Murdered Unidentified Children - The Babes in the Woods

In Vancouver's Stanley Park, January 1953, gardener Albert Tong went about his duties clearing brush by an area near Beaver Lake when he found a tragic scene. After clearing some brush he discovered a decomposing fur coat under which were the bones of two young children.

As police investigated the scene they discovered near the bones a few other items, including a rusted metal lunch box, bits of children's clothing, a woman's size 7-1/2 penny loafer - which was actually under the bones themselves, two leather children's aviator caps - like what a child pretending to be a World War II pilot would wear, and a rustly layman's hatchet - which would later prove to be the murder weapon.

Part of the Exhibit at the Vancouver Police Museum

A doctor called to the scene concluded that the bones came from a young boy and a young girl and that the bones had most likely been lying there for six years, putting the year of death at 1947. One of the child's skulls had a wound from the blade of the axe found nearby and the other had a would from the blunt end of that same axe.

Police received 100s of tips, and although at first tips were plentiful, none of them panned out and eventually, the case went cold. At some point during the 1980s, the children's bones were put on display at the Vancouver Police Museum.

It wasn't until the mid-1990s when Vancouver Police Seargent Brian Honeybourn started investigating the case when he became head of the BC Unsolved Homicide Unit that more progress was made in the case.

Sgt. Honeybourn wanted to get a DNA profile of the children and discovered that they weren't a girl and boy, they were two boys and they were brothers. Unfortunately, that meant that leads the police received for the last 40 plus years may have been overlooked because they were looking for a woman with a boy and a girl.

Plaster casts were made of the children based on their skulls and photos and information were sent across North America and compared with missing person cases from around the world, but no more leads came from this.

Honeybourn thought that the police at the time may have been mistaken on how long the children's bones were laying at their resting place in Stanley Park. The type of shoes worn by the children was imported from Asia around 1944.

Broadening the scope of his search Honeybourn found some potentially significant leads in this case:

• A woman stayed at the New Haven Hotel with two young boys then had disappeared.
• A truck driver reported that he picked up a woman hitchhiking a ride to Stanley Park. She was traveling with two young boys that wore aviator caps. 
• A woman who was an alleged prostitute nicknamed "Lipstick Liz lived with her father in a house near the lighthouse in Stanley Park had two young boys that went missing. this lead was not looked in to at the time because police were looking for a young boy and a girl.
• A woman and a man were seen in Stanley Park with two young boys. Alarmingly the man was seen carrying a hatchet. The witness stated they remembered the hatchet because the man was banging it against an iron fence as he walked past it. They were seen entering the woods with the children and without the children when they left. The people that reported this could not be located because the lead was reported in 1953 and was rediscovered by Honeybourn in the late 1990s.
• A woman wearing one shoe was seen running out of the bush in Stanley Park by a man and his fiance out for a walk. The woman made a "guttural sound" as she exited the bush and the couple noticed what looked like blood on the lower part of her legs.

All of these leads didn't pan out. Either the kids were still alive or the timeline didn't match up, or too much time had passed to get any more info.

The remains of the children originally were kept in an evidence box, a mistake that possibly destroyed potential evidence. Acid erosion damaged the remains before they were able to be preserved in special evidence bags.

It was important to Honeybourn that the children's remains were laid to rest. In the late 1990s, he had the remains cremated (keeping crucial pieces in case more DNA testing was needed) and scattered the ashes in the waters off of Kitts Point.

The woman that lived in the house near the lighthouse in Stanley Park had a relative that dies in the 70s who would have been a 1/2 brother to the children, and Mitochondrial DNA testing was done, but the results were inconclusive because there wasn't enough DNA to properly do the test.

Sgt. Honeybourn is now retired, but he investigates the case still. He believes that one of the boys attended school somewhere in BC, and hopefully, attendance records may provide a clue someday. He says that somewhere a boy suddenly didn't return to school one day and maybe someone remembers something.

Vancouver Police still have this case open under investigation by an officer with the Major Crimes Division. The Vancouver Police Museum now has replicas of the children's bones and the crime scene on display.

Replica crime scene

The Museum's director Robert Noon said that when people visit the exhibit, "a hush comes over them as they read what happened to the children". The case haunts Mr. Noon, as he goes through the displays at night the children's exhibit is the last one that he turns off.

"Good Night, everybody," he says, before he walks out, something he says that he has done from the beginning of his time at the museum.

There are many unanswered questions with this case. I wonder if possibly the children's father fought in World War II. Did he come home? Were they killed by their mother who thought that it would be too hard to raise two young boys by herself? Or were they killed by someone else entirely? Was the mother merely walking with the children in the park and attacked by someone and had to run, fearing for her life, then afraid to come forward afterward? This case has too many questions and not enough answers.

The "Babes in the Woods" murders are one of the most haunting crimes in Vancouver's history, one that has intrigued and haunted people for over half a century. As time ticks on, hope for solving this crime gets smaller and smaller. The killer is most likely dead, but maybe at some point, investigators will be able to give these unfortunate children their names back.



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