“Everybody is a suspect” in the disappearance of Lilly & Jack Sullivan says ex homicide detective 
it’s a very sunny Friday morning here in Northern England, the 16th of May.

Today, I’m continuing the coverage of the missing siblings—six-year-old Lily and four-year-old Jack Sullivan from Lansdowne Station, Pictou County, Nova Scotia in Canada. And sadly, it’s another milestone: two weeks. Two weeks today since they went missing, or at least were reported missing by their mother, Malia Brooks-Murray, around 10:00 a.m. on the 2nd of May.

Dispatch audio says they were last seen at 8:00 a.m.—zero-eight hundred. I find it concerning, worrying, and disturbing even, that that came over the dispatch audio. They appear to have been missing for two hours rather than the 20 minutes that their stepfather, Daniel Martell, said. I find that problematic.

So, in this video, I’m going to go through a couple of news pieces which have come up with interesting opinions. There’s nothing new in the investigation from the RCMP—so if that’s what you’re here for, sorry. But please do stay and listen, because I thought this was really interesting.

From CTV News: The search for Lily and Jack Sullivan continues in Pictou County, Nova Scotia. They interviewed a former homicide investigator named Steve Ryan, who has been following the case closely and believes the lack of witnesses is likely presenting a major obstacle.

So, I looked up Steve Ryan—not that I don’t believe CTV, but you know, don’t believe anybody at face value—and yes, he’s a real guy. Actually, he’s an ex-homicide detective. Not just an investigator, but a detective. He worked in Toronto’s homicide squad for over a decade and even wrote a book: The Ghosts That Haunt Me: Memories of a Homicide Detective.

According to him, the story provided by the mom and stepdad to police is that they woke up and the kids were gone. Daniel claims to have been awake and that the kids were gone. He claims to have seen Lily coming into the room a couple of times, and then was dozing in and out of sleep, I guess. Then 20 minutes after they were last heard, they went looking for them. Daniel drove around, while Malia rang the police.

Again though—were they missing for 2 hours before any of that happened? Because why would the dispatch audio say they were last seen at 8:00 a.m.? There’s a massive mismatch there.

Given that there are no witnesses to what happened, that leaves a very gaping hole in this investigation. After almost a week of searching more than six square kilometers—we heard from RCMP the other day that they searched 5.5 km, which is 3.4 square miles—if you take the radius from that area, they actually only searched just over a 1-mile radius.

But they concentrated more to the west. So, I think they went further west and probably less than a mile in other directions. It wasn’t a perfect circle.

They searched for six days, and then the RCMP called back the 160 ground search and rescue workers.
“The active search efforts to locate Lily and Jack have been scaled back,” said Staff Sergeant Curtis McKinnon on May 7th.
We know all this, don’t we?

Ryan said the search may have been scaled back, but a multi-layered investigation is still active. Well, absolutely it is. That investigation started straight away. The Major Crimes Unit got involved on Saturday—just a day after they went missing. Apparently, the Major Crimes Unit gets involved in all missing child cases in Canada, so it’s not unusual.

If a kid’s been missing for more than a day, you’re potentially looking at a crime.
There’s an awful lot going on behind the scenes, around the clock, while the police look for these two children—or try to determine if there was foul play involved.

In addition to suspected foul play, kidnapping has not been ruled out.
“The worst-case scenario is that they’re deceased, and if they are deceased, they need to be recovered,” said CTV News public safety analyst Chris Lewis.

We need to determine if a criminal act occurred. Yes—this is what I’ve been saying. I think the search was scaled back too soon. Now, I know that there are massive funding implications—a huge search effort—and the idea is to throw everything at it to try and recover them alive. But once they’re deceased, there’s not that urgency, is there?

My issue with this kind of investigation—I said it with Sebastian Rogers, I said it with Summer Wells back in the day. Now, they searched for a full 13 days for Summer—similar terrain to this. Really difficult terrain in northeast Tennessee.

But if they’re deceased, they need to be recovered. Not just for closure for the family and the community, but also for the investigation.
I’m sorry to be graphic, but the longer the bodies are out there, the more decomposition occurs, and the more likely scavenging animals will obliterate any chance of getting a reliable cause or manner of death.

I guess it’s like looking for a needle in a haystack. They do have to take into account the funding problems, and they’ve got other cases. But still—in an ideal world…

According to Ryan, missing persons cases are traumatizing for any community—especially a small, close-knit area like Lansdowne Station, Nova Scotia.
“You’ve got a small community, and they’re all peering out of the window, looking at vehicles driving by and wondering if this could be the person that took these two children. They want to know what happened,” said Ryan.

Of course, they do.
I think “suspects” is probably a bit strong, but everybody’s definitely a person of interest. The major suspects would be the people who last saw Lily and Jack—the adults on the property.

There were four adults on the property—at least there were before Malia was kicked off. You’ve got Malia and Daniel sharing the trailer, and over in the backyard, you’ve got Daniel’s mother and his brother. A lot of people suspect the brother. I don’t know anything about him. I don’t talk about his mother and brother because I just don’t know anything about them—not anything reliable, anyway. They’ve not spoken out.

Look, I’m not saying anybody did anything to Lily and Jack. But RCMP have done 35 formal interviews, according to their update the other day. And they do that for a reason. Thirty-five interviews—that’s a lot in two weeks.

The longer the Sullivan children remain missing, Ryan said, the more residents from the area will be deeply affected—but can take comfort knowing the RCMP investigation is ongoing.
They’ve had 180 tips—hopefully one of those tips leads to answers. But if there was a crime, it might be a long wait.