good afternoon and welcome to true crime mysteries
if you're new to the channel hello and welcome and if you're returning welcome back
today we are discussing three canadian cold cases let's get into it number one babes in the woods
vancouver british columbia's oldest cold case has recently had a new development
but the nearly seven decade mystery hasn't been solved yet
it was on january 14 1953 when skeletal remains were found in stanley park by a park employee he
had been going through a more remote part of the park when he stepped on something and crushed it
he examined further and found a woman's coat and below the coat was a small skull
investigators carefully excavated the area and found the remnants of two children's helmets
clothing a picnic basket and a hatchet which was later determined to be the murder weapon
the remains were identified as belonging to two children and they were given the moniker babes
in the woods it was estimated the bodies had been there since approximately 1947.
the medical examiner that first worked the case concluded that one of the children was a female
which had hampered the investigation greatly for decades many theories had been constructed
to attempt to explain why two young children had been murdered in stanley park although
significant folklore has surrounded this case for years we must not forget that these real children
who died a tragic and heartbreaking death said inspector dale weedman in a statement to the media
all attempts to find the children's families had failed several different techniques were used to
generate different visual reconstructions of what the children might have looked like
but it never helped the vancouver police department in identifying them
in 1996 a scientist at ubc did dna testing on some of the remains and determined that
the remains were that of two boys brothers in fact and estimated the ages to be close to six and ten
so after i received the position of a detective sergeant in the provincial unsolved homicide
unit i wasn't carrying a caseload i thought i would like to have a look at it because
the media had resurrected it so many times and by the way the media are the one that gave the
name of the babes in the woods it's from a shakespeare's play
and that stuck with the file so after uh resurrect resurrecting it i discovered that the remains were
on display in the vancouver police museum i did not think that was appropriate
so i went down one day without any authority from any of my superiors and i seized all their remains
i took them out to my very good friend dr david sweet here at the bureau of legal dentistry at ubc
and while i held the skulls david was able to extract a tooth from each of the skulls and then
i'll pass it over to him in a minute to explain what he did but after that i took the remains
to a crematorium that will remain strictly with me because i'm not going to identify it to you
and i had the remains minus the skulls cremated and then i arranged to have the
remains taken with a police boat off a kitts line of point and with the police chaplain
at that time dedicated the remains to the ocean we had a nice little service and the
children's festival was on but that was not planning on my part it just was coincidence
now after the remains uh were interred into the sea uh dr sweet and i kept it to ourselves
what biological remains were kept for future advancement in dna and scientific research
we kept that secret for a lot of years and we didn't release that because we thought it sounded
kind of ghoulish for people that wanted to know and believe me there were people that wanted to
know but we kept that to ourselves so the fallacy of that they were running out of dna is incorrect
because there were lots of teeth in those skulls and dr sweet god bless them was able to extract
dna by pulverizing one of the teeth and i'll ask him to explain it sergeant honeybourne wanted to
confirm that in fact the information that was in the file at the time he was looking at it
was true and we could use modern dna evidence of the day mid 1990s
to extract a usable dna source and to confirm that it was in fact a boy and a girl
we have developed at my laboratory this technology for extracting dna from teeth and from bones
an armor coating covers the material that's inside so the technique was to grind the tooth and then
expose the dna to the surface from where it could be recovered we analyzed that with the technology
of the day which improved in a couple of years the results initial results were confirmed
with additional testing and it was determined that they were not a boy and a girl in fact they were
two boys that were related as half brothers they shared a mother but not a father and so
that became an extremely important part of the investigation because it changed the thinking at
the time and obviously changed the scope of the investigation where the police were looking for
a young boy and girl this changed the direction of the investigation greatly as investigators
now had more accurate information in 2021 the vpd sent off samples of dna and reached out to
the redgrave research forensic services genetic genealogy company to help build familial profiles
over the last year the redgrave team had worked tirelessly to build out those trees despite
several challenges with the dna which after so long and had not been preserved well had degraded
significantly eventually they identified ancestors they believed to be maternal grandparents
they reached out to family members who gave samples of their dna and were able to confirm
they had identified a tree of maternal relatives after so many decades the two little boys
previously only known as the babes in the woods have been given their names back derrick and david
dalton the boys were seven and six at the time of their deaths and had her surviving older sister
it is still unclear what happened it seems to have been a closely guarded family secret as surviving
relatives had never known what had happened to the boys their mother passed in 1996 at the age of 78
and had always told relatives that the boys had been removed from her by child protection services
the vpd didn't find any records matching either the mother's name or the boys
this may be where this case ends as too much time has passed to get any more answers
but it can end with two children taken far too early a chance to finally be laid to rest with
their names and to be known as more than the babes in the woods number two melissa chaboise
it was late on november 25th 2005 in thompson manitoba
when melissa chaboise was working a long shift as a cab driver melissa those who knew her called
her alyssa was a 35 year old single mother to a teenage son and was also a devoted foster parent
having housed over 20 children over the last 10 years she loved fostering and supported her
foster kids whenever they needed help even if it had been years since they'd been in her care
melissa drove kav part time to supplement her income her full-time job was working as a care
aide to adults with developmental disabilities she worked at north star cab for almost a decade
mostly picking up shifts from october to december to save up for christmas and on this friday night
was her normal graveyard shift around midnight she was dispatched to a call to the thompson arena
the caller didn't leave a name or number with the dispatcher melissa called into the dispatcher
to let them know that drop-off would be at the armada hotel now the burntwood hotel rcmp have
stated that they believe melissa picked up two passengers at around 12 30 a.m she drove into a
parking lot behind the mall in thompson where she was attacked and killed by the people in her cab
melissa had been stabbed several times while attempting to flee the vehicle her attackers fled
on foot captured on surveillance cameras going through a field east of the parking lot another
cab driver had been sitting in his cab also in the mall parking lot and saw the taxi top light
and went over to see what was going on he attempted to help melissa but it was too late
the two suspects were never identified or found the case had been cold for several years
it doesn't appear that melissa had been robbed and it is unclear what the motive was for the attack
melissa was called the gentlest driver and her manager said if someone didn't have the
money she'd smile and say pay later she never would have gotten into a dispute with someone
after melissa's murder thompson changed its bylaws to require all taxi cabs to be fitted with cameras
there is a 14 000 reward for any information that leads to an arrest
anyone with information are asked to contact crime stoppers
number three barbra jean mclean
in the early morning hours of february 26 1977 a man walking his dog along the gravel road in
northern calgary made a grisly discovery the body of a young woman was discovered in a ditch
her cause of death was strangulation and she was later identified as barber jean mclean the 19
year old had recently moved to calgary from nova scotia and worked as a bank teller for royal bank
she shared her apartment with her boyfriend and officers worked to trace back the events of the
previous evening barbra jean had a wide group of friends and was often seen at her favorite local
bar that was where she was the night before at highlander bar with a group of friends
at some point in the evening her boyfriend got kicked out of the bar for being too rowdy
he sat in the parking lot in his vehicle and waited for barbara to come out
when the bar closed at 2 30 am barbara joined him in the car and they had a heated argument both of
them were intoxicated but her boyfriend drove off and left her alone in the parking lot she
had told a friend she was going to a house party and intended to hitchhike there that was the last
time barbara was seen alive the rcmp have stated that they believe gary mcgastocker is responsible
for the crime he was a registered sex offender that had been released on parole at the time
and had been known to target women hitchhiking but it was never definitively confirmed
mcastalker committed suicide before he could be questioned in connection to barbara's murder
barbra jean's murder was also connected to several other women in the area that had been
murdered in similar circumstances alluding to the presence of serial killer in the area
the case is still open but there hasn't been any new developments in some time
anyone with information is asked to call crime stoppers
number four mariella lenny
marielle lenny was a 17 year old student from toledo northwest territories she had recently
moved to yellowknife yukon that september to finish high school and was staying with family
she was described as an outgoing and friendly person and on october 6 1991 she went missing from
downtown yellowknife she was last seen around 6 pm near the discovery inn she wasn't reported missing
for 12 days and little has been released about the case her body was found on may 8 1992 in great
slave lake seven months after she had gone missing her body was identified with dental records
the rcmp have stated that there is enough evidence to suggest mariella was murdered but have declined
to release any further information about the case including cause of death her family have
continued to advocate for mariella and keep her cold case in the media they are desperate
to know the status of the investigation and even after so many years don't understand why the rcmp
have declined to tell them more information about what had happened to their daughter
mariella's murder was one of several in the yukon in the 90s her case is among the
hundreds of known murdered indigenous women cold cases to have occurred between 1980 and 2012.
anyone with information is asked to contact the rcmp
or crimestoppers well that is it for this video as always thank you so much for watching if you like
the content and what i do over here please don't forget to subscribe and hit the notification bell
so you don't miss my next upload don't forget to hit that like button if you enjoyed the content
and also letting you know that we have patreon as well as channel membership where you can get more
behind the scenes content and exclusive content or just to support the channel in the description box
of this video you will also find links to all my socials to connect with me as well as other
things but that is it for me thank you so much for being here i will see you on the next one
you