David D’Alton was a six-year-old boy with Métis and Russian heritage through his mother who lived in Vancouver, British Columbia. Online sources do not support an October 1, 2026 death date. Investigators believe David and his older brother, Derek D’Alton, were killed around 1947, although the exact date remains unknown. The brothers lived in Vancouver, attended Henry Hudson Elementary School in the Kitsilano neighbourhood, and came from a family that authorities described as likely living
in poverty.
For years after the brothers disappeared, relatives were apparently given a different explanation for what had happened to them. According to investigators, the story passed down through the family was that David and Derek had been removed from their home and placed in government care. A relative later told police that attempts to ask other family members about the boys were met with silence, and their disappearance was not openly discussed. Investigators eventually found little indication that the children had actually been taken into government care.
The fate of the brothers remained hidden until January 1953, when a groundskeeper clearing brush near Beaver Lake in Vancouver’s Stanley Park discovered skeletal remains beneath leaves and debris. Police determined that two children had been killed and left in the wooded area years earlier. Their skulls showed that they had been struck with a hatchet, and a hatchet was found at the scene. The remains had been concealed beneath a woman’s fur coat or cape. Investigators also recovered children’s aviation caps, a woman’s shoe and a lunchbox containing food that had long since deteriorated.
The investigation was complicated almost immediately by an incorrect early conclusion that one of the victims was female. For decades, the unidentified children became known as the “Babes in the Woods,” and the killings developed into Vancouver’s oldest unsolved homicide case. Later forensic testing established that both victims were male and related to one another, but investigators still did not know their names.
A major breakthrough came through forensic genetic genealogy. In 2021, Vancouver police worked with Redgrave Research Forensic Services and Lakehead University’s Paleo-DNA Laboratory to recover usable genetic material from the remains. Researchers extracted DNA from portions of the children’s skulls and compared the resulting genetic profiles with information available through genealogy databases. After an initial attempt produced insufficient material, additional testing generated enough DNA to trace relatives and build a family tree.
The genetic work ultimately led investigators to members of the D’Alton family. Police reviewed family information and school records and confirmed that the unidentified children were Derek and David D’Alton. Their identities were publicly announced in February 2022, nearly seven decades after their remains were found. A relative had uploaded DNA to a genealogy service partly in hopes of learning what had happened to the missing brothers, helping provide the link investigators needed to identify them.
Investigators also developed a stronger understanding of who may have committed the murders. Vancouver police said they believed the killer was most likely a close family member and noted that one of the boys’ relatives lived near the entrance to Stanley Park at the time of the killings. Police did not publicly identify the person they considered the likely perpetrator. Investigators said the suspected killer was believed to have died approximately 25 years before the brothers were identified, making prosecution impossible.
No arrests were made, and no charges, trial or conviction resulted from the murders. Police explained that because the person believed responsible was deceased, they could not lay charges and would not publicly name that individual. Although the investigation did not end with a prosecution, the genetic genealogy work finally restored David’s and Derek’s identities and allowed their surviving relatives to learn what had happened to the children who had vanished from their family decades earlier.
