Derek D’Alton was a seven-year-old boy from Vancouver whose family was descended from Russian immigrants. He and his younger brother David became the victims of one of Vancouver’s longest-running murder mysteries, later known as the “Babes in the Woods” case. Although their skeletal remains were discovered in Stanley Park in January 1953, investigators determined that the children had been dead for roughly five years, placing the killings around 1947 or 1948 rather than in 1953.
A Vancouver Parks Board groundskeeper clearing brush near Beaver Lake in Stanley Park came upon the children’s remains concealed beneath a woman’s coat and surrounded by vegetation that had grown over the site during the years they lay undiscovered. A hatchet was found nearby. Examination of the skulls showed that both children had suffered severe blows to the head, and police concluded that they had been murdered with the hatchet. Their bodies had apparently been deliberately hidden in the wooded area and remained there for years before the chance discovery.
The investigation was complicated almost immediately by uncertainty about who the children were. Early investigators did not know their names and at one point mistakenly believed one set of remains belonged to a girl. The victims consequently remained unidentified for decades. Later forensic work established that both children were boys and that they shared the same mother. Despite repeated reviews of the evidence, investigators were unable to connect the remains to a known missing-child case, and the murders became an enduring Vancouver cold case.
The case took a decisive turn through advances in DNA analysis and forensic genetic genealogy. In 2021, the Vancouver Police Department partnered with Redgrave Research Forensic Services to develop genetic profiles from DNA obtained from the children’s remains. Researchers produced a profile suitable for comparison through GEDmatch and traced genetic connections to the boys’ maternal family. Genealogists reconstructed a family tree and provided investigators with the names of possible relatives. Police then located family members, reviewed school records and other historical information, and sought additional DNA confirmation. By February 2022, the genetic comparisons conclusively established that the children were Derek and David D’Alton.
The identification also allowed detectives to reconstruct more of the circumstances surrounding the brothers. Police determined that they had lived in Vancouver and that a family member lived near the entrance to Stanley Park around the time they disappeared. The family had apparently carried an explanation through later generations that the boys had been taken from the home by child-welfare authorities, but investigators ultimately found Derek and David among the unidentified victims from Stanley Park instead. Their identities were publicly announced by Vancouver police on February 15, 2022, nearly seven decades after their remains had been discovered.
Investigators have not publicly identified a specific person as the proven killer. Vancouver police said their investigation led them to believe the person responsible was probably a close relative of the children and that the individual had died approximately 25 years before the boys were identified. Police acknowledged that they could make strong investigative assumptions about what happened but could not establish the killer’s identity with the certainty required for a criminal case. The passage of decades, the suspected perpetrator’s death and the limited remaining physical evidence made a definitive prosecution effectively impossible.
No one was arrested or charged with the murders, and there was therefore no criminal trial or conviction. By the time Derek and David were finally identified, Vancouver police said the principal objective of the renewed investigation had become restoring the boys’ identities and giving their surviving relatives answers rather than pursuing charges against a person believed to have been dead for many years. The homicide itself remains without a judicially established perpetrator, even though investigators believe the killings occurred within the boys’ own family circle.
