Fourth Months, No Answers: How Rumours Took Over a Missing Children’s Case in Nova Scotia

Six-year-old Lilly Sullivan and her four-year-old brother Jack have not been seen in public since May 1, a day before their mother and stepfather say they wandered away from their home in Lansdowne Station. The rural Nova Scotia community is part of Pictou County, an area of dense forests and meandering rivers, where memories of recent tragedies in the province—a horrific mass killing in 2020 and a missing toddler that same year—remain vivid. Over four months after the siblings’ disappearance, a sense of unease permeates the region, even as residents rally at vigils and in community Facebook groups to try to keep hope alive. And while everyone seems to have an opinion about what may or may not have happened, not a single soul appears to know for certain.

In the days after the children were declared missing, hundreds of trained searchers spent long, arduous days scouring the almost impenetrable woods around the family’s home, using drones, dogs, and an underwater recovery team, though in the end, these efforts yielded little more than a child’s faint boot print and scraps of pink blanket. As of mid-July, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police team leading the investigation has assessed more than 760 tips from the public, reviewed more than 8,000 video files obtained from the surrounding area, and interviewed at least sixty individuals, some of whom, including the children’s stepfather, Daniel Martell, were given polygraph tests. While police have stated there is no evidence to suggest that the children were abducted, they have not ruled out the disappearance as suspicious. For now, the case remains an active investigation.

For locals, the lack of resolution has been devastating—as have the media frenzy and online speculation. What began as initial shock turned to cautious hope that the children would be found safe. But as the days passed, hope began to waver and ever more elaborate theories about the disappearance started to circulate. In the intervening months, a number of social media spaces and true crime websites have blown up with wild and often lurid stories. Many of these accusations are directed at Lilly and Jack’s family, as online sleuths parse every word uttered by relatives for evidence of guilt and offer outlandish theories about what they might have done.

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I n theory, police can keep rumours at bay by keeping the public informed. But communicating openly can be risky when a missing-person case is still active. “Law enforcement always has more evidence than they share with the public,” says Michelle Jeanis, an associate professor in criminology at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. “They want to hold back on information, for one, on things that they can’t prove yet, and they don’t want to tip off any potential persons of interest so that they change their behaviour if they’re watching them closely.”

Jeanis is a leading expert in missing-person cases; her research looks at how the stories of the missing are taken up by the media and how amateur sleuths can help or hinder investigations. She says it’s exceedingly rare for a child—let alone two—to simply vanish with no evidence. In an unsolved missing-person case, the lack of answers can be agonizing for the families of the disappeared, who often blame police for falling short.

In an interview with CTV News the day after the disappearance, Malehya Brooks-Murray, the children’s mother, pushed for law enforcement to issue an AMBER Alert, which would have notified the public about a child abduction via widespread media broadcasts and called for anyone with information to come forward. But the RCMP says they had no information to suggest an abduction had occurred. They did, however, send out two “vulnerable persons” alerts to the surrounding area on May 2 and May 3. Nevertheless, there’s a feeling among some that focusing solely on searching for the children in the woods instead of treating the disappearance as a possible abduction might have cost investigators valuable time.

The issue of emergency alerts is particularly raw in rural Nova Scotia, five years after the RCMP were criticized for waiting too long to send out an electronic alert as Gabriel Wortman impersonated an officer and led a rampage of murder and arson in a string of communities not far from Pictou County, in what would turn out to be Canada’s largest mass killing. The Mass Casualty Commission formed in the wake of the killings condemned the RCMP in their report for failing to adequately communicate with local residents while the attacks were occurring.

Jeanis says the only things law enforcement can do at this point in Lilly and Jack’s investigation is to keep the case in the media in order to solicit tips and to continue their searches. In July, RCMP corporal Guillaume Tremblay told CBC News that the public needs to be patient, citing the frequency of RCMP news releases and the need for police to be cautious about what information is released. As a new school year begins, however, and worried parents send out their children, it seems clear that the resolution Pictou County needs in order to find peace remains beyond the reach of law enforcement.

Frustration with police handling of missing-person cases in Nova Scotia is nothing new. Also in 2020—just a few weeks after Wortman’s rampage—three-year-old Dylan Ehler disappeared from the backyard of his grandmother’s home outside Truro, not far from Pictou County. Dylan’s body was never recovered, and the case remains open, although searchers discovered his rubber boots in a nearby river and many assume he might have fallen into the waterway and drowned.

Dylan’s parents criticized police for not treating his disappearance as a possible crime and not issuing an AMBER Alert. In a burgeoning Facebook group of 17,000, members traded theories, with some accusing Dylan’s family of involvement in the disappearance. In response, the family hired a lawyer, who sued group administrators under a provincial cyber-bullying law. In the ensuing settlement agreement, the administrators were prohibited by courts from posting about the case, reactivating the Facebook group, or creating any similar groups.

Jeanis says the families of the disappeared are put in an impossible position. When they feel the police aren’t doing enough, they might reach out to media directly in hopes that will speed the case along. On the one hand, Jeanis says, research shows that when families speak to the media, there is a greater likelihood of the missing person being recovered. Stepping into the media glare, however, comes at a great psychological cost. The families of the missing rarely have media training. “Nobody knows how to act right,” she says. “There’s no standard way that you’re supposed to behave.” Once in the spotlight, families are subject to intense scrutiny. “Now everyone can talk about you.”

In the case of Lilly and Jack, online commentators have fixated on Martell’s seemingly calm behaviour and apparent lack of emotion during interviews as evidence that he might be covering up his involvement in the case, even as court documents released to the media last month regarding the investigation seem to suggest otherwise. Nevertheless, every word he utters is analyzed and debated by social media users around the world. While Martell has been highly visible in local and national media, Brooks-Murray has chosen not to speak to reporters since the day after the disappearance, a decision her mother told CBC News came at the advice of police. The children’s paternal grandmother, Belynda Gray, meanwhile, is calling for a public inquiry into the disappearances—which would include looking at how police handled the early stages of the investigation.

Martell’s mother, Janie Mackenzie, who owns and lives on the property from where the children went missing, is also critical of the RCMP’s initial handling of the case and is unhappy that police updates to the family have slowed down. In an interview with CBC News, she complained of drones flying over her home and reporters showing up at her door unannounced. She says the barrage of online accusations against her son has turned her life upside down.

“I want the rumours to stop,” she told the CBC. “I just want everything to stop. For me, for the sake of the other children, my grandchildren. They don’t deserve this.”

Robert Parker, the warden of the Municipality of Pictou County, which includes Lansdowne Station, says that as the elected municipal leader for the area, it’s been hard for him to see his close-knit community show up on the national radar this way. The intense surveillance from outsiders weighs on everyone. “It becomes almost like a TV show,” he says. “But the important thing to remember is that at the end of all this is real people.”

Stepping into this void are volunteer groups, active in online sleuthing or searching for the disappeared. Nick Oldrieve is the founder of the organization Please Bring Me Home, which helps families of the disappeared search for their loved ones. He has been closely involved in the Dylan Ehler case and has kept in regular contact with Dylan’s parents since soon after the boy went missing. He had hoped to help search for Lilly and Jack in May but was already leading a volunteer effort to search for Dylan on the five-year anniversary of his disappearance.

Oldrieve sees similarities in the Ehler and Sullivan cases. He says he feels for the families who are on the front lines of public accusation: “I can’t imagine the toll it has to take on them to think that the public looks at them as being responsible for the disappearance. The surprising thing to me is how quick people are to that judgment without having all the information.”

Parker says the community knows how deeply invested the searchers and police are in finding the children. “The fact that we didn’t find little Jack and little Lilly does not reflect at all on the hard work that went in here from so many people, including the RCMP. Everybody gave it their all.”

He says the disappearance has been especially difficult for young children in Pictou County, including those who attend Jack and Lilly’s school, Salt Springs Elementary. Caregivers have become more protective and parents apprehensive about letting their children play alone in their yards until the truth of the tragedy is revealed.

“I think it’s really difficult for the family and neighbours,” Parker says. “It’s a natural thing, I think, for people to want to know what’s happened here. We need to find answers. We need to know what happened to our little ones.”