Pod Insights Crime, Conspiracy, Cults and Murder Ep. 101 | They Disappeared Out Of Thin Air... | Lily and Jack Sullivan About this episode In May 2025, siblings Lilly (6) and Jack (4) Sullivan vanished from their rural Nova Scotia home without a trace - igniting a massive search and leaving investigators with more questions than answers.
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0:30 Speaker 01 There's a particular kind of quiet that settles over rural Nova Scotia. The kind that sounds peaceful until it isn't. And Pic 2 County holds a community so small, so tucked away from everything, that some neighbors have never once crossed paths. Landsdowne. Now, you probably haven't heard of it, and most people haven't. Thick woods stretch in every direction as far as your eyes can carry you. And the isolation isn't just geographic because it seeps into everything, into the houses and into the people. And a woman named Malaya Brooks-Murray called this quiet corner home. And Malaya was raising her two kids there. A little girl obsessed with anything pink, and a four-year-old boy who spent his days on his hands and knees
1:15 Speaker 01 hunting for bugs under rocks. And then, one morning, they were just gone. This is the story of Lily and Jack Sullivan. Crime, conspiracy, cults, serial killers, and murder, all things that I love to consume, and I know you do too, you sick, twisted, beautiful, intellectually-minded freak. And today, we are doing a little mini-episode. A little bonus episode, if you will. But it is about an extremely puzzling and disturbing case. So without further ado, let's unbuckle our seatbelts, go march right down the highway, slam the brakes, and bust through the windshield into this puzzling case together.
2:02 Speaker 00 At Humana, our Medicare Advantage plans are easy to understand and easy on your wallet. Like offering more benefits than you'd get from original Medicare alone, and including dental, vision, and hearing coverage in every plan. And the best part is, every plan has a $0 or low monthly plan premium, which makes it easier to save, too. So this Medicare planning season, plan well with Humana. Learn more at gethumana.com. Humana is a Medicare Advantage, HMO and PPO organization with a Medicare contract. Enrollment in any Humana plan depends on contract renewal.
2:32 Speaker 01 Malaya Brooks-Murray was 27 years old, a stay-at-home mom born and raised in the Brookfield and Truro area, about an hour outside of Halifax. Now, Malaya was Mikmac, a member of the Cpeck Nikatik, First Nations group, one of the largest Indigenous communities in all of Nova Scotia. And people who knew Malaya described her as quiet and shy, the kind of woman who wasn't going to argue with you, even if she probably should have. Just non-confrontational to her core. And the children's biological father was Cody Sullivan. And Cody was 29 in 2025. And Cody and Malaya had been together roughly three years before having two kids together.
3:14 Speaker 01 And from the outside, it looked like a normal family with nothing alarming about it. But Malaya wasn't happy. And eventually, she made the call that she wanted out. So she pursued full custody of the children, and Cody walked away without a fight. And not just from Malaya, but from it all, from the children and from any role in their lives. So by May of 2025, Lily and Jack hadn't seen their father in three years. And Cody had been paying child support for a while, but in 2024, he lost his job and the payments stopped. And by 2025, Cody was back living with his mother, Belinda Gray, out on the eastern shore with no job, no vehicle, and no real contact with his children.
3:59 Speaker 01 Now, Belinda described a distance between herself and Cody, saying he'd always been closer to his father. Then there's Daniel Martel. And Malaya eventually wanted to get back out there and find someone, so she met Daniel on Facebook Dating in the spring of 2022. And Daniel was 34 and moved fast. And by fast, I mean, within two weeks of meeting her, he moved in with Malaya. But Daniel had a history with meth and cocaine and was trying to start over and build something new. And according to Malaya, she didn't find out about any of the drug history until a year into their relationship. So by 2025, Daniel was attending Narcotics Anonymous classes somewhere around three times a week, though the exact frequency depends on who you ask because sources aren't
4:44 Speaker 01 totally consistent on that. But the point is, Daniel was trying. Daniel worked hard, too, at a local sawmill doing hardwood operations until the work dried up. Because the spring thaw brings a seasonal ban on heavy trucks in the area, and just like that, the mill couldn't operate at full capacity. So Daniel went from full shifts to maybe one shift a week if he was lucky. And court documents that came out later painted a picture of a household under serious financial strain, with arguments between Malaya and Daniel about money and everything that came with it. So here's what you had: a quiet, non-confrontational mother trying to find a new love after a
5:25 Speaker 01 relationship that had fizzled out, a man with a complicated past doing his best to "step up for this ready-made family," and both of them were struggling, but functioning together for a while, anyway. So in August of 2023, Malaya would make a decision that, in hindsight, becomes one of the more troubling threads in this entire story. And Malaya would pack up Lily and Jack and move out to Daniel Martel's family property in Lansdowne, rural Pictou County, about 65 kilometers from Truro, where Malaya had grown up, where her mother was, and where her friends were. And just generally, where her entire support system lived, just gone, all of it.
6:08 Speaker 01 And Daniel's mother, Jenny McKenzie, already lived on the property in a trailer, and Malaya and Daniel Moved into a separate mobile home nearby with the kids and their new baby daughter. And then, according to a close family friend, something shifted. And Malaya started pulling back from everyone. And it wasn't just because of the distance either. Something in Malaya's mood had changed and she wasn't doing well in the months before everything fell apart. And Belinda Gray noticed it too. And Belinda had been staying in contact with her grandchildren despite Cody's complete absence. Coming by every so often to see Lily and Jack. But after the move to Lansdowne, those visits stopped and contact went quiet. And the money problems weren't going anywhere.
6:53 Speaker 01 And by early 2025, there were five people in that mobile home. Malaya, Daniel, Lily, Jack, and their baby sister Meadow, who was only 16 months old. Now Lily Sullivan was six years old, born in March of 2019. And she had light brown hair, bangs, and an absolute devotion to the color pink. Pink boots, pink blankets, pink everything. And Lily would spend hours in the fenced backyard of their mobile home, talking to her dolls and stuffed animals like they had opinions worth hearing. And she followed her little brother's lead too. Jack Sullivan was four, born October 29th, 2020, with short blonde hair and the kind of bug obsession that only four-year-old boys seem to fully commit to.
7:37 Speaker 01 And Jack would flip rocks and poke it logs and investigate every inch of the ground like he was on some kind of scientific contract. And Jack wore his blue dinosaur boots almost constantly and was still going through potty training at this time. But these two were inseparable. Brother and sister and best friends all at once. Happy kids who loved playing and loved people, even if people were hard to come by way out in those woods. But they weren't completely stuck at home, though. Both attended Salt Spring Elementary in Salt Spring, Nova Scotia, about a 20-minute bus ride from home. And Jack was in pre-primary and Lily was in primary, roughly the American equivalent of preschool and kindergarten.
8:20 Speaker 01 Now, the children did have some developmental concerns. Malaya described- them as possibly autistic, not formally diagnosed, but behind in certain ways. Malia said it wasn't extreme, just present, and the children were meant to get a proper evaluation at some point. And staff at the school had noticed things as well, and it went beyond academics. And the children's home environment raised concerns because on one occasion Lily arrived at school without proper winter clothing, visibly unkempt and staff had to provide clothing for her. And that concern eventually prompted a child protection social worker to visit the home, but no physical injuries were observed, so nothing came of the visit.
9:03 Speaker 01 But then in December of 2024, Salt Springs Elementary posted a photo from a class trip on Facebook. And in it, Jack is sitting among his classmates in the forest with a visible green and purple bruise below his left eye. And there ended up being other photos that showed more bruises on the children in later reports. And in private Facebook messages, Martell, the children's stepfather, acknowledged the bruising and blamed it on Lily, saying Lily had punched Jack in the face. And Martell would also say that Lily had a black eye because Lily pushed down on a toy truck and it swung up and hit her in the face. So keep that in mind. But life inside that mobile home wasn't simple. A large wood stove took up a good chunk of the living room.
9:48 Speaker 01 And outside was a fenced yard with a chicken coop and a steep embankment the kids would sometimes play near. And they'd actually built a little fort out there, and the entire property was wrapped in dense, heavy woodland. And in 2022, Hurricane Fiona had knocked trees down in every direction and layered the forest floor with fallen timber, making it tangled, unpredictable terrain that was hard to walk through and easy to get lost in. And Belinda Gray, the paternal grandmother, hadn't visited since before the family moved. So Tuesday, April 29th, 2025 was like any other day. But it was actually a free day for the kids because the next day was a professional development day for teachers.
10:30 Speaker 01 So there was no school on Wednesday, and the family spent that day running errands together. They did laundry at a relative's house, went grocery shopping, and got home at around 10:19 that night. And Thursday, May 1st, the children stayed home because Martell and Lily had a cough. And since Lily wasn't going in, they kept Jack home too. So that afternoon, the whole family went out, and at 2:25 PM, all of them were captured on surveillance footage at a Dollarama in New Glasgow, roughly 30 kilometers from their home. And that would be the last confirmed public sighting of Lily and Jack Sullivan. But May 1st was unremarkable by all accounts.
11:12 Speaker 01 Martell said he spent the evening working on the fence in the backyard while the kids got ready for bed and couldn't recall exactly when they went down. And Malaya said she put Lily and Jack to sleep somewhere between 9 and 10 that night, though police noted her timeline was inconsistent throughout. And before going to bed, Martell leaned a wrench against the front door as a makeshift alarm system. The idea was that if anyone opened the door, the wrench would fall, clatter, and wake someone up. And Martell had done this many times before, and it had never actually gone off. So somewhere between 6 and 6:15 in the morning, Malaya used the school's mobile app to mark both children absent.
11:54 Speaker 01 And same reason as Thursday, Lily's cough, and since Lily wasn't going, Jack wasn't going either. And it was a second consecutive day home for both of them. Between roughly 8 and 9:40 in the morning, Malaya and Daniel were still in the bedroom with Meadow, their baby. And Malaya said she could hear Lily and Jack playing in the next room before she went back to rest. And Martell said Lily came in and out of the parents' bedroom a few times that morning, while Jack could be heard in the kitchen and apparently opening the patio door to go play in the backyard. Now, Janie McKenzie, Daniel's mother, was in her camper in the driveway about 30 meters away and later told police she could hear the children playing on the swings at around 8:50 in the morning.
12:37 Speaker 01 And that was the last time anyone claims to have heard them. So at some point, and no one can pin down exactly when... The adults noticed the trailer had gone quiet. So they checked the kids' bedrooms and found it empty. Checked the rest of the trailer, but found nothing. And then went outside and called for the children, but nothing was called back. And the wrench was still leaning against the front door, exactly where Martel had left it, undisturbed, which meant the children had gone out through the sliding glass door at the back. Both pairs of boots were missing, Jack's blue dinosaur boots and Lily's pink rubber boots. So at 10:01 a.m., Malaya called 911 and reported that her children had gone missing.
13:22 Speaker 01 And right away, Malaya told the dispatcher that the children were possibly autistic and known to roam. And 26 minutes later, at 10:27 a.m., RCMP officers arrived at 1407 Garlock Road. And the response was enormous by any measure. Ground search and rescue teams flooded in from across the province. And the Civil Air Search and Rescue Association deployed aircraft, the Department of Natural Resources contributed air support, and multiple RCMP units arrived with police dogs and remotely piloted drones. And over 160 people were on the ground by May 4th, and they weren't slowing down. And Martel told police that when he realized the children were gone, he jumped in his
14:06 Speaker 01 car and driven around looking. And when that turned up nothing, Martel got on foot and searched the woods for hours. And when investigators asked for a timeline, Martel said he hadn't tracked it and hadn't brought his phone either. So there was no way to map where he had actually been. And around 4 o'clock that afternoon, three family members emerged from the woods carrying a piece of blanket, pink, which means it was Lily's. And it was torn and hanging in a tree roughly 1 kilometer from the mobile home. And search teams redirected their efforts toward that area. And a police dog was dispatched to catch Lily's scent from the blanket, but found nothing.
14:48 Speaker 01 No trail and no trace, which was troubling on its own because if the children had carried that blanket into the woods... There should have been something for the dogs to follow. But then, Malaya told police something that changed the shape of things entirely. The blanket wasn't from inside the house. Malaya had thrown it in the garbage about a week before the children had disappeared. And it had been Lily's favorite for a long time, something Lily dragged everywhere. But Lily had grown out of it, and Martel had repurposed it briefly to block a draft coming in under the door before they tossed it out. Investigators looked at the trash bag still sitting at the end of the driveway and found the blanket inside, completely ripped apart with a missing piece.
15:31 Speaker 01 And Malaya explained that the piece was already missing when she threw it away because Daniel had torn the section off when he used it to block the door. So, a discarded blanket, already ripped, somehow turned up in a tree a kilometer from the house, and the dogs couldn't pull a scent from it. And nobody had a clean explanation for how it got there. I mean, could have been, maybe an animal took it, like a squirrel took it and brought it up a tree, I, I don't know. So on the night of May 2nd, around 11:30 PM, a drone equipped with infrared sensors picked up two heat signatures in the woods. So RCMP officers were sent in on foot and found nothing. And investigators later concluded the heat source was likely a bear in the area.
16:14 Speaker 01 But the search didn't stop, and days bled into each other. And by May 7th, six days in, Staff Sergeant Curtis McKinnon stood in front of the cameras with pictures of the children behind him and said, carefully, that search efforts were being scaled back because the realistic probability of two young children surviving alone in the wilderness for nearly a week was low. So on May 8th and 9th, the RCMP underwater recovery team searched bodies of water nearby, three ponds and Lansdowne Lake, but found nothing. And when it was all said and done, the search had logged over 12,000 hours with more than 1,700 crew members and volunteers, and the search area had more than doubled to 8.5 square kilometers.
16:59 Speaker 01 Helicopters, drones with thermal cameras, dogs, and divers had all been deployed, and still... All investigators were left with was one child-sized footprint near the property and a piece of ripped pink blanket. The RCMP's Crime Unit, which had been involved since May 3rd, recognized this shift. This was no longer a search and rescue operation. It was an investigation. And the suspicion didn't wait for the search to wind down. It started almost immediately. And at 12:45 in the morning of May 3rd, just hours after the children were reported missing, Malaya called police with a theory. And Malaya thought the children's biological father, Cody Sullivan, might have taken them.
17:42 Speaker 01 And that maybe Cody had driven up, picked up the kids, and taken them to New Brunswick, where Malaya believed Cody might be living.
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18:19 Speaker 01 So police were at Cody's door at nearly 3 a.m. And Cody was confused and disoriented, being at that time of the morning, just shaken by having officers show up at that hour, and told them he hadn't seen the children in over three years, because remember, he was a very absent father. So they took down some information and they would leave. And that same afternoon, things got loud. And Daniel Martell's drug history had apparently made its way to Malaya's family. And her sister was furious. And a confrontation broke out on the property, and Janie McKenzie eventually ordered the family to leave. Witnesses were there, and it got ugly. And at the Search and Rescue Command Center later that day, Malaya reviewed the maps
19:03 Speaker 01 of the search area and the weight of everything hit her at once. And Malaya handed Meadow to a family member, went outside, and had a panic attack while medical staff attended to her. And when it was over, something hit changed. Malaya packed up, left Lansdowne without Martell, and blocked Martell on social media, and didn't look back. And May 7 brought another development when a tip came in suggesting Cody Sullivan had been spotted at a hotel in New Brunswick. And police contacted Cody and Cody said he hadn't left Nova Scotia. And they verified it and Cody was effectively removed as a person of interest. So, who did that leave? Malaya
19:43 Speaker 01 went almost completely silent after this. And she gave one brief media interview during the initial search and then nothing. Police had advised her not to speak publicly because they were building a case. And in October of 2025, Malaya released a written statement through the volunteer group, Please Bring Me Home, saying, quote, "I will never stop searching for my children until they are found and brought home safe and sound. Someone, somewhere, knows something, so please bring my babies home," unquote. And then, nothing again. And Daniel Martell did the exact opposite. Martell was everywhere, going from CBC to CTV to Global News to YouTube interviews, telling his story and correcting the narrative
20:28 Speaker 01 and pushing back. And at one point, Martell described himself as the "figurehead" of the Lily and Jack investigation. And in one interview, Martell actually spoke about himself in the third person, saying, quote, "He has nothing to do with the disappearance. But in the public, as long as he looks evil, the public will judge him as being guilty," unquote. And people thought he was guilty because other photos surfaced after the kid's disappearance. And they showed more bruises on the children. And media outlets pressed Martell on this, and he didn't comment publicly. But he would comment in those Facebook messages like I mentioned before, and he would acknowledge the bruising, saying that Lily did it to
21:10 Speaker 01 herself, and, and so did Jack. But people weren't buying it. And Belinda Gray, the paternal grandmother, hadn't visited since before the family had moved. And when police showed Belinda photos of the children after they disappeared, photos taken In the months prior, Belinda was visibly shaken because they looked thin and malnourished with cracked lips. And Belinda said she believed the parents had failed these children, and she included herself in that failure. And when police later interviewed Brooks Murray, she was asked if Daniel Martel was ever physically abusive towards her during their relationship. And according to documentation filed for a search warrant application, her answer was yes.
21:52 Speaker 01 She stated, "He would block her and hold her down when she would try to leave, even pushing her. And one time, when she wanted to call her mother, Daniel took the phone away from her, sometimes leading to something physical." And Martel denied all allegations against him. And he would yell in response, no physical violence ever transpired in the duration of their relationship. So they had their ups and downs, but he said things never got physical. And in all interviews with news sources, he continually denied the allegations, stating they were trying to design a narrative where he was the perpetrator. And although never brought to court, a pattern of isolation from the family, a control of behavior from contacting them through the phone, and supposed physical confrontations,
22:37 Speaker 01 investigators were cautious with his narrative, unsure of what truly occurred in their home months before the disappearance of their children. But the contrast between the way Malaya was acting and the way Daniel Martel was acting was very stark. And the internet, naturally, noticed. And people couldn't reconcile Malaya's silence with Martel's apparent need to be on every camera every other week. And both behaviors were scrutinized with neither explanation feeling satisfying. The true crime community went into overdrive with Facebook groups, YouTube channels, and Reddit threads, all analyzing and theorizing and speculating constantly. And a child called "It's a Crying Shame," run by a woman named Sunny Austin, was doing
23:21 Speaker 01 live streams on the case regularly and sometimes drawing thousands of viewers. And family members of the children would occasionally show up in the chat, including Belinda Gray and, of course, because he needs to be in the center of everything, Daniel Martel. And one of those viewers was a man named Darren Geddes, a distant relative of Brooks Murray's and a first cousin of her grandmother Patty Pearson. Now Geddes appeared in one of Sunny's videos and put forward a theory that Malaya had put the children in a vehicle and sent them away before calling them in as missing, covering himself with a half-hearted "could be wrong" while the implication was clear. And police took it seriously enough to interview Geddes on May 30th.
24:05 Speaker 01 And according to documents, he was confrontational and evasive and more interested in getting information from investigators than actually giving any to them. And he became upset when police wouldn't answer his questions. And a month later, Malaya gave police a recording of a phone call between Geddes and her mother, Patty Pearson, recorded on the evening of June 21st. And whether Geddes knew he was being recorded was unclear. But meanwhile, the harassment toward Martell online was relentless, with people calling him a child killer and asking him where he had hid the bodies. Each message just getting darker and darker than the last. And on June 2nd, a candlelight vigil was held outside the RCMP detachment in Stellerton.
24:49 Speaker 01 And about 50 people gathered and placed stuffed animals, candles, and angels, and the memorial continued to grow. Martell attended alongside Belinda Gray. Two paper lanterns were lit and released into the sky, one for each child. And afterward, Martell stood up and asked the public to stop targeting Malaya because her mental health, he would say, would affect Meadow. So as the search scaled back, the investigative machinery kicked into full gear. And nearly a dozen RCMP officers from across the country were assigned to the case. And on May 12th, both Malaya and Daniel took polygraph tests at the Bible Hill RCMP detachment, and both passed.
25:29 Speaker 01 And by June 2025, investigators had spoken to roughly 54 people with connections to the case, and some of those people were polygraphed as well. And Martell told CBC around this time that every question he was asked in those interrogation rooms assumed the children were dead. And that Martel was the one responsible and not one question framed the possibility that someone had just taken them, just quote unquote, "Did you kill Lily and Jack?" Unquote. So for someone claiming innocence, Martel said, "That was a terrifying room to sit in." And June 10, Janie McKenzie underwent a polygraph, but the results were not used because her, quote, "physiology was not suitable for analysis," unquote, according to documents.
26:13 Speaker 01 And June 12, Cody Sullivan took a polygraph and passed. And July 2, Cindy Murray, the maternal grandmother and her boyfriend Wade Paris both took polygraphs and both passed. Which is, this is kind of irrelevant because you can't use a polygraph in court, so it's just, I don't even know why it's used anymore. But at this stage, police stated they did not believe the children's disappearance was criminal in nature, with no grounds to suspect someone had done this deliberately. But investigators needed something. So on June 19, the Nova Scotia government announced a reward of up to $150,000 for information related to the missing children, with the value scaling depending on the quality of the lead.
26:54 Speaker 01 So by August 2025, investigators had accumulated over 8,000 video files from trail cameras, dash cams, and security systems. Every frame of footage they could find in the area was being reviewed. And investigators had also executed approximately 12 search warrants between May 16 and July 16, covering properties, phone records, banking records, and surveillance footage. And then in September 2025, more than four months after the children vanished, the RCMP deployed cadaver dogs. And these aren't ordinary search dogs because they train specifically to locate human remains. And there are only about six to eight of them in the entire RCMP across all of Canada.
27:35 Speaker 01 So two handlers arrived, one from Alberta and one from British Columbia, and covered 40 kilometers of terrain over three days, starting from the property and working outward and hitting areas like where the pink blanket was found. But they would find nothing. And in November 2025, about 30 volunteers conducted a new search near the Middle River of Pictou, and one of them found a blanket in the woods with what appeared to be bones wrapped inside. And the bones were sent to an anthropologist who reviewed the photographs and determined they were animal bones. And on one occasion during these searches, a group was approached by a local property owner and told to leave because he had dangerous animals on his land.
28:17 Speaker 01 And those dangerous animals turned out to be two rams. So by January 2026, investigators had conducted 75 interviews, processed over 1,066 tips, examined 8,100 video files, and deployed units from across multiple provinces. And RCMP Staff Sergeant Rob McCammon said plainly that no suspects have been identified. And the case remained classified under the Missing Persons Act, which allowed investigators to continue accessing telecommunication records and anything else they deemed relevant, even without a formal criminal designation. And that could change, McCammon said, if new evidence surfaced. So they're waiting.
29:00 Speaker 01 But since there are no official suspects, not one, the public filled the vacuum with its own theories. And the first is an abduction theory. So from almost the beginning, Martel was pushing investigators to monitor provincial borders and airports because Martel believed the children were taken, and Malaya's inner circle shared that view. But police kept saying there was no evidence of abduction, so no Amber Alert was warranted. That is, until May 31st, when a woman named Natasha Haywood came forward and told police she'd been driving with her sons on the morning of May 2nd and spotted two children walking on the side of the road. A young girl was holding a younger boy's hand, and the boy had blond hair and was
29:43 Speaker 01 wearing shorts, and the girl had dark hair in pigtails with a tank top with a blue string. And they were walking toward an older white woman, approximately 50 to 60 years old, who was standing by the passenger side of an older tan or gold-colored sedan with the back door open. The location was Garlock Road and Lansdowne Station Road, close to the home. The descriptions didn't perfectly match, though, as Haywood estimated a nine- or 10-year-old girl and a five-year-old boy, whereas Lily was six and Jack was four, and the car was never identified. And police looked into it, but nothing came of it. But the account fueled the abduction theory in a significant way. And the next would be that they just wandered
30:26 Speaker 01 into the woods. And this was the working theory from day one and the reason for the massive immediate search response. Malaya had told the 911 dispatcher herself that the kids were possibly autistic and known to roam, so the assumption was that Lily and Jack slipped out through the patio door early in the morning and wandered into the dense forest and just got lost. And it was plausible at first, but less so as time went on. And Nick Oldreeve, founder of Please Bring Me Home, led a search in November of 2025. And after walking the area himself and seeing how thoroughly investigators had already covered it, Oldreeve was skeptical. And the dogs couldn't get a scent from the blanket, and the cadaver dogs found nothing,
31:09 Speaker 01 and helicopters and thermal drones found nothing, and over 160 volunteers on the ground found nothing. For two small children to completely vanish in a defined search area and leave no trace, that needed a real explanation, and the woods theory was struggling to provide one. And the next theory would be foul play. And this was the one the true crime community latched onto hardest. And honestly, the circumstances gave people plenty to work with, because allegations of domestic abuse, financial desperation, isolation from family, children arriving at school with bruises and black eyes, a child protection visit that found nothing, and then two kids who vanished without leaving a trace that hundreds of trained
31:51 Speaker 01 searchers could locate. And one early red flag involved Malaya deleting the TextPlus app from her phone. Now, TextPlus was an internet-based calling app Malaya used frequently because traditional phone service was spotty out in Lansdowne. And deleting it wiped the records and potentially compromised a portion of the investigation. And when asked why Malaya deleted it, she said she simply didn't need it anymore. And then there were the neighbors. Brad Wong and Justin Smith both told police they heard a vehicle coming and going from the property in the early hours of May 2nd. And Wong said he could see vehicle lights over the tree line from his elevated property, and that a loud vehicle had departed the driveway multiple times after midnight,
32:34 Speaker 01 stopping and returning and going again across three to four trips before driving off in the early morning hours. And Smith independently said he heard a vehicle at around 1:30 a.m. near Highway 289 by the railroad tracks near Galrock Road and Lansdowne Station Road, which is close to where the pink blanket was later found and near the child-sized boot print. And Smith said he'd spoken with Wong about it, and Wong believed the vehicle belonged to Martell. Now Martell denied all of it and said his vehicle never left the yard that night, and that if anything moved, it was Malaya's vehicle. Now the RCMP reviewed surveillance footage from Galrock Road area and found no evidence of vehicle activity during that window.
33:18 Speaker 01 And next was just the mystery of the blanket. It's possibly the strangest and most unresolved piece of the whole case was this blanket. The blanket was found hanging in a tree a kilometer from the house, but Malaya had told police it had been in the garbage for a week, and Daniel had used it to block a draft, then they tossed it and the trash bag was still at the end of the driveway with the blanket inside it, completely ripped apart with a missing piece. So how did that missing piece end up a kilometer away in a tree? Did Lily pull it from the trash before the garbage day? Was it placed there deliberately? And why couldn't the dogs pick up any scent from it?
33:59 Speaker 01 This was Lily's once favorite blanket, so her scent was definitely on it. It was something she carried literally everywhere, and there was nothing for the animals to follow. And forensic testing of the blanket was never made public. And Martell provided a blood sample to investigators for comparison with what they found on it, but the results were never released. No answers, just more questions. So eight months after these children have vanished... On January 26, 2026, Daniel Martel was arrested. It was 11:30 in the morning when Pictou County District RCMP took Martel into custody, and the charges were sexual assault and forcible confinement involving an adult victim.
34:42 Speaker 01 And the alleged offenses covered a timeframe between September 1, 2024, and March 30, 2025, which are the months directly leading up to the children's disappearance. And RCMP confirmed the charges but didn't name the adult victim. So whether it was Malaya Brooks-Murray was never officially stated. And the charges were separately classified from the missing children investigation, but nobody watching closely needed to be told what that timing suggested. So Martel was released on conditions and scheduled to appear in provincial court on March 2, 2026. And Martel didn't make any public statement about the arrest, but this was a man who had spent months going from news outlet to news outlet
35:25 Speaker 01 declaring his innocence and positioning himself as the public face of the search for Lily and Jack. And now Martel was facing charges like these. And the people who had already been suspicious of Martel had a lot more to be suspicious about. But as of February 2026, as I'm recording this, I know it's most likely March now, but as of February, Lily and Jack Sullivan are still missing. No bodies, no confirmed sightings since May 1, 2025, when the children were captured on that Dollarama footage in New Glasgow. And there are no new leads the public at least has been told about. So the case remains under the Missing Persons Act and is not officially a criminal investigation.
36:07 Speaker 01 But RCMP Staff Sergeant Rob McCammon has said that could change the moment any new evidence warrants it. And the Nova Scotia Government's reward of up to $150,000 is still on the table. McCammon has said publicly that he doesn't believe this will become a cold case. That hope is admirable, and whether it holds up is another question entirely. And Malaya released her last public statement in October of 2025, saying, "I will never stop searching." ...my children until they are found and brought home safe and sound. Unquote. But nine months, over 70 interviews, more than 1,000 tips, 8,000 video files, and 40 kilometers of terrain covered by cadaver dogs, ponds and wells and lakes and
36:50 Speaker 01 septic systems all searched, along with helicopters, thermal drones and divers. And still, investigators were left with a child-sized boot print and a torn pink blanket. There are just no clean answers, and the case is still open and the reward is still unclaimed. And two children, two innocent children, are still missing. Somewhere out there, maybe someone knows something they haven't said yet, and maybe they'll say it. And that is the reason I am making this video. If you know any information, please contact the local authorities in Nova Scotia. But that is the case of Lily and Jack Sullivan. So if you know any information, please contact
37:32 Speaker 01 the RCMP or local authorities in Nova Scotia. I really, I'm praying that these children get found, and if anyone did anything to them, that they are brought to justice. But let me know if there are any other cases you want me to cover. I'm grateful to be able to use my platform to get the word out on these sorts of cold cases. So please let me know any other cold cases you would like me to cover down below. But until then, we'll see your beautiful face, and please, please stay safe out there. All right? Bye.
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