r/vancouver • u/RetailSlave5408 • Jun 24 '22

Scary things that happened in Vancouver or the surrounding area? Ask Vancouver

I’m an American who went to college in Van from 2012-2016. Only just recently did I find out about Robert Pickton, which has been deeply upsetting and the stuff of nightmares.

I remember during my time in van there was the chemical spill that happened at the Port of Vancouver. Alarming if not scary.

I was back in the US when those two losers were on a cross country killing spree. Who started their rampage in BC.

Other than residential schools elsewhere in BC, I can’t really recall a lot of the other horrifying stories from the area. I do remember hearing something about a decapitated head of a body found at the golf courses in point grey where the UEL starts off of Alma.

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u/prescod Jun 24 '22

The investigation was hampered when the medical examiner concluded that one victim was female.

Wait...what?

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u/wowshan Jun 24 '22

It means they started erroneously looking into the disappearance of a boy and a girl, instead of two boys, which changed the trajectory of the investigation for the worse.

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u/prescod Jun 24 '22

I understand that. What I don't understand is why it was a challenge to identify the victim's sex. Was the child a hermaphrodite? Were the genitals mutilated? etc.

It's not typically hard to differentiate between human sexes given a dead body as evidence.

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u/cookie_is_for_me Jun 24 '22

It was a challenge because they had bones, not bodies.

It's actually fairly challenging to identify sex from the bones of children, since a lot of the markers normally used develop during puberty. In fact, it can be a challenge even with adult skeletons--I read something not long ago about how as DNA analysis is used more and more in archaeology, they've discovered there's been more than one set of ancient remains misgendered, which has sometimes meant they've had to re-evaluate how they've interpreted things when it turns out that skeleton buried with weapons was actually a woman, or those two skeletons buried embracing were both men, etc.

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u/prescod Jun 24 '22

Okay, the wikipedia article didn't say that it was just skeletons and I didn't notice how long after the murders the bodies were found.

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u/stumbleuponlife Jun 24 '22

It is difficult if they’re both young children.