A grieving father wants answers from Vancouver police after his daughter was removed from a missing persons list before being found deceased in a downtown hotel.

Bruce Ogilvie stumbled into fatherhood when he and his then-partner adopted a young relative who needed a family, and for more than three decades he loved his daughter with all his heart.

"Possibly the proudest moment of my life is when the adoption came through,” said Ogilvie. “Wow, I'm a dad!"

Lila Moody-Ogilvie, 34, suddenly stopped posting to social media and contacting relatives, so her family reported her missing to Vancouver police on Feb. 28.

A few days later, on March 3, Ogilvie called police for an update.

"Lila had been taken off the missing person's list,” said Ogilvie. “And my immediate reaction was, 'Well, what does that mean?'"

The person on the other end of the phone at VPD said it likely meant a police officer had been in contact with his daughter, but that never happened.

A clerical error had led to her being removed from the missing list, and nobody had seen or heard from her, not even friends living in the same building.

“She didn’t deserve to go that way and to be neglected the way she was,” said Sharon Small who lived on the same floor as Moody-Ogilvie at the Marble Arch Hotel, a supportive housing building on Richards Street.

According to Moody-Ogilvie’s father, she was found deceased March 10, in the room next door to her own on the top floor of the hotel.

"There was an odour coming from that room,” he said. “When the police called me back about this clerical error they said then they were going to get serious about looking for her."

But it was still several days after that when Moody-Ogilvie was eventually found. Small confirms a strong odour was coming from the room.

Vancouver police don’t believe Moody-Ogilvie’s death was suspicious in nature.

A statement from Deputy Chief Const. Laurence Rankin says Indigenous women are at an increased risk of harm. Indigenous women in the Downtown Eastside are more likely than others to go missing, so police prioritize missing person cases and start investigations without delay.

“We offer our deepest sympathies to the Ogilvie family about the loss of their daughter. Although I cannot get into the details surrounding her death at this time, I can tell you her death is not suspicious,” reads Rankin’s statement. “However, it concerns me that the family is frustrated by their interaction with our staff and investigators. We understand that they have submitted a complaint to the Office of the Police Complaint Commissioner. As part of this process, we will fully review our investigation and work with the OPCC.”

Moody-Ogilvie’s father says the BC Coroners Service has told him they believe his daughter likely died of a drug overdose days before she was initially reported missing.

“She was a loving person… and she was a loved person,” he said when asked what he wants the world to know about his daughter.