I agree. I'm sure there's also people who saw something and never reported their tips to police or newspapers. Again, that's not my business. I'm going to stay out of it. That's somebody else's to deal with. That's how people felt, you know?

Ultimately, we'll never know for sure who it was that killed Derek and David Dalton and exactly when they died, but the babes in the woods have their names back and have not been forgotten since they were first discovered 70 years ago. I think this case is an incredible example of how new technology has advanced forensic [01:08:00] investigations.

And of course it's even more incredible that we're able to combine modern science with history, genealogy, to find answers in some cold cases across the world. I also think we're going to continue to see more and more cold cases being solved using genetic genealogy as DNA tested. I will say if you're looking for answers to something weird in your family tree, you know, if you've heard stories that just don't quite add up, genetic genealogy could be a really great way for you to get those answers, just like we've seen with the babes in the woods and lots of other cases.

Definitely look into what that means for you with genetic genealogy. Consenting to providing your DNA sample, make sure you understand all of that and find a service that makes the most sense for you. But I definitely think if you're looking for those answers, they're often out there. You just have to start looking and that's a great way to do it.

And that's it for the Stanley Park Babes in the Woods murders.

Nima: That is all.

Lauryn: That is. It honestly was so much fun to talk about a case [01:09:00] that really combines true crime and genealogy. This was a really fun one to research.

Nima: Yeah, it was super cool to see the way it all developed through part one and into part two.

Like, everything changed in part two, but that was really fun to see.

Lauryn: Yeah, the DNA story. paints an incredible picture.

Nima: Yeah, it does for sure.

Lauryn: If you enjoyed the episode, please give the show a follow so you can stay up to date on the latest episode releases with new episodes coming out every other Thursday.

We'd also really appreciate it if you took the time to share the podcast on your own social media feeds or with your loved ones.

Nima: If you wanna find out more about genetic genealogy or how to start your own family tree, Lauryn has some great resources on our website, rooted genealogy.com. The link to her blog is also in the show notes.

Lauryn: You can follow us on Instagram @rootedincrime, and you can get in touch with us by email at rootedincrime@gmail.com. If you'd like to support the show, you can find us on [01:10:00] Patreon at the link in the show notes as well. I do have a few cases lined up for the next few episodes, but I'm always looking for suggestions on other cases to cover.

They don't have to be a Canadian case either, I've just stuck with researching Canadian cases so far. Feel free to reach out to us on any of our socials with a case from your hometown or family tree, and I'll take a look at it. And as always, a shout out to Lindsay Macdonald for writing and recording our intro and transition music.

And that's it! Until next time, everyone.

Nima: See you next time, guys.

Sources

Genealogical

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1911 Census of Canada. Census Place: 40, Humboldt, Saskatchewan; Page: 1; Family No: 2. Ancestry.com Operations Inc, Provo, Utah: 2006. https://www.ancestry.ca/imageviewer/collections/8947/images/e084_e002095942?pId=2281486 

1926 Census of the Prairie Provinces. Roll: T-27425; Page: 13; Family No: 124. Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario. https://recherche-collection-search.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/home/record?app=census&IdNumber=73058129

1931 Census of Canada. RG 31; Folder Number: 6; Census Place: 6, Edmonton West, Alberta; Page Number: 6. Ancestry.com Operations Inc, Provo, Utah: 2013. https://www.ancestry.ca/imageviewer/collections/8991/images/1921_006-E002860116?pId=6222998 

“3 White Rock Winners in Speed Estimating Contest Held by RCAF.” The Surrey Leader, August 27, 1953. https://www.newspapers.com/image/327933507/.

Alberta, Canada, Deaths Index, 1870-1970. Ancestry.com Operations Inc, Lehi, Utah: 2017. https://www.ancestry.ca/discoveryui-content/view/176890:61561?ssrc=pt&tid=192275379&pid=172500806374 

Alberta, Canada, Marriages Index, 1898-1944. Ancestry.com Operations Inc, Lehi, Utah: 2017. https://www.ancestry.ca/discoveryui-content/view/389130:61560?ssrc=pt&tid=192275379&pid=172500806374 

“Bellingham Judges to Pick Winner in Contest for ‘Miss White Rock.’” Surrey Leader, July 15, 1954. https://www.newspapers.com/image/328251721/.

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“DEATHS: MCALPINE.” The Vancouver Sun, June 15, 1996. https://www.newspapers.com/image/496019841/.

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“IN THE POLICE COURT.” Edmonton Journal, August 6, 1913. https://www.newspapers.com/image/468744237/.

“Josephine ‘Fanny’ Young Bousquet (1892-1925).” Find a Grave, May 22, 2016. https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/163031904/josephine-bousquet?_gl=1%2A1i2tq9a%2A_gcl_au%2AMzczMTMwMDA4LjE2ODcyODIyMTc.%2A_ga%2AMTk3NDMyNDg0Ny4xNjg3MjgyMDU3%2A_ga_4QT8FMEX30%2AMjhiMDgzNTYtZTRkNy00ZDRjLThmMWMtZjA0Mjc5YmNmNDU4LjM4LjEuMTY5MTc2Njc0NC4yMi4wLjA

“NOTICE OF APPLICATION FOR CHANGE OF NAME.” The Vancouver Sun, June 12, 1959. https://www.newspapers.com/image/492360892/

“POLICE COURT NEWS.” Edmonton Journal, November 6, 1918. https://www.newspapers.com/image/470148734/

“POLICE COURT NEWS.” Edmonton Journal, October 18, 1918. https://www.newspapers.com/image/470145013/

“POLICE COURT.” Edmonton Journal, July 24, 1913. https://www.newspapers.com/image/468734255/

Sun Directories Limited. The British Columbia and Yukon Directory 1936. Vancouver: Sun Directories Limited, 1936. https://bccd.vpl.ca/title/1936/BC_and_Yukon_Directory.html

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Case Research

Clark, Gordon. “DNA Testing Explodes.” The Province, March 20, 1998. https://www.newspapers.com/image/505132939/

Culbert, Lori. “Babes in the Woods Murderer Still Unknown to Police.” The Vancouver Sun, December 27, 2000. https://www.newspapers.com/image/496380097/

Fraser, Keith, and John Mackie. “Victims ID’d in 70-Year-Old Babes in Woods Murder Mystery.” The Province. February 15, 2022. https://www.newspapers.com/image/824262183/

Gold, Kerry. “Babes in the Woods Haunt Retired Cop.” The Vancouver Sun, August 11, 2003. https://www.newspapers.com/image/496714935/

Kines, Lindsay. “Tip Is Final Hope in Slayings.” The Vancouver Sun, December 10, 1998. https://www.newspapers.com/image/496412039/

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Roessle, Jason. “No Babes in Mission.” The Abbotsford News, August 28, 2004. https://www.newspapers.com/image/536747856/

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Skehan, Tracey. “Who Were the Babes in the Woods?” Lakehead University, 2022. https://www.lakeheadu.ca/alumni/journey/magazine/fall-2022/articles/node/72545

Syed, Ronna, and Shanifa Nasser. “Toronto Police Identify Killer in Cold Case of 9-Year-Old Christine Jessop.” CBC, October 16, 2020. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/christine-jessop-news-conference-1.5763673

Turner, Logan. “Thunder Bay Lab Hopes to Help Crack Decades-Old Babes in the Woods Case in B.C.” CBC News, July 6, 2021. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/thunder-bay/lakehead-dna-lab-babes-in-the-woods-case-1.6091006

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




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