In the quiet, post-war suburbs of Vancouver, David Pauls and his family were building a modest, hardworking life. David, 53, and his wife Helen, 47, had emigrated from Russia as teenagers. After marrying, they lived in Saskatchewan and the farming community of Aldergrove, British Columbia, before purchasing a home in September 1956 in a south Vancouver neighborhood. They settled into a small house in the 1000 block of East 53rd Avenue with their 11-year-old daughter, Dorothy. The family was known to be frugal and diligent, saving their money and keeping to themselves.
David worked in the warehouse of the downtown Woodward’s department store, a well-known Vancouver institution. Helen worked the evening shift at the Home Fancy Sausage Shop on East Hastings Street. Their daughter Dorothy was a quiet Grade 6 student at the local Walter Moberly School. Though they had previously been members of a local Mennonite church, they had recently stopped attending.
By all accounts, the Pauls family lived a peaceful, ordinary existence, with no known enemies. That peace was irrevocably shattered in what became the city’s first-ever triple homicide.
On the rainy night of June 10, 1958, David Pauls left his home around 11:30 p.m. to walk to the bus stop and meet his wife after her shift ended. He was ambushed just outside the rear basement door of his own home. An attacker shot him in the head with a.22-calibre revolver, gravely wounding him but not killing him instantly. The killer then used David’s keys to enter the house. Upstairs, young Dorothy was asleep in her bed. The intruder entered her room and bludgeoned the child to death.
The killer then returned to the basement, where he dragged David’s injured body inside, beat him, and shot him twice more in the head. Sometime after 11:30 p.m., Helen arrived home, likely having run from the bus stop in the rain after her husband never appeared. The attacker was waiting. Helen was shot and beaten to death in the front hallway of her home. Her house keys were later found still in her pocket.
The discovery of the three bodies the next day horrified the city and launched a massive investigation by the Vancouver Police Department. The crime scene, however, offered few answers. Investigators found a partial footprint in the garden, a bloody but unidentifiable palm print on a bedroom wall, and a dislodged rock that suggested the killer's escape route. The murder weapon, believed to be a common Rohm RG-10 revolver, was never found. Robbery was considered a motive, as David's wallet and keys were missing, but nothing else of value appeared to have been taken.
Over the decades, detectives explored numerous theories. They looked into the family's Russian past and their connection to the Mennonite church, but found no leads. They considered it could have been a case of mistaken identity, as the previous owner of the house was a police sergeant of a similar age with a wife and young daughter. Another theory was that David had interrupted a peeping tom who was spying on Dorothy. A reinvestigation in the 1990s by the Provincial Unsolved Homicide Unit focused on the possibility that the crime was sexually motivated and that Dorothy was the primary target, with her parents being killed to eliminate witnesses. This was based on the fact her pajama bottoms had been removed and left beside her bed, though there was no evidence of sexual assault.
Despite the brutality of the crime and a substantial reward of $14,000 being offered, the largest in the city’s history at the time, no one ever came forward with information that could solve the case. No suspects have ever been identified or charged in the murders of David, Helen, and Dorothy Pauls. As of July 2021, the Vancouver Police Department confirmed the case remains open but unsolved, a frustrating and tragic mystery that has haunted investigators and the city for over 60 years.
